BIBLIOMANCY (use of the Bible or other sacred text for divination)
In an in-depth Talmud class the other night, looking at Sanhedrin perek 10, considering the prohibition of using a certain verse from the Torah as an incantation to heal a wound (a verse that, weirdly to me given this prohibition, is in the bedtime Shema!), the rabbi mentioned that in some varieties of Orthodoxy, bibliomancy is practiced, using the letters of the Rebbe or the like, and I mentioned a couple of examples I’ve run across in Christianity.
The Roman Catholic religious order I was in, the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement, entered the Roman Catholic denomination in 1909, but were founded as an order in the Episcopal Church in 1898. The Episcopal priest who founded them got the name “Atonement” from a New Testament verse he opened to at random in the pulpit Bible in his church one Sunday afternoon after praying (and there were a couple of other verses of significance to the order he similarly found).
But as a teenager, I knew someone personally who practiced bibliomancy with her Bible. Although raised Baptist, she was involved in the charismatic movement, in the prosperity gospel end of things, and met my father through some charismatic event (I think at a local charismatic Bible school event run by a very sketchy evangelist). She paid for a trip to Hawaii for my parents (I stayed with other friends they had met through a charismatic church we attended for a few months – the husband gave my parents some far-right Christian nationalist publications which were quite frightening and appalling – and I got macadamia nuts and the autobiography of Karl Hilton from my parents on their return). She would frequently pray and then open her Bible, put her finger on a verse, and assume that was “G!d” speaking to her.
She was, despite her religiosity, one of the most overtly narcissistic and frankly greedy materialists I’ve ever met. She was not a member of one particular church, but would go to different churches. (She did once go to the United Methodist church I had joined to introduce some stability into my religious life and start distancing myself from my parents’ toxic fundamentalism – and that was the Sunday the associate pastor gave a benediction in which he prayed for the “grease of our Lord Jesus Christ” to be on the congregation – he had meant to say “grace and peace” – and the congregation dissolved into laughter – and she said afterward she needed the laugh.) She had been involved in a divorce proceeding with her wealthy husband – whom she claimed only became wealthy through her efforts – for over seven years. At one point, she wanted to hide assets in my parents’ bank account – and my father was stupid enough to agree – my mother and I objected, so he condescendingly had this awful woman talk with us to persuade us otherwise. I was not persuaded (not even “Almost Persuaded” as the emotionally manipulative altar call hymn is entitled) – but as a minor, I had no real say. But rather than settling the divorce and start over with what were, by her own admission, quite brilliant business skills, she wasted many years of her life fighting with her ex-husband over their assets. Her ex-husband was indeed most likely a terrible person – but she made it clear she wouldn’t be satisfied until she took EVERYTHING he owned. (She only had one adult daughter who already had a child by the time we met her – and the daughter was from a prior marriage.)
She also gave me three birthday presents in successive years – two years in a row, she very insultingly gave me copies of the SAME Bible story book written for kids 9-12 – I was in my teens and had already studied New Testament Greek and pored over my father’s copy of the Interpreter’s Bible Dictionary and felt profoundly unseen. Another year, she gave me a key to some motel room she had stayed in – she couldn’t remember the city – which was very weird and, in retrospect, profoundly creepy. I’m certain nothing physically ever happened between her and my father, but it was definitely an emotional affair, and my mother, who was pretty miserable at that point as the only breadwinner, after my father had been fired from four churches in two denominations, was made even more miserable by this woman’s relationship with my father – and her periodic descent on the household to consume all the oxygen with her drama.
I went off to college and my parents ended up as Southern Baptist missionaries to Iowa to convert the heathen (Lutherans and Catholics, but the one – and only – good outcome of my father’s involvement in the charismatic movement was becoming more ecumenically minded, so he was actually friends with the ALC/thenELCA and RC pastors). At one point, there was a “revival” and my father had a friend who was a bivocational Southern Baptist minister and jeweler come preach for it. This awful woman also came. She and this minister fell in love and got married quite quickly – even though my parents urged caution and going more slowly. It was at least her third marriage – maybe her fourth. It ended in an acrimonious divorce and she blamed my parents (who deserve blame for much – but not for this, since they had urged caution!) and largely stopped talking to them, other than Christmas cards.
When my father died and I was going through their address book to notify people, I decided to send her a notice – but NOT include any of my contact information, since I do not need that kind of insanity back in my life. I later googled her – she had a charitable remainder unitrust (which is not something one has without some wealth), gave money to a right-wing Texas fundamentalist politician, and got stuck in a snowbank and was rescued by some college students. She has since died, having lived into her 80s.
Good times.
