Practical Psychomancy: Now Available!

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This little guide to the psychometric world comes courtesy of William Walker Atkinson- a prolific author under both this name and several pseudonyms, also known as Yogi Ramacharaka when writing about Hinduism, Eastern mysticism, and related topics.

The work details the basic methodology of crystal gazing, astral projection, and speaks at length of the authors own concept of the "astral tube" and "space psychomancy." Some of these concepts seem unique to his own beliefs. A number of intriguing examples of prognostication by mystics are given, including those of Cazotte.

70 pages.

Mother Bunch's Closet: Now Available!

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This little booklet is one of a number of "chap-books" reworked in the late 19th century from an earlier volume, with a very interesting origin; namely, a far older work dating back far further than the "Book of Knowledge" which I once personally believed was the origin of the Norwood Gypsy tale. It is mostly a series of fictional tales of "Mother Bunch" interacting with various youngsters, advising them on matters of courtship and marriage, being oddly foreword about the concept of premarital relations and adultery.

33 pages.

The Original Norwood Gipsy: Now Available!

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This little text is one of a number of divination titles ascribed to the infamous Norwood Gypsy, briefly mentioned in the Salem Witch Trials. It is a standard fortune teller, with tea leaf reading, physiognomy, lucky and unlucky days, and fortune telling using a deck of cards, all mentioned. It is brief but complete and may have been the basis for plagiarism from later works repeating it near-verbatim.

33 pages.

A Method of Chierognomy: Now Available!

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This heavily illustrated little work is a good fortune telling system mostly overlapping the practice of palmistry. It does not really mention the lines of the hand (except in terms of degrees of smooth or rough) but focuses mainly on finger and hand shape and size, and the various "mounds" of the hand used to determine various types and degrees of character.

40 pages.

Telling Fortunes by Tea Leaves: Now Available!

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This excellent little fortune telling work is illustrated with examples involving the telling of fortunes by tea, using a Nelros cup (still available for sale, it was quite popular then as it is now.) About seventy pages of the content is encyclopedic and solely involves listing the meanings of different figures in tea cups, left over from loose tea brewing; one of the most common and popular fortune telling methods.

I highly recommend it for those intrigued by divination. While I gravitate towards dream interpretation more than tea leaves and tarot, it is at least very well written and fairly exhaustive.

139 pages.

Mehmet Alis Oriental Interpretation of Dreams: Now Available!

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This interesting work is partially a plagiarism of Napoleons' Oraculum (not the later Tousey version but the 1830s variant) but is nonetheless the best fortune teller work I have come across; at almost 180 pages in modern format it includes nearly 90 pages of (dense) dream interpretation, a full oracle system, sections on phrenology, lucky and unlucky days, dice, cards, simple charms, and phrenology. The oracle is ascribed to Count Bismarck which almost surely makes that entry a tongue-in-cheek swipe at the French attribution (to Napoleon) of that earlier, notable work.

It is of note that the dream interpretation differs somewhat from other contemporary systems and occasionally gives a double meaning (one 'source' claiming the dream means one thing, another 'source' another, etc.) The tea leaf section is definitely adapted from the Mrs' Bridget Fortune Teller or some missing link work between the two in date.

Extremely readable and useful. I use it in my own dream interpretation explicitly.

179 pages.

The Mystic Dream Book: Now Available!

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This book is the most in depth pre-modern work I have encountered on the topic of dream interpretation. Sharing overlap with the entries found in older works on the subject (or including the subject), it is properly a fortune telling work in the same rough tradition as the Universal Fortune Teller, Philosophical Merlin, and various others.

It is detailed and fairly lengthy; those intrigued by the idea of dreams in the occult (from the more literal perspective, as in, direct prognostication) will probably find this book fascinating.

138 pages.

The True Fortune Teller: Now Available!

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This is yet another of the fortune teller works I am so fond of. This one is quite short but dense and contains several novel inclusions- it is, as far as I know, the only work which prognosticates by nail shape and color (at least among works I've edited currently) and the tree picture is itself a sort of oracle used with a blindfold to tell general fortune.

It partly plagiarizes the 1790s Fortune Teller of Mrs Bridget and contains the same origin story and astrological section. The author is not known and the source work is not dated but I speculate it dates to shortly after the Philosophical Merlin and thus the 1830s or so based on the oracle type, the font and format of the initial work, and the obvious post-Mrs Bridget date.

I had help with the tree image from Sandra Kishi Glenn, whose website you can find here at this link. Many thanks for the rendering!

29 pages.

Signs, Omens, and Superstitions: Now Available!

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This is one of my favorite editing works so far; a massive collection of folklore, dealing with every sign and omen under the sun from a dozen cultures, multiple epochs, etc. From bad luck to good, from relationships to employment, Cielo's work has a little bit of everything. It is interesting to me that some of the content is familiar to me such as the common habit here in my own native New England of seeing barns with horse shoes nailed above the door, always open-end up to "keep in the luck."

The author, a skeptic, wrote this work in order, ostensibly, to mock superstition, but instead is likely to be heralded as a compiler of folklore- the rational minds of the era sought to dispel supernatural things but ended up cataloguing them instead for future generations; a testament to the abilities of the paranormal, of the occult.

121 pages.

The Divining Rod: Now Available!

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This short but interesting manuscript is a compilation of lore related to the use of the divining rod (or dowsing rod) and was created by Latimer in the mid 1800s- Latimer proclaims his own skill with the use of the same and seems to take it fairly literally (minus the new age usage of the same- namely as a homeopathic medicinal object for closing "negative energies" off to heal the sick.)

The manufacture, use, and history of the dowsing rod is all spoken of here, both by the author himself as well as from sources he has compiled- a nice work on the subject, arguably one of the few in depth looks at the phenomena at all.

56 pages.

General Update For July

As of right now I am juggling several good projects; Puckle's "Funeral Customs" is first on the list, rapidly approaching completion, and will be available probably within a week, indeed possibly two or three more days if I continue editing at the rate I have been for some time.

I have obtained several new works that fit within the herbal and homeopathic category; I still have the South Sea Herbal to work on as well, so that makes three more entries within that category for the fairly near future; one is a longer work, the South Sea Herbal is rather short, and another that is about 60 pages in length, a simple hand guide to some herbal species.

The tenth category to be added to this blog (specifically for cryptids and folklore) will be made subsequent to the next title being finished that will fit into the same category. I may eliminate the folk magic category and create a new one specifically for mysticism which requires shuffling a few titles around as well- into that category will go works like the Sepher Bahir, along with a few works currently in the Divination category which are more spiritual as opposed to some of the routine fortune-telling titles.

Over the coming months I hope to return to works of divination and, once the South Sea Herbal is illustrated and released, it will finally be time to unleash a stand-alone variant of the Ars Goetia on the world and, after that, a version of the Lesser Keys of Solomon; the most famous of all grimoires.

General Update: Five Works Coming Down Fast

In happy news, I spent the last couple of days (due to excessive heat) not wanting to do any harder literary work, and as such I preferred to complete a short alchemical text (which will be available later this very same day) and to format three works in addition to the two edited herbals awaiting their artwork- when the artwork will be done I am not 100% sure, but I've seen the progress and it's coming along nicely.

To these other works (which I have already listed) will soon be joined "The Book of Halloween" by Ruth Edna Kelley- an interesting historical treatment of the various traditions involved on that special spooky day. I skimmed through a couple of the sections and was happy to see that it speaks of multiple cultures.

Secondly, "Aryan Sun Myths" by Nims and Knight- this work fits in with the time period well, and speaks of the solar origin of caucasoid religious forms. As with many such texts, the subject matter is taboo; all that much better, it means a lot of people aren't willing to release such works (even if they predate the second world war.)

Third, "The Divining Rod" by Charles Latimer; a sort of folkloric look at that general topic.

Obviously this amount of work necessitates delaying a few of the other works I've planned on editing; the Asuri Kalpa for example has been shelved now for four months!

The Language of the Stars: Now Available!

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This particular booklet is both well made enough for a total novice of astrology to understand its content and in depth enough to cover things other than the standard "twelve signs and their overlap with other categories" material which shorter astrological works tend to cover.

Written by Burgoyne and explicitly recommended as a good astrological primer by Magnus Jensen (which, honestly, is how I found out that it existed!) it goes fairly deep into drawing up nativity charts, the meaning of and calculations of the planets, their influence into the twelve houses (and the meaning of the same) and far more.

67 pages.

Everybody's Astrology: Now Available!

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This booklet is a compact little guide to the basics of astrology both theoretical and pragmatic. Some of the content here is Magnus Jensen's own theory and opinion, the rest is fairly standard zodiacal lore.

It contains a pair of rising sign tables among other things as well as references to a half dozen other astrological works, admonishing that the world would be a far better place if astrology were more widely understood and practiced.

38 pages.

The Omnium Gatherum: Now Available!

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The Omnium Gatherum is a bizarre but interesting fortune teller. Written in the 1870s and pairing a social oracle with temperance propaganda, it is the offspring of JT Yarrington, who was an activist for this latter cause.

The social purpose is clear; get a group of people together to tell their fortunes with one another and subsequently ponder the evils of alcohol (the "grog sellers" and so forth!) It also contains a dozen testimonials from the press of its age. Indeed, the oracle can be used solo by making slips of paper for each possible answer to the questions but getting a group together really helps when your purpose is to get them talking about the evils of beer and liquor.

44 pages.

The New Atlantis: Now Available!

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This work by Francis Bacon was left incomplete in a fairly obvious nod to Plato, who similarly forsook his own tale of Atlantis mid-sentence, possibly for effect. Bacon's work here is notable in the occult sense for two basic reasons.

First; the work dwells primarily on the spiritual character of the mythical people of Bensalem and a few of their rites, and might be ascribed as an allusion to how christian society ought to operate much as Plato's account is often seen as a description of how classical society should do the same in its era.

Second; Bacon speculates on technology and arranges it in such a way that he is almost making a series of predictions of what man would eventually be able to do; on most counts he was not only right but spot on- from the development of smokeless gunpowder and human flight, to advanced optics and microscopy among other things.

The entire work is delivered in such a form that it may be said to have alchemical overtones as well, dwelling on the very same processes of purification (in a mundane sense) that alchemists ascribed to their own practice.

46 pages.

Divination, Fortune Telling, and Astrology Books for Sale

The following is a continuously edited list of texts related to fortune telling, prophecy, astrology, and prognostication, which I have edited and released. This list will be updated over time as new titles become available.

THE PHILOSOPHICAL MERLIN
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A British work from 1822 dealing with astrology and divination.

HIEROGLYPHICAL FORTUNE TELLER
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A lengthy oracle with no additional content. Circa the 1870s.

THE UNIVERSAL FORTUNE TELLER OF MRS BRIDGET (1790)
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A longer, earlier fortune teller including palmistry, astrology, card tricks, dream interpretation, and more.

THE UNIVERSAL FORTUNE TELLER (1860)
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A series of charms and astrological divination. Also Americana.

NAPOLEON'S ORACULUM
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An elaborate system of fortune telling, which also contains charms and divination-related practices which use nothing more than playing cards, dominoes, and other simple things. Pure Americana.

THE SEASIDE SYBIL
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A short oracle using slips of paper. Contains many vintage quack medicine and joke ads.

THE HINDU BOOK OF ASTROLOGY
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The twelve signs, the cusps, and various Western occult lore masquerading as Hindu.

YOUR FUTURE REVEALED BY THE GODS OF GREECE
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A simplified oracle in Shakespearean verse.

THE OMNIUM GATHERUM
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A social oracle paired with temperance era propaganda. Mostly relationship related.

EVERYBODYS ASTROLOGY
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A short astrological work mainly speaking of the signs and their meaning.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE STARS
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An excellent primer on beginner-to-intermediate astrology.

THE NEW DREAM BOOK
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An excellent, mid-length work of dream interpretation including moles and cards as used to prognosticate. Contains an early proto-oraculum.

THE TRUE FORTUNE TELLER
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A short work half plagiarized from the 1790 version. Includes prognostication by nails and a unique tree-oracle.

MYSTIC DREAM BOOK
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A lengthy list of dreams and their meanings, from a late 19th century perspective.

PLANTING, HARVESTING, ETC BY THE SIGNS OF THE ZODIAC
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A short work that subjugates crops and surgery to the movements of celestial bodies.

STARS OF DESTINY
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A work on astrology with the signs, houses, and hours as well as their various natures.

DREAMS AND PREMONITIONS
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A Theosophical work detailing how to remember dreams, some material about their meaning, and a large number of anecdotes about premonitions in dreams.

MEHMET ALIS ORIENTAL INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
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A long, obtusely titled work of dream interpretation, phrenology, general divination, also with a full sized oracle system.

TELLING FORTUNES BY TEA LEAVES
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A comprehensive encyclopedic system of interpreting tea leaves, with a fairly large and illustrated section giving examples.

FORTUNE TELLING AND DIVINATION
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A collection of divination and fortune telling lore. Oracles, dream interpretation, tea leaf reading, and much more.

A METHOD OF CHIEROGNOMY
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A palmistry work focusing on the hands' shape and size, its mounds, and on finger and thumb types.

THE ORIGINAL NORWOOD GIPSY
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A short fortune teller with palmistry, tea leaf reading, divination by cards, lucky and unlucky days, etc.

MOTHER BUNCH'S CLOSET
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A short combination fiction story and fortune telling work re-edited from an even older work which might even predate mention of the Norwood Gypsy.

THE NATURE OF DREAMS
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A short work by Carrington categorizing dreams and speaking about how to remember them, some prognostication by dreams, and more.

PRACTICAL PSYCHOMANCY
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A short Atkinson work on crystal gazing, astral projection, and other associated topics, with anecdotes, and more.

HINTS FROM THE HORNOGRAPH
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A quasi-theosophical prophetic work using allegory and symbolism and linguistics to (correctly) predict the fall of the British Empire and rise of the United States.

The Book of Forbidden Knowledge: Now Available!

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The Book of Forbidden Knowledge should in no way be judged based on its era and type of manufacture. A simple paperback released at the dawn of the 20th century, it's really more of a modern grimoire influenced by the Oracle/Napoleonic tradition than it is a hand guide of trickery typical of that late Victorian age.

Covering charms, talismans, fortune telling, prognostication, physiognomy, mesmerism, seances, and more, it's similar to Hohman's Pow Wows in the 1800s or the Petit Albert of the 1700s. That is to say, a compilation of many types of lore from multiple backgrounds; indeed the similarity it shares with these two works leads me to believe that it borrows some of its content from each. It's an extremely good work; far better than I expected when I first saw the cover and presumed it to be silly.

106 pages.

Hieroglyphical Fortune Teller: Now Available!

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In a stroke of good luck I happened upon this work while researching the early 1900s Oraculum; the Dream Book version, as opposed to Tousey's far better Book of Fate version.

A slimmed down work, it contains an expansive oracle in place of Tousey's shorter oracle twain with other content. As a pure fortune telling manuscript, it revolves around asking one of 26 questions, then choosing one of 26 letters to represent the answer- this works better when ascribing the numbers 1 through 26 on a random number generator to this purpose, or when the letters have been placed on cards and turned facing down so the user is able to eliminate the possibility of guesswork based on prior usage (the original text merely instructs the user to choose a Hebraic symbol for their answer- useless if they have used it more than a few times.)

Altogether an interesting work.

35 pages.

From the Universal Fortune Teller (1790)

The 1790 version of the Universal Fortune Teller is indeed far stranger than the one I've already released which post-dates it by seventy years. One look at the content and you know you're not exactly reading something from modernity.

The work is substantially more dense than I originally predicted; the astrological content alone stretches well past 40 pages, and that's really only half the work. All told, it might approach or slightly exceed 100 pages in length with a modern format (bibliophiles will know, of course, that many works from the 1700s had what we would now consider tiny typesetting.) Take a look at this passage from the book:

On the seventeenth day the child that shall be born will be foolish to that degree that it shall be almost unnatural, and thereby become a great affliction to his parents. To go on messages this day is unfortunate, yet to contract matrimony, to compound physical preparations, and to take physic is good, but by no means let blood.

On the eighteenth day the child that shall be born, if a male, shall be valiant, courageous, and eloquent; and if a female, chaste, industrious, and painstaking, and shall come to honor in her old age. It is good this day to begin buildings; and to put out our children in order to be brought up in learning. Have a care of being let blood this day for it is very dangerous.

On the nineteenth day the child then born, if a male, shall be renowned for wisdom and virtue and thereby arrive to great honor, but if a female, she will be of a weak and sickly constitution, yet she will live to be married. This day they may bleed that have occasion.

These three short sections are from the end of the astrological work, regarding the birth of children at various stages of the lunar phases. As we see, bloodletting is encouraged according to the day, and what we term a "voyage" or "trip" is (and this is replicated in the work at least two other times) referred to as a "message." I am leaving some of the antiquated English intact in this work for stylistic purposes, where a modern individual will still be able to infer the meaning from context.

This work, oddly, appears to contain less of the "females are only interested in marriage and lovers" content than the 1860 version; indeed, some of the passages refer to women of a vaguely heroic or brawny constitution depending on the circumstance of their birth. This probably relates to the growing moralism of the mid 1800s as opposed to the lingering flames of the enlightened times of the 1700s and the philosophy from that same era.