Fall Asleep to the History of Fortune Tellers: From the Witch of Endor to the Crystal Ball

On the night before his last battle, a king who had banished every fortune teller from his land put on a disguise and went looking for one: a woman at Endor. This long, calm narration follows the women who read the future, one place and one reader at a time, and the people who came to them with something at stake. We read the palace letters of Mari, visit Veleda in her tower on the Lippe and Ganna at the court of Domitian, and open the Oseberg ship and the grave with the iron staff at Fyrkat. Then come Hildegard, the Sibyl of the Rhine, the Holy Maid of Kent and Henry VIII, the palm readers at Lambeth, Mother Shipton's cave at Knaresborough, La Voisin and the Affair of the Poisons, and Mademoiselle Lenormand of the rue de Tournon. The road runs on through Marie Laveau's New Orleans, the Vagrancy Act of 1824, Biddy Early and her blue bottle, Madame Blavatsky's parlour, Miss X and the crystal ball, Madame de Thebes, Evangeline Adams at Carnegie Hall and the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup. It ends with Helen Duncan at the Old Bailey, Jeane Dixon, Sybil Leek of the New Forest, the itako of Mount Osore, the Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951 and a fortune teller's booth on the pier at Blackpool. Scripture, court records, legend and later retellings are kept apart along the way. Settle in and rest.