Astragalomancy
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
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]
In Ancient Greece
Astragalomancy was performed in
These Anatolian dice oracles are all set out in a particular format. They address the reader in a first person singular, with an implied narrator and an implied reader. The narrator addresses the reader as if they are interacting, and regularly addresses the reader as ‘stranger’ implying they come from somewhere else, usually with business to be conducted.[8] The business the reader has is either silently or openly expressed to the oracle, and the oracle responds in kind. The text's standard construction of the inquirer then is one who has come from a foreign place to the oracle, puts the business or activities he wants to conduct to the god, and then receives an answer. These answers are mostly positive, with responses like “You will find that for which you are consulting the oracle, and nothing will be bad” or “you will get everything about which you are asking”.[8] There were negative responses as well, such as “The sun has gone down, and terrible night has come. Everything has become dark: interrupt the matter, about which you ask me”[8] but these were less common.
Tibetan Dice Divination
Tibetan culture contains a wide range of dice divination traditions, some within the buddhist tradition and some outside of it. The most common form uses the standard cubical six sided dice with numbers of pips one through six on each side. Others such as the Sanskrit pāśaka are four sided rectangular dice, and date from the eighth to the tenth century with evidence from manuscripts.[9]
There is evidence that dice divination was used in Tibetan law, influencing things such as loans, interest, marital law and troop conscription. There is a recently published Tibetan manuscript containing both a divination manual and a legal text, suggesting an interconnectedness between the two practices.[10] The legal section of the text lays out many issues spread over 11 ‘clauses’, which contain sets of questions and answers. Each case ends with a question of whether the matter can be resolved by means of sho, meaning ‘dice’. The petitions typically end with the phrase “Do we decide by means of sho or not - how do you command?".[11]
Early Tibetan Dice Divination
Early Tibetan dice divination was performed with pāśaka, four sided oblong dice with pips one through four marked on the long sides. These were generally 7 cm x 1 cm x 1 cm in size and were constructed so that under regular circumstances it was unlikely they landed on their narrow ends.[12] In order to produce an oracle, the process was as follows: one pāśaka or dice was thrown three consecutive times, with the result and order of the pips recorded. With these three throws, sixty four possible combinations, or omens were possible. These omens were usually displayed in manuscripts with geometric shapes separated by lines, like this “◎◎ / ◎ / ◎◎◎◎” representing the dice results.[13] This result would then be compared to the corresponding entry in the manuscript, and the omen would then apply. The omens themselves are constructed in a particular way, and are either written in verse (referred to as Type-1) or written in prose (referred to as Type-2).[14] The contents can be summarised as follows:
- “(a) set of die-marks,
- (b) verse in ⟨Type-1⟩ / the name of the divinity in ⟨Type-2⟩,
- (c) commentary,
- (d) result.”[15]
In Tibetan Buddhism
The Dalai Lama is reported as using the mo, balls of dough in which have been placed pieces of paper with possible "choices" written on them, to help in making important decisions.[16] Tibetan divination has long featured the mo in making everyday decisions, too.[17] There are books written by various lamas on interpretations for the casting of dice. The traditional six sided dice appears in the iconography of the Hindu deity Lha-Mo. A pair of such dice hang from her belt, attached with string. Lha-Mo is part of the “eight terrible ones”, defenders of the buddhist faith, and is closely associated with divination, with a strong connection to divination via dice throwing. Lha-Mo's connection to dice throwing is apparent in a story in the Beun-mo bka'i than-yig, a religious text. In this story, Lha-Mo appears in the guise of a fortune teller multiple times, and ritually throws dice in each apparition, eventually healing a queen who was sick.[18] The lamas of the Lha-Mo cult, the “Dpal-Idan dmag-zor rgyal-mo'i sgo-nas” still perform a dice throwing ritual for divination today, called ‘mo’.[19]
On the Silk Road
The style of astragalomancy using numerical
In South America
The huayru is a dice game played in South America at funerals. The game is traditionally played with
Notes and references
- S2CID 161808394.
- ^ 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.
- JSTOR 148320.
- ^ "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.
- S2CID 170389602.
- ^ "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.
- ^ "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.
- ^ ISBN 9789047407966.
- OCLC 1112129568.)
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link - ^ Evan Osnos, Profiles, “The Next Incarnation,” The New Yorker, October 4, 2010, p. 63
- ^ Tseten, Dorjee. "Tibetan art of divination". The Office of Tibet. Archived from the original on 2008-05-04. Retrieved 2008-07-31.
- ISBN 9789004251229, retrieved 2022-05-26
- JSTOR 23682089.
- OCLC 1262675426.)
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