Bibliomancy...Tolkien style

[Mithalwen]

The only Tolkien book I have on me is a paperback copy of The Silmarillion which is refusing to fall open. Does this mean I have no future?

[Formendacil]

Originally Posted by Mithalwen

The only Tolkien book I have on me is a paperback copy of The Silmarillion which is refusing to fall open. Does this mean I have no future?

Considering that about 95% of the Silmarillion is doom and gloom, this may mean an exceptionally bright outlook in the near future for you.

[Mithalwen]

Yes and the less depressing 5% was the index and appendix . *still waiting for book to fall open despite flicking the pages.... you may wish to make a cup of tea .... or a large and elaborate banquet..*

[wilwarin538]

It's true, I tried the Sil, the Hobbit, and both of the other LotR, but they refused to fall open. TTT did after about a minute.

[Mithalwen]

Because I had to blow on the pages to make the book fall open and then it fell unsurprisingly almost exactly to the middle. And my wandering hands picked:

"Then a winter, as it were the hoar age of mortal Men, fell upon Thingol. But Luthien came to the Halls of Mandos, where are the appointed places of the Eldalie, beyond the mansions of the West upon the confines of the World. There those that wait sit in the shadow of their thought. But her beauty was more than their beauty, and her sorrow deeper than their sorrows; and she knelt before Mandos and sang to him"

Yep...I'm doomed......

OR

I am going to grieve my Aged Parent who is severely Cymru-phobic and participate in an Eisteddfod... ( my grandmother on the other side was Welsh..)

OR despite my woeful ignorance of genre I should get over my panic and persevere with ME Idol.....

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

Aragorn had brought torches from Dunharrow, and now he went ahead bearing one aloft; and Elladan with another went at the rear, and Gimli, stumbling behind, strove to overtake him. He could see nothing but the dim flame of the torches; but if the company halted, there seemed an endless whisper of voices all about him, a murmur of words in no tongue that he had ever heard before.


Well, it appears that I am going to be left behind in terror and shadow.

Thanks for cheering me up, Fordim.

[Estelyn Telcontar]

Alas, not even my 33-year old paperbacks will fall open - apparently they made the spines better back in those days! I tried it with several different ones, and the only one that fell open at all was FotR, which opened to the very first page - not even the title nor anything else by Tolkien, but the quotes of several reviews.

The one my fingers found was Auden's:

For any one who likes the genre to which it belongs, the Heroic Quest, I cannot imagine a more wonderful Christmas present.... No fiction I have read in the last five years has given me more joy than The Fellowship of the Ring.

Interpreting that is worse than trying to make sense of Malbeth's prophecies! Either I should be looking for Christmas presents already - maybe figuring out if someone should get a copy of LotR - or I should start writing another chapter of that Heroic Quest, The Revenge of the Entish Bow, before the holiday season begins.

Then again, maybe I have my own Heroic Quest lying ahead of me! Lots of joy before Christmas...

[Fordim Hedgethistle]

The Paperback Problem is not one I had anticipated. Here is a solution.

1. Hold the book upright loosely by the spine, so that the pages fan out slightly
2. hold a card or piece of paper in your free hand and bring it down into a random point amongst the fanned open pages
3. proceed as above

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

It was an amusing moment just now when I decided to mess with forces beyond my control. Pulling from my floor (a location conveniently next to my over-cluttered desk) my battered and possibly ill-gotten paperback RotK, I sat upon my bed with it. I tried to balance it upon its spine. It failed. A good six times.

Eventually I sort of threw it in the air and jabbed a finger into the pages while I caught it. With my eyes closed, I found a paragraph.

Leod was the name of Eorl's father. He was a tamer of wild horses; for there were many at that time in the land. He captured a white foal, and it grew quickly to a horse strong, and fair, and proud. No man could tame it. When Leod dared to mount it, it bored him away, and at last threw him, and Leod's head struck a rock, and so he died. He was then only two and forty years old, and his son a youth of sixteen.

And so based upon this, I suspect that I will either leave a kid behind when I die a painful death due to my own daring... or I am a wild horse that no man may tame.

Ooh, I like the latter. Yes. 'Tis my light skin that gives it away. Young and pale, fair, proud, strong... Yes, yes, I like this. Untamed. So very true. Fatal. Oh lovely.