Talk:Cledonism

Cledonism and Cledonomancy
This article explains that "cledonism, or cledonomancy, was a kind of divination", but mainly gives examples of taboos. I can sort of see how listening for (literally) ominous words, and avoiding saying ominous words, can be based in the same idea— namely, something like if something is said, it could be fated to happen, and then this could play out as divination (if you hear it, look out, it might happen!) *and* as word-taboo (you better not say it, or it might happen!). But I'm completely inferring/speculating this, and if this (or something else) is true, then could someone familiar with this subject add a bit of explanation to the article how it is that taboo and divination come from the same idea cledonism/cledonomancy? That explanation would be very useful, especially seeing as how it's easy to suppose (and I am merely supposing) that the two words cledonism and cledonomancy might not be synonyms, but instead that they could be two distinct concepts: cledono mancy could be purely divinatory (mantic) and cledon ism could be word-taboo (and any other non-divinatory beliefs/practices?) based on the shared idea of spoken⇄fated. —Sburke (talk) 22:40, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

Cledonomancy
Given that this article's examples of taboos are of wanting to avoid something negative, I wonder if the general idea of overhearing words ("listened for the god's answer among the chance words of pedestrians") was basically about whether or not something negative would happen-- or, instead: whether the divination could just as easily tell you that wonderful things would happen. Cf. how "luck" in English is by default about good things, whereas "ominous" is English is by default about awful things, whereas the Yijing is rarely purely one way or another. —Sburke (talk) 23:19, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

The Scope of Cledonism/Cledonomancy
The intro sentence "a kind of divination based on chance events or encounters, such as words occasionally uttered", is extremely broad-- that makes it sound like cledonism could refer to, well, any chance events or encounters. Instead, I wonder if it could really refer only to things involving words/speech, since κληδών seems pretty narrow in scope (i.e., words/notions as opposed to just any coincidence in the universe). Or: maybe it could involve words but also just plain noise-- what I would call psophomancy, i.e., divination by noise, which is a wonderful wonderful word because I've made it up just now. (I'm pulling it from "ψόφος", which is "noise" in LSJ-etc, but my 2002 Pocket Oxford Classical Greek Dictionary (Morwood & Taylor) gives "noise, sound; idle talk", into which I would contribute the practically onomatopoetic synonym "chatter".) —Sburke (talk) 23:20, 28 January 2013 (UTC)