Cleromancy is a form of divination using sortition, casting of lots, or casting bones or stones, 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.
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In ancient Rome fortunes were told through the casting of lots or sortes.
Casting of lots occurs relatively frequently in the Bible, and many biblical scholars think that the Urim and Thummim served this purpose.
In the Hebrew Bible, there are three obvious cases where lots were cast as a means of determining God's mind:
Other places in the Hebrew Bible relevant to divination:
One notable example in the New Testament occurs in the Acts of the Apostles 1:23-26 where the eleven remaining apostles cast lots to determine whether Matthias or Barsabbas (surnamed Justus) would be chosen to replace Judas. In addition, all four gospels (e.g., John 19:24 tell of the soldiers at Jesus's crucifixion casting lots to see who would get his clothing.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church this method of selection is still occasionally used. In 1917 Metropolitan Tikhon was elected Patriarch of Moscow by the drawing of lots. German Pietist Christians in the 18th Century often followed the New Testament precedent of drawing Lots to determine the will of God. This was often done by selecting a random Bible passage. The most extensive use of drawing of Lots in the Pietist tradition may have been 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.
The practice of casting lots was described by Tacitus, in Chapter X of his Germania, 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."[3]
This practice was still in use in the ninth century, when Anskar, a Frankish missionary and later bishop of Hamberg-Bremen observed the practice several times in the decision-making process of the Danish peoples. In this version, the runes 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 it was the Christian god and he later found a book that his son had stolen from Bishop Gautbert in his house.[4]
In China, and especially in Chinese Taoism, various means of divination through random means are employed, such as use of the I Ching. In Japan, omikuji is one form of drawing lots.