Consider the following situation:
A successful businessman who has made a bundle of money, has a house in the Hamptons and a pied à terre in New York. He has a wife, several mistresses, a couple of kids and a drinking habit. One day his wife discovers the existence of the mistresses and storms off to consult her lawyers. His business tanks and he discovers that most of the money he’s salted away was actually in a Ponzi scheme that will return him less than a cent on the dollar. He has money hiding away in the Cayman Islands, but the IRS has got wind of it and they are making ambitious demands and writing threatening letter. In other words, he’s reached a climacteric moment and his life sucks like a singularity.
What is going to happen?
Perhaps all is not lost. Perhaps he’ll come through this unscathed. He’s definitely motivated to consult a fortuneteller and find out what the future holds?
As soon as this whimsical idea enters his brain he realizes that there are choices here. He can go to a palmist or an astrologer or a Tarot reader or just a plain old card reader (cartomancer). Maybe he prefers an I-Ching specialist or a numerologist or a clairvoyant complete with crystal ball and gypsy costume. Or maybe he wants something really exotic, like some form of divination he’s never heard of before. You never know, he might discover someone who’ll predict a really rosy future for nothing more than a fist full of dollars. But what to choose? Here is a list of 10 unlikely possibilities:
- Stichomancy: Why not just grab the Yellow Pages, open it up at the fortunetelling section and just pick a name with a pin. Actually, why not just open the Yellow Pages at random and put your finger anywhere on the page it opens at. If you do that, you’ll be indulging in stichomancy; divination by randomly selecting a passage from a book. Don’t ask me how you should interpret it if you finger alights on “Diamond Joe’s All Star Strip-a-Grams,” or “Larry’s Low Budget Precision Plumbing,” I know nothing of the technicalities of stichomancy. But I can tell you that this form of divination has been popular in its time, because there are several words for it. Aside from stichomancy, it is also called bibliomancy and, if you confine yourself to using books of poetry ,it’s called rhapsodomancy. Remarkably, there are even terms for rhapsodomancy that date back to Roman times. They are; Sortes Homerica (divination using The Iliad) and Sortes Virgilianae (using the Aeneid). By the Middle Ages everyone was using the Bible for this kind of stichomancy, but nowadays the Yellow Pages is probably as good as anything. To be thoroughly modern, one could try googlomancy; typing random words into Google and interpreting the meaning of the first page link that comes up.
- Logarithmancy: Suppose our soon-to-be-bankrupt businessman who craves knowledge of the future is actually a financial trader of some kind. If so, he may be interested in a form of divination that employs sophisticated mathematics. If so, logarithmancy is for him. Technically logarithmancy is defined as divination using algorithms, but actually it is what it sounds like. The only form of logarithmancy on record used tables of logarithms. The use of logarithms in this way may have evolved from the fact that astrologers used tables of numbers to work out planetary positions, so a table of logarithms may have been an impressive prop for a fortuneteller to have on hand. Possibly they were used by numerologists who were just no good at arithmetic. Actually no-one knows, because the information about how logarithmancy worked (if it ever did) has been lost. It’s likely that logarithmancy was used to predict the ups and down of the various markets that flourished as the merchant traders of the 17th century opened up the sea lanes of the world. Logarithmancers may have made recommendations on when to buy and sell shares in the South Sea Company and, if only they existed, modern day logarithmancers would surely provide our nervous businessman with excellent advice on which derivatives to gamble on.
- Gyromancy: Perhaps our once-successful-businessman has studied management practices and is familiar with Management By Walking Around (MBWA). If so, what could be more appropriate for him than Metagnomy By Walking Around (MBWA). Metagnomy, by the way is another word for divination. Believe it or not, there are two forms of MBWA; ambulomancy and gyromancy. Ambulomancy involves watching someone walk from one place to another and gaining insight from observing the choices he or she makes en route. From this you deduce what kind of person they are and what their future is likely to hold. The second form of MBWA is much more fun. With gyromancy the person whose fortune is being told spins around inside a circle drawn on the ground. Letters of the alphabet are placed around the perimeter of the circle. When the person falls over from being dizzy you take a note of the letter they fell on, or nearest to, and then put them back on their feet until some message or other is spelt out. The neat thing about gyromancy is you can do it better when drunk.
- Coscinomancy: I am not making this up, but as I write this I feel as though I am. Coscinomancy is metagnomy using a sieve and shears. Does that make any sense? Not at all. It could just as easily be metagnomy using an iPod and jar of pickles. How about metagnomy using a rubber bullet and a baseball bat? I wouldn’t even dare to mention this absurdity were there not an entry in the Wikipedia. Coscinomancy is described in Cornelius Agrippa’s Libri tres de occulta philosophia and also in the Wikipedia entry. Probably the only living Coscinomancer is the person who wrote the entry.
- Omoplatoscopy: Omoplatoscopy is much more believable than coscinomancy, although it is still a bit “out there.” It is metagnomy using a shoulder blade (normally of an animal), which has been charred from being burned in a fire. The reason it’s more believable is that there are so many words that relate to using a shoulder blade for metagnomy. I have no idea why that particular bone has been selected for fortunetelling. There are no metagnomy methods I’ve come across that use any other bone. I guess it must be just the right shape for reflecting the future. Anyway, for the record, there’s also armomancy and spatulamancy which are words for metagnomy using an animal shoulder blade in general and there’s also scapulimancy which means precisely the same as omoplatoscopy.
- Apantomancy: The previous two forms of metagnomy are unlikely to appeal to our challenged business leader, because they are archaic (like the regulation of Wall St) and it will be difficult to locate a practitioner (just as it’s difficult to find a regulator on Wall St.) There are many forms of metagnomy which you simply cannot do whenever you feel inclined. For example, metagnomy using thunder (brontomancy) or using lightning (ceraunomancy) suffers from “no thunderstorm equals no metagnomy.” Imagine how frustrating life must be for a haruspex (a fortuneteller who combines the observation of lightning with the examination of entrails) when there’s no likelihood of a thunderstorm for weeks. You’d have to have some other form on metagnomy to resort to. In fact, if you were a haruspex, apantomancy would be the perfect alternative for when the thunder won’t strut its stuff. Apantomancy is metagnomy using any object at hand – absolutely anything inanimate, no holds barred. Related to this, I suspect, is the far more particular macromancy, metagnomy by studying the largest object in the area, and also the more exacting micromancy, metagnomy by studying the smallest object in the area. Both of these are excellent options that can be tried anywhere, with anyone, at any time. I suspect that once metagnomy brings itself more up-to-date with technology we’ll see the development of nanomancy, metagnomy using an electron microscope.
- Taghairm: Maybe our sorry businessman has been on several of those intensive personal growth courses where everyone ends up meditating and hugging trees. In which case, taghairm really might appeal to him. It’s a form of metagnomy that involves seeking inspiration by being wrapped in the warm smoking hide of a newly slain ox and laid at full length in the recess of some lonely waterfall. It’s a practice that comes from the Scottish Highlands, but I’m sure it is equally effective wherever you do it. This is something you can do yourself, if you really want (please don’t try it at home) but you can also have a practitioner do it for you. In Scotland they tended to choose a prophet, feed the prophet a question and then commence with the ox slaughtering.
- Retromancy: You might think this means metagnomy using a method that was once popular and is now in revival. It doesn’t, it’s metagnomy by looking over one’s shoulder. While metagnomy is usually about looking forward, retromancy is about looking forward while looking backwards. I’m not exactly sure whether there are any practicing retromancers nowadays, mainly because retromancer (a practitioner of retromancy) has recently acquired a new meaning; retromancer, a person or group or people dedicated to the revival of any and all things considered retro – including retromancy, I’d hope. This makes it pretty much impossible to find yourself a retromancer on the Internet. Our sorry businessman might as well try kalling.
- Kalling: I promise you I am not making this up. Get someone, put a blindfold on them and then place examples of different varieties of cabbage in front of them. They pick one blindly in whatever manner they care to and what they pick reveals the future. That’s right. Kalling is metagnomy based on which variety of cabbage a blindfolded person picks. Before you object to this let’s just review the facts here. There are over four hundred different varieties of cabbage nowadays; round, conical, flat, curly, tight or loose leaved, green, white, red, and purple. There are only 64 hexagrams in the I Ching and that’s been a popular means of divination since Wu was king of the Chou. So we could argue that kalling is every bit as subtle as the I Ching depending on how many varieties of cabbage you use. But it probably isn’t.
- Geloscopy: This is metagnomy based on interpreting someone’s laughter. For example, in early 2008, a noted geloscopist, on hearing Hillary Clinton’s laugh, prophesied perfectly accurately that she would not become president. Geloscopy insists that people who laugh a lot are open and sincere, those that rarely laugh are persistent and reserved; quiet laughter says “facile but kind,” loud laughter says “harsh and inclined to lying” and Hillary Clinton’s laughter says “vote for someone else.” The main challenge with geloscopy is getting the client to laugh, but practiced geloscopists have a sure fire way to pull this off. They simply tell the client about all the metagnomic absurdities described above and they’re splitting their sides in no time.
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"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."
~ Thomas Jefferson
~ Thomas Jefferson
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