With ||||¦¦ Comes Great Responsibility

I think it's time for a change of profession.  Something more exciting.  More interesting.  Something that lets me speak in a jumble of confused riddles.  (As if tech-talk wasn't incomprehensible enough to people without the background.)  In fact, I believe I shall become a bibliomancer.

bibliomancy, noun:
Prediction of the future by the use of books.

Origin: From Greek biblion (book) + manteia (divination)

First off: selection of the proper book.  Sacred texts (such as the Bible) are generally prefered, but I'm a bit low on sacred texts at the moment (and I don't think AD&D Deities & Demigods counts).  Barring this, poetry is also popular.  It was supposedly not uncommon for The Aeneid to be used during the latter part of the Roman Empire, as well as the parts of the Middle Ages, and The Illiad was supposedly sometimes consulted as well.

So, book selection:  a quick scan of the library for appropriate works shows me that I have the first two parts of The Divine Comedy (so Inferno and Purgatorio), Beowulf (with Old English text provided.  Getcher answer in Anglo-Saxon!), Paradise Lost, The Aeneid, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chanson de Roland, and Shakespeare.

There're also a few poems kicking around in other works, but I doubt that anything good could be divined by consulting Lovecraft or Clark Ashton Smith.  (Besides, then I might run the risk of having to re-read Lovecraft's poetry; that's a hazardous work environment if there ever was one.)

So: book of choice?  Shakespeare, as it's the longest of the lot.  I am open to using other texts instead.

Next, the method of selecting the passage: the simplest method is to place the book on its spine and let it fall open to a given page.  Then, with eyes closed, you place your finger on the page and read the indicated passage (the last after opening your eyes, of course).  There are, of course, problems with this.  Namely, favourite passages are more likely to be selected due to wear to the spine.  Plus, paperbacks don't stay on their backs very well.

Other forms use some sort of random generator to choose the desired passage.  The I Ching, which traditionally uses the tossing of yarrow stalks or coins to choose one of its 64 passages, is a perfect example of this.

Random number generation is simple enough in the age of computers.  There are (not counting the appendix and glossary) 1396 pages in my Shakespeare.  Generate a number from 1 - 1396 (inclusive) and bam!—there's the desired page.

Now, choosing the passage becomes trickier.  Doing the I Ching thing and generating the exact reference to the desired passage is a bit much, given the sheer number of passages in Shakespeare.  So we're falling back to the old ways, and are just going to use the "close your eyes and take a stab in the dark" method.

Now, ask away, and I shall consult for you.  Also, feel free to request a different book than Shakespeare.  If you really want a laugh, I'll even use Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, which (rumour has it) was written using the I Ching.  Yes!  Seek direction in your life by consulting a book that was written by consulting another book for direction!  It's like a game of divination telephone.

(No, I'm not serious about this.  The idea of bibliomancy merely amuses me.  That doesn't mean I won't use Shakespeare to answer your questions though.  And before someone spoils the joke: yes, I know that the passage associated with ||||¦¦ (or ䷡ if your font supports it—mine doesn't) is normally translated as "the power of the great", but I have also seen it as "great power".)