Happy Beltane! First, I feel I must apologize for going all April without posting a divination lesson. I broke my arm in early April while hiking in Arizona, and it has slowed everything down for me. Seeking a divination tool I could do a divination lesson about while typing with one hand, I found this nineteenth century gem (on the right in the picture above) in a book titled, Madame Zadkiel’s Fortune Teller & Mirror of Fate by Jesse Haney, from 1884. Consisting of a divinatory chart and answer key pages, a key feature of this divination tool is it’s done completely in rhyming verse.
If you wish, you can follow to the letter the instructions for use as laid out in the introductory poem. There is something to be said for using a divination tool in the original prescribed way. But that would mean using the chart in a southern exposure window, either on a sunny day at noon, or in the middle of the night on one of those nights where the moon is shining brightly enough to be useful. And of course, having to stick a pin in the middle and observing where its shadow fell. But there’s no reason why you can’t plop the chart on a spinning surface and give it a point after giving it a spin. Or use a coin, a pendulum or a spinning top, for that matter. But in a nod to the author of this oraculum, it would be a nice gesture to circle the table seven times, then point to somewhere on the chart while blindfolded.