Daphnomancy Daphnomancy Daphnomancy is a form of pyromancy whereby the future is predicted by burning bay laurel leaves. A loud crackling from the fire is a positive omen, whereas silence is a negative one. "Daphno" is thought to be a tribute to Daphne, an ancient Greek nymph turned into the first laurel tree by Apollo. Originally, the leaves were selected from the Sacred Grove of Apollo, but as time moved on the practice of daphnomancy spread to pre-Christian era Rome and Greece and was thought to be commonly practiced by augurs of both empires. The original grove from which the Romans
The Wood Nymph The Wood Nymph The Wood Nymph (Swedish title: ; subtitled '), Op. 15, is a programmatic tone poem for orchestra composed in 1894 and 1895 by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. The ballade, which premiered on 17 April 1895 in Helsinki, Finland, with Sibelius conducting, follows the Swedish writer Viktor Rydberg's 1882 poem of the same name, in which a young man, Björn, wanders into the forest and is seduced and driven to despair by a ', or wood nymph. Organizationally, the tone poem consists of four informal sections, each of which corresponds to one of the poem's four stanzas