We have therefore summoned to our presence a Jewish woman, by name Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of York — a woman infamous for sortileges and for witcheries.

Orthodox believers […] were less happy about using sortilege to coerce God into taking decisions on their behalf.

‘Too much evil sortilege,’ Glad always says when someone suggests he open a franchise over Cheat Ridge.

People who faced difficult decisions or needed insight into the future would consult a diviner, who performed a ritual to locate an oracle in the codex and then interpreted the divinatory text. In Egypt and the wider Mediterranean world, this practice - sortilege - was both common and controversial.

Sortilege

Meaning

Noun

Origin