Using Bibliomancy as a Drafting Tool

Occult Writing Tips

Bibliomancy is a traditional divinatory practice that can be found across all religions, and it uses passages from books or sacred texts to predict and interpret future events and our relationship to moral and emotional predicaments. Historically, it has an interesting past because while the church was against fortune telling or augury due to its ties to witchcraft and heathenism in the Middle Ages, bibliomancy was allowed because it used the Bible, the Qur’an, the Torah, etc., as its primary tool to commune with the divine, and that was viewed very differently when compared to the use of other non-sacred tools like tarot, pendulums, or spirits boards.

When I first learned about Bibliomancy years ago, I had just started studying tarot, which was something I was using fairly regularly in my day-to-day life, but also in my writing. I found myself drawn to the cards because I loved to use the artwork as a visual component in both my poetry and my fiction. Still, this idea of seeking out or invoking specific words or passages from my favorite books or holy texts was new to me but equally, if not more, exciting because I felt that it would deepen my connection to books that I already felt had greatly impacted my life. Bibliomancy also allowed me to take my emotional relationship with literature to another level. Books that spoke to me while I was growing up, that got me through heartbreak and depression, and that provided me comfort when I was scared or alone, were now my companions in making art. I wanted to tap into that energy to see what I would create alongside it and within it.

While writing this, I pulled a couple of books off my shelves and decided that I was going to work with them on a series of poems as a way to conjure tone, imagery, and potentially character arcs in the pieces themselves. For those curious about what books I picked, I used We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.