{"id":3618,"date":"2011-11-27T14:35:38","date_gmt":"2011-11-27T19:35:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=3618"},"modified":"2011-11-27T14:35:38","modified_gmt":"2011-11-27T19:35:38","slug":"call-on-the-library-angel-and-check-your-sneakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/11\/call-on-the-library-angel-and-check-your-sneakers.html","title":{"rendered":"Call on the Library Angel, and check your sneakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Library Angel. That was\u00a0Arthur Koestler\u2019s name for the shelf elf that arranges that a certain book appears (or disappears) in unusual ways at just the right moment.<\/p>\n

To get the attention of the Library Angel, pick any book, open it at random and see whether there is a clue for you on the page you are now looking at..<\/p>\n

You may find you have a favorite book for this game, or a succession of them.<\/p>\n

“Bibliomancy” is the fancy name for divination with books. When you get your message from the first line or two on the page, the more exact term is “stichomancy”, which means divination with lines or stanzas.<\/p>\n

My favorite books for games of this kind are my own dream journals. Opening one at random is the only practical way for me to keep in touch with my \u201cold\u201d dreams now that they fill many thousands of pages.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s an example of how the Library Angel came to play with me when I opened an old dream journal:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Catching up with the Black Sneakers<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

While working on my book\u00a0Dreamways of the Iroquois<\/a><\/em> early in 2004, I opened a 1993 journal at random and was struck by a small detail in a dream report: \u201cI am wearing a pair of black sneakers\u201d. At the time of the dream, I did not own a pair of black sneakers and never had. At the time I rediscovered the dream report, eleven years later, I was wearing my very first pair of black sneakers. I had purchased them just two months earlier.<\/p>\n

It seemed my waking life had caught up with something I had dreamed eleven years earlier. But wait. If one detail from an “old” dream had manifested, wasn’t it possible that there were other clues in the 1993 dream to what was going on now, or might happen in the near future? I pored over the details of the 1993 dream report. \u00a0I noticed this:<\/p>\n

I found some loose index cards, covered with my own handwriting. I know these contain treasure.<\/em><\/p>\n

I wandered my house with these words in my mind. In a guest room we were using mainly for storage, I found that loose index cards had spilled out of a cardboard box. I would normally have stuffed them back in the box.<\/p>\n

Because of the “old” dream, I carried the cards into my office. I had written on them even earlier than 1993, back in 1987-8, a time of visionary encounters with wisdom keepers of Iroquois tradition. My handwriting was easier to read then than it was later. I found the “treasure” promised eleven years before. The information on the cards gave me the inspiration for two vital chapters in Dreamways of the Iroquois<\/em> that I had not planned to write until the spirit of synchronicity helped me to pick the right page in an old journal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Library Angel. That was\u00a0Arthur Koestler\u2019s name for the shelf elf that arranges that a certain book appears (or disappears) in unusual ways at just the right moment. To get the attention of the Library Angel, pick any book, open it at random and see whether there is a clue for you on the page…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,41,25,14,8],"tags":[787,379,1812,381,382],"class_list":["post-3618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-active-dreaming","category-coincidence","category-conscious-living","category-journaling","category-synchronicity","tag-arthur-koestler","tag-bibliomancy","tag-divination","tag-library-angel","tag-stichomancy"],"yoast_head":"\nCall on the Library Angel, and check your sneakers - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/11\/call-on-the-library-angel-and-check-your-sneakers.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Call on the Library Angel, and check your sneakers - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Library Angel. That was\u00a0Arthur Koestler\u2019s name for the shelf elf that arranges that a certain book appears (or disappears) in unusual ways at just the right moment. To get the attention of the Library Angel, pick any book, open it at random and see whether there is a clue for you on the page…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/11\/call-on-the-library-angel-and-check-your-sneakers.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-11-27T19:35:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/files\/2011\/11\/RM-Journal-2003.07.28_Experiences-after-waking-300x231.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert Moss\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Call on the Library Angel, and check your sneakers - Dream Gates","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/11\/call-on-the-library-angel-and-check-your-sneakers.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Call on the Library Angel, and check your sneakers - Dream Gates","og_description":"The Library Angel. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3618"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3623,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3618\/revisions\/3623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}