Casting Lots: A Cleromancy Tutorial

Cleromancy is one of the oldest forms of divination practiced by human beings. Where tarot requires a deck of illustrated cards and astrology demands a chart computed against exact birth data, cleromancy requires almost nothing: a handful of objects, a surface to cast them on, and the willingness to read meaning from where they fall. The word comes from the Greek kleros, meaning “lot” or “allotted portion,” and the practice spans every inhabited continent and most documented civilizations. To cast lots is to participate in a tradition that reaches back before writing, into the earliest recorded encounters between human beings and the unknown.

This tutorial will take you from a bare understanding of the practice through to a complete personal lot set, a casting cloth you have prepared yourself, and reliable methods for both quick yes/no questions and longer, more nuanced open readings. The only supplies you need to begin are objects you likely already own.

Cleromancy across cultures

The casting of lots appears in the Hebrew Bible in numerous passages, most explicitly in the book of Leviticus, where the high priest Aaron casts lots before the Lord to determine which of two goats will be sacrificed and which released into the wilderness on Yom Kippur. The Hebrew word is goral, and the practice was considered not mere chance but the direct expression of divine will: “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord” (Proverbs 16:33). The apostles in the New Testament cast lots to choose a replacement for Judas Iscariot.

In ancient Rome, a well-developed system of lot divination called sortes involved drawing wooden tablets inscribed with verses from Virgil or Homer. Pilgrims traveled to specific temples, most famously the oracle at Praeneste (modern Palestrina), to draw a sortition from a chest of oak tablets. The practice was called sortes Vergilianae when Virgil was the chosen poet and remained popular well into the Christian era, despite repeated condemnations from church councils.

West African traditions, particularly those related to Ifa divination practiced by the Yoruba people, use a sophisticated casting system involving palm nuts or a divining chain of eight half-shells. The Ifa corpus is among the most complex oral literature in the world, and the diviner, the babalawo, draws on thousands of memorized verses to interpret which of 256 possible figures the cast produces. UNESCO recognized Ifa as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2008. Though the full Ifa system requires years of dedicated training, the underlying principle of casting physical objects and reading their arrangement is cleromantic at heart.

In China, cleromantic ideas underlie several forms of divination, including the casting of jiao bei, crescent-shaped wooden or bamboo blocks thrown before temple altars to receive yes/no answers from deities. The I Ching, though now most commonly consulted through yarrow stalks or coins, was historically used with bundles of tortoise shells and milfoil stalks in a physical casting process.

Among Indigenous peoples of the Americas, bones, seeds, and gaming pieces served dual purposes as both playing objects and divination tools. The Zuni people used marked sticks; many Plains nations used bone sets with specific symbols carved or painted onto them.

What all of these traditions share is not a single method but a shared premise: that the way randomness falls is not meaningless, and that a prepared mind can read significance in the patterns that emerge.

Assembling a personal lot set

You do not need to purchase a commercial rune set, a carved bone set, or any other pre-made divination kit, though you are welcome to if that appeals to you. Many experienced cleromancers work with lots they assembled themselves from materials gathered over time, and the personal investment in choosing and charging each piece strengthens the working relationship between practitioner and tool.

A functional lot set contains between nine and twenty-four pieces. Fewer than nine gives you too little variety to produce meaningful readings; more than twenty-four can produce layouts so dense they become difficult to interpret. Most beginners do well with twelve to sixteen lots.

Materials that work well include smooth river stones (flat ones travel well across a casting cloth), cowrie shells (traditionally associated with divination in West and East African traditions, as well as among Caribbean diaspora communities), large seeds such as acorns or Job’s tears, animal bones or bone-shaped objects, glass beads of uniform size, wooden discs cut from a branch, and clay or polymer clay pieces you shape and fire yourself. Coins, particularly old or foreign coins with interesting faces, are excellent lots and carry a long tradition: the I Ching coin oracle, the Norse practice of casting coins in sacred pools, and many folk traditions all use coins as divination objects.

One object in your set should serve as the significator. This piece represents you, the querent, and its position on the cloth after casting anchors the reading spatially. Choose something that feels personally significant: a stone you found on a meaningful walk, a particular coin from a trip, a shell that caught your eye.

To assemble the set, gather your objects one at a time rather than purchasing a matched collection all at once. Hold each candidate in your hand for a moment. If it feels inert or wrong, set it aside. You are not performing a ceremony at this stage; you are simply paying attention to which objects engage you. When you have gathered enough candidates, lay them all out and reduce the set to your target number by eliminating any that feel redundant or flat.

Assigning meanings

Once your objects are assembled, you need to assign a meaning to each one. There are two approaches, and neither is more correct than the other.

The thematic approach assigns each lot to a broad area of life or a concept: one lot for love and relationships, one for work and practical affairs, one for health, one for finances, one for creative endeavors, one for hidden or unconscious forces, one for obstacles, one for helpful allies or energies, one for time and patience, one for change, one for stability, and one for unexpected developments. With a twelve-piece set, those twelve categories give you comprehensive coverage. You can add more specific lots to expand the set later.

The symbol-based approach assigns each lot a symbol drawn from a tradition you already study, such as the letters of the Elder Futhark rune alphabet (twenty-four runes), the sixteen geomantic figures, the twelve astrological signs, or the ten sephiroth of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life. This approach is richer but requires you to already have working knowledge of the source system.

Whichever approach you choose, write your assignments down in your practice journal immediately and review them regularly until the meanings are memorized. You should be able to pick up any piece of your set and state its meaning without consulting notes.

Marking your lots helps during readings. Some practitioners use paint, wood-burning tools, or permanent markers to inscribe a symbol on each piece. Others leave the objects unmarked and learn to distinguish them by shape, color, or feel. If your set contains similarly sized and textured objects, some marking system is essential.

Preparing the casting cloth

The casting cloth defines your reading space and allows you to interpret lots spatially. A simple cloth is a circle or square of fabric, roughly eighteen inches across, marked with concentric zones and directional divisions.

To make a basic casting cloth, cut or hem a piece of fabric in a color that feels appropriate to your practice. Divide it with light pencil lines or embroidery into three concentric zones: an inner circle about six inches in diameter at the center, a middle ring extending to about twelve inches, and an outer ring reaching the edge. Mark the cardinal directions on the rim if you work with elemental or directional correspondences.

The zones carry positional meaning. Lots that land in the inner zone represent matters that are immediate, certain, and active in the querent’s present situation. Lots in the middle zone represent matters that are developing, near, or approaching. Lots in the outer zone represent background influences, distant possibilities, or factors the querent has not yet had to confront directly. Lots that fall entirely off the cloth are typically read as outside the scope of the question or irrelevant to the current reading.

Some readers further divide the cloth into left and right halves, assigning the left to the querent’s inner world, emotions, and self-knowledge, and the right to external circumstances, other people, and the world at large.

The casting technique

Hold all your lots cupped in both hands. Take a breath and hold your question clearly in mind. You do not need to speak aloud, but the question should be fully formed and specific. Then release the lots onto the cloth from a height of about twelve to eighteen inches, allowing them to scatter naturally.

Do not rearrange any lots before you begin reading. What matters is where each piece lands in relation to the others and to the cloth’s zones. Note which lots landed face-up and which face-down if your pieces have a marked and unmarked side; face-down lots in most traditions indicate hidden, blocked, or reversed energies.

Give yourself a moment of genuine looking before you begin to interpret. Notice which clusters formed, which lots landed isolated, whether the significator ended up surrounded or alone, and whether the lots feel crowded in one zone or spread evenly.

Yes/no readings

The simplest cleromantic reading is a yes/no question, and it requires only a single special lot: a designated yes/no or binary marker. Many practitioners use two lots of the same type, one marked positively and one negatively, a white stone and a black stone being a common choice. To read, hold these two pieces (and only these two) in your cupped hand while holding the question in mind, then release them.

If the positive piece lands closer to the center of the cloth, or closer to the significator if you have also cast it, the answer is yes. If the negative piece lands closer or the positive piece lands off the cloth entirely, the answer is no. If they land equidistant, or both fall off the cloth, the situation is unresolved and the question should be revisited at a later time.

A three-lot binary method uses a positive, a negative, and a neutral piece. Neutral landing nearest to center indicates that the question itself needs to be reframed.

Open-ended readings

For a full reading on a complex question, cast all your lots at once onto the cloth. Begin interpretation by locating the significator, then work outward through the zones, reading the lots in each zone as a group before moving to the next.

A step-by-step open reading:

1. State your question clearly, either aloud or in your mind, before the cast.
2. Release all lots onto the cloth from a moderate height.
3. Locate the significator. Note which zone it landed in. A significator in the inner zone suggests the querent is centrally engaged with the question; one in the outer zone can suggest the querent feels distant from or avoidant of it.
4. Identify which lots share a zone with the significator. These are the most immediately relevant forces.
5. Note any lots that landed in physical contact with the significator. These represent energies that are pressing directly on the querent.
6. Read each zone in turn: inner first, then middle, then outer.
7. Within each zone, look for groupings of two or three lots that landed close together. Grouped lots interact and modify each other’s meanings.
8. Lots that landed in isolation on the cloth represent forces operating independently, without significant relationship to other factors.
9. Lots that fell off the cloth are outside the reading’s scope.
10. Note any lots that landed face-down (if applicable) and read them as blocked, internalized, or shadow aspects of their meanings.
11. Synthesize by asking: what story do the inner-zone lots tell? How does the middle zone develop or complicate that story? What background conditions does the outer zone describe?

Working with groupings

When two lots land close together, read their meanings in combination. A lot representing communication and a lot representing obstacles, landing in proximity, suggests blocked or difficult communication rather than two separate factors. A lot for love and a lot for money landing together might indicate a financial relationship or that affection and material concerns are intertwined. The meanings blend rather than stack independently.

When three lots cluster, the middle piece of the cluster (the one most central to the grouping) typically acts as the primary theme, while the others act as qualifiers.

Common mistakes and troubleshooting

Reading too quickly is the most common beginner error. Sit with the cast for at least a minute before you begin to speak or write. What you see in the first two seconds is often superficial. Deeper patterns emerge when you relax and allow the layout to speak.

Ignoring lots you do not understand produces incomplete readings. If a lot lands in a significant position but you cannot see its relevance, note it and return to it. Often the relevance becomes clear as you interpret surrounding lots first.

Asking the same question repeatedly because you dislike the first answer is not cleromancy; it is wishful thinking. Cast once, read honestly, and trust what the lots show. If you genuinely feel the cast was disrupted, it is acceptable to cast a second time, but you should take the second reading as final.

Using too many lots too soon overwhelms the beginner. Start with eight to ten lots in your set and learn their meanings thoroughly before expanding. The richness of cleromancy comes from deep familiarity with a small set, not from a large set that remains half-memorized.

Neglecting the casting cloth zones and simply reading each lot in isolation produces a list of keywords rather than a reading. Position and relationship are the heart of cleromancy. A lot for change in the inner zone has different weight than the same lot in the outer zone; a lot for allies pressed against the significator says something different than the same lot isolated near the cloth’s edge.

Grounding after a reading

Close each session by gathering your lots deliberately, holding the set together in your hands for a moment, and either saying a simple closing statement or taking a few slow breaths. This marks the transition between divinatory time and ordinary time and keeps your practice from bleeding into anxious rumination. Record the reading in your journal, including the date, the question, a rough sketch of the lot layout, your interpretation, and, if applicable, a note to revisit it once time has revealed whether your reading proved accurate.

Over time, your journal becomes the most valuable tool you own. Patterns in how specific lots consistently appear together, or how the significator tends to cluster with particular pieces in your own castings, are personal signatures of your practice that no general guide can anticipate. That body of accumulated evidence, built reading by reading, is what transforms a technique into a living art.