The Fore-readable Future: Divination in the Library

Among the most iconic tools of divination, tarot is an example of cartomancy, or divination using cards. The history of tarot is cloaked in superstition, with some claiming that tarot’s origins can be traced to the mythical Book of Thoth, the “oldest book in the world” authored by Hermes Trismegistus, councilor of the ancient Egyptian god Osiris (Gray 1). Another claim asserts that the cards are connected to the Jewish Kabbalah and are the key to its mysteries (The Complete Book of Fortune 27). In a less superstitious history, tarot can be traced to a mid-15th century Italian card game similar to bridge called Trionfi. The first documented trionfi card packs, produced and traded in Florence between 1440 and 1450, and were just that– playing cards (Pratesi 95, 102). The cards were not imbued with their fortune-telling powers until the late 18th century, when the writings and interpretations of French occultists, such as Antoine Court de Gébelin and Éliphas Lévi, shifted the perception of the cards from playing cards to divination tools. In turn, tarot broke into two distinct decks, one for playing card games, and the other for future-telling. Interestingly though, some decks traditionally used only as a card game were adopted into cartomantic practice, such as the famous Tarot of Marseilles and the Swiss Tarot.

Traditional tarot decks are composed of 78 cards, which can be split into two groups, the Major Arcana and Minor Arcana. The Major Arcana are the first twenty-two cards of the deck, and the Minor Arcana make up the other fifty-six. Tarot cards have multiple meanings, and readings are interpretated by the reader from a combination of cards pulled by the querent (the person making an inquiry). Tarot decks are often amalgams of religions and cultures, with Egyptian, Hindu, Babylonian, Jewish, and Christian elements commonly appearing in their pictography. In a contemporary context, tarot has been integrated into multiple world religions such as Wicca and Paganism, as well as the cultural practices of the Romani people and in Hoodoo traditions (which were developed by enslaved African Americans in the Southern United States). Tarot’s popularity has led to secular usage as well, and the cards have since entered pop culture, appearing in various forms of entertainment, such as TV shows like Marvel’s Agatha All Along and video games like Supergiant Games’s Hades II.

Fun fact: The word arcanum (pluralized as “arcana”) comes from the Latin arcanus, meaning “secret.”

Michel de Nostredame, known more commonly by his Latinized name of Nostradamus, was a French author, translator, physician, astrologer, apothecary, and supposed prophet. Born in the French commune of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in 1503, Nostradamus hailed from a Jewish family, who had recently converted to Catholicism a generation prior to avoid rampant antisemitism in France. In fact, as a converted Jew, Nostradamus faced enough suspicion that his grandfathers were forced to be his first teachers, who taught him Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, as well as astrology and the Kabbala, an esoteric Jewish school of thought, which would have been deemed dangerously anti-Christian at the time (Smith 2). Surrounded by the plague for most of his life, Nostradamus’s education at the University of Avignon was cut short by an outbreak, and some years later in 1534, his first wife and two children died in another outbreak. Although suffering tremendous loss, Nostradamus did become quite successful, with the publication of his 1550 almanac leading to his employment of an astrological consultant for multiple affluent clients, such as Catherine de’ Medici, who served as Queen of France from 1547 to 1559. Nostradamus gained his fame as a seer in 1555, when he published his Les Prophéties (“The Prophecies“), in French, Latin, Greek, and Occitan. Les Prophéties were a collection of quatrains grouped into sets called “centuries,” and pertained to Nostradamus’s various (and usually bleak) predictions of the future, which commonly featured deaths and disasters.

Fun fact: Nostredame means “Our Lady,” which could have been perceived as “defiantly Catholic” at the time, hinting further that his family chose this name to help keep their Jewish ancestry discreet (Smith 2).

Not to mention, doomsayers are still using Nostradamus’s prophecies to cast predictions– in 2024, a Youtuber claimed the Les Prophéties had predicted when the Big One (AKA the hypothetical, catastrophic earthquake generated by the San Andreas Fault destined to destroy much of California) would hit. The Youtuber (and apparently Nostradamus) asserted that an earthquake would hit the Golden State on May 28, 2024 with a whopping 9.8 on the Richter scale. Spoiler, this didn’t happen. Due to poetic vagueness, Nostradamus’s prophecies can easily be lent to multiple events or individuals, which is nothing new when it comes to prophets– the sybils of Ancient Greece weren’t exactly precise in their wording either.

In terms of age, prophecy is one of the oldest forms of divination and widely appears in various world religions and mystic traditions. For example, prophetic figures appear in Christianity, the Baháʼí Faith, Islam (where prophets are known as nabī (Arabic: نَبِي; pl. anbiyāʼ from nabā “tidings, announcement”), and Judaism (the Hebrew term for prophet is Navi (נביא), which translates as “spokesperson”). In fact, prophetic and divination texts are just as old, as seen by ancient Chinese oracle books, called Chen (讖), which include the I Ching (易經, meaning “Book of Changes“), which was published in the late 9th century, and the Tui bei tu (推背圖), published in the 7th century in the Tang Dynasty. This is to say, prophecy and oracles can be found in most cultures around the world in some form or fashion. While Nostradamus wrote some pretty exciting and sometimes eerily accurate prophecies, he most certainly is but one member in the Soothsayer Club.

Fun fact(s): Ancient Chinese oracle bones were used in pyromancy, a form of divination that utilizes fire. Animal bones (usually the shoulder bone of an ox or plastron of a turtle shell) were inscribed with a question to a deity with a sharp tool (Keightley 3). The bones were then fired using heated metal rods or burning sticks until thermal expansion caused them to crack (Keightley 1). These cracks were then read by diviners and interpreted as answers from the gods. This practice is very, very old– as the first evidence of Oracle bone script, which is what was carved onto these bones, has been attested as the oldest form of written Chinese, dating all the way back to 1250 – 1050 BC! Even older still, pyro-scapulimancy (pyromancy using shoulder bones) has been dated back to the Neolithic inhabitants of North China, evident from archeological findings of deer, sheep, pig, and cow bones from 4000-3000 BC (Keightley 3).

Chiromancy, better known as palmistry, is a form of divination where meaning is gleamed by reading the palm. This includes the lines and mounts (the areas around the lines), which can be interpreted by hand readers or palmists to answer questions about various aspects of one’s life or future. This practice is one of the oldest oldest forms of documented divination, with chiromancy appearing in Sumerian records (the earliest known civilization, located in southern Mesopotamia). Appearing in multiple world belief systems, examples of palmistry can be found in Christianity, jyotisha (Hindu astrology), ancient Chinese divination, and Romani fortune-telling. In Renaissance magic of the 15th and 16th centuries, chiromancy was classified as one of the seven artes prohibitae, or prohibited arts, which were outlawed by canon law of the Catholic Church. Johannes Hartlieb’s includes chiromancy in his Book of All Forbidden Arts in 1456, alongside the other six magical practices of necromancy, geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, and scapulimancy.

Tasseomancy is a form of divination that uses the patterns of tea leaves, coffee grounds, wine lees, or any other dregs from a liquid to foretell events. Tasseomancy is derived from the French word “tasse,” meaning cup. Finding meaning in the “patterns” of things is a common theme across divination forms, but this one in particular is notable for its portability. Originating from European trade routes– where coffee and tea abounded– tasseomancy was practiced in both Baltic and Slavic cultures (Holmes 4). Similarly, tea leaf reading is particularly linked with Romani people and culture, with their nomadic lifestyles contributing to the spread of tasseomancy across Europe and Asia (Holmes 4). The Romani people became well-known for this practice, enough so that in Europe, they would offer door-to-door tea-leaf readings and sometimes open fortune-telling tea parlors. Tea leaf reading eventually gained popularity in the United Kingdom in the 1800s, and many Romani women commercially practiced tasseomancy in Victorian era England. Victorian women, whose social gatherings almost always included tea, would often employ Romani women to read their fortunes (Holmes 4-5). After World War I, many American women opened up their own tea parlors, and in like manner to the Romani people, would offer not only refreshments, but also readings (Holmes 4).

The lesser-known practice of coffee-ground reading appeared around the 1500s and was first recorded in the palaces of the Ottoman Empire (Holmes 4). Here, like the fortune-telling tea parties of Victorian England, coffee-ground reading was a common part of social gatherings between women. The cariye (Arabic: جارية, “Jariya”), women enslaved as concubines in the Ottoman Imperial Harem, were known to drink coffee together and read each other’s fortunes.

Our final form of divination is crystallomancy, otherwise known as crystal-gazing and scrying. Crystallomancy utilizes the reflective surface of a medium, such as a crystal ball, water (Hydromancy), mirrors (Catoptromancy), or otherwise crystalline solid to spy visions of the future. Occasionally, the seer or reader enters a trance-like state to perceive their visions. Divination via reflective surfaces appears in numerous world religions and mythologies, such as the Book of Genesis, in which a silver chalice used for divination is placed in Benjamin’s bag when he leaves for Egypt. As a tool of hydromancy, the chalice would have likely been used to create a still, reflective surface for a seer to peer into. A similar item is the Cup of Jamshid (Persian: جام جم, jām-e Jam), a magical cup of divination from Persian mythology that could reflect all seven layers of the universe. Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, like the Aztec, used polished stone mirrors (commonly made from obsidian) for decoration and divination, as mirrors were deemed as portals to another world.

Fun fact: In Ancient Rome, crystal-gazers who used mirrors for divination were called specularii (Melville 9).

Crystal-gazing using crystal balls gained popularity first in the Roman Empire. Their use became so widespread by the 5th century that they were demonized by the early Christian church, alongside other divination practices. However, the crystal ball remained a powerful symbol of the occult and foresight and continued to be used throughout history. John Dee, Elizabeth I’s court astronomer and advisor, was known to use crystal balls and crystalline talismans to practice divination. In Victorian England, not only was tea-leaf reading common, but so was crystallomancy! The pastime of crystal-gazing was said to be best preformed when “the Sun is at its northernmost declination” and that the crystal ball would “mist up from within” before a vision (Melville 25). Crystal-gazing has a surprising number of rules and protocols in order to achieve successful readings. For example, the crystal-gazer must conduct their sessions while the moon is waxing, not waning. The crystal must be kept clean, and if dirtied, must be cleansed with a concoction of water and brandy and dried using chamois leather. If the gazer wishes to see events that are taking place a great distance away, they should look lengthwise through the crystal. A crystal must be at least the size of a small orange. The rules and techniques go on.

Fun fact: The crystal ball is known as an orbuculum in Paganism, which is derived from the Latin orbis meaning “circle, orb” as well as “the world.”