They retired into
deep caves, where the darkness and silence resembled the state of death,
and there fasted, and lay upon the skins of the beasts they had
sacrificed, and then gave for answer the dreams which most affected
them; or opened a certain book appointed for that purpose, and gave the
first sentence that offered.[10] At other times the priest, or any person
who came to consult, took care at his going out of the cave, to listen
to the first words he should hear, and these were to be his answer. And
though they had not the most remote relation to the mutter in question,
they were twisted so many ways, and their sense so violently wrested,
that they made them signify almost anything they pleased. At other times
they had recourse to a number of tickets, on which were some words or
verses, and these being thrown into an urn, the first that was taken out
was delivered to the family.[11] Health, prosperity in worldly affairs,
and all that was intermixed in the good or evil of this world were
regulated by the responses or signs which these equivocal, not to say
less than absurd, means afforded, of prying into the womb of future
events.
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