I recall pledging about a year ago when I started to translate Claude Commiers’ book The Curious Practice, I would translate and share all three Books of Fate it contained in a year’s time. This lesson is me completing that pledge. I will be returning to the topic of clairvoyance in the next lesson, since I’m not finished with the topic of Psychomancy.
The method of arriving at an answer to your question in The Fortune of Humans Decided is simpler than the method outlined in Oracle of the Sibyls, Parts One and Two. You simply choose a question, noting it’s number, then select another number at random from the ‘Chessboard of Fortune.’ Look for that number’s fortune table in the succeeding twelve pages, find the number of your question on that fortune table, then turn to the page specified by that God, Goddess, Demi-God, or ‘Great Man’ and read your fortune by the number you first selected from the Chessboard of Fortune.
The nature of the particular God, Goddess or Great Man where your answer can be found is supposed to provide some hint as to what the nature of the answer will be. If the God, Goddess, Demi-God, or Great Man has a light-hearted reputation, the answer will be similarly light-hearted. If said Personage has an ominous reputation, then the answer is likely to be an undesirable one. Claude Commiers designed his Book of Fate like this so that if you’re familiar with the story of the Personage named, you can decide if you really want to look up the answer. Which is considerate of him if you ask me, because very few divination tools in this world drop you a hint ahead of time that ‘you’re not going to like the answer, so you can walk away at this point, and we can still be friends.’
The questions represent a good smattering of life situations, but a little cultural translation is necessary, this book having been written when Louis the Fourteenth was still on the throne in France. A ‘Beneficence’ was a high church office, like Prior, Abbot, Bishop and the like, France being a Catholic country where such concerns were normal in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. When you read ‘cabaret’ in question number 55, think nightclub, pub, tavern, bar, etc., any establishment where drinking, gambling and carousing goes on. References here and there to the King will need translation to head-of-state or public official in current day situations. I’ve tried to respect the original wording as much as possible, but of course a little updating was needed here and there.
And this pretty much ends my translations of Books of Fate from past centuries. Next lesson: clairvoyance, or psychic seeing, which is certainly future-focused.
EXERCISE
Print out a copy of the question-and-answer sheet on page 62 of the PDF. Look over the list of 60 questions on pages 3 and 4 of the PDF and choose three that you’re sure you can either independently verify the answer or the answer won’t take very long to resolve itself. Check back with the answers later. How on-target were the answers you received?