Divination or fortune telling by examining the entrails of a person during a sacrifice or slaughter, usually those of virgins or young children: With anthropomancy, the viscera (organs of the digestive, respiratory, urogenital, as well as the spleen, the heart, and great vessels) were used to read symbols of the future.

This form of anthropomancy was practiced in ancient Egypt; and Roman Emperor Heliogabalus is said to have done this, too.

Herodotus said that Menelaus, who was detained in Egypt by contrary winds, used anthropomancy by sacrificing two children of the country, and sought to discover his destiny by this method.

It is reported that in his magical operations of anthropomancy, Julian the Apostate, caused a large number of children to be killed, so that he might consult their entrails and a woman was found in the Temple of the Moon at Carra, in Mesopotamia, hanging by her hair with her liver torn out.

This type of anthropomancy divination continued through the period of the Roman Empire and it was believed to have been revived by notorious practitioners of the black arts during the Middle Ages.