Sciomancer

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who performs sciomancy, the ancient practice of calling up the spirits of the dead by means of their shadows
2. One who conjures the shades of departed souls and consults them as a form of divination through shadows
3. A diviner who claims to summon ghosts or spirits of the deceased, questioning them through their shadowy forms

Etymology: "Sciomancer" is a compound built from two Greek-derived parts: "scio-", from Greek "skia", meaning "shadow", and "-mancer", from Greek "manteia", meaning "divination" or "prophecy", through Old French "-mancie" and the Latin-influenced "-mancer" ending. Taken together, the parts describe someone who divines or summons by means of shadows, which in older belief meant the shades or spirits of the dead. The "-mancer" element is the more familiar half. It appears in "necromancer" (one who divines by the dead) and "geomancer" (one who divines by earth or patterns of dots), and it lends the sense of a practitioner of a particular kind of occult art. The "scio-" element is less common in English, which is why this word can feel more unusual than its neighbours in the same family.

Synonyms: shadow diviner