Axinomancy was 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 which 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 or she was still around. If she or he was gone, it pointed to the direction in which that person went.