Saturday, March 21, 2009

Got Questions?

KeelyNetI notice one of the gadgets available for Blogger blogs is one called Wish which is listed numerous times in the selection list. At first I put it on here, but don't particularly like it.

Magic 8 Ball is more my style except you only get the limited options on the ball. The I Ching is another option but again, the hexagrams limit the answers. The luck of the draw indeed and the heart of games of chance.

When you use an entire book as a randomized source for finding answers to a question, I think your chances, due to a very wide selection of options, are much better to get something useful...yes, I am a hybrid...about 3/4 science and 1/4 weird, if not more.

The use of a book to 'divine' the future or answer a question is called Bibliomancy and in the past, the Bible was the most used book for this purpose. I found a bit about this;

Bibliomancy, or divination by the Bible, had become so common in the fifth century, that several councils were obliged expressly to forbid it as injurious to religion, and savouring of idolatry.

This kind of divination was named Sortes Sanctorum, or Sortes Sacra, Lots of the Saints, or Sacred Lots; and consisted in suddenly opening, or dipping into the Bible, and regarding the passage that first presented itself to the eye, as predicting the future lot of the inquirer.

The Sortes Sanctorum had succeeded the Sortes Homericae, and Sortes Virgilianae of the Pagans; among whom, it was customary to take the work of some famous poet, as Homer or Virgil, and write out different verses on separate scrolls, and afterwards draw one of them; or else, opening the book suddenly consider the first verse that presented itself, as a prognostication of future events.

Even the vagrant fortune-tellers, like some of the gypsies of our own times, adopted this method of imposing upon the credulity of the ignorant...

The nations of the East retain the practice to the present day....it was found necessary to ordain in the council of Vannes, held A.D. 465, 'that whoever of the clergy or laity should be detected in the practice of this art, should be cast out of the communion of the church.'

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