Astragalomancy

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Replica Roman astragali
Astragali used for gaming in Mongolia

Astragalomancy, also known as cubomancy[1] or astragyromancy, is a form of divination that uses dice specially marked with letters or numbers.

Historically, as with dice games, the "dice" were usually knucklebones or other small bones of quadrupeds. Marked astragali (talus bones) of sheep and goats are common at Mediterranean and Near Eastern archaeological sites, particularly at funeral and religious locations.[2] For example, marked astragali have been found near the altar of Aphrodite Ourania in Athens, Greece, suggesting astragalomancy was performed near the altar after about 500 BC.[3]

The practice of contacting divine truth via random castings of dice or bones stretches back before recorded history. The Metropolitan Museum of Art displayed bone "dice" (hakata) used by the Shona people of southern Africa.[4] They have been in use for thousands of years, and remain extant.[citation needed]

Astragalomancy is often considered to be a branch of cleromancy.[5] As a form of sortition, numbers are scrawled into the dice; the numbers are associated with letters, thus bearing on the questions of the diviner. The diviner then casts the dice, resulting in a random sequence of numbers.[6] The diviner interprets this sequence according to certain rules – usually rules related to a religion (e.g. Tibetan Buddhism and the Mo system of cubomancy).

Another branch of cleromancy sometimes compared to astragalomancy is pessomancy (also known as psephomancy) – a type of divination which uses colored or marked pebbles rather than numbered dice. These pebbles are either thrown out of a bag after shuffling or drawn from the bag at random. The interpretation of the colors or symbols relate to issues such as health, communications, success, and travel.[7]

  1. ^ Pargiter, F. E. (1913). ""The Bower Manuscript. Facsimile Leaves, Nāgarī Transcript, Romanised Transliteration and English Translation with Notes, and Sanskrit and English Indexes; by A. F. R. Hoernle" Review by: F. E. Pargiter". The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Cambridge University Press: 699–705. doi:10.1017/S0035869X00045366. JSTOR 25189045. S2CID 161808394.
  2. ^ Reece, David S. (2000). "Worked Astragali" (PDF). Kommos: an excavation on the south coast of Crete volume IV: the Greek sanctuary. Princeton: Princeton University Press. pp. 398–401.
  3. ^ Reece, David S. (1989). "Faunal remains from the altar of Aphrodite Ourania, Athens". Hesperia. 58 (1). American School of Classical Studies at Athens: 63–70. JSTOR 148320.
  4. ^ "Divination Dice (Hakata)". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Archived from the original on 2008-05-09. Retrieved 2008-07-31. Sets of dice (hakata) are the quintessential Shona instruments used to divine the source of illness or personal misfortune. These consist of a series of four miniature tablets, made of wood, ivory, or bone, each with a distinct design motif inscribed on one side. According to Shona conceptions of experience, personal difficulties—ranging from unemployment or poor grades in school to the death of one's livestock—may all be attributed to some spiritual agency. Consequently, a distinction is made between medical treatment of certain ailments and a diviner's probing analysis and diagnosis of the ultimate cause of a client's problems.
  5. ^ Armytage, W.H.G (1966). "The Mantic Mantle". Apeiron. 1 (1): 32–38. doi:10.1515/APEIRON.1967.1.1.32B. S2CID 170389602.
  6. ^ "Astragalomancy." Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Ed. J. Gordon Melton. 5th ed. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. 100. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 27 February 2015.
  7. ^ "Pessomancy (or Psephomancy)." Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Ed. J. Gordon Melton. 5th ed. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale Group, 2001. 1202. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 28 February 2015.