Lot books

A lot book is a divinatory tool which uses various kinds of Cleromancy in order to find the answer to questions which are frequently given at the beginning of the book. During the resurgence of Geomancy in the Victorian era, it was extremely common to find lot books which used it as part of the process of obtaining an answer.

Structure

Most commonly, lot books are organized in the following order:

• An Introduction/Preface, oftentimes discussing the supposed manuscript from which the lot book is said to be copied or translated from in addition to giving basic instructions.
• The questions, most of the time numbered, which may be answered through the use of the book.
• A chart to be consulted, using the number of the question asked and the symbol, number, or name deduced through the processes described in the Introduction/Preface, in order to find the answer.
• The answers, often broken into sections represented by letters or symbols and listed by the aforementioned symbol, number, or name.

Notable works which deviate from this pattern include the 1824 manuscript version of the Book of Fate which instead categorizes the answers by question and doesn't include a chart, and the French book Le Palais des Curieux, which instead uses a chart and certain mathematical processes to arrive at the page number the answer is on, and the number representing the answer on that page.