Bibliomancy Project: Query 6/6/2013

Q: I dreamed a few nights ago of sitting at a long table across from a short, swarthy man in a suit with balding hair and a mustache, and to his right a little girl.  I vaguely remember another figure in the room but not well enough to describe.  

I was there to explain something to the little girl about aliens and their hidden or imminent presence on earth.  Knowing nothing about it myself, I could not say much.  

Stuttering, I looked to the short man for counsel. He gave me some kind of signal, his forehead contorted in a impossible way and his pupils crossed like two magnets approaching one another's field and pulsing.  The message he conveyed in this way was something to the effect of ' wait a couple days and you will learn more,' and say nothing to the little girl until then.  

A couple days have passed.  What is going on?  

A: "Not too bad for the moment.  Considering what you just told him, your fellow looks a little down, but he's going with the flow."

from Eric Liberge, On the Odd Hours, p. 55.

Q: I don't understand.  Please tell me more.

A: Image of an apartment door, the lock turning from inside.  Apt. 10S.

from Neil Kleid, The Big Kahn.    

These are both graphic novels that I am entering into a database for work, chosen from the tops of their respective piles.  First was to my right, second to my left.  

Bibliomancy Project: Query 3/25/13

Q: In the realm of personal matters, why this persistent feeling that something is rotten?

A: 'The time had come for me to seek a discharge and take my place once more in society.'

Bradford Morrow, 'The Enigma of Grover's Mill,' in New Jersey Noir, p.123.

Bibliomancy Project: Query 3/11/13

Q: I feel an inexplicable sense of dread.  Why?

A: "Le Vin"

from Baudelaire's Flower of Evil

I drank my share of wine last night, more than in quite a while, in the company of friends.

Bibliomancy Project: Query 3/11/13

Q:
A___ seems immovable, unwilling to really open her heart, indifferent, barely trying, half there.  I love her.  Please tell me something I don't already know.

A:
She had said, "Like coming home..."  
He sensed a promise of sorts there.
But he didn't understand.

from Simenon, Three Bedrooms in Manhattan, p.111.

Q: Should I keep my distance this week?

A; To study the Buddha Way is to study the self.

from Dogen's Genjo Koan, p. 182.

These were 2 books from a pile of damages and customer returns at work.  The others in the pile were art monographs and technical books, mostly.  I used Simenon for the first question because it was the lighter, smaller book of the two and incidentally placed on top. 

Bibliomancy Project: Query 2/26/13

Q: This job is sucking me dry.  Is it time to move on?

A:

'Real Jobs in the Real World
Choosing a Major? A Career? An Employer?
2013 Link-In: Connecting With Careers
Spring Break Job Shadows in the Workplace
March 11-15 & 22

I swear this was not a planned response, but an answer provided by a flyer forgotten in the back of a book, which I opened randomly to rediscover said flyer. 

Bibliomancy Project: Query 2/7/13

Q: A blizzard is said to be coming, the worst in years. 

A: The USA and Australia are obvious examples of nation-states all of whose specific national characteristics and criteria of nationhood have been established since the late eighteenth century, and indeed could not have existed before the foundation of the respective state and country  However, we need hardly remind ourselves that the mere setting up of a state is not sufficient in itself to create a nation.

-E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (Cambridge, 1990), p.78. [second Italics mine]

Bibliomancy Project: Intro

The results of oracular divination depend a lot on how a question is posed. I have consulted the I Ching like a trusted friend in times of profound uncertainty, and often with an object of anguished desire in mind. But how to pose a question without investing the reading with disproportionate self-interest is always a challenge, and thoughtful contemplation can easily give way to grasping and brooding. I have left it alone for a long time now; and even though its inner logic will always inform the way I experience the world, I refrain for now from engaging with the Book directly because the white noise of my nameless fears has gotten loud to the point of scrambling any message that might come through. Still, the "I" is a convergence point of many vectors, and any action that it takes, any incidental message that it receives from whatever source, is charged with a significance that resonates infinitely in all directions. "I" cannot help but be an (blind)oracle among (blind) oracles.

"Everything is a symbol, even the most piercing pain. We are dreamers who shout in our sleep" Leon Bloy, Le mendiant ingrat, Le Vieux de la Montagne and L'invendabl

In any event, here begins a casual experiment in bibliomancy, the practice of divination through randomly selected texts. The plan is to just open a book, whatever book, once a day or so and record the first paragraph or little bit of text that my eyes fall onto. I will pose a question or statement beforehand and take it all with a grain of salt, that is, try not to look too deeply for a correlation between the question/statement and the 'oracular reading.' Maybe a larger pattern will emerge with time, an arc of some kind, or at the very least some good material for a story, but until then suffice it to be an open ended project.

And just a note on method--I am keeping it loose, but here are some ways of approaching an oracle that I have found useful:

- Pose a straightforward question: like, is my horse pregnant?, where the results are read as a qualified 'yes' or 'no.'
- State an intention, where the results are then interpreted as a map of what can be expected should that intention be carried out.
- Describe a feeling, existential condition, or desire where the results are read both as good counsel and as a a kind of aerial map of unseen forces acting upon the subject.

Good enough, more to follow.