Practiced by the ancient Creten Greeks to discover a crime. An agate or piece of jet (stone) was placed on a red-hot axe which indicated the guilty person by its motion.
Another explanation suggests that it was a system that was used as a mode of finding a guilty person, this consisted of heating an ax head, setting it upright, placing a marble on it, and turning it slowly until the marble rolled in someone’s direction. This same prodedure was considered as one way to find a treasure.
An additional method was to suspend a hand ax, or hatchet, from a string attached to its handle, twirl it and see to whom it pointed when it stopped.
A third and perhaps the best method was to drive the ax blade into the top of a post and let it waver there, while a group danced around the post.
When the ax finally fell, its handle was supposed to point to the guilty person if he/she was still around. If she/he was gone, it pointed to the direction in which that person went.