OTHER NEW YEARS DAY DIVINATION METHODS & TOOLS
For those who don’t want to start out their New Year’s celebrations with an assignment, below are a few New Year’s forecasting methods and tools I’ve discussed in previous years.
LUCKY DIPS
A simple and clever New Year’s Eve divination idea picked up from the British royal family, all this requires is a bowl of dried legumes or rice and slips of paper with various fortunes written on them. You can use the ones I’ve provided below, or write your own. Just remember to fold them before sticking them in the bowl, you want everyone’s choice to be random. If you have enough slips and few-enough people, everybody could have a second go-round of lucky dips.
NEW YEARS PAPER FORTUNE TELLER
Ok, yeah, it’s a bit school-yard, but if you or your guests are in the mood, (or some of your New Year’s eve guests are young), it might be a few minutes’ fun.
NEW YEAR’S WHEEL OF FORTUNE
You can use a spinning top. You can use a pendulum. You can use your finger and a lazy-susan. You can be experimental and use it as a casting field for your divining stones! (See ‘Stone Divination’ under Simpleomancy). The New Year’s Wheel of Fortune is an open-ended tool, with more than one way of consulting it.
GLUCKSGRIEFE-COOKIE DIVINATION
I covered this divination method way back in the Simpleomancy section, but if you still have any cut-out sugar cookies around from Christmas or Solstice (I know, fat chance), you could practice this traditional Prussian form of New Year’s Eve divination. Glucksgriefe, which translates as ‘lucky grabs’, or more-simply known as cookie divination, was an assortment of cookies arranged on a tray or platter, then covered with a towel. Everyone took turns reaching under the towel and grabbing whatever cookie first came to their fingers. The shape of the cookie they grabbed held a clue as to what sort of year each individual was going to have. I understand certain ethnic bakeries have a variety of cut-out sugar cookies for sale the week before New Year’s Eve for the purpose of practicing this fun and tasty form of divination.
With that, I want to close by wishing you all a Happy New Year, and may your fortunes in the New Year be good ones!
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, Jim. The Cunning Man’s Handbook: The Practice of English Folk Magic 1550-1900. Avalonia Books, U.K., 2013. pp. 318-319.
This was the source book for Erna Pater’s day-of-the-week New Year’s prognostications. A fascinating, informative and exhaustive look into the subject of English Folk Magic.