--

Hare sitting on side.
Butterfly near rim.
Heart and ring.
Large flower on edge of bottom.
Figure of woman holding ivy-leaf in bottom.
Triangle.
Initials 'A' and small 'C' with dots.

INTERPRETATION

FIG. 10

This is typical of the cup being too often consulted by some people. It
is almost void of meaning, the only symbols indicating a short journey,
although the flower near the rim denotes good luck, and the fact that
the bottom is clear that nothing very important is about to happen to
the consultant.

[ILLUSTRATION 10]

FIG. 10

_Principal Symbols_:--

Line of dots leading W.S.W to
Flower.
Two letters near rim

CHAPTER VI

OMENS

How have omens been regarded in the past? An appeal to anciency is
usually a safeguard for a basis. It is found that most of the earliest
records are now subsisting. See official guide to the British Museum.
Babylonian and Assyrian antiquities, table case H. Nineveh Gallery, the
following appears:

"By means of omen tablets the Babylonian and Assyrian priests from time
immemorial predicted events which they believed would happen in the near
or in the remote future. They deduced these omens from the appearance
and actions of animals, birds, fish, and reptiles; from the appearance
of the entrails of sacrificial victims; from the appearance and
condition of human and animal offspring at birth; from the state and
condition of various members of the human body."

In India, where the records of the early ages of civilization go back
hundreds of years, omens are considered of great importance.

Later, in Greece, the home of the greatest and highest culture and
civilization, we find, too, omens regarded very seriously, while to-day
there are vast numbers of persons of intellect, the world over, who
place reliance upon omens.

That there is some good ground for belief in some omens seems
indisputable. Whether this has arisen as the result of experience, by
the following of some particular event close upon the heels of signs
observed, or whether it has been an intuitive science, in which
provision has been used to afford an interpretation, is not quite
clear. It seems idle to attempt to dismiss the whole thing as mere
superstition, wild guessing, or abject credulity, as some try to do,
with astrology and alchemy also, and other occult sciences; the fact
remains that omens have, in numberless instances, given good w