Cleromancy

Cleromancy is divination by the casting of lots, throwing objects and reading the pattern of their fall as the expression of a chance believed to be guided by fate, the gods, or the divine will. The instruments are humble and ancient: dice and knucklebones, marked sticks or stones, shells, or specially made lots. It is among the most universal of divinatory methods precisely because it requires no elaborate apparatus, only the willingness to treat a random outcome as a message.

The practice has a notable presence in the biblical tradition: the Urim and Thummim of the Israelite priesthood appear to have been sacred lots, the land of Canaan was divided among the tribes "by lot," and in the New Testament the apostles choose Matthias to replace Judas by casting lots, "and the lot fell upon Matthias", a decision made by deliberately surrendering the choice to chance under God. The same logic underlies the many lot-oracles of the Greek and Roman world, the casting of yarrow stalks or coins in the Chinese I Ching, and countless folk practices. Cleromancy rests on a distinctive theological premise, well expressed in the biblical proverb "the lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord": that what appears to be pure chance is in fact the clearest channel for a will beyond human manipulation.

Casting lots occupies an unusual position: it is the one divinatory technique that appears in scripture with approval and is practised by the institutions that condemned the others.

The Hebrew Bible has land allotted by lot, duties assigned by lot, and the Urim and Thummim consulted for decisions, and the practice is presented as a way of removing human preference so that the outcome may be given rather than chosen. Early Christian narrative continues it: the replacement for Judas is selected by lot, and the account offers no apology for the method.

That precedent left the church in a difficult position. Divination in general was prohibited, yet the scriptural warrant for lots could not be argued away, and the compromise reached in practice was that lots were permissible when necessity was genuine and no personal advantage was sought, and forbidden as curiosity. The line was never stable. Opening a sacred book at random and reading the first verse found, a practice with its own name in Latin, was condemned by councils repeatedly and went on being used by people including bishops.

The underlying logic outlived the theology. Selection by lot was a central democratic mechanism in classical Athens, and its modern descendants, the jury drawn at random and the citizens' assembly, rest on the same idea: that where every candidate is acceptable, chance is the only selector that cannot be lobbied.

The technique is trivially simple, and its history is not.