Bibliomancy
Bibliomancy is a form of divination consisting of opening a book at random and reading the first passage encountered as an answer to a question that has been asked. The text chosen is generally a sacred work, but the practice extends to any work considered meaningful.
Origin and etymology
The term bibliomancy comes from the Greek biblion (book) and manteia (divination). The practice dates back to Greco-Roman antiquity, where it took the form of sortes — drawing of lots. The sortes virgilianae, in vogue in Rome from the first century, consisted of opening Virgil's Aeneid to find an omen. The emperor Hadrian, according to the Historia Augusta, is said to have used it to anticipate his political future. With Christianization, the practice was transposed onto the Bible and became sortes biblicae or sortes sanctorum. Saint Augustine himself mentions in the Confessions (book VIII) his conversion triggered by the random opening of an epistle of Paul.
Evolution and tradition
In the Middle Ages, bibliomancy was very popular throughout Europe, despite conciliar condemnations (Council of Vannes in 465, Carolingian capitularies). The sortilegium rite sometimes preceded the election of a bishop. In Islam, the practice called istikhâra or fâl al-Qur'ân consists of opening the Qur'an after a prayer of supplication. The poetry of Hafez is also used in Iran as a corpus of bibliomancy (fâl-e Hafez). In China, the Yi Jing operates on an analogous principle, although codified through the drawing of yarrow stalks or coins. In the twentieth century, Carl Gustav Jung theorized this type of meaningful coincidence in Synchronicity (1952).
Practical use
The procedure is simple. Clearly formulate a question, take a book to which you grant a certain authority — Bible, Qur'an, Tao Te Ching, collection of poems — close your eyes, and open the book. Point to a passage without looking. The text thus indicated is read as an answer to your question. On Tarotoui, you can apply this principle to a collection of tarot symbols or to a reference manual: random selection often works as an effective trigger for introspection, through projection.
Going further
Cognitive psychology explains the subjective relevance of the results through the Barnum effect and cherry-picking interpretation: a sufficiently rich text always offers a resonant reading. No strict divinatory validity is demonstrable. This does not invalidate the hermeneutic interest of the exercise, long studied by Wolfgang Iser and reception theory: meaning emerges from the encounter between text and reader. Bibliomancy remains a legitimate introspective tool, provided it is conceived as a mirror, not as an oracle.