By Joseph J. Bucci ——Bio and Archives--October 16, 2024

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Time is counting down – we’re so close. Everyone is anxious about the results of the upcoming election. Who will win? How will our country be changed? It’s been an onslaught of political ads and back-and-forth fighting among the different sides, each camp making their final pitches to the voters. Oh, if only we could see what would happen!

We can… sort of. The many prognosticators are here to tell us exactly what they think will be the results. How do they know? Polls, polls, polls! Each side has its forecast. Then there are the major network polls, and independent polls; with each one knowing the real story. There are even aggregators of all the polls, just so that we have a clearer idea of what actually may happen – yikes! I want to run into my bedroom and hide under the blankets until it is all over, like hiding from a bad storm with thunder and lightning. That worked when I was four years old; but it doesn’t work anymore.

There is so much information available to us that our minds are filled to capacity, and our senses gorged with the specter of current events and how things may play out. All of this has led to much anxiety about what the future may hold. There is actually a new medical term for this: Anticipatory Anxiety (Golden, 2023). While the internet and 24-7 news cycles tell us everything about the present, people seek sources outside of themselves to know about the future – sources with whom they agree, of course. When the prestigious political prognosticators disagree, everyone’s favorite prognosticator in 2016 and 2020 becomes the focus of ridicule by another combative pollster here in 2024 (Prokop, 2024; Snider, 2024).

When searching for ways to actually know the future, I stumbled upon a website as part of the Merriam-Webster language information web pages (Merriam-Webster.com, 2024). This website listed “30 Ways” by which people have sought to discern the future (Merriam-Webster.com, 2024). These included Aeromancy, which is divination from the........

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