Bibliomancy

Bibliomancy is divination by opening a book at random and reading a passage as an answer to the question asked. It has been practiced with the poems of Homer or Virgil, with the Bible, the Quran, or the poems of Hafez in Iran, where consulting his Divan remains a popular custom. Several medieval church councils condemned it without managing to stamp it out. The principle resembles that of drawing a card: the text becomes a mirror of the situation.