One of the most persistent accounts in the European haruspical tradition concerns a porcine intestinal formation that may have shaped a medieval succession. This article examines the reading, its method, and what it still offers the practising haruspex today.
Category
Case Studies & Readings
Case Studies & Readings is the practical core of this resource — a curated archive of documented examinations, annotated scenarios, and real-world accounts contributed by practising haruspices across the UK and further afield.
The material here covers the full range of challenges encountered in active practice: contested spleenfold interpretations, procedural complexities in regulated environments, licensing ambiguities, and the administrative realities of mobile reading operations. You will find articles addressing documentation standards, relationships with local authorities, grant applications, and what experienced practitioners have learned from readings that did not go according to plan.
This is not theoretical. Case Studies & Readings exists because organ behaviour varies, contexts vary further still, and the most useful knowledge in this profession tends to come from specific, well-documented experience rather than general principle. What worked, what did not, and what a practitioner would approach differently next time — that is the substance of this archive.
Whether you are newly qualified or have decades of practice behind you, the archive rewards careful reading. Browse Case Studies & Readings in full, and consider submitting your own documented experience where it may be of value to others.
Entrails in the Bible: A Closer Reading
The Hebrew scriptures contain numerous passages in which animal organs carry significant ritual and interpretive weight. This article examines the key texts — from the Levitical sacrificial codes to Ezekiel's Babylonian haruspex — and considers what they offer the modern practitioner. Read carefully, they are more relevant than their reputation suggests.
Victorian Revivalism and Organ-Based Divination
The Victorian occult revival did more than popularise haruspicy — it codified it. This article examines how classical scholarship, urban demand, and a new empirical spirit reshaped organ-based divination in Britain, and why those changes still matter to practising haruspices today.
The Lost Rituals of the Anatolian Gutsingers
The Anatolian gutsingers were a network of divinatory practitioners operating in central Anatolia during the early centuries of the common era, whose methods diverged from classical Roman haruspicy in instructive ways. Drawing on fragmentary sources, this article examines what can be reconstructed of their techniques — including paired-organ reading and ritual vocalisation — and what contemporary haruspices can take from them. The documentary record is thin, but the implications are not.
Open-Air Divinations: Results from the 2023 Solstice
In the summer of 2023, a group of experienced haruspices conducted a collective open-air reading at a stone circle on the summer solstice. This case study documents their methods, findings, and the practical lessons drawn from the session for practitioners considering outdoor divination work.
The Haruspex of Londinium: Unearthed Accounts
A scroll fragment in the British Museum's Romano-British collection documents the work of a civic haruspex in Roman Londinium, describing methods, preparatory practice, and professional standing. The find offers genuine continuity with contemporary haruspical work, and a useful reminder that the discipline's current challenges with public perception are a historical interruption rather than an inherent condition.
Wedding Readings and Their Consequences
Wedding readings carry a distinct set of professional risks that routine consultations do not. This article examines what goes wrong, why it goes wrong, and how careful preparation and honest communication with clients can prevent the most common failures.
Folk Haruspicy and 17th Century English Witches
The witch trial period in England created significant professional and legal risk for practitioners of folk haruspicy, not through direct prosecution but through association. This article examines what the records actually show, what was lost, and why the history remains relevant for contemporary practitioners.
The Missing Chapter of the Sibylline Books
The fire of 83 BCE destroyed a significant portion of Rome's Sibylline Books, including one chapter never recovered or reconstituted. This article examines what the missing material may have contained, why it matters to the haruspical tradition, and what its loss tells us about the gaps in our theoretical record.
Haruspicy in the 2019 General Election: A Review
In the weeks before the December 2019 general election, twenty standardised liver readings were conducted by practitioners across the UK. This review examines what those readings indicated, where they held, and what the methodology can learn from the results.