Sacred texts
Classic texts from many traditions, each in a named translation that is in the public domain, two of them in two translations you can read side by side. Read them here in full, search them, highlight and bookmark passages with private notes, or draw a passage at random.
Reading plans: a whole book, a little each day, with your place kept.
- Tao Te Ching (The Tao Teh King) · Laozi (attributed)Eighty-one short chapters on the Way and its virtue, attributed to Laozi.Translated by James Legge (1891) · Taoism · 81 chapters
- Tao Teh King (Laotzu's Tao and Wu Wei) · Laozi (attributed)The same eighty-one chapters in Dwight Goddard's plainer 1919 rendering, each with his own title.Translated by Dwight Goddard (1919) · Taoism · 81 chapters
- The Dhammapada · Traditionally attributed to the BuddhaVerses of the Buddha's teaching, one of the best-known texts of the Pali canon.Translated by F. Max Müller (1881) · Buddhism · 26 chapters
- The Song Celestial (Bhagavad-Gîtâ) · Traditionally attributed to VyasaKrishna and Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, in Arnold's verse rendering.Translated by Sir Edwin Arnold (1885) · Hinduism · 18 chapters
- The UpanishadsTwelve of the principal Upanishads, the Vedic dialogues on the Self and Brahman, in Max Müller's translation.Translated by F. Max Müller (1879) · Hinduism (Vedanta) · 54 sections
- Meditations (The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus) · Marcus AureliusThe private notes of a Roman emperor on Stoic philosophy and living well.Translated by George Long (1862) · Stoicism (philosophy) · 12 books
- Corpus Hermeticum (The Divine Pymander and the Sermons of Hermes) · Attributed to Hermes TrismegistusThe sermons of Hermes Trismegistus, opening with the vision of Poemandres, in G. R. S. Mead's translation.Translated by G. R. S. Mead (1906) · Hermeticism · 17 tractates
- The Masnavi (Masnavi i Ma'navi), abridged · Jalal al-Din RumiStories and teachings from Rumi's great Sufi poem, abridged and translated by E. H. Whinfield.Translated by E. H. Whinfield (1898) · Islam (Sufism) · 6 books
- The Meaning of the Glorious KoranThe hundred and fourteen surahs of the Quran in Marmaduke Pickthall's 1930 translation.Translated by Marmaduke Pickthall (1930) · Islam · 114 surahs
- Psalms · Various (traditionally David and others)The hundred and fifty psalms of the Hebrew Bible, in a modern public-domain translation.Translated by World English Bible (Michael Paul Johnson and volunteers) (2020) · Judaism and Christianity (Hebrew Bible) · 150 psalms
- Psalms · Various (traditionally David and others)The Psalms in the American Standard Version of 1901, verse for verse beside the modern translation.Translated by American Standard Version (American Revision Committee) (1901) · Judaism and Christianity (Hebrew Bible) · 150 psalms
- Proverbs · Traditionally attributed to Solomon and othersShort sayings of wisdom from the Hebrew Bible, in a modern public-domain translation.Translated by World English Bible (Michael Paul Johnson and volunteers) (2020) · Judaism and Christianity (Hebrew Bible) · 31 chapters
Search the texts
Finds passages containing all the words you type. This is choosing by theme, not a random draw: the results are the passages that match, in book order.
How a random passage is drawn
Opening a book at random for guidance, bibliomancy, is an old practice across many traditions. Here a draw is chosen by the server with a cryptographic random number generator, saved to your journal before it is shown, and kept with how it was chosen, so a refresh or retry cannot replace it.
What one passage is depends on the book, so a draw is a readable piece of text: a whole chapter of the Tao Te Ching, a whole psalm, a stanza of the Gita, a section of the Meditations, a story of the Masnavi, a paragraph of the Hermetica, and a single verse of the Upanishads, the Dhammapada, the Quran and Proverbs, shown with what comes either side of it. Where a book is here in two translations, only one is drawn from, so it is not twice as likely to come up.
Weighting. With several books chosen, a draw can make every passage equally likely, so a long book like Proverbs (915 verses) comes up far more often than the Tao Te Ching (81 chapters); or make every book equally likely, then pick a passage within it. The two give different odds, and the setting is saved with each draw.
Avoid repeats leaves out passages you have drawn before from the chosen books. When every one has been drawn, the draw says so and allows repeats again.
Drawing again. If you draw again with the same settings, the first passage is not replaced: both stay in your history and the new one is marked as a redraw of it.
Your own book. If you open a physical book at random, you can record what you found. It is saved exactly as you type it, marked as drawn from your own copy, and is not checked against any edition.
The passage of the day is drawn once each day (midnight UTC) from every passage, and is the same for everyone.
A random passage is a prompt for reflection. Nothing here claims that a draw is guided or that it predicts anything.
Editions and rights
Each text was transcribed from the source below and lightly normalised (footnote markers and markup removed, line breaks tidied; spelling kept; each book lists its changes). Translators’ notes and commentary are not included.
Tao Te Ching (The Tao Teh King), trans. James Legge
The Sacred Books of the East, vol. 39 (The Texts of Taoism, part I), Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1891
Translation published 1891; translator James Legge died 1897. Public domain worldwide (life+70) and in the US (published before 1929).
Tao Teh King (Laotzu's Tao and Wu Wei), trans. Dwight Goddard
Laotzu's Tao and Wu Wei, a new translation by Dwight Goddard, Brentano's, New York, 1919 (first edition)
Published 1919; translator Dwight Goddard died 1939. Public domain in the US (published before 1929) and in life+70 countries since 1 January 2010.
The Dhammapada, trans. F. Max Müller
The Sacred Books of the East, vol. 10, part I, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1881
Translation published 1881; translator F. Max Müller died 1900. Public domain worldwide (life+70) and in the US (published before 1929).
The Song Celestial (Bhagavad-Gîtâ), trans. Sir Edwin Arnold
The Song Celestial; or, Bhagavad-Gîtâ (from the Mahâbhârata), Trübner & Co., London, 1885
Translation published 1885; translator Sir Edwin Arnold died 1904. Public domain worldwide (life+70) and in the US (published before 1929).
The Upanishads, trans. F. Max Müller
The Sacred Books of the East, vols. 1 (1879) and 15 (1884): The Upanishads, parts I and II, Clarendon Press, Oxford
Translations published 1879 and 1884; translator F. Max Müller died 1900. Public domain worldwide (life+70) and in the US (published before 1929).
Meditations (The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus), trans. George Long
The Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, translated by George Long (first published 1862); PG #15877 transcription of a later printing (printing not identified in the file)
Translation published 1862; translator George Long died 1879. Public domain worldwide (life+70) and in the US (published before 1929).
Corpus Hermeticum (The Divine Pymander and the Sermons of Hermes), trans. G. R. S. Mead
Thrice-Greatest Hermes: Studies in Hellenistic Theosophy and Gnosis, vol. II, Theosophical Publishing Society, London and Benares, 1906
Published 1906; translator G. R. S. Mead died 1933. Public domain in the US (published before 1929) and in life+70 countries since 1 January 2004.
The Masnavi (Masnavi i Ma'navi), abridged, trans. E. H. Whinfield
Masnavi i Ma'navi: The Spiritual Couplets of Maulana Jalalu-'d-din Muhammad Rumi, translated and abridged by E. H. Whinfield, second edition, Kegan Paul, Trench, Truebner & Co., London, 1898 (first edition 1887)
Published 1887 (second edition 1898); translator E. H. Whinfield died 1922. Public domain worldwide (life+70) and in the US (published before 1929).
The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, trans. Marmaduke Pickthall
The Meaning of the Glorious Koran: An Explanatory Translation, Alfred A. Knopf, New York / George Allen & Unwin, London, 1930 (PG transcription proofed against printed copies; printing not identified)
First published 1930; translator Marmaduke Pickthall died 19 May 1936. Public domain in the US since 1 January 2026 (95 years after publication, for works published in 1930) and in life+70 countries since 1 January 2007.
Psalms, trans. World English Bible (Michael Paul Johnson and volunteers)
World English Bible, 2020 stable text edition (eBible.org eng-web USFM)
Dedicated to the public domain by its publishers. copr.htm: "The World English Bible is in the Public Domain. That means that it is not copyrighted. However, "World English Bible" is a Trademark of eBible.org." They ask that a changed text not be called the World English Bible; only markup was removed here.
Psalms, trans. American Standard Version (American Revision Committee)
American Standard Version, Thomas Nelson & Sons, New York, 1901 (eBible.org eng-asv USFM)
Published 1901 by the American Revision Committee (the American counterpart of the English Revised Version's committee): public domain in the US (published before 1929); eBible.org publishes it as public domain. copr.htm: "The American Standard Version of the Holy Bible is in the Public Domain. Copy freely."
Proverbs, trans. World English Bible (Michael Paul Johnson and volunteers)
World English Bible, 2020 stable text edition (eBible.org eng-web USFM)
Dedicated to the public domain by its publishers. copr.htm: "The World English Bible is in the Public Domain. That means that it is not copyrighted. However, "World English Bible" is a Trademark of eBible.org." They ask that a changed text not be called the World English Bible; only markup was removed here.