Cleromancy

Cleromancy is divination by casting lots: the practice of using randomly falling objects to generate an answer to a question. Stones, sticks, dice, coins, shells, seeds, and runes are among the many objects that have been cast across human history in the belief that chance-based selection, properly prepared for and reverently conducted, reveals something that deliberate choice cannot. The random outcome, treated as a response from a force beyond ordinary consciousness, is the oracle.

The word itself comes from the Greek kleros, meaning lot or allotment, and the practice reaches into the deepest layers of recorded human history. Cleromancy has been used to make decisions, settle disputes, choose leaders, determine guilt or innocence, and seek guidance from divine sources in cultures spanning the ancient Mediterranean, the Near East, sub-Saharan Africa, northern Europe, East Asia, and the Americas.

History and origins

The Hebrew Bible records the casting of lots (Urim and Thummim, and the general practice of gorel) as a sanctioned means of determining divine will. Lots were used to assign the division of Canaan among the tribes, to identify Jonah as responsible for the storm, and to make other consequential communal decisions. The specific nature of the Urim and Thummim objects is debated by scholars; they appear to have been carried by the high priest and consulted for yes-or-no divine answers.

In ancient Greece and Rome, cleromancy was formalized in temple contexts. Oracles at various sites used lots, drawn or cast from containers, to provide answers to pilgrims. Pebbles, beans, and small marked objects were commonly used. The Roman practice of Sortes (lots) extended into consultations at temples of Fortuna and other deities.

Norse and Germanic traditions preserved the practice of casting marked wooden sticks or runes, recorded in Tacitus’s Germania as a method used by Germanic peoples to read the will of the gods. The modern practice of casting runes descends from this tradition, though how directly is subject to scholarly debate.

In sub-Saharan African divination traditions, shell-casting methods such as Ifá (which uses palm nuts or a divining chain) and related cowrie shell reading practices represent highly sophisticated cleromantic systems embedded within complex theological and practical frameworks. Ifá, practiced by the Yoruba people and carried throughout the African diaspora, is recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Dice, as a standardized randomizing tool, were used in divination across the ancient world: Greek, Roman, and Indian dice-oracle texts have been preserved, with specific meaning-sets assigned to different numerical combinations.

In practice

The simplest cleromantic practice is also among the oldest: assign meanings to possible outcomes, then cast, draw, or select randomly, and read what falls.

A method you can use

A basic approach uses a set of three coins, following the I Ching coin method but simplified for general cleromancy.

Choose a question that can be usefully addressed through one of three responses: yes, no, or more information needed (or unclear). Alternatively, assign three possible answers or directions to your question before casting.

Hold your coins and your question simultaneously. The physical act of holding the question in mind while your hands hold the coins is the opening of the divinatory space.

Cast the coins. Count heads and tails. Three heads is the strongest positive response. Three tails is the strongest negative or challenging response. Two heads and one tail is a conditional yes or movement toward resolution. Two tails and one head is a conditional no or movement toward difficulty.

This is a bare-bones method. The I Ching elaborates this enormously through a 64-hexagram system with extensive textual commentary, and that depth rewards study. For simple yes-or-no guidance, however, the coin cast is as ancient and direct as divination gets.

For rune casting, draw runes from a bag without looking, or cast them from your palm onto a cloth and read only the runes that fall face-up. Each visible rune carries its traditional meaning, and the runes that fall together are read in relationship to each other.

The theological dimension

What cleromancy asks of the practitioner is a willingness to accept that randomness, properly approached, is not merely noise. Whether this is understood as the will of a god or gods, the operation of synchronicity, the voice of the unconscious speaking through apparent chance, or some other framing, the practice rests on the conviction that what falls is not arbitrary in any simple sense.

This conviction need not require metaphysical certainty. Many practitioners find that the act of consulting lots, regardless of how they understand the mechanism, provides a moment of perspective-shift that is itself valuable: the surprising result, the unexpected casting, the rune that seems impossible for the situation and yet, on reflection, exactly right. The practice of cleromancy cultivates the capacity to be surprised by what you don’t already know.

In myth and popular culture

The casting of lots to determine divine will appears at pivotal moments across sacred narrative. In the Hebrew Bible, the high priest’s Urim and Thummim, mysterious objects used to obtain divine yes-or-no answers, functioned as a formalized cleromantic device. Lots were cast to identify Jonah as responsible for the storm that threatened his ship (Jonah 1:7), to divide the land of Canaan among the twelve tribes, and to select Saul as Israel’s first king (1 Samuel 10). In the Christian New Testament, the apostles cast lots to select Matthias as the replacement for Judas among the twelve (Acts 1:26), a procedure treated in the text as a legitimate method of divine selection.

In Norse tradition, the casting of lots marked by runes is recorded by the Roman historian Tacitus in “Germania” (98 CE), where he describes Germanic peoples cutting marks into slips of wood, casting them at random, and reading the results as divinely meaningful. This passage is one of the primary ancient sources for understanding pre-Viking rune practice, though scholars debate how directly contemporary rune casting descends from what Tacitus observed.

Ifá divination, the Yoruba system that uses palm nuts or a divining chain to generate the 256 possible odu (divination figures), is recognized by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The babalawo (divination priest) interprets the pattern that falls against an extensive body of oral literature associated with each odu, producing a reading of remarkable depth from a fundamentally cleromantic process.

The I Ching’s coin method, the most accessible form of the sixty-four-hexagram oracle, is pure cleromancy: three coins thrown six times generate the hexagram through random fall, and the resulting text is the divination. The I Ching has influenced major twentieth century thinkers including Carl Jung (who wrote an influential foreword to the Wilhelm-Baynes translation) and John Cage, whose chance-based musical compositions drew explicitly on the I Ching method.

Myths and facts

Several misunderstandings about cleromancy deserve direct address.

• Cleromancy is sometimes dismissed as purely random and therefore meaningless. The cleromantic traditions themselves offer different explanations for why random selection is meaningful, including divine guidance, synchronicity, and the operation of the practitioner’s deep intention. The practice rests on the conviction that the fall is not arbitrary in the relevant sense, whatever the mechanism.
• Many people assume that casting lots is a primitive or superseded practice. Randomized selection remains in active use in consequential modern contexts, including lottery selection for military service, jury selection protocols in some jurisdictions, and certain scientific trial designs. The formal deliberateness of how lots are cast in divination has parallels in the protocols around randomization in research.
• Rune casting is sometimes presented as an unbroken tradition directly descended from ancient Norse practice. Contemporary rune systems have been substantially reconstructed and developed from the nineteenth century onward, drawing on medieval manuscript sources and modern scholarship. The claim of unbroken ancient lineage should be approached with historical nuance.
• Some practitioners assume cleromancy is less sophisticated than symbol-based divination systems like tarot. The I Ching is among the most philosophically sophisticated divinatory systems ever developed, and Ifá’s body of associated oral literature is vast. Simplicity of the casting mechanism does not determine the depth of the interpretive tradition.
• Cleromancy is sometimes assumed to produce only yes-or-no answers. While simple lot casting can function this way, complex cleromantic systems like the I Ching and Ifá produce nuanced, contextual responses that require skilled interpretation and substantial learning.