Five Stichomancies

How often do you do this?

How often do you do stichomancies? According to Wiktionary, stichomancy is, “divination by randomly selecting lines or passages from books.”

Okay, this is how you do it. You get into a mindless, meditative state then you walk past all the many bookshelves in your home or office. Your mind is shut off and you rely solely on feeling. As you walk past those many, many books, leave your mind completely open and see which book calls out to you.

When this happens take the book off the shelf. Cradle it in your arms and close your eyes. Feel the book as you open it up. With eyes still closed, flip through the book until you get an impulse to stop. Then drop one of your fingers down onto the page you opened up to. Open your eyes and read the paragraph or passage that your finger landed on.

That is stichomancy. It works as well as the Tarot, the I Ching, the reading of tea leaves, or any other form of divination. It is a matter of surrendering to and allowing spirit to deliver a message to you through artistic words that have already been spoken or written by others.

It is like saying to spirit, “I don’t know the question and I don’t know the answer, could you please provide both?”

So instead of doing some of my own writing, I decided to do five stichomancies. I walked past the bookshelves in my home and tried to detect the books that had vital messages. I then pulled them off the bookshelves and did a stichomancy. With eyes closed, I opened the book to a random page that FELT good and then I dropped my finger down onto the page.

Here are the five stichomancies that I got from five different books that I ‘randomly’ pulled from my shelves:

“Although the passing of the spaceship, if, indeed, that’s what it was (the naval weather station at Pearl Harbor claimed that it had been a meteor) set the High Jinks compass needle spinning in wild abandon, it regained its senses after an hour and resumed its obsequious fidelity to the domineering north. In the meantime, to keep them on course, Bernard took fixes on the moon and the constellations of Orion and Buddy Holly. They breezed into Kolohi Channel, making for Honolulu. The wind had its arms around them. The sea dandled them on its knees.” — Tom Robbins, from his novel, Still Life With Woodpecker

“No, not yet. I had me the bestest dream last night. I dreamed that I looked down and saw hundreds of little tiny golden hands rubbing all over me, and it felt so good, when I woke up I felt tingly all over. I tell you, honey, I think that cake must have cheered me up. I’ve been sick so long I forgot how good homemade cake is. I think it done woke up my taste buds. I’ve been thinking about making us some good old corn bread. What would you think about that?” — Fannie Flagg, from her novel, Can’t Wait to Get to Heaven

“I believe that all the world’s religions share, at their core, a desire to find a transporting metaphor. When you want to attain communion with God, what you’re really trying to do is move away from the worldly into the eternal (from the village to the forest, you might say, keeping with the theme of the antevasin) and you need some kind of magnificent idea to convey you there. It has to be a big one, this metaphor — really big and magic and powerful, because it needs to carry you across a mighty distance. It has to be the biggest boat imaginable.” — Elizabeth Gilbert, from her novel, Eat, Pray, Love

“Early on in their time together — when she was fresh out of her marriage, and they were still in the phase she thinks of now as Mickey nursing her back to health — he asked her why she didn’t wear perfume.

“‘I just never did,’ she told him. ‘I never had any. I guess.” Sam had bought her a bottle of Chanel Number 5 for Mother’s Day one year, in the aftermath of the birthday when she’d burst into tears after opening his gift of a pressure cooker. As with the black garter belt he got her that other time, Sam’s attempts at romantic gifts never rang true to Claire. It was as if some guy at one of his building jobs had handed him an instruction manual that said, ‘Garter belt, black. Perfume: Chanel Number 5.’” — Joyce Maynard, from her novel, Where Love Goes

“As I thought about the past though, it was obvious that my experiences had stimulated me to ask questions I might not have asked otherwise — questions that were to lead me to seek a greater framework. And as I wrote this chapter, I began to see more clearly how I’d come to encourage impulses that led to writing and curtail those that led in any other direction. Still, I didn’t feel as impatient with myself as I had earlier. I even thought, with a grin, ‘You’ve come a long way, baby!’” — Jane Roberts, from her book, The God of Jane

Stichomancies are very personal, just like any other reading. You can read my stichomancies or those of anyone else and they won’t convey the meaning and messages that are specifically for you. (Unless that is exactly what you needed.) The best stichomancies are always the ones you do yourself.

When was the last time you did a stichomancy? Try it now. In fact, do five of them. Share them if you are compelled to. Don’t if you’re not. If you’ve got books around your house it’s like getting a free psychic reading. Or it can just be a fun game.

Sadly, the lost art of stichomancy may be coming to an end as more and more books are digital. So try it before it’s too late.

Once you have become accustomed to personal stichomancy you might want to try group stichomancy. When was the last time stichomancy was the theme of your weekend get-together? Seriously, has it ever been?

Break the mold. Be different. Have a stichomancy weekend. Try it. Those you invite will surely think that you are really cool.

Maybe.

Copyright by White Feather. All Rights Reserved. Writings of White Feather Archive

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