Sciomancers

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A practitioner who claims to communicate with spirits or shadows for divination or guidance
2. An individual skilled in the art of seeking knowledge through interactions with ethereal beings or phantoms
3. A seer who invokes apparitions or spectral entities to reveal hidden truths or foretell future events

Etymology: "Sciomancers" is the plural of "sciomancer," formed from the combining form "scio-" and the suffix "-mancer." The second element comes from Greek "manteia," meaning divination or prophecy, which gives English words like "necromancer," "geomancer" and "chiromancer," each naming a practitioner who reads or summons something specific. The first element, "scio-," derives from Greek "skia," meaning shadow, so a sciomancer is literally a diviner of shadows. That compound is the whole story. Since the sense "shade" or "shadow" carries over into the idea of spirits, a sciomancer is someone who calls up ghostly apparitions, the "shades" of the dead or other spectral presences, and interprets them as sources of hidden knowledge.