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Sortilege:
A form of divination by the casting or drawing of lots. There are many different types including astragalomancy,belomancy, bibliomancy, pessomancy, rhapsodomancy and stichomancy. It is also called cleromancy.
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Since the beginning of time, mankind as invested considerable time and effort in finding out what the future holds. One result of this was the development of the art of divination according to which a seer uncovers some hidden knowledge, meaning or is able to predict future events. Sortilege is one of earliest forms of divination, many elements of which survive even till today.
Sortilege, at its simplest, is divination by the drawing of lots. The origin for this term goes back to Latin according to which it literally means to select fate since ‘sors’ refers to fate and ‘legere’ means to select. The basic principle of sortilege depends upon the act of randomness so that its result is believed to be beyond the control of any human being. In this way the result of sortilege or casting of lots is seen as the wish of gods or an indication of the future which a normal human can neither predict nor control.
In sortilege, the sortes were thrown like dice and the results were interpreted by the seer as answers to important questions or as pointers of the future. These sortes or lots were usually little tablets or counters, made of wood or other materials. One of the most common forms of sortilege involved the casting of dice for the purpose of divining some hidden knowledge or as a way to seek an answer to a perplexing question. This was known as cleromancy usually the reading was assumed to be the will of God or gods. In the earliest practice of cleromancy, the knucklebones of animals was used to cast the lots and this is in fact gave rise to a particular form of divination known as astraglomancy since ‘astragli’ in ancient Greece referred to the knucklebones of the sheep. Eventually though, other objects came to be used by the seers in order to cast lots; among these were objects of different shapes, colors, or markings and included beans, bones as well as pebbles in which case the practice was known as pessomancy.
