{"id":736,"date":"2023-09-20T11:14:50","date_gmt":"2023-09-20T10:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/?p=736"},"modified":"2023-09-20T11:14:51","modified_gmt":"2023-09-20T10:14:51","slug":"a-divination-catalogue-for-the-end-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/a-divination-catalogue-for-the-end-days\/","title":{"rendered":"A Divination Catalogue for the End Days"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Stephanie Feldman<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Oneiromancy: divination by dream<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I used to have vivid dreams \u2013 different<\/em>, in some unnameable way \u2013 about visiting with my deceased grandfather. I\u2019m agnostic about the supernatural \u2013 like Fox Mulder, I want to believe, but like Dana Scully, I don\u2019t, not really \u2013 but I felt compelled, comforted, and chased by these dreams. They became the only autobiographical sequence in my first novel, in which the main character receives ghostly visits from her own deceased grandfather. He has a message, too, because he\u2019s a character in a novel; and because she\u2019s a character in a novel, the protagonist decodes the message by the story\u2019s end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The novel, then, was a kind of escape from the weirdness of life. Sure, my fiction is weird<\/em>, but it has structure and logic. (Enough, anyway; don\u2019t @ me.) In real life, my dream was just the random shuffling of neurons. In my book, dreams meant<\/em> something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My real-life dreams didn\u2019t confirm the beyond and they didn\u2019t predict the future, either, which was that my writing would become the weirdest mystery of all, each page another uncanny missive, ignored until it was too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Grammomancy: divination by writing individual letters<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Not to be confused with graphology, which is divination by studying handwriting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neither of these is telling the future by crafting narrative \u2013 sculpted scenes, characters with punchy dialogue. If we could tell the future, maybe we wouldn\u2019t write stories at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the post-2016 era, when making up stories felt personally urgent but socially irresponsible, I started writing another novel. Writing even as I wondered: who cares about my dumb novel when democracy is buckling, when a tweet may trigger a nuclear missile? For the first time in my life, my fear of the future was overwhelming, but still I scratched and scrawled, hoping the words might mean something, something that mattered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first sentence of that novel, Saturnalia<\/em>: \u2018It\u2019s not the life I planned for, telling fortunes during the end of days, but clients are plentiful.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Retromancy: divination by looking over one\u2019s shoulder<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For two years, I wrote stories featuring catastrophic weather events: a husband killed in a flash flood; a ghost that dissolves into a terrifying island storm; a gothic mansion battered by a tornado. A small part of me wondered if it was becoming a bit of a crutch. Most of me was worried about other things, like the pandemic and virtual school and elections and employment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The destructive weather trope was, at first, just a hint in Saturnalia<\/em>. The novel follows a single night in the fortune teller\u2019s life, a winter solstice celebration in a climate-wrecked Philadelphia. At the beginning of the novel, she observes that the skyline has been fractured by a tornado.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s something ghastly and satisfying about sending a psychic wrecking ball through your own home. I grew up in Philadelphia and live there now \u2013 well, in the suburbs, though I\u2019m writing this at my parents\u2019 house, my temporary address, within city limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, these were the very pages I was editing in the hours before the tornado came down our street, the same pages I shoved in a bag, my youngest child \u2013 too old, but still light enough, and barefoot \u2013 on my hip and my oldest close behind. After the tree came through the ceiling and the windows exploded. After my husband made it back inside the house, just as the winds whirled the yard into ruins; he could have died in the sudden storm, like the husband in the story I drafted two years before, but he lived, the sheer luck of seconds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018After, after\u2026\u2019 A story to avoid those minutes. Tell it like it happened. Dirty dinner plates as the rain scrubs the world from the windows. The trill of our smartphones. The power going out; the generator coming on; the crash and the generator going out. Herding the children into the central staircase. Herding them back as they drift away to try the television again, not realizing they should be afraid. The freight train sound. Our ears popping. The house shaking. The whistle of the children\u2019s keening, a fearful sound they had never emitted before, and me repeating, \u2018It\u2019s OK, everything\u2019s fine, we\u2019re safe,\u2019 though I had no idea what had happened, or what might happen next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The four of us fled to a neighbor\u2019s basement \u2013 our house doesn\u2019t have one \u2013 and before the internet went out, I sent an adrenaline-deranged email to a friend. Well,<\/em> I wrote, it turns out I\u2019m a witch. <\/em>I wrote a tornado into existence. <\/em>I think my house is gone but I\u2019m OK.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A couple days later, we would confirm that the house could be repaired, and a couple days after that, I realized I wasn\u2019t OK at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Saturnalia<\/a> <\/em>by Stephanie Feldman<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Cartomancy: divination by cards, as in the tarot or oracle deck<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I like reading the cards, but I\u2019m no witch. I didn\u2019t conjure a tornado with my prose. I know the cards are a mirror reflecting our own concerns, not a portal into other times and other minds. They present a rich jumble of symbols and we see what we want or need to see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not a drag on card-reading \u2013 a mirror, a focused and guided reflection on your circumstances and thoughts, can be very useful. Most of the time, our minds are like little cubicle farms in our skulls; each neuron cluster working on related projects, but also ignoring each other\u2019s emails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two weeks before the tornado, I told my husband that my half-educated opinion was that we were in a relatively good place, geographically. Fires, droughts, hurricanes \u2013 not really Mid-Atlantic phenomena. Sure, water shortages and refugee surges will affect all of us, but in terms of our immediate safety, we in southeastern Pennsylvania might be among the best situated in the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Except for tornados,\u2019 I said. \u2018The warnings are growing more common. And we don\u2019t have a basement. But I\u2019m sure I\u2019m just being neurotic.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had the same neurotic thought when we put an offer on the house almost a decade before. No basement. That meant no playroom for the kids \u2013 no place to shunt off their toys, that is \u2013 but also no refuge. It\u2019s OK, I told myself. It\u2019s not like a basement really matters, not like Pennsylvania gets tornadoes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The figment of the tornado kept coming back, is what I mean. When I dismissed it, it pushed into my writing, weeds through concrete, and still I ignored it. Just a thematic thread, just a plot device, until suddenly I realized I had created a library of the future. Not clairvoyance, but educated predictions, from scientists and my own observation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, maybe not fair to say I ignored it. Yes, I was a bit ashamed of these fears \u2013 always a worrier, with a hysterical imagination. The truth is, though, there was just nothing I could do but wait and see if they came true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

See also<\/em>: Phobomancy, divination by fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. Hydromancy: divination by rainwater<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Thunder, a sudden gust of wind, trees swaying and hissing outside the windows \u2013 they make the kids cry. I prepare them: it\u2019s going to rain tonight, there might be thunder, we\u2019ll be together. I reassure them, though my heart is racing, too: it\u2019s just a little wind, it\u2019s going to stop soon. I lie to them: it won\u2019t happen again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t have to divine the longer-range future. We know how the climate is changing, and why, and how to fix it; we can\u2019t know for sure, but we have reason to believe that humanity will not enact that fix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the men cleaning out our waterlogged and splintered house told me a story about another client in our region. Years ago, she was also hit by a tornado and it took four months to repair her home. The day after she moved back in, a second tornado hit. They came back and cleaned out her house again. A year later, she was hit by a third tornado, a sibling of our own, which FEMA named \u2018Remnants of Hurricane Ida\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Don\u2019t tell me that!\u2019 I wailed into my mask. We were both wearing masks, because of the dust and, of course, because of the lingering pandemic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he told me a story about another client in the mountains, whose home was stalked by an enormous coyote, which piled carcasses in an outbuilding. I enjoyed that one. I live in Philadelphia. We don\u2019t have coyotes here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. Dendromancy: divination by trees<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our neighborhood was sort of the usual suburban tableau, except for the hundreds of old growth trees. They made it look cozy and fairy tale-like, which comforted my snobbery when I first arrived after a lifetime of living in cities, and comforted my despair during the pandemic. For months, I took long, long, very long walks beneath those trees, my only escape from the house, where we lived and worked and schooled and where I wrote stories about people fighting floods and storms. (But not fighting viruses \u2013 it was escapism!) My sense of home expanded to include the entire neighborhood; the trees were an extension of our house, where we were all safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This only became clear to me afterwards. You might say I read it, reflected back to me, in the trees broken by the tornado. Everywhere, enormous trunks, boughs, debris piles on the ground, and pillar-sized splinters spearing the sky. The world was suddenly bright and hot and ugly.    <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A pivotal moment in time \u2013 before the tornado and after, when there were trees and when there weren\u2019t. (Aren\u2019t.) But this demarcation of eras is another imposition, another attempt to create patterns. There are no singular tipping points. It\u2019s an endless flux; a long slow slide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I felt like I missed the signs until it was too late, even if there was nothing I could have done. But what if I\u2019m wrong about it being too late \u2013 what if I\u2019m in another, oblivious before-time?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Stephanie Feldman<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. Pareidolia: not divination at all, but the phenomenon by which humans recognize patterns \u2013 or, mostly, faces \u2013 in random assemblies of shapes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s a thought experiment, one you might have considered yourself: do you want to know how you\u2019ll die? Each answer has pros and cons. In the wake of the 2016 election, I was absolutely desperate to know the future \u2013 to know, I guess, that there was<\/em> a future and that it would be OK. Children uncaged, courts unfucked, voting rights returned. In the wake of the tornado, I thought I finally saw a very real possible future: this is how I might die \u2013 a shrill alarm, a drop in pressure, and then an obliterating crash. I felt a kind of grim acceptance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I do die in a tornado, or some other extreme weather event we can no longer call freak or fluke, you might look over your shoulder, back at this essay, and think I was a fortune teller.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And maybe I am. Maybe I do have psychic powers. Incredibly useless psychic powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think, though, I\u2019m just an ordinary person. I\u2019d like to see the future \u2013 winning lottery numbers, planes to avoid, and so on \u2013 but more than that, I just want the present to matter. I want my dreams, love, and fears, the actions I take, the troubles I encounter \u2013 I want them all to have meaning. I don\u2019t want my small dramas to be only small dramas before the inevitable obliteration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s the fortune I want: a wealth of meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

8. Chronomancy: divination not by time, but of time; to determine the lucky and unlucky days<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m writing from the future, after the exile in which I first set down these words. I\u2019m back in my home and in my right mind. I\u2019m thinking about something funny that happened. Right after the storm, I stood with a neighbor and looked out onto the block \u2013 heaps of wood, downed power lines, crumbled rooftops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We\u2019re really lucky,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Yes,\u2019 I agreed. \u2018It could have been worse.\u2019 What I meant: we could have died. My husband, steps ahead of the tree limbs that speared five feet into the earth; my youngest daughter, huddled on the stairs instead of lying in her bed, which caught a falling branch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My neighbor looked at me. \u2018No,\u2019 he said. \u2018I<\/em> am lucky. You<\/em>\u2019 \u2013 he gestured to the tree sunk in my roof \u2013 \u2018are not lucky.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had a point: we could have been luckier<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here we are, healthy and intact and back home, with a really great new sofa to replace the one lost to water damage. Sometimes, it\u2019s like the last seven months away never happened; sometimes it\u2019s like the tornado was yesterday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The protagonist in Saturnalia<\/em>, the card-reader, believes telling fortunes is a scam. It\u2019s just a game, she reassures herself, again and again. The reader, though, suspects she\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality, we can never know. Not just what the future holds, or if we might glimpse it, but what mysteries animate our lives. Maybe we can at least locate fortune and divinity, whatever they mean, here in the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Life is, really, an eternal present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I draw a card from my tarot deck, right now, it\u2019ll confirm that theory. That\u2019s what I\u2019ll see, because it\u2019s what I need to remember.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Stephanie Feldman 1. Oneiromancy: divination by dream I used to have vivid dreams \u2013 different, in some unnameable way \u2013 about visiting with my deceased grandfather. I\u2019m agnostic about the supernatural \u2013 like Fox Mulder, I want to believe, but like Dana Scully, I don\u2019t, not really \u2013 but I felt compelled, comforted, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"1080","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"a3_pvc":{"activated":false,"total_views":0,"today_views":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=736"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":745,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions\/745"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vervebooks.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}