Random Chance Divination: Casting Lots and Throwing Dice

Random Chance Divination: Casting Lots and Throwing Dice

From Fabulous Folklore with Icy by Icy Sedgwick

April 18, 2026 · 17 min

About this episode

This episode explores the folklore surrounding random chance divination methods such as casting lots and throwing dice.

Divination is a beautifully varied practice, with a plethora of tools and practices designed to give insight into situations. Practices like reading tea leaves or tarot cards already appear on this podcast. But what about those forms of divination that rely on ‘randomness’ in order to work? You might cast lots, throw dice, or interpret the connections between items that fall where they may. To what extent you believe the result is 'random' depends on your belief system. For some, the message comes from deities or spirits, and the tool is their communication method of choice. For others, the results come from the universe itself. Other diviners don’t accept ‘random’ as a concept, and their meanings come from the statistical results of divination. For others, the result might be truly random, but the diviner creates meaning by seeing associations between apparently disparate items. But how it works is not our issue here. Instead, we’re going to explore the folklore of casting lots, casting stones, and throwing dice in this week's episode of Fabulous Folklore! Find the blog post with all the images and references here: https://www.icysedgwick.com/random-chance-divination/ Buy Fate…

Topics covered

  • divination
  • folklore
  • casting lots
  • throwing dice

Keywords

  • randomness
  • belief systems
  • deities
  • spirits
  • universe
  • statistical results

Mentioned in this episode

Products: Fate or Fortune: The Art and Folklore of Divination

Books & works: Fabulous Folklore

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