Written in the stars, and cards, and pages

A brief announcement before I get into today’s post: The paperback of my most recent novel, A Sleight of Shadows, came out a couple of weeks ago. (That is an affiliate link, which means if you order the novel through it, I may receive a small amount of money through the sale, as well as a small amount of money as royalties.) It is the concluding book in my Unseen World duology. The next book is very different indeed.

Okay, actual post.

I’ve always had a fascination with things like astrology and tarot. Not so much because I think that they directly predict the future or say immutable things about our lives, but because I think they are useful and interesting things to think with. I think, speaking broadly, that we as humans like stories, and that telling ourselves stories about where we came from or where we are going is a kind of comfort to us in times of uncertainty, and that star signs and card spreads are very useful and compelling storytelling tools. (Sometimes literally - I know multiple writers who use tarot as a part of their process.)

And in a way, it’s because of the fact that these sorts of divination tools require interpretation, require storytelling, that I think they do have actual power. For example, if I have a pressing question, or a life issue that I am trying to make sense of, and I turn to the tarot about it, then I am focusing the signs and symbols that arise around my life and my question. The very fact of thinking in such a focused way may offer up answers or clearer ways of thinking. Or it may give me the means of explaining something confusing after the fact, when I am looking for a scaffolding to help me make sense of chaos.

All of this is by way of offering up a literary means of divination: bibliomancy. This is divination by book. Often the book used was a particular holy or otherwise meaningful book, but that is not required. Basically, you choose a book, open to a random page, and look at a random passage to help answer your question or explain your problem.

I am particularly fond of a kind of bibliomancy called rhapsodomancy, which just means that it uses poetry, not prose. For me, this is the most useful sort of bibliomancy is that which allows for flexibility of interpretation, and poetry builds that in by nature of the form.

And I was going to do a little rhapsodomancy for all of us here, choosing a book at random from a bookshelf that has a lot of poetry books on it, opening to a page number I had chosen beforehand, and interpreting it, but as it turns out, I am interpreting the poem as one that happens to fit my new book project quite well, so I am keeping this one as my own. But I’ll put the book and poem in the comments, and if you do a little bibliomancy on your own and want to share, please feel free.