Divination: The Oldest Game in Town

When many people hear the word divination, they think of think of that professor in Harry Pottery reading the tea leaves. Or perhaps they envision a witch in a scary movie spreading out entrails. Divination is a BIG word to a lot of people. It feels like something removed from our everyday life, our modern life. It feels spooky. Maybe even scary.

But divination couldn’t be more natural.

Once upon a time, when the world was much older, oracling was part of everyday life. Local medicine women or men would talk to Spirit for the people in their village, bringing in wisdom to help with afflictions of the mind, body or spirit. This was a time when men and women were a lot more in tune with the language of the plant spirits, the animal spirits and the great mysteries of this world and the others. In classical times, even kings and emperors would seek the counsel of an oracle. No coppers from the royal coffer were spent, and no wars waged, without seeking the advice of a Sybil or Pythia.

Of course, now we are very disconnected from divination. We find it “otherworldly” and mistrust it. But believe me, dear ones, it is a part of us. It is a part of you.

It is time for us to “rewild.” We must embrace the strange and unknown in order to reclaim our ancient wisdom. For divination is as old as the human race.

The ancients used methods such as augury (studying the movement of birds), signs in the natural world (such as the movement of animals), and visiting the dream world to divine information about crops, hunting, or other important decisions to the tribe.

In ancient Greece and Rome, people traveled from far and wide to seek the wisdom of the Pythias, Sybils and other oracles. The Oracle at Delphi was perhaps the most famous. The Oracle at Siwa is another lesser-known oracle, but one whom was visited by Alexander the Great before he conquered most of the Middle East and Mediterranean.

All of this still sounds lofty to most people (who were these ancient oracles and bone throwers, anyway?), but most would be surprised to learn how many modern games and pastimes have their roots in divination. Despite the loss of the origins of the practices, cultural remnants remain. Let’s walk through a few, shall we?

Playing Cards

·      Playing cards were originally used for divination. This history of playing cards is intimately intertwined with the tarot.

Dice

·      Dice originated in ancient times. Diviners would toss bones onto casting clothes, and the result of the throw was used to divine outcomes. Bone dice could be marked with numbers or other symbols (such as runes). How the bones landed would provide information about the question being posed.

Dominoes

·      Dominoes were originally used in much the same way as dice. It is generally agreed that they were once a fortune telling device.

Board games

·      There is evidence that knucklebones (“astragali”) were used as playing dice with game boards in ancient times. Such playing boards have been recovered on archaeological digs alongside marked bones that were traditionally used in divination.

Pick-up-sticks

·      Pick-up sticks likely evolved from the yarrow sticks that were tossed in I-Ching divination.

Other divination objects were the simple implements of everyday life around the home (cauldrons and water bowls, anyone?). Children likely played with and explored these ordinary objects around the home, as they were not secret or separate, but were in fact a normal part of everyday life.

Many forms of divination, and other forms of worship or ceremony were eradicated through the effects of empire (e.g., the Roman destruction of indigenous culture in Europe and the British Isles) and the Christianization of the West (which saw the burning of books, the razing of pagan temples, and the burning of witches). Today, we have echoes of the ways in which our ancestors once connected with Spirit and their gods and goddesses. But we have been divorced from our ancestral cultures and we have become disconnected from nature. So we are left with whispers, fragments of what once was.

Many people feel this disconnection from ancestral spirit, and feel a pull to divination, psychic phenomenon, or even the fantasy genre of books and movies, because they REMEMBER.

We can reclaim these old methods and, in addition, invent new ones.

In what ways can you begin the process of reclaiming? Of rewilding?

We are spiritual beings, and to deny this is to deny the very truth of what we are. Divination is as natural to humans as eating, drinking, loving or grieving.

Go on now, go buy an oracle deck or watch some birds!