The secret word is...

It all started so innocently (doesn’t it always?). I decided that I would use the Magic 8 Ball approach and wander through my library, settling on an object to help me interpret my life or advise me on how to proceed. Brilliant, right? A whole library. There’s a word that describes this process, and it’s a cool word, and I can’t remember it.

I knew I had received the word in my “Word A Day” e-mail subscription (it’s free, go sign up), but I had no idea where to start in the archive. I remembered, however, the most prominent pop culture reference to the Magic 8 Ball lifestyle, Augusten Burroughs. Burroughs wrote in “Running with Scissors” about his crazy adopted family’s use of the “Bible dip.” Identical to the process I described above, in the Bible dip, you flip through the pages, stick your finger in, and read the passage you landed on. Interpret away. Still, I didn’t want to be so populist and accept “bible dip” to define my actions, so I had to keep looking for THE WORD.

I Googled “Bible dip,” and I got this gem off the “Running with Scissors” message board: “We Bible Dip all the time, from the bartenders handbook, when deciding what drinks to make.”

Interesting, certainly, but not my word.

Next I stumbled into Urban Dictionary (dot com) and found, next to “Bible Dip,” "Bible Bigot.”
Bible bigot is remarkable for the tags in the second definition. Instead of creating keywords, the author continued the diatribe. (The author is no librarian; we would never abuse keywords that way.)

At last, exhausted for my search for the word, I went back to A Word A Day and searched smarter. I just entered the word “Bible” in the search box. From Anu Garg:

bibliomancy (BIB-lee-o-man-see) noun

Divination by interpreting a passage picked at random from a book, especially from a religious book such as the Bible.

[From Greek biblio- (book) + -mancy (divination).]

If you are having a hard time deciding between turning groupie and following your favorite band around or to stay put in your accounting job, help is at hand. Try bibliomancy. Here's the step-by-step method:

1. Pick a book you trust a lot.
2. Put it on its spine, and let it fall open.
3. With your eyes closed, trace your finger to a passage.
4. Interpret the passage as your lifemap to the future.

You could even add more randomness to the process. To do that at the macro level, visit a library and pick a book at random from the shelves. At the micro level, instead of interpreting a passage, pick a single word and let it point you to your path.

It’s bibliomancy. Thank you, Anu. I can go and search with a clear conscience, ready to follow the advice of my random encounter.