"Somebody, with fervour unavailing, is pleading for an answer—'Yes, or no?'"  From Cassell's, 1886.

If you'd like to divine the answer, our Augural Agglomerator has it, here.

From Newgate by J. M. Rymer, 1846.

"That which is yet to come cannot be foretold," from Springfield High School's Resume yearbook, 1909.  See How to Hoodoo Hack a Yearbook.

"Her future," by Harrison Fischer, ca. 1920.  A scan by Nasjonalbiblioteket.

Here's a thousand-year-old precursor to arranging seeds into a 9-square grid.  The newfangled technique is for germination (our photo is from Elements of Farm Practice by Archie Dell Wilson and E. W. Wilson, 1919).  The ancient technique is for geomancy and comes down to us from Kazakhstan (perhaps via Persia) called Kumalak (Qumalaq).  One takes 41 beans and (through a simple process of dividing into piles and finding remainders) places them onto the squares of the grid.  The squares at the top of the grid represent two eyes and the head.  The middle squares are two hands and the heart.  The bottom squares are two feet and a horse.  The rows also represent (top to bottom) past, present, and future.  The number of beans in each square is associated with the elements (1 to 4 representing fire [for action and clarity], water [for tension and imbalance], air [for encounters and associations], and earth [for wealth and sorrows]).  And so parts of the body are combined with elements to form the divinatory reading: water in the head, wind in the eyes, fire in the hands, sand in the heart, and so on.  Here's a link to an article about the special meanings that might come up with particular combinations of beans.  By the way, Didier Blau's Kumalak system appears to be very hard to find.  We acquired ours from Simon & Schuster Australia.

Someone asked our Augural Agglomerator, "Will Peter and Wendy get back together?"  The Agglomerator answered "Open" (exactly 50% between Yes and No) (and here is the exact report, with all 59 separate oracle readings).  At first we thought that the Agglomerator was in error, because we all know that Wendy chose not to fly away with Peter Pan, deciding instead to remain with the Darlings, and when she visited Neverland once a year to clean house, her eyes were less and less able to detect Peter's presence.  Where does the uncertainty lie?, we wondered.  And then the obvious hit us like a little ball of light: Tinker Bell.

"Ask Henda.  'She knows the answers'" to these questions: "Will I be lucky in love?"  "Will I have financial trouble this year?"  "Is this my lucky day?"  "Am I putting on too much weight?"  "Will it rain today?"  "Will my health improve?"  From the State Fair of Texas, 1984, photographed by Lynn Lennon.

"Witches' luck," from Woodmyth & Fable, written and illustrated by Ernest Thompson Seton, 1905.

Years ago we developed a calendar system that tracks the flow and relationships of telltale words and symbols.  One can generate an entire month's calendar to test its accuracy in predicting events in daily life.  The link is http://mysteryarts.com/magic/calendar/.

Thanks to the reviewer over at Amazon who rated our Hexopedia four stars: "Interesting read!  So far, the effects are subtle, but they are there."