Secret Games of the Gods: Ancient Ritual Systems in Board Games

The title promises more than this book delivers. The first half is a catalogue of divinatory methods that slowly wends it way toward the subject of board games. Once we get there, however, the focus becomes descriptions of the boards, pieces, and gameplay. Mystic and magical references are scant and conjectural. This edition also suffers from poor editing, with dropped letters within words and even repeated clauses, often several to a page. The strangest lacuna, however, is in its discussion of chess variants. Chaturanga is mentioned in several places, yet the Rosicrucian Chess, the variant developed by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn for divinatory purposes, is completely absent.