The Forgotten Forms of Divination

When the average person thinks of fortune telling, theyby throwing blades into the air and observing the
might imagine somebody peering into a crystal ball andpatterns they create when they land. This latter form
receiving visions of the future. Or they might conjureused to be popular in Scotland, and was performed on
up an image of a tarot card reader, coming up with athe eve of August to foretell which marriages and
clearer and clearer picture of events that have yet todeaths would occur in the coming year.
pass as each card is turned over. There are manyAnother form of divination that uses sharp objects to
forms of divination, though, a lot of them now obscureprovide a reading is that of Belomancy. This was
and hardly practised.practised by ancient civilisations like the Babylonians
Astragalomancy is one such form. It involves throwingand Greeks, and involved coming up with a number of
dice, each with a different pattern on each of its sides,possible answers to a question and writing them on
into the air and then reading the future from how theypieces of cloth or feathers which were then attached
fall. It is similar to Tarot Reading in some ways; eachto arrows. The arrows were fired into the air and
pattern has separate meanings to the others, but theywhichever went furthest had the best answer
only form a full picture when laid alongside the rest ofattached.
the dice.The thing that connects all of these forms of divination
Macharomancy is also rarely practised, possibly due toto the popular ways of reading today is that they rely
the potential for things to go badly wrong. It relies onon a spiritual force to influence how the dice, swords
either spinning a blade on a board with numbers andor arrows will fall. The spirits use these objects to send
letters around the edge (similar in some ways to a Ouijius a message, and from there it is up to us to take
board, but without relying on the spirits of the dead), orthat guidance and use it well.