Oh, boy. Just this morning I was just reading about Joseph Campbell and his background that led to the writing of The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Gilgamesh certainly falls into that bucket and I have been seeing the theme of this hero journey throughout this entire exercise. Today, (the last day of this encouraged exercise, and thank you very much for it) this is what I pulled.
………………..Hurt………………………
………………..Evil……………………….
……………...Glorious……………………
…………….Wonderful…………………
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell pg. 83
Gladwell was talking about our human tendency to make snap value judgements based on appearances. However, the passage struck me as a powerful commentary on life. What a way to end the 7 days.
Then I did something that may be cheating a little but I have recently been interested in testing what AI, particularly Chat GPT, is able to intuit based on what it knows about me. I use it almost everyday in editing and other basic tasks but I don't put much personal information in. I wondered what Chat would make of all these passages, so I gave it this prompt: "I have been engaged in a practice of bibliomancy the last week along with a blogger I follow. I have been trying to make meaning in my life of the passages I randomly pull from books on my office shelf. I will list them below. Please look for themes or meaning that I may have missed across the selections."
Here is what it gave back to me. I was somewhat stunned.
"Here are some themes and connecting threads that seem to surface when you lay these passages side by side. They read like stepping stones that form a quiet narrative about disorientation, discernment, identity, and courage.
1. Being led somewhere you did not intend to go
Your week begins with the Fellowship deep in the Forest, pulled away from their chosen path. They can no longer rely on direction or intention. This sets a tone of disorientation, a sense of being moved by forces not fully understood. It raises the question: when the path bends without your consent, what do you do with the uncertainty.
2. Trust and responsibility when you lack the full picture
Truman’s testimony introduces the idea of working within partial knowledge. Responsibilities remain heavy even when you cannot see everything that is shaping the larger situation. The theme repeats the idea that you may not have perfect clarity about the forces shaping your journey, yet your role still matters.
3. Impermanence and the pressure of time
Barbara Crooker’s poem introduces a shift. Suddenly seasons have changed, children are nearly grown, parents have vanished from the daily landscape. It deepens the early sense of disorientation but adds tenderness. Even when time feels as if it is slipping, the daily task is love. Not a grand quest, but a humble practice between morning and evening.
4. The deceptive nature of fear
Bradbury’s scene asks, What if the thing we fear is only frightening because we expect it to be. Sometimes the threat turns out to be ordinary, almost disappointingly human. There is a suggestion that not every shadow in the Forest is the monster you expect. Fear can distort perception.
5. Purpose responds to what you serve
Margaret Cameron brings a pivot point. You move from disorientation and fear into the realm of inner alignment. Her language suggests that purpose is not something that chases you. It answers only to your true nature. If you feed destructive forces, they answer. If you feed generative forces, they build for you even when you feel blind and wounded. This connects directly back to Truman’s partial knowledge and Crooker’s call to daily love: what you choose to serve shapes the path ahead.
6. Courage, struggle, and earned confidence
The Island Stallion adds energy and grit. The red horse stands unshaken in the face of challenge, confident because he has survived hard things. This is not naive confidence but forged confidence. It suggests that even when you are pressed or challenged, previous tests have shaped your backbone. The passage contrasts fear with the steady flame of experience.
7. Dichotomy and the rapid judgment of meaning
Gladwell’s scattered words offer the simplest frame, yet perhaps the most useful: Hurt, Evil, Glorious, Wonderful. It evokes snap judgment, but also how life tends to offer mixed signals. Experiences rarely fall neatly into one bucket. They can wound and uplift at once. They can frighten and clarify. They can feel like being lost in a forest while still moving toward something that matters.
Across the selections, a pattern emerges:
You begin lost, pulled away from the direction you thought you were going. You confront partial knowledge, shifting seasons, and fears that may not be what they seem. You are invited to consider the nature of purpose and the power of aligning yourself with what builds rather than what destroys. You see the image of earned courage standing steady in the face of challenge. And finally, you reach a page that simply names the tension of living: hurt and wonder, evil and glory.
This week of bibliomancy reads like a meditation on finding inner orientation when the outer world refuses to provide it. It hints that clarity may come not from perfect direction but from choosing what you serve, practicing love in the fleeting hours, and trusting the strength you have earned through earlier storms."
So, here is a guidebook to navigating this hero's journey I am on. The universe certainly is interesting. And kind.
Thanks for this, Matt. It has been meaningful in unexpected ways.
This is brilliant. Perhaps not inconsequentially, I've been noticing for some time that what generative AI models seem to be particularly good at, in textual terms, is not just generating text but picking up on patterns and meta-patterns in existing/provided text that we humans might miss, or that we might at least find difficult to detect. On the one hand, I wonder or worry that reliance on this technology to do that pattern-detection might end up robbing us of something important and meaningful if we rely too much on it. On the other hand, this hesitation reminds me of the kind of thing represented by Plato's famous myth of Thamus and Theuth, in which the former, a king, rejected the gift of writing from the latter, a god, on the grounds that it was a pernicious invention that would inevitably have a deleterious effect on people by atrophying our innate intelligence because it would outsource knowledge, thought, and wisdom to artificial and external repositories. As Neil Postman was only one of the most prominent recent commentators to point out, while aspects of the overall principle behind the criticism undeniably hold true even in highly contemporary terms -- who remembers phone numbers anymore in the age of cell phones? -- overall it might be safe to say that investing civilization-wide in the technology of writing was a winning bet. The benefits far outweighed the detriments. The return was positive. And when it comes to LLMs and their awesome capability for recognizing patterns in data both textual and otherwise, and for reflecting them back to us in helpfully illuminating and elucidating form, I've begun to think this may end up illustrating the same principle. Yes, there's a trade-off, but the benefits may ultimately end up putting us in the red. In the case of your own bibliomantic experiment and the insight that ChatGPT delivered from it -- which, crucially, only became actual insight once you read and engaged with it! (because ChatGPT can't produce or enjoy insights on its own, in isolation, since it's not actually sentient and therefore can only produce blind textual churn until someone is there to receive and understand it) -- in this case, I feel the point is amply illustrated. I understand why you were kind of stunned when reading what ChatGPT wrote. Because it really is astute and insightful and illuminating, at least when received and understood by actual persons like you and me. And instead of foreclosing on human mental, emotional, or even spiritual life and action, it's probably actually stimulative to these things because of its emotional impact. As I said, I'm beginning to think this may be one of the most interesting and valuable functions to emerge from LLMs.
I do believe I have that very same edition of the Epic of Gilgamesh. I've given up playing, since I realized I was cheating. I was not reaching for books with my eyes closed. Perhaps I will try and replay this bibliomancy sometime. I've really enjoyed following your play and look forward to your conclusions.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. And how cool that you have the same Gilgamesh edition. I know what you mean about "cheating," by the way. Several times over the years when I've gone to do this, I've noticed that that I'm doing the same thing. Trying to tilt the playing field, slant the reading, determine the drawing. Still, even that can become the object of the exercise, if we stand back from it far enough!
Oh, boy. Just this morning I was just reading about Joseph Campbell and his background that led to the writing of The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Gilgamesh certainly falls into that bucket and I have been seeing the theme of this hero journey throughout this entire exercise. Today, (the last day of this encouraged exercise, and thank you very much for it) this is what I pulled.
………………..Hurt………………………
………………..Evil……………………….
……………...Glorious……………………
…………….Wonderful…………………
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell pg. 83
Gladwell was talking about our human tendency to make snap value judgements based on appearances. However, the passage struck me as a powerful commentary on life. What a way to end the 7 days.
Then I did something that may be cheating a little but I have recently been interested in testing what AI, particularly Chat GPT, is able to intuit based on what it knows about me. I use it almost everyday in editing and other basic tasks but I don't put much personal information in. I wondered what Chat would make of all these passages, so I gave it this prompt: "I have been engaged in a practice of bibliomancy the last week along with a blogger I follow. I have been trying to make meaning in my life of the passages I randomly pull from books on my office shelf. I will list them below. Please look for themes or meaning that I may have missed across the selections."
Here is what it gave back to me. I was somewhat stunned.
"Here are some themes and connecting threads that seem to surface when you lay these passages side by side. They read like stepping stones that form a quiet narrative about disorientation, discernment, identity, and courage.
1. Being led somewhere you did not intend to go
Your week begins with the Fellowship deep in the Forest, pulled away from their chosen path. They can no longer rely on direction or intention. This sets a tone of disorientation, a sense of being moved by forces not fully understood. It raises the question: when the path bends without your consent, what do you do with the uncertainty.
2. Trust and responsibility when you lack the full picture
Truman’s testimony introduces the idea of working within partial knowledge. Responsibilities remain heavy even when you cannot see everything that is shaping the larger situation. The theme repeats the idea that you may not have perfect clarity about the forces shaping your journey, yet your role still matters.
3. Impermanence and the pressure of time
Barbara Crooker’s poem introduces a shift. Suddenly seasons have changed, children are nearly grown, parents have vanished from the daily landscape. It deepens the early sense of disorientation but adds tenderness. Even when time feels as if it is slipping, the daily task is love. Not a grand quest, but a humble practice between morning and evening.
4. The deceptive nature of fear
Bradbury’s scene asks, What if the thing we fear is only frightening because we expect it to be. Sometimes the threat turns out to be ordinary, almost disappointingly human. There is a suggestion that not every shadow in the Forest is the monster you expect. Fear can distort perception.
5. Purpose responds to what you serve
Margaret Cameron brings a pivot point. You move from disorientation and fear into the realm of inner alignment. Her language suggests that purpose is not something that chases you. It answers only to your true nature. If you feed destructive forces, they answer. If you feed generative forces, they build for you even when you feel blind and wounded. This connects directly back to Truman’s partial knowledge and Crooker’s call to daily love: what you choose to serve shapes the path ahead.
6. Courage, struggle, and earned confidence
The Island Stallion adds energy and grit. The red horse stands unshaken in the face of challenge, confident because he has survived hard things. This is not naive confidence but forged confidence. It suggests that even when you are pressed or challenged, previous tests have shaped your backbone. The passage contrasts fear with the steady flame of experience.
7. Dichotomy and the rapid judgment of meaning
Gladwell’s scattered words offer the simplest frame, yet perhaps the most useful: Hurt, Evil, Glorious, Wonderful. It evokes snap judgment, but also how life tends to offer mixed signals. Experiences rarely fall neatly into one bucket. They can wound and uplift at once. They can frighten and clarify. They can feel like being lost in a forest while still moving toward something that matters.
Across the selections, a pattern emerges:
You begin lost, pulled away from the direction you thought you were going. You confront partial knowledge, shifting seasons, and fears that may not be what they seem. You are invited to consider the nature of purpose and the power of aligning yourself with what builds rather than what destroys. You see the image of earned courage standing steady in the face of challenge. And finally, you reach a page that simply names the tension of living: hurt and wonder, evil and glory.
This week of bibliomancy reads like a meditation on finding inner orientation when the outer world refuses to provide it. It hints that clarity may come not from perfect direction but from choosing what you serve, practicing love in the fleeting hours, and trusting the strength you have earned through earlier storms."
So, here is a guidebook to navigating this hero's journey I am on. The universe certainly is interesting. And kind.
Thanks for this, Matt. It has been meaningful in unexpected ways.
This is brilliant. Perhaps not inconsequentially, I've been noticing for some time that what generative AI models seem to be particularly good at, in textual terms, is not just generating text but picking up on patterns and meta-patterns in existing/provided text that we humans might miss, or that we might at least find difficult to detect. On the one hand, I wonder or worry that reliance on this technology to do that pattern-detection might end up robbing us of something important and meaningful if we rely too much on it. On the other hand, this hesitation reminds me of the kind of thing represented by Plato's famous myth of Thamus and Theuth, in which the former, a king, rejected the gift of writing from the latter, a god, on the grounds that it was a pernicious invention that would inevitably have a deleterious effect on people by atrophying our innate intelligence because it would outsource knowledge, thought, and wisdom to artificial and external repositories. As Neil Postman was only one of the most prominent recent commentators to point out, while aspects of the overall principle behind the criticism undeniably hold true even in highly contemporary terms -- who remembers phone numbers anymore in the age of cell phones? -- overall it might be safe to say that investing civilization-wide in the technology of writing was a winning bet. The benefits far outweighed the detriments. The return was positive. And when it comes to LLMs and their awesome capability for recognizing patterns in data both textual and otherwise, and for reflecting them back to us in helpfully illuminating and elucidating form, I've begun to think this may end up illustrating the same principle. Yes, there's a trade-off, but the benefits may ultimately end up putting us in the red. In the case of your own bibliomantic experiment and the insight that ChatGPT delivered from it -- which, crucially, only became actual insight once you read and engaged with it! (because ChatGPT can't produce or enjoy insights on its own, in isolation, since it's not actually sentient and therefore can only produce blind textual churn until someone is there to receive and understand it) -- in this case, I feel the point is amply illustrated. I understand why you were kind of stunned when reading what ChatGPT wrote. Because it really is astute and insightful and illuminating, at least when received and understood by actual persons like you and me. And instead of foreclosing on human mental, emotional, or even spiritual life and action, it's probably actually stimulative to these things because of its emotional impact. As I said, I'm beginning to think this may be one of the most interesting and valuable functions to emerge from LLMs.
I do believe I have that very same edition of the Epic of Gilgamesh. I've given up playing, since I realized I was cheating. I was not reaching for books with my eyes closed. Perhaps I will try and replay this bibliomancy sometime. I've really enjoyed following your play and look forward to your conclusions.
I'm glad you enjoyed it. And how cool that you have the same Gilgamesh edition. I know what you mean about "cheating," by the way. Several times over the years when I've gone to do this, I've noticed that that I'm doing the same thing. Trying to tilt the playing field, slant the reading, determine the drawing. Still, even that can become the object of the exercise, if we stand back from it far enough!