What Next? Methods of Divination

 

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Hey, y’all, it’s Weird Wednesday! Where on some Wednesdays, I blog about weird stuff and give writing prompts.

Today: What Next? Methods of Divination

Today we’re trying to make the unknown, well, known. Divination is telling the future through supernatural means. You’ve probably heard of cartomancy (Tarot or playing cards), crystallomancy (crystal balls), and chiromancy (palm reading). We’ll look at some rarer rituals, including ornithomancy (birds), cleidomancy (keys), margaritomancy (no this is not getting drunk enough to prophesy, it means pearls), gyromancy (dizziness - no, really), and of course, necromancy (the dead).

Check out the blog post for the whole story and some prescient prompts, such as these for ornithomancy:

Baring your soul. In an alternate universe, what if birds were not animals, but souls of the dead, who could now see the future? Would they give false predictions or true? Would they communicate in pre-arranged bird-code to still-living family members so no one else could understand? Would some birds disagree with each other, leaving the living bewildered? What if each bird could give only one message before passing into the next world?

It’s a bird cage. How about a dystopian universe where birds are nearly extinct, but people are fighting to save them as the only chance they have to know the future. Perhaps there’s an aviary housing the last living birds, and people pay large sums of money to visit or watch a video feed, trying to find a way out of the mess society has become. Who would own the aviary, and can they be trusted?

More prompts here

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