Mystical Angels

What cultures and religions have a Book of Life?

What cultures and religions have the concept of a "Book of Life" wherein the general details of everyone's life past, present and future is outlined and real life tries to approximate what is written as closely as possible. What does it mean if multiple allegedly reputable fortune tellers that are completely unrelated say that you are not as written in the book of life and with the same specific detail. The specific detail is in gender, apparently they would say that in the book of life my mother was destined to have three children, two girls and a boy, the first two would be girls but if the second born was a girl then she would die after giving birth hence to approximate the book of life, I the second born was born as a male so that she would not die and three children, two girls, one boy would be born as foretold. No I don't have any transsexual, cross dressing or even bisexual tendencies though the concept of transsexual operations fascinated me as a child (a local hospital specialized in it and there was a multi-issue special about it in the paper that fascinated me, mostly because of the full page graphic depicting the left half of a nude woman a scalpel and the right half of a nude male, internet porn wasn't available to children in those days, it was the Sears catalog or articles and textbooks on science and biology). The fortune tellers always go on to say that this is very confusing that they cannot accurately interpret my future or what I should do. Some would go as far to say perhaps you should change your sex. Sometimes, I'd be offered a refund. The usual course of the session would be they would say that I'm the third born, to which I would say no second born, then they would say this is very strange, your mother was to have died before you were born, and after a lengthy pause they would say you were supposed to be a girl. My parents said that a professional traditional Chinese reading they had done before immigrating also said the same thing and they said that everything else that fortune teller said has come to pass including a third child as there was only two of us at the time, so much came true that they decided to have all three children's names legally changed to modify our fortunes, my parents say they weren't superstitious till all those predictions came true. The new age fortune teller that I had gone to also nailed obscure details such as when my father would come back from a prolonged contract abroad. She also went on to recommend a large number of books to read on Wicca because something was very odd but powerful about what she was seeing and that I should research it myself. A year later, we went to the same tea house but they had a different fortune teller who used obvious stage tricks such as holding hands over yours so you could feel the energy flowing from them (heat from the palms would be felt) and did the usual cold reading stumbling around, of course a good cold reader wouldn't be obvious and wouldn't be noticed as cold reading. All fortune tellers that would seem anywhere's credible would do the book of life confusion thing to me and would seem genuinely confused, the ones that did not did the obvious stage tricks. The Lotus Sutra seems to be more teachings from Buddha rather than outlines of Life. The others are primarily descriptions of rites and rituals. The Christians have a Book of The Life but it's a list of names of those who have been redeemed and can enter heaven. The closest one other then Twilight Zone short stories that I can think off would be the Greek Fates weaving the threads of life. Are their others?

Public Comments

1. Different branches of paganism have "books of life", as do many other religions, and they're explained in the texts I've listed below. I'm just treading on basics, but here you go: Nichiren Buddhist: The Lotus Sutra Egyptian: The Egyptian Book of the Dead The writings of Enheduanna Neo-Pagan: The Pagan Book of Living and Dying The Spiral Dance The Holy Book of Women's Mysteries Summoning the Fates