Augury is "the art of divination by observing the behavior of birds."1 The term comes from the word for the Roman officials, augurs, who were charged with watching "the pecking behavior of sacred chickens" whenever a military or political initiative was underway, to see whether the gods approved.2 For generations, the practice of augury was understood as a supernatural phenomenon, as a moment of divine inspiration during a trance, or the result of expert work by a skillful reader of signs.
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