Saturday, May 27, 2023

Picking my Bibliomancy Books

Hello everyone. It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? I was thinking the other day about bibliomancy and how I could help others get more interested in this practice. One of things I realized is that I have a way to pick the books I use.
"When it comes to picking books, I think about the question I want to ask." Source.
It’s very simple: I read them first, and then decide if and how I could use them.

The reason is just as simple. Even though you can just use a magazine, I like to put in some effort in my practice, give it meaning and importance. It gives me a connection that helps me feel more connected to it.

When it comes to picking books, I think about the question I want to ask. The book must be related somehow to it, even if just a little. So far, I’ve been using three but, in the past, I had some different options that I could use now.

  • The Picture of Dorian Gray: A queer, gothic classic that speaks about beauty, obsession, death, morality, love, art, passions, youth, immortality, and the human condition. I would even include mental health, identity, and friendship.
  • The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: This and the next one can both be used for queerness, mental health, adventure, innocence, childhood, religion, transformation, spiritual connection, and wonder. This one in particular is special for knowledge, evolution, and growth.
  • The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm: This and the previous one can both be used for queerness, mental health, adventure, innocence, childhood, religion, transformation, spiritual connection, and wonder. This one in particular is special for ancestral veneration, writing, and folklore.
  • Edgar Allan Poe’s Complete Tales and Poems: I got it mostly because of the price, but Poe’s writing is amazing to explore shadow work, mental health, trauma, fear, shame, horror, nightmares, and memory. 
  • Carmilla and other Vampire Tales: I had a book with several vampire tales, and they were all poetic. Carmilla is good for queerness, seduction, love, manipulation, shadow work, and protection. Vampires in general are also an option to explore sexuality, freedom, purity, and beauty.
  • Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus: Although it’s not explicitly queer, there are some parts that make me think of Victor and his creation as queer-coded characters, so I can use it for internalized homophobia, along with obsession, mental health, identity, trauma, death, intellectual matters, growth, and study.
  • Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: Another one that could be considered queer-coded even if the author didn’t intend it. It speaks about madness, mental health, trauma, shadow work, personality, self-esteem, knowledge, purity, and evolution or devolution, depending on how you look at it.

I only need to also say that The Picture of Dorian Gray is my favorite, so I use it on a more regular basis to get general advise, even if the questions are not related to the content of the story.

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