Cleromancy

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For the use of random selection as a way to make a fair form of selection, see Sortition.

Cleromancy is a form of

random, such as the rolling of dice (astragalomancy
), but that are sometimes believed to reveal the will of a deity.

In classical civilization

In ancient Rome fortunes were told through the casting of lots or sortes.[1]

In Judaic and Christian tradition

Casting lots for tribal inheritance, woodcut for Die Bibel in Bildern, 1860, Joshua, Chapter 14
Leviticus 16:7–10; stained glass from Lincoln Cathedral
)

Casting of lots (Hebrew: גּוֹרָל, romanized: gōral, Greek: κλῆρος, romanized: klē̂ros) is mentioned 47 times in the Bible.[citation needed] Some examples in the Hebrew Bible of the casting of lots as a means of determining God's will:

Other places in the Hebrew Bible relevant to divination include:

A notable example in the

Matthias, or Barsabbas (surnamed Justus) to replace Judas
.

The

Zinzendorf and the Moravian Brethren of Herrnhut, who drew lots for many purposes, including selection of church sites, approval of missionaries, the election of bishops, and many others. This practice was greatly curtailed after the General Synod of the worldwide Moravian Unity in 1818[citation needed] and finally discontinued in the 1880s. Many Amish customarily select ordinary preachers by lot. (Note that the Greek word for "lot" (kleros) serves as the etymological root for English words like "cleric" and "clergy" as well as for "cleromancy".)[4]

In Germania

Tacitus, in Chapter X of his Germania (circa 98 AD), describes casting lots as a practice used by the Germanic tribes. He states:

"To divination and casting of lots, they pay attention beyond any other people. Their method of casting lots is a simple one: they cut a branch from a fruit-bearing tree and divide it into small pieces which they mark with certain distinctive signs and scatter at random onto a white cloth. Then, the priest of the community if the lots are consulted publicly, or the father of the family if it is done privately, after invoking the gods and with eyes raised to heaven, picks up three pieces, one at a time, and interprets them according to the signs previously marked upon them."[5]

In the ninth century

bishop of Hamburg-Bremen, observed the same practice several times in the decision-making process of the Danish peoples. In this version, the chips were believed to determine the support or otherwise of gods, whether Christian or Norse, for a course of action or act. For example, in one case a Swedish man feared he had offended a god and asked a soothsayer to cast lots to find out which god. The soothsayer determined that the Christian god had taken offence; the Swede later found a book that his son had stolen from Bishop Gautbert in his house.[6]

In Asian culture

In

omikuji
is one form of drawing lots.

yarrow
.

In South India, the custom of ritualistically tossing sea shells (sozhi) and interpreting the results based on the positions of the shells is prevalent, predominantly in the state of Kerala.

In West African culture

In Yoruba and Yoruba-inspired religions, babalawos use variations on a common type of cleromancy called Ifá divination. Ifá divination is performed by "pounding ikin"—transferring consecrated oil palm kernels from one hand to another to create a pattern of eight to sixteen marks called "Odù" onto a tray of iyerosun, or consecrated termite dust from the Irosun tree. The casting itself is called Dafá in Yoruba language speaking areas in West Africa. Similar to I Ching, this form of divination forms a binary-like series of eight broken or unbroken pairs. This allows for 256 combinations, each of which references sets of tonal poems that contain a structure that includes various issues, problems and adversities and the prescriptions of offerings to correct them.

In M'ikmaq tradition

The game of Waltes is a form of cleromancy practiced by traditional Mi'kmaq and preserved since colonial potlache law, the Indian Act and residential schools in Canada. It is played with a bowl, six bone dice, and a counting stick. Three sticks are grandmothers and one the grandfather.[7]

See also

References

  1. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, vol. 1, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, pp. 1051–1052, archived from the original
    on 2009-07-08, retrieved 2021-06-20
  2. ^ Leviticus 19:26
  3. ^ Deuteronomy 18:10
  4. ^ Harper, Douglas. "cleric". Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved 2017-05-03.
  5. ^ "Introduction to Runes". Sunnyway.com. Retrieved 2013-06-02.
  6. ^ "Rimbert's Life of Anskar", in Carolingian Civilisation: A Reader (2nd ed.), ed. P. E. Dutton, 2009.
  7. ^ "The Game of Waltes".

External links

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