Due to our mysteriously esoteric studies, we're often asked for oracular predictions about the new year.  For the upcoming transition, we consulted our own Mimetic Oracle, and here's why: life is a grand pageant, and it's been said that theatre reveals what is behind so-called reality.  Our Mimetic Oracle draws from 92 characters in six vintage plays, with 166 spoken lines and 31 stage directions in the mix.  With the system, one randomly draws five characters and generates a script to illuminate the current drama of life.  (There’s a detailed F.A.Q. which explains how the scripts are created, how to make sense of the dialogues, how to determine whether a reading is positive or negative, what to make of the various characters, and why these specific 6 plays were chosen for the system: http://www.mysteryarts.com/play/.)

Here's the strangely positive scenario that the oracle generated when asked about the new year:

The scene begins ominously: "They're putting out all the lights."  That vague pronoun seems to refer to the "powers that be."  Yet the character Snookums feels "perfectly fan-tas-a-ma-gor-ious."  This is crucial, not just for its positivity, but also for how the word is broken down.  This means: separate out the component parts, get down to the roots, see how it all fits together, and it'll all be good (albeit sort of unreal; the fantastical is removed from reality).  At the heart of the scene is some weeping, nervous rocking back and forth, darkness, and unconsciousness.  Yet a tin soldier (symbolic of humble, innocent, uncorrupted authority) points to the rear of the stage where a candle is being lit.  "Here is a candle," says Paddy Mike; "Now I'll light it."  A single candle dispels all the darkness.  The scene ends on an extraordinarly positive tone.  Note that the candle has been placed upon a box.  A lingering question to ponder is: what's in that box that supports the illumination?