Bibliomancy Horoscopes: Divination With Etel Adnan's Poetry

BY LISA MARIE BASILE

Books speak to us, create worlds for us, and conjure both the questions and answers that reside within us. When we turn to books and written texts for some greater message, a message from beyond the page, we become literary witches — or bibliomancers. Bibliomancy (which goes by many other names) is the use of books in acts of divination. The goal here is to find greater wisdom, to lean into that Force or Spirit beyond and yet within the page.

Like the ancient practice of sortes (also a form of cleromancy, the use of lots for divination), the practice of divination from drawing a card or other object, bibliomancy has long had a place across cultures and in many folk traditions. Bibliomancers traditionally used the bible for divination, although grimoires and other sacred texts were also used.

According to the University of Michigan’s Romance Languages and Literatures, poetry — how delicious! — was consulted as well. The Dīvān of Ḥāfeẓ, a collection of ghazals written by the great Persian poet Hafiz, was used to seek “Tongue of the Unseen,” or messages via the poet after his death. Today, it’s still common for people to use sacred texts, like the I-Ching or the Bible to divine wisdom.

When we use poetry, of course, there is a technical term for that: Rhapsodomancy. However, bibliomancy seems to cover it for most people.

There’s even a fun intersection of the modern and the ancient over at the Bibliomancy Oracle, a simple webpage that offers up lines of poetry after concentrating and opening a “book” by clicking a button on the site. My poetry has even been included! The site says, “This Oracle selects passages from its database using a random generator. The idea being that meaningful texts are offered via synchronicity. The relevant message finds you. You only need to be open to receiving it.”

I’ve been consulting books for wisdom long before I knew what I was doing. I’d thumb through Bluets by Maggie Nelson or Rumi’s work — seeking wisdom, motivation, a message — and poetry never failed me. I’m sure you’ve done this, too, perhaps subconsciously. Not reading, per se, but seeking. Stumbling upon a stanza. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I began intentionally meditating on a question before selecting a passage and journaling about the line or stanza I’d be directed to upon asking it.

Like tarot or astrology, bibliomancy asks us to lean into the mystery and examine what we’ve been told. What is revealed? What does this revelation ask of us? What sings out when we see the words before us?

In this practice, the reader opens a book, whatever book calls out to them. As a poet, I prefer poetry. The reader then may call out to a guide or spirit to direct them to passage. Then, with eyes closed, the reader selects a page and then selects a line ( at least this is how I do it; although I am secular, so I work with no entity or deity). From there, the given line can be taken as wisdom, an omen, or a sign. Intuit this. Sometimes, people place the book on its spine and let it fall open (this was traditionally done with the bible, according to some research).

Although there are many approaches to bibliomancy, it is best that you create your own approach. Poems offer the most beautiful and mysterious answers to those questions we hold quiet and deep within us, I believe. In their ability to span the liminal parts of the self — the unsaid, the almost-said, the said-between-the-lines — poems offer great wisdom. Perhaps the spirit of the poet is there to direct you as well.

Poems are little written oceans, in which we dive deep, hungry to reach the bottom. Perhaps there is no bottom and that is the answer. Perhaps it’s the journey that matters.

When you let the book fall open, investigate what a line could mean in the context of your life. What images does it bring to mind? How does it make you feel? What does it force you to think about that perhaps you had not before? 

Here, I’ll be doing that for you — for each of the sun signs.

The method: I’ll be opening a poetry book every two weeks and asking for wisdom for each every sign. I will put myself into a receptive, trance-like state (I believe being loose, open, and connected yields the most accurate answers), close my eyes, call out the sign I’m asking about, thumb through the pages of a book, and let my fingers guide me to a line.

It is up to you to reflect the line assigned to your sun sign. Journal about it, meditate on it and listen to the way it reverberates through your mind. Let it stay with you. Write it down and carry it with you.

And at the very least, you’ll discover a new poet.

Our poet is Etel Adnan, and we draw on her book, NIGHT.

Aries

My breathing is a tide. Love doesn’t die.

Taurus

Memory is intelligent. It’s a knowledge seated neighter in the senses, nor the spirit, but in collective memory. It is communal….it helps us rampage through the old self, hang on the certitude that it has to be.

Gemini

What we mean by “God” is that He is night. Reality is night too. From the same night.

Cancer

Words trace their way to the ocean. From the ridge facing this house, signals take off, scaring us, but a large stride, a deep breath, restores tranquility.

Leo

Love creates sand-storms and loosens reality’s building stones. Its feverish energy takes us into the heart of mountains.

Virgo

One day, the sun will not rise at its hour, therefore that won’t be a day. And without a day, there won’t be a night either.

Libra

Are the rockets shooting for the moon killing invisible animals on their way?

Scorpio

Everything I do is memory. Even everything I am.

Sagittarius

Sometimes the sea catches fire.

Capricorn

We create reality by just being. This is also true for the owl who right now is dozing on a branch.

Aquarius

Our mind has a border line with the universe, there, where we promenade, and where tragedy resides.

Pisces

Memory is within us and reaches out, sometimes missing the connection with reality, it's neighbor, its substance.

For more on poetry, divination and magical writing, preorder my forthcoming book, THE MAGICAL WRITING GRIMOIRE.

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Lisa Marie Basile is the founding creative director of Luna Luna Magazine--a digital diary of literature and magical living. She is the author of "Light Magic for Dark Times," a modern collection of inspired rituals and daily practices, as well as the forthcoming book, "The Magical Writing Grimoire: Use the Word as Your Wand for Magic, Manifestation & Ritual." She's written for Refinery 29, The New York Times, Self, Chakrubs, Marie Claire, Narratively, Catapult, Sabat Magazine, Healthline, Bust, Hello Giggles, Grimoire Magazine, and more. Lisa Marie has taught writing and ritual workshops at HausWitch in Salem, MA, Manhattanville College, and Pace University. She earned a Masters's degree in Writing from The New School and studied literature and psychology as an undergraduate at Pace University.

5 Songs to Get You into the Spirit of Halloween

BY TIFFANY SCIACCA

Halloween is approaching fast and although I always have a list or two of scary movies I plan to watch, I rarely think about music. Of course, there is not as big a catalog for Halloween as for Christmas but you do have the standbys like Bobby Pickett’s, Monster Mash or Ministry’s, Every Day is Halloween, though I am more partial to Siouxsie and The Banshees, Peek-A-Boo myself. I decided to explore a bit and found five songs to add to your Halloween playlist.

First, we have a band recommended to me through my YouTube recommendations. Formed in 1982, Saâda Bonaire was intended as a disco/world music band fronted by Stefanie Lange and Claudia Hossfeld. They were destined to have at least one hit single, “You Could Be More As You Are” but their A&R man grossly went over budget for Tina Turner’s, Private Dancer as well Saâda Bonaire’s debut album and EMI refused to release the single, pushing the group into obscurity. My introduction to them was, Shut the Door (1983) a nice jazz fusion song you would think was almost too bouncy to tie in with Halloween but then when the vocals start it quickly sounds like a song you’d find on the soundtrack of Vamp or The Hunger .

The second tune is familiar to most of us I think. Spooky (1967) was originally an instrumental song by Mike Sharpe and only later were lyrics added. More than 30 artists from Lydia Lunch to Andy Williams have covered it and I’m going to share the two that were unfamiliar to me.

The first version is by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. It definitely has that signature sound with the Vandellas adding the appropriate backdrop making it a perfectly dark and sultry song with Martha taking lyrical liberties like, “Love is kind of crazy with a spooky old lady like me.”

The second cover of Spooky is by the interesting trio of Joan Osborne, Isaac Hayes, and Dave Sanborn. This video was produced at Studio 5, NYC in 1997 for David Sanborn & Friends, The Super Session. There is a little playful banter at the beginning, but then it sticks close to the best known version by the Classics IV with lyrics alluding to a “spooky little girl.”

Another oldie but goodie, I Put a Spell On You, was supposed to be the perfect love song. “What do you mean Tiffany?” You ask, “It is a perfect love song!” Well the versions we hear now, like Nina Simone’s are more than convincing, but the original version which was written by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins was recorded after a large meal consisting of too much alcohol and the final project was not the pristine song familiar to the 1950s and was banned for some time. Here is a later version but you will still get the picture, definitely has that Halloween vibe. You are welcome!

The last on the list is Eartha Kitt’s, I Want to Be Evil released in 1953 on the album, That Bad Eartha, and with lines like, “… whatever I've got, I'm eager to lose” and “The the closest I've been to a bar is at ballet class.” I Want to Be Evil” is just as fun as Monster Mash but with sharper lyrics. I hope you enjoy these 5 spooky songs as much as I did and if you have any to add, please let me know!

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Tiffany Sciacca (senior staff) is a writer who has recently moved to Sicily from the Midwest. Tiffany’s work has appeared in the Silver Birch Press, SOFTBLOW, and DNA Magazine UK. When she is not learning a new language or trying to blend in, she is reading old poetry anthologies, binging Nordic Noir or of course, writing.

3 Poems by I.S. Jones

BY I.S. JONES

EVE

I know Death
is the undulating snake below the Great Tree.
Before Truth opened my eyes
I could do nothing but feel—
even the veil that blocked my sight
could never make me ignorant of desire.
I knew of my nakedness—
the snake’s tongue throbbing
for the meat of my thighs.
I am a feral thing; my mouth
a greedy canvas of ripened consequence.
In the garden, I pick fruit & masturbate—
worship myself in the absence of prayer.
The blackberry’s sweet nectar
indistinguishable from my own.
Fingers: blackened        Pussy: blackened
Lips the color of shadows.
All day, I dance like a rich woman
let mango drip from my chin.
You don’t know hunger,
a throat relieved of its own drought,
until your teeth tear open the wet heart of the sun
& chew through its shining meat.
I don’t know if I could have broken the snake’s spell—
or rather if I wanted to.
I followed it—sliding & sliding—
through the quiet bend
where stood God’s second head.
I pulled God’s heart down from the branches.
I sunk my teeth through salvation
& climaxed like never before.
I wept & then all the lights of heaven pierced my skull
like a dagger’s epiphany.
I know Death:
it met me at the edge of myself
gave me a new name,
then sent me back.
I woke up naked & wailing in a forest;
the faint caw of life at midday,
flies rest lazily on leaves
as shelter from the coming rain.

OYINBO

I am a spell of six letters.
I have a name that begins & ends two countries.

I am ‘Itiola’: ‘Iti’: ‘the foundation’, ‘the root’.
Ola: ‘cradle of wealth’. English is a meager language.

There is no threshold that can translate me.
No one trusts a name they can’t pronounce.

Call me ‘Stephanie’ because that’s easier.
It’s more American, meaning ‘white’.

I am so articulate; I sound like generational wealth:
the ‘burbs two cars in the driveway

manicured lawns private schools.
Like any good American, I get to complain in English.

Say: American-born Nigerian. Say: Child of Empire.
No one can make sense of what I am:

Yankee. Foreigner. Exotic fruit of the West.
I am the most foreign when I talk about Nigeria

[you don’t get to weep for a country that isn’t yours, selfish American]
I am most White when I talk about America.

I love my country though I’ve seen its hideous face:
When my parents speak in Yoruba & sound like a threat,

when Americans hear my mother’s accent & question her intelligence.
I’m used to this one-sided love, how any Empire too close to the sun

can burn.

ABEL

Baba gave me dominion over all cloven & two-legged animals.
I lift my hands & all living creatures bow.
I stir shadows & creatures plunge headfirst to salvation.
Some of us pick flowers, dream in blue & green,
others do the real work to bring home a heavy feast.
All year long, my people eat like kings.
Look at me, Cain: Baba’s most prized creation.
He made life, but I undress the light
& a village doesn’t go hungry
of the way I put my humanity on a nightstand
to do the vain, hideous things,
what sister, do you know about blood & the way it speaks…?
I remember each upon each—the knuckling, the wordless pleas,
the clean deliverance of blade upon a beast’s neck.
Flesh into flesh.
Every nation under my tending feasts until marrow
until tendon
until muscle
until blood is savior over body.
Let each column of teeth
know its guillotine weight.
Let each hungry mouth know itself to be a brief church.
O sister, praise me for the pity I have shown you
& know when life gives you poverty be grateful life gives you
anything at all.

after Phillip B. Williams

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I.S. Jones is a queer American / Nigerian poet and music journalist. She is a Graduate Fellow with The Watering Hole and holds fellowships from Callaloo, BOAAT Writer's Retreat, and Brooklyn Poets. She is the 2018 winner of the Brittle Paper Award in Poetry. She is a Book Editor with Indolent Books, Editor at Voicemail Poems, freelances for Complex, Earmilk, NBC News Think, and elsewhere. Her works have appeared or are forthcoming in Guernica, Kweli Journal, The Rumpus, The Offing, The Shade Journal, and elsewhere. Alongside Nome Patrick Emeka, is she the co-editor of the Young African Poets Anthology. She is a Kemper K. Knapp University Fellowship and an MFA candidate in Poetry at UW-Madison.

Survivor: An Interview With Joanna C. Valente

JOANNA C. VALENTE IN INTERVIEW WITH LISA MARIE BASILE

LISA MARIE BASILE: Let's talk about your #Survivor Book — it centers on survivors of all sorts, including survivors of body, gender, and physical trauma. It's deeply aligned with all of your work as a writer and, also, as a photographer — so, how, specifically, did this book come to fruition?

It was kind of an accident, to be honest. I was at a residency to work on writing (specifically, my novel Baby Girl and Other Ghosts) at Denniston Hill. On a whim, I brought my camera with me just to have a creative outlet other than writing so as not to burn myself out. I personally like to multitask with my creative projects, because it keeps everything fresh - and keeps me challenged. So, I ended up taking photos every day and began to focus on the energy around me and how that made me reflect on my own body and my own energy. How do those things merge, outside and internal energies? As a witch and tarot reader, I have always been preoccupied by these themes and thoughts, particularly when it comes to healing. A lot of dialogue around and within the survivor community doesn't always focus on healing itself, and often focuses on how it happens, what it looks like. Those are, of course, necessary parts of the process for us to understand.

But my focus is more on the individual and the individual's path to healing and fulfillment. As I took photos of the landscape, I thought about how we have abused that land, how that land soaks up energy from the people who have inhabited it. I sought to do the same with the body, so I began to use myself as a muse, largely focusing on empowering myself as a survivor, while also just trying to capture myself as a survivor in the moment, vulnerable and as I am - without crafting too ornate of a photoshoot that makes it something else entirely. For me, the key element to the project is its authenticity and truthfulness to the land and the body.

Joanna C. Valente

LISA MARIE BASILE: How did you decide to pivot from poetry to photography in this specific text? Also, cnn you talk a little more about the photos you took of yourself? Was this a move toward autonomy?

In this case, I didn't want the editorial gaze and editorialization of poetry, of language. Language is a beautiful spell, a kind of magic - but I wanted to focus on capturing something as it is, in its vulnerability and true form, rather than channeling the energy into something else entirely. In this way, however, the autonomy becomes center to it in a way that it doesn't with writing. Writing, of course, is completely controlled by its author, but a photo is an interesting, intimate collaboration between the artist and its subject, whether human or nature. In some way, it is me giving away control and autonomy to another being, and building trust, but it's also a way to gain empowering autonomy within the very choice of that relationship, and being autonomous in steering the shoot and the artistic direction.

There are captions to the photos, which does bring an element of language to the photos, to give them some context. This context, however, gives to the healing process and gives meaning to that journey. However, it doesn't give context to each survivor's journey, because those details are irrelevant. We are all survivors, and our details don't need to isolate us - however, our being and vulnerability and experience can connect us in ways that are magical. That energy is real and palpable, and we can use it for good. In a way, this book is one big healing spell, hoisting all of this energy in a hopefully positive way for people.

LISA MARIE BASILE: The idea of including an accompanying digital photo series outside of the book is lovely. It gives lots of people a chance to take part. What do you hope the overall message is, and how do you want to change the way we talk about survival and allyship?

I want to make it move beyond gender and sexuality, and those stereotypes and concepts in our head. When we talk about pain, trauma, and struggle, we often talk about it especially in those terms, which are very isolating to the queer communities. If someone, for instance, identifies as nonbinary, where do they fit into that equation? Most times, the conversation tends to focus on certain demographics and I don't think that is always the most helpful approach. I've had countless people tell me how they thought they couldn't tell anyone of their experiences, because they wouldn't be taken seriously because of their gender - or that they would be ostracized or not believed. That's incredibly painful, to feel as if you are being silenced, and then to invariably silence yourself. That creates an entirely different kind of trauma - and having a lack of support is the opposite of what should be happening.

So really, I want to break down barriers. I want people to realize anyone can be a survivor; there is no one person or body that fits the description. If we come from a place of love and empathy and compassion, rather than trying to draw boundaries and pictures of what survivors look or act like, we can unify and work together to create a better support system and community. Isn't that the point, to help each other? I realize it's not always so easy, especially because our own ideas of ethics and justice and safe spaces vary, but it's impossible, in my opinion, to build a truly inclusive and safe space if we aren't welcoming of everyone.

Joanna C. Valente

LISA MARIE BASILE: You obviously work with ritual and magic. Have you ever performed meditation, spellwork or ritual around body/healing/and gender and identity?

I definitely have. I meditate (mostly) every day in some capacity (usually in the morning) and definitely work with rituals and spells when I need to. Being a tarot reader has also been a miraculous journey for me in this regard. People often look at the tarot as being gendered, such as having masculine or feminine traits (such as the Empress or the Emperor cards). While I don't debunk anyone's relationship or reading to the cards, as every reader is a little different and has their own unique approach, looking at tarot as gender-fluid has been freeing for me. We can embody various "traits" while also not embodying one particular gender, for instance - and I use the cards in a way that feels authentic to that. How, for instance, are the cards showing me what my energy levels are like in a particular moment? How are they changing and what does that mean for me, as an entire being on a journey to happiness?

LISA MARIE BASILE: I think a lot about healing — one another, ourselves, the earth — from our daily traumas, generational traumas, and the trauma that humans have done to one another and the earth. I also think a lot about how art itself, and sharing it and including others, is an act of healing.

What are your thoughts on how writing and art can make us better?

I definitely am a huge proponent and believer that art as a whole heals us. It's therapeutic. How could it not be? It can allow you to become more self-aware of your motives, your emotions, your past, and how those things cause you to react. It can help you heal and work through trauma, finding a creative outlet to tunnel and channel your emotions. Channeling emotion is a form of magic; language is actualizing something into reality, and that is a form of magic. That is healing. When other people come into contact with that work, they begin their own relationship around it, and it can help them actualize their own feelings and experiences. The effect is endless, and it creates a spiritual community even if it's not something overtly on the surface. Any time we are connected deeply to ourselves and others, that's spiritual to me. We are channeling and exchanging energies - and that's life-saving. Being isolated is the worst thing that can happen to a human, and for me, art has always been the opposite of that, as a connector.

LISA MARIE BASILE: How can people learn more about your book and the series?

They can go to my website (joannavalente.com) and see photos, engage with the interview series, and get in touch with me if they want to talk about it or get involved. I also post a lot about it on my Twitter and Instagram (Twitter: joannasaid, Instagram: joannacvalente). I'm pretty easy to find these days.

LISA MARIE BASILE: If people want to learn more about you, where can they start?

Also my website! And social media. All of it is, thankfully, just my name, so it makes me easy to find.