Frank Herbert, author of the Dune saga, and one of my heroes, started each chapter of his inspired and inspiring novels with a quotation from a source he made up himself. Ass an homage to this series, in my Takuhi trilogy, I started making up my own “sources” and quotations. But somewhere around the 16th chapter of Takuhi’s Daydream, my quotation well ran dry. Then it occurred to me: Shakespeare is in the public domain. Why no do a bit of bibliomancy?
Bibliomancy, for those of you who don’t know is the divinatory practice --mancy denotes method of divination. Biblio--for book. Biblio-- comes from Byblos, a Phoenician/Ledanese city that has been occupied from 7500 BCE to the present day under an Arabic name was known throughout the ancient world for its parchments and papyrus, in short, supplying everything you needed to create books, or scrolls as they were shaped in ancient times. Books as we know them today or codices did not come out until much later. Biblioteca, Spanish for library.
Most often bibliomancy is done with a Bible. Those who are Muslim can also use a Quran. Mormons could use the Book of Mormon. The essence of doing bibliomancy is to pick a page at random, and without looking select a passage or verse. Since I am not an adherent of any Abrahamic religion, I selected the works of Shakespeare. Thee is a funny story about using the Bible for advice when at a critical crossroads, indecisive about what to do. A desperate minister used his Bible for such advice. The passage he came to was “Judas went and hanged himself.” “No! No! That can’t be right!” He selected another verse. “Go thou and do likewise.”
Accordingly, I opened the works of my old friend the Bard to a random page. I ran my finger down the page without looking, and stopped. It was a line by John Falstaff, a man who I guess was an historic figure, although I had always figured him to be a character made up by Will himself. I copied the quotation to the beginning of the chapter. I did it again for the next chapter and the next. I am now at Chapter 24, and considering moving to a book of Irish faery tales I received from my daughter for Yule. This kind of bibliomancy can be used in many ways, but as the minister discovered to his horror, not to be followed in one’s subsequent actions. After all, you might end up with the suicide scene near the end of Romeo and Juliet.
Camp NaNoWriMo is coming up next month, and already I have signed up and declared my project. How many of you, O dear readers, are participating? It’s sure to be a fun time for all. If we are quarantined, thanks to this virus everyone is panicking over, we are sure to get a lot of writing done.
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