Cleromancy is a form of sortition, casting of, in which an outcome is determined by means that normally would be considered random, such as the rolling of dice, but are sometimes believed to reveal the will of God, or other supernatural entities.
Casting of lots occurs relatively frequently in the Bible. The Hebrew Bible contains several examples of the casting of lots as a means of determining God's will:
According to Numbers, Moses allocated territory to the tribes of Israel according to each tribe's male population and by lot.
In , a guilty party is probably found by lot.
In the Book of Joshua, Joshua says, "Ye shall therefore describe the land into seven parts, and bring the description hither to me, that I may cast lots for you here before the our God." The Hebrews took this action in order to know God's will as to the dividing of land between the seven tribes of Israel who had not yet "received their inheritance"..
In the First Book of Samuel, lots are used to determine that it was Jonathan, Saul's son, who broke the oath that Saul made, "Cursed be the man that eateth any food until evening, that I may be avenged on mine enemies.".
In the Book of Jonah, the desperate sailors cast lots to see whose god was responsible for creating the storm: "Then the sailors said to each other, 'Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.' They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah."
Other places in the Hebrew Bible relevant to divination include:
Book of Proverbs : "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from Yahweh and 18:18: The lot settles disputes, and keeps strong ones apart."
Book of Leviticus KJV "... neither shall you practice enchantment, nor observe times." The original Hebrew word for enchantment, as found in Strong's Concordance, is pronounced naw-khash. The translation given by Strong's is "to practice divination, divine, observe signs, learn by experience, diligently observe, practice fortunetelling, take as an omen"; and "1.to practice divination 2.to observe the signs or omens". Times in the original Hebrew is pronounced aw-nan'. Its translation in Strong's is "to make appear, produce, bring, to practise soothsaying, conjure;" and "1. to observe times, practice soothsaying or spiritism or magic or augury or witchcraft 2. soothsayer, enchanter, sorceress, diviner, fortune-teller, barbarian...". In the Hebrew-Interlinear Bible, the verse reads, "not you shall augur and not you shall consult cloud".
Deuteronomy "let no one be found among you who ', performs ', ', or . qasam qesem literally means distributes distributions, and may possibly refer to cleromancy. Kashaph seems to mean mutter, although the Septuagint renders the same phrase as pharmakia'', so it may refer to magic potions.
To Christian doctrine perhaps the most significant ancient Hebrew mention of lots occurs in the Book of Psalms, "They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots." This came to be regarded as a prophecy connecting that psalm and the one that follows to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, since all four gospels tell of the Roman soldiers at Jesus's crucifixion casting lots to see who would take possession of his clothing.
A notable example in the New Testament occurs in the Acts of the Apostles where the eleven remaining apostles cast lots to determine whether to select Matthias or Barsabbas to replace Judas. The Eastern Orthodox Church still occasionally uses this method of selection. In 1917 MetropolitanTikhon became Patriarch of Moscow by the drawing of lots. The Coptic Orthodox Church uses drawing lots to choose the Coptic Pope – most recently done in November 2012 to choose Pope Tawadros II. German Pietist Christians in the 18th Century often followed the New Testament precedent of drawing lots to determine the will of God. They often did so by selecting a random Bible passage. The most extensive use of drawing of lots in the Pietist tradition may have come with Count von 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 and finally discontinued in the 1880s. Many Amish customarily select ordinary preachers by lot.
In Germania
, in Chapter X of his Germania, 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."
In the ninth century Anskar, a Frankish missionary and later 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.
In ancient China, and especially in Chinese folk religion, various means of divination through random means are employed, such as qiúqiān. In Japan, omikuji is one form of drawing lots. I Ching divination, which dates from early China, has played a major role in Chinese culture and philosophy for more than two thousand years. The I Ching tradition descended in part from the oracle bone divination system that was used by rulers in the Shang dynasty, and grew over time into a rich literary wisdom tradition that was closely tied to the philosophy of yin and yang. I Ching practice is widespread throughout East Asia, and commonly involves the use of coins or sticks of yarrow.
In Yoruba and Yoruba-inspired religions, babalawos use variations on a common type of cleromancy called Ifá divination. Ifa 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 "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.
