EVERYDAY ORACLES · LESSON 1 OF 9 · 13 MIN · FREE
Urim and Thummim, knucklebones and dice oracles, the Germanic lots — the oldest and simplest way of asking.
Before cards, before charts, people asked by lot: they cast something that could fall more than one way, and read the fall as the answer. Sortilege — from Latin sors, "lot" — is the simplest oracle there is, and one of the most widespread.
Before cards, before charts, people asked by lot: they cast something that could fall more than one way, and read the fall as the answer. Sortilege — from Latin sors, "lot" — is the simplest oracle there is, and one of the most widespread.
The idea behind all three is the same: casting lots takes the choice out of human hands, leaving it to God. That is why lots were also used to divide land, choose officials and settle disputes — Athens chose many of its magistrates by lot.
Greeks and Romans played and divined with astragali, the knucklebones of sheep or goats. A knucklebone can land on four sides, each with its own value (1, 3, 4 and 6). In the 2nd century CE, several towns of southern Asia Minor carved dice oracles on stone pillars in their marketplaces: you threw five knucklebones (or a die five times), added up the result, and found the matching verse — each with a god's name and an answer such as "Wait; the time is not right."
The Roman historian Tacitus (Germania, chapter 10) describes the Germans cutting a branch from a fruit-bearing tree into slips, marking them with signs, and scattering them on a white cloth; a priest or the head of the household picked up three, one at a time, and read them. Whether the signs were runes nobody knows — but the Runes tool lets you scatter lots in just this way.
A lot is pure chance. Its power is what happens in you when it falls: relief, disappointment, the sudden knowledge of what you hoped it would say. Many readers use a lot exactly for that — to find out what they really want.
Use your three lots for small daily choices for a week — which route to walk, which book to read next. Record each cast and your reaction. At the end of the week, ask what you learned about your own wishes.
4 questions — choose an answer to check it.
1.How was Matthias chosen to replace Judas as an apostle, according to Acts?
2.What are astragali?
3.In the dice oracles inscribed in towns of Roman Asia Minor, what did each throw lead to?
4.Why does sortition (decision by lot) appear in so many cultures?
Reading once is not remembering. Study Cards bring each fact back just before you would forget it, until it is yours.
Members can ask questions about any lesson and get an answer grounded in the lesson and its sources — explanations, practical guidance and what to study next.
Become a member