Bibliomancy

Bibliomancy is divination by means of a book: a sacred or otherwise authoritative text is opened at random (or to a randomly chosen line), and the passage lit upon is read as guidance, omen, or answer to a question. The practice depends on treating a particular text as so charged with truth or divine presence that even a chance encounter with it must be meaningful. Its history is closely tied to the most revered books of each culture. In the classical world the poems of Virgil were used this way, the sortes Virgilianae, as, earlier, were the Homeric epics.

In Christian Europe the Bible was the usual instrument (the sortes sanctorum or sortes biblicae), a practice both widely used and repeatedly condemned by church authorities wary of treating scripture as a lottery; a famous instance is Augustine's conversion in the garden, prompted by opening Paul's letters at random.

Comparable practices attach to the Quran and to the poetry of Hafez in the Persian world (fal-e Hafez), and the Chinese I Ching functions on a related principle. Bibliomancy reflects a recurring conviction across traditions: that a supremely authoritative text contains an answer for every situation, and that the moment of opening it can be guided, by God, fate, or chance rightly read, to the passage one needs.

The practice requires a book already regarded as authoritative, and the history of it is largely a history of which book a culture would trust that far.

In the classical world it was Homer and then Virgil, and the Latin name for the practice preserves the second. In Christian use the Bible replaced them, and the sortes sanctorum were condemned by church councils on multiple occasions across several centuries, which is reliable evidence that they went on being used. The most celebrated instance in Western literature is Augustine's own account of his conversion, in which he hears a child's voice telling him to take up and read, opens the letters of Paul at random and takes the passage he finds as addressed to him.

Islamic practice has its own forms, including consultation of the Qur'an, and in the Persian world the poems of Hafez are used for the same purpose in a living tradition with its own occasions and etiquette. The book chosen is a poet rather than a scripture, which changes the theology without changing the method.

The mechanism the practice depends on is not obscure. A rich, allusive text opened at random will supply something that can be read as pertinent, and a reader with a pressing question will do the reading. What the tradition adds is the discipline of accepting the passage found rather than turning the page for a better one.

That constraint is what distinguishes it from simply consulting a book.