Poem titles
Ancient Divination Techniques
Fortune tellers
Fortune teller arts
Fortune teller songs
100
a French doctor and astrologer who lived in the 1500s
Nostradamus
100
Birth chart reading
Horoscope
100
Judging character from facial features
Physiognomy
100
Drawing 1
The Fortune Teller (1595) – Caravaggio
100
Went to a fortune-teller
To have my fortune read
I didn't know what to tell her
I had a dizzy feeling in my head
Said she'd take a look at my palm
She said, "Son, do you feel kind of warm?"
She looked into her crystal ball
And said, "You're in love, love"
Said it could not be so
I'm not with all the girls I know
She said when the next one arrives
You be looking into her eyes
I left there in a hurry
Looking forward to my big surprise
The next day I discovered
All that the fortune-teller told me were lies
Fortune Teller (1962)
Benny Spellman
200
What is the title of this poem?
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The Second Coming - Y.B. Yeats
200
Haruspicy
Examining animal organs
200
Reading the lines on your hand
Palmistry
200
Drawing 2
The Fortune Teller (c. 1630) – Georges de la Tour
200
O Fortuna
velut luna
statu variabilis
semper crescis
aut decrescis
vita detestabilis
nunc obdurat
et tunc curat
ludo mentis aciem,
egestatem,
potestatem
dissolvit ut glaciem.
Sors immanis
et inanis,
rota tu volubilis
status malus
vana salus
semper dissolubilis
Obumbrata
et velata
michi quoque niteris
nunc per ludum
dorsum nudum
fero tui sceleris.
Sors salutis
et virtutis
michi nunc contraria,
est affectus
et defectus
semper in angaria.
Hac in hora
sine mora
corde pulsum tangite
quod per sortem
sternit fortem
mecum omnes plangite
O Fortuna (1935)
Carl Orff
300
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
Fire and Ice - Robert Frost
300
Burning bones
Pyro-osteomancy
300
Pouring wax into water and reading the shape
Ceromancy
300
Drawing 3
The Fortune Teller (1895) – Mikhail Vrubel
300
And now, talk, my beautiful,
From the future give us news;
Tell us who will betray us,
Tell us who will love us.
Speak, speak!
Speak, speak!
Tell us who will betray us,
Tell us who will love us.
FRASQUITA
Speak! Speak!
MERCÉDÈS
Speak! Speak!
FRASQUITA
Me, I see a young lover
Who loves me can not be more.
MERCÉDÈS
Mine is very rich and very old
But he's talking about marriage.
FRASQUITA
He's camping me on his horse,
And in the mountains he trains me.
Trio des Cartes (1875)
Georges Bizet
400
The Future—never spoke—
Nor will He—like the Dumb—
Reveal by sign—a syllable
Of His Profound To-come—
The Future—never spoke
Emily Dickinson (1921)
400
Dream Interpretation
Oneiromancy
400
Reading tea leaves
Tasseography
400
Drawing 4
The Fortune Teller (1922) – Julio Romero de Torres
400
In the east the wind is blowing the boats across the sea
And their sails will fill the morning and their cries ring out to me
Oh, the more it changes, the more it stays the same
And the hand just re-arranges the players in the game
Oh, I had a dream
It seemed I stood alone
And the veil of all the years
Goes sinking from my eyes like a stone
A king shall fall and put to death by the English parliament shall be
Fire and plague to London come in the year of six and twenties three
An emperor of France shall rise who will be born near Italy
His rule cost his empire dear, Napoloron his name shall be
From Castile does Franco come and the Government driven out shall be
An English king seeks divorce, and from his throne cast down is he
One named Hister shall become a captain of Greater Germanie
No law does this man observe and bloody his rise and fall shall
Nostradamus (1973)
Al Stewart
500
Don’t ask, it’s forbidden to know what fate the gods grant us,
whether your fate or mine, Leuconoë. Don’t play with Babylonian
fortune-telling either. How much better to suffer whatever comes,
whether Jupiter gives us more winters or this is the last one,
the one now wearing out the Tyrrhenian Sea on the rocks opposite.
Be wise, and mix the wine: because life is short,
cut back far-reaching hopes! Even while we speak, time is envious:
seize the day, put little trust in tomorrow.
Ode I.11 - Horace
500
Book divination
Bibliomancy
500
Using cards like Tarot for fortune-telling
Cartomancy
500
Drawing 5
The Fortune Teller (Woman in a Yellow Dress) (1926) – Helene Schjerfbeck
500
Let's tell the future
Let's see how it's been done
By numbers, by mirrors, by water
By dots made at random on paper
By salt, by dice
By meal, by mice
By dough of cakes
By sacrificial fire
By fountains, by fishes
Writings in ashes
Birds, herbs
Smoke from the altar
Predictions (1990)
Suzanne Vega