Cracking open the Secrets of Oomancy

Alright, folks! Gather round for the moment we’ve all been waiting for! The ultimate display of my witchy prowess, drum roll please…🥁OOMANCY! And just like the name of the divination I practiced, I hope to hear you all saying “oooo” from behind your screen where you’re reading this. I’m a witch now. I’ll know if you did it or not.

Okay, so let me first tell you a little bit about divination with eggs. Divination is meant to help gain insight of a question or insight of the future. Different lore and practice suggest slightly different ways to practice oomancy, but consistent across methods is that the diviner will drop a raw egg white into a glass of water where the shapes it make can be interpreted. I’m especially interested in this occult practice because it was used in New England in the 17th century and a version of oomancy was experimented with by Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Paris, kicking off the Salem Witch Trials. Their version was called the Venus Glass, and also required a mirror to perform. Other versions require accompanying meditation or drawings of the shapes created by the egg. Just like in palmistry, another type of divination, there are visual indicators through color, consistency, or shape which indicate certain expectations that can be read by a trained “oomaster”. A TikTok post called this an “egg cleanse” and shared some signs to look for. I also noticed in her video that she used a whole egg instead of just the whites. In an assessment of all the versions of egg-scrying I’ve discovered, oomancy has the potential to divine the career of your future husband, insight into personal issues, emotions, relationships, finances, health, pregnancies, etc.

Now let me tell you about my experience. In the version of oomancy I followed, I dropped an eggwhite into a glass of hot water and interpreted the shapes. This was meant to determine the career of my future husband. The examples I had for reference were “if the eggwhite looked like a ship, your husband would be a sailor. If it looked like a plow, your husband would be a farmer.” In the case described by Reverend Hale, the shape of a coffin appeared to the girl and she died a single woman as punishment for handling the devil’s tools. I personally don’t believe that putting a egg in water is anywhere near the work or tools of the devil. It hurts no one and spreads no evil in the world, so I was prepared to attempt it. I shall share the video, but here are the shapes and careers I predicted.

Shape Observed → Career Predicted

Jellyfish → Marine biologist

Circus silks → Circ de Solei Performer / Acrobat

Body tissues → Doctor

Clouds/fog → Meteorologist

Fabric → Modiste / Dress maker

 

If I had to guess now, I’d predict that my future spouse would be a marine biologist. That was my immediate prediction when conducting the experiment, and so I’ll go with my instincts. After conducting the experiment, I don’t think it will affect my life or my mindset at all. At this point in my life, me and my peers haven’t started our professions yet, so I am not sure it will provide me strong clues to finding my future partner, but it was a fun activity to do. Afterwards, I poached the egg and ate it. Waste not. 

I’m not sure I have the same obsession with predicting my future partner that Abigail and Betty had. Perhaps it’s that I have more opportunities in my life beyond marriage than they did, so it doesn’t fascinate me to the same extent as it did them. Or perhaps we’re just different people. It’s all speculation at this point. While I enjoyed the activity, I was not so enticed by the knowledge it promised that I would have done it had I thought I was dabbling in something sinister. Then again perhaps being forbidden from doing it made it more tempting.

I want to mention one last thing that snagged my attention before I sign off. In the instructions I followed, it said “the shapes would be examined to determine the career of one’s future husband.” This phrase makes an assumption about the performer of the divination. It presumes that the diviner is a straight woman. I could well be reading too deeply into nothing here, but to me it reemphasized the assumption of women as witches. In historical witch trials, women always took the brunt of the accusations. So here again we have this expectation that women would be the ones dabbling in witchcraft. 

I hope you enjoyed my egg-citing divination from the witching hour. I was left shell-shocked, but now I know witch way to go for my future husband and I’ve cracked open the secrets of oomancy.