More psychomancy lessons are coming, I promise. But I came across this particular book of fate, The Young Lady’s Oracle, while searching for something else at Internetarchive.org, and knew I had to spotlight it. More historical artifact than for actual instruction, it is such a document of its time and sufficiently unlike the other books of fate I’ve covered, that it warrants coverage, if only to illustrate how books of fate can differ and how they can change with the times.
Published in New York in 1863 by a long-defunct publishing firm, from an unknown author, its questions are addressed to ‘young ladies.’ Presumably genteel young ladies, because how many young ladies of the mid-nineteenth century would’ve been concerned with question number eight: ‘shall I soon go to a ball’? But this book is a nice contrast to the oldest book of fate, ‘the Oracles of Astrampsychus’ which addressed itself to the concerns of adult men.
This book’s target audience was adolescent females in a country fighting a civil war when a good number of young men were away fighting. The concerns about whether a sweetheart would return home from the war, or whether one would ever have the chance to marry and have children or else end up an old maid, were very real. The book was subtitled, A Fireside Amusement reflecting as always the legally-safe contention that this was ‘only for fun’ and not to be taken seriously. But we can safely assume some young ladies (and perhaps older ones) consulted this book for secret reassurance that things would turn out alright, that things would be well, that the war would end, and they’d have a promising future once again.
Some questions seemed designed to seemed designed to elicit a chastising response. Where will my folly lead me? What will be my greatest fault? How shall I silence scandal? What is my principal defect? Am I not taking an imprudent step? Should I alter my conduct? There are other non-self-condemnatory questions in the list, but the author seemed fully-aware that no one beats us up like we beat ourselves up, so he decided to indulge the reader in that respect. The Young Ladies Oracle reads like the honest but loving older relative whose affection for you doesn’t make them less blunt and more diplomatic. Said relative also being obtuse and short in their answers, which is entirely in character with oracles.