The Book of Fate

About this book

A question about love, travel or a coming decision can be put to a book of fate. The answer arrives through numbered signs, symbolic tables or a method of drawing lots.

Raphael's Book of Fate belongs to the popular fortune-telling literature that made divination a domestic pastime. Its apparatus of signs and correspondences turns chance into a ceremony of consultation. The meanings reflect astrological and occult beliefs of the period. The small scale of the publication is part of its charm: an entire system of prediction folded into something that could sit on a parlour table.