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.

Fortune Telling and Divination: Now Available!

 

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This collection of fortune telling lore is parsed into several sections and spans a couple of centuries. It is a compilation of materials from my own edited works on subjects such as dream interpretation, astrology, oracles, and other practices used to discern ones' fate. I wanted to provide as broad and lengthy an overview of these systems as possible in this excellent work, which is a companion to my collections on demonology and alchemy.

With a short suggested reading list and expansive preface, this work can be used by a modern audience just as it could in times past.

388 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 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.

First Post of 2018: General Update Time!

As of last night a most happy event has begun; the fabled return of the legendary "Morbid Stories" is at hand, and once the current slew of new entries is compiled, I'll be able to mildly re-edit the old ones, then create a two volume set mixing them all together. The original edition of the first Morbid Stories is, format-wise, not up to my modern standards, so it has to be remade anyways.

The first work of the year (which I am plowing through at high speed) is the "New and Complete Fortune Teller" (Also called the "New Dream Book.") This medium-length work dates to the dawn of the 19th century so that makes it one of the older fortune telling works. The vast bulk of its content is dream interpretation (almost 80 pages of it) followed by some divination by moles, some chartology by playing cards, and a much-shortened, simplistic oracle (called in this work a fortune table.) It fits in completely with the oracle and dream book traditions. In due time I need to create perhaps a book of books cataloging, categorizing, and explaining these intertwined traditions and their various literary cannibalism.

I hope to release a second work in January alongside the New Dream Book, but have not yet decided on which. I want to return to some alchemy soon also.

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.

Your Future Revealed: Now Available!

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This interesting work is one among many in the oracle tradition but with two neat twists; first, the oracle is set up to answer via some of the Greek deities, and second the oracle is in Shakespearean quotation.

This likely marketing strategy takes a straightforward, relatively simple oracle and transforms it into something a bit more snazzy. Thirteen questions may be answered by merely using slips of paper upon which the numbers of the gods (or their names) are placed. This system can be adapted for essentially any multiple choice query.

32 pages.

The Seaside Sybil: Now Available!

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The Seaside Sybil is a strange little work. Written in 1882 and almost entirely New York-centric in style, it proposes a rather simple oracle system; 100 possible fortunes are present, and the numbers 1 through 100 placed on slips of paper and one drawn at random to consult the oracle.

The oracle itself is what concerns, of course, the occult audience- also of interest here though is the addition of ads for quack medicine, often ads of a rather outmoded and at times hilariously bigoted nature; for example, an ad featuring a "chinaman" charicature eating a box of rat poison- the ad states "They must go!" It is not clear if the rats, or the chinaman, are the primary subject.

28 pages.

Nature Worship: Now Available!

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This exciting work, from the same series as Cultus Arborum and Ophiolatreia, is yet another look at the phallic faith by (possibly) Hargrave speaking to us from the late 1800s British Empire. This particular text is a bit more lurid and licentious than the others, and delves deeper, relatively, into sexual worship, the Maharaja, the sacred harlots and call women of ancient times, and so forth. Strangely, the worship of actual nature here appears to be an allusion to human, rather than floral, nature.

That hardly denigrates from its massive depth; it manages to compress enough academic material into its anecdotes and antiquated spiritual tales to fill a text several times its length. Altogether an extremely interesting read as well for those interested in the sacred sexual, the sacred feminine, or the Left Hand Path in general.

136 pages.

Literary Update

It's been two weeks since the last general update- thank goodness I made it that long without making one of these important-but-oft-repetetive posts!

The first happy point to make here is that "Nature Worship" is complete and being processed as we speak; this edition is like other purported Hargrave/ privately printed releases from the same set in the 1890s; it dwells mostly on mythology re; Hinduism as well as tales of lurid and sometimes depraved sexual rites from ancient Greece, the Hebraic culture, Babylon, and India at large among the Maharaja and others. It's more rooted in actual mythological and spiritual texts than the other works thus far; while "Archaic Rock Inscriptions" was largely archaeological, and while "Phallism" was largely then-modern or nearly modern anecdotes, this work relies heavily on ancient manuscripts.

The second update is that Sickness in Hell is almost complete; I have three chapters now left to craft, and the story is winding down towards its apocalyptic conclusion. I expect to finish it in the first week of October. It's going to be slightly longer than I anticipated.

The third is that I have decided to focus on the last three of the Phallic works for October and if there's time get to a few new alchemical works before settling in for the Lemegeton and a couple of shorter manuscripts of my own composition I wish to release.

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.

What Your Neighbor's Say: Now Available!

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This little booklet is one of the most bizarre things I've ever edited. It manages to combine Victorian-Era quack medicine (various and often psychotropic pills and tablets) with a fairly decent dream interpretation section (similar to that of Tousey's "Napoleon's Oraculum) and multiple "recipes for invalids." It also contains some folkish material, specifically regarding the preservation of linens, cleaning kitchenware, and fire safety.

The testimonials and ads for Dr. Pierces' medicines are amusing but not generally connected to the more interesting dreams-and-folkishness content.

36 pages.

The Universal Fortune Teller of Mrs. Bridget - Now Available!

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The 1790 Universal Fortune Teller is not attributed to Napoleon, although later works containing similar (and sometimes utterly plagiarized) content were. This text contains an elaborate backstory in which the editor claims to have obtained a manuscript from the thatched hut of an old wise woman who had recorded her occult findings in heiroglyphic form. Subsequent to cracking this mysterious code the work was then released.

It's fairly obvious that this backstory was an attempt to increase its circulation- but that doesn't detract from the work, which manages to cover astrology, palmistry, and other tricks, rites, and knowledge into just under 100 pages of content. The astrological system here goes well beyond the simple Zodiac and into terms and meanings as well as arcane minutiae.

With a slimmed down dream interpretation section and a buffed up card trick section, this work is comparable to Napoleon's Oraculum in style, minus, of course, the oracle itself. It is also a rather bawdy work, mentioning whoredom, vixens, cuckoldry, and adultery quite frequently in the divination-by-card section.

98 pages.

A Comparison Of Five Overlapping Occult Books

What follows is a comparison of five different occult works from two overlapping traditions; the Oraculum and the Fortune Telling hand guide. What might have otherwise been two disparate traditions overlaps so significantly that each time I encountered one of the texts I was surprised to a fairly large degree.

What culminates is a fusion and evolution of two literary traditions; the late 1700s fortune teller and the early 1800s oracle book. I intend to release an edition of Mrs. Bridget's Fortune Teller, although I am hesitant to bother releasing the second version of the Oraculum when Tousey's version is so much more interesting; the former version, from the early 1900s, is heavily stripped down.

It is worth noting a second layer of interesting comparison: Fortey released a work in 1860 alongside his version of the Universal Fortune Teller on dream interpretation containing a similar catalog of interpretations to the 1790 work of Mrs. Bridget, while there is also a work from 1823 which stylistically is almost identical to the Philosophical Merlin and also contains an expose on the meaning of moles on the body.

Here, thus, are the comparisons based upon content:

Napoleon's Oraculum Version 2: Fisher and Brothers (1908?) NOFB

Napoleon's Oraculum: Tousey (1884) NOF

Universal Fortune Teller: Fortey (1860) UFTT

Universal Fortune Teller: Mrs. Bridget (1790) UFTB

Philosophical Merlin: (1822) PM

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An Oraculum

NOFB: Yes, expansive question oracle
NOF:  Yes, shortened question oracle
UFTT: No
UFTB: No
PM:   Yes, a nativity casting oracle

Prognostication for Children

NOFB: Yes, simple
NOF:  Yes, simple
UFTT: Yes, simple
UFTB: Yes, expansive
PM:   No

Charms And Rites Section

NOFB: No
NOF:  Yes
UFTT: Yes
UFTB: No
PPM:  No

Dream Interpretation

NOFB: No
NOF:  Yes, very expansive
UFTT: No
UFTB: Yes, moderately expansive
PM:   No

Tricks with cards

NOFB: No
NOF:  Yes, several tricks
UFTT: Yes, one fortune-telling trick
UFTB: Yes, one fortune-telling trick
PM:   No

Tricks with Dominoes

NOFB: No
NOF:  Yes
UFTT: No
UFTB: No
PM:   No

Tricks with Dice

NOFB: No
NOF:  Yes
UFTT: No
UFTB: No
PM:   No

Choosing a Husband by the Hair

NOFB: No
NOF:  No
UFTT: Yes
UFTB: Yes
PM:   No

Astrology

NOFB: No
NOF:  Yes, simple horoscopes
UFTT: Yes, simple horoscopes
UFTB: Yes, complex horoscopes and astronomy
PM:   Technically yes

Palmistry

NOFB: No
NOF:  No
UFTT: Yes, complex
UFTB: Yes, simple with illustration
PM:   No

Tea Leaf Reading

NOFB: No
NOF:  No
UFTT: Yes
UFTB: No
PM:   No

Moles and their Importance

NOFB: No
NOF:  Yes, moles and their meanings
UFTT: No
UFTB: Yes, moles and their meanings
PM:   Yes, their likely presence as determined via Oraculum

Largely Fictional Backstory Regarding Origin

NOFB: Yes, of Napoleon
NOF:  No
UFTT: No
UFTB: Yes, of the Norwood Gypsy
PM:   Yes, of Napoleon

Unlucky Days List

NOFB: No
NOF:  No, but contains a list of days not to cast the oracle
UFTT: Yes
UFTB: Yes
PM:   No

Origin

NOFB: United States
NOF:  United States
UFTT: England
UFTB: England
PM:   England