Divination or fortune telling by picking words or other book passages at random: Several church councils were formed in the fifth century A.D. to study and forbid this "common" practice of bibliomancy.

One of the methods used was for a person to point to a line or passage of an open book with his or her eyes closed. The randomly chosen line was believed to convey a message of significance.

In the Middle Ages, it was trendy to use Virgil's Aeneid and Homer's Illiad. Moslems are said to use the Qur'an for this purpose.

Now, bibliomancy refers to divination which interprets randomly chosen passages from any book. The Bible is still the most frequently used book, although other publications may be used.

The variation of using a book of poetry is called "rhapsodomancy".