The response addresses Lévy-Bruhl's 1926 essay, "Primitive mentality and games of chance," focusing on the gambler's role as an interpreter of the present for the sake of the future. Through a discussion of Lévy-Bruhl's articulation of the gambler's mentality, the gambling game fafi, and the invisible forces that dictate chance, the piece offers a reading that emphasizes the significance of interpretation and a collective capacity to read the "signs that herald the future.

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This article explores the interpretive and divinatory practices and strategies used in the South African street-based lottery game fafi. The game, run by the Chinese community in South Africa and played predominantly by low-income black South Africans, utilizes a set of images and divinatory practices, particularly dream interpretation. The article analyzes the practices and history of fafi, alongside the financial and interpretive stakes of the gambling game, to understand contemporary orientations towards the future and uncertainty. Dreaming-learning how to dream and how to interpret dream images-as a gambling skill is understood in relation to traditional healing and diagnostic practices in South Africa. In the context of shifting urban landscapes, the piece argues that "the future" has become an entity to get ahead of rather than a projected goal or destination one hopes for.

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