Astragalomancy: Knucklebone Divination Explained

What an astragalus is

The astragalus (plural astragali, Latin talus) is the ankle bone, a small bone of the tarsus between the lower leg and the heel. In sheep and goats it has a striking shape: elongated, with four sides it can rest on and two rounded ends it will not stay standing on. Two sides are broad, one convex and one concave; two are narrow, one flat and one twisted. That makes it a natural throwing object with four possible outcomes. The Greeks gave the sides the values 1, 3, 4 and 6. The 2 and the 5 are missing because the ends do not count.

In English these bones have long been called knucklebones, even though they come from the ankle, not the knuckle. The name stuck to the children's game, and when the bones were replaced by small metal pieces and a ball, the game became jacks.

From game to oracle

Playing with knucklebones is ancient and found almost worldwide. In Greece and Rome it was a children's game, a game of skill and a game of chance at once. A famous painting from Herculaneum, now in the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, shows young women playing with knucklebones. For gambling, four astragali were usually thrown. The worst throw, all showing the same lowest side, was called the Dog; the best, where each bone showed a different side, was named after the goddess Aphrodite, and by the Romans after Venus.

That gambling and oracle sit so close together here is no accident. For ancient people the outcome of a throw was not blind chance but allotment: what fell was given. Whoever threw the bones in a sanctuary asked the deity to speak through the fall. The travel writer Pausanias describes, in the 2nd century AD, an oracle of Heracles near Bura in the Peloponnese: whoever wanted to ask a question prayed before the statue, threw four astragali onto a table and read the answer for each combination from a board.

The oracle pillars of Asia Minor

The most impressive evidence stands in what is now southwestern Turkey. In towns of Pisidia, Pamphylia and Lycia, archaeologists found pillars and stone slabs from the 2nd century AD carved with complete knucklebone oracles. The procedure was public and self-service. You threw five astragali, or one astragalus five times, added up the values and looked for the combination on the stone.

For five knucklebones with four sides each there are exactly 56 combinations if the order does not matter. Each had its own line on the pillar: the sequence of numbers, the sum, the name of a deity and a short oracle in verse, usually advice on whether to risk or skip a journey, a business deal or a lawsuit.

These inscriptions are now an important source for everyday religion. They show an oracle without a priestess and without ecstasy, one anyone could consult in the marketplace, and they show what worried people: money, health, travel, disputes. The sayings are often cautious and general. That is true of good oracles to this day.

Why knucklebones don't fall fair

A die is symmetrical; an astragalus is not. Its four sides land with different frequencies. Throwing experiments, for example by the statistician Florence Nightingale David in her book Games, Gods and Gambling (1962), gave roughly this result: each broad side comes up in about four out of ten throws, each narrow side in only about one in ten. The exact figures depend on the individual bone.

How often does each side land? (rough approximation)

Side	Traditional value	Share of throws
Broad, concave side	3 or 4	About 40%
Broad, convex side	3 or 4	About 40%
Narrow, flat side	1 or 6	About 10%
Narrow, twisted side	1 or 6	About 10%

Which side carried which value is reported differently in the sources. For the oracle, the unequal odds mattered. Some combinations came up often, others almost never, and whoever composed the tables probably knew it. Rare throws could carry especially weighty answers. Historians of mathematics see the astragalus as one reason probability theory emerged so late: it is hard to reason about equally likely cases with a bone whose sides land unequally. Only the regular die made that easy, and even then it took until the letters between Pascal and Fermat in 1654.

How a pillar consultation worked, step by step

The inscriptions let us reconstruct a consultation fairly precisely. A traveler arriving in a Pisidian town with a worry, say whether to set out on a sea voyage before winter, would go to the pillar in the agora. Five bones were thrown at once, or a single bone five times. Suppose they showed 3, 3, 4, 4 and 6. The sum is 20. The traveler then ran a finger down the carved columns until finding the line for that exact combination of values, since the lines were grouped by their combination of values.

Each line followed the same scheme: the five numbers, the total, the name of a god who "gave" the answer, and a verse of two or three lines. Totals ranged from 5, all bones showing 1, to 30, all showing 6. Both extremes were very rare with real bones, which is exactly why the table could attach dramatic answers to them without them turning up often. Common middle totals tended to receive measured advice: wait, be careful, the matter will turn out well if you are patient.

The gods named in the lines are mostly the familiar deities of the Greek world, and the whole system reads like a public amenity of the town. There was no trance and no interpretation beyond reading the stone. In that sense the pillars are closer to a printed fortune than to Delphi, and closer to how many people still use cards and runes today: a fixed key, a random draw, and the reader's own sense of what fits.

Where the knucklebone oracle lives today

Throwing knucklebones is not a dead practice. In Mongolia, sheep ankle bones called shagai are still toys, sports equipment and oracles; their four sides are called horse, camel, sheep and goat. Knuckle-bone shooting, in which players flick bones along a board at a target, has been on UNESCO's list of intangible cultural heritage since 2014.

In southern Africa, traditional healers such as sangomas throw a set of bones, shells and other objects and read how they fall. That is an independent tradition with its own training, and it should not be equated with the ancient oracle or borrowed casually. In North America, the knucklebone survives most visibly in the playground game of jacks, and some Western diviners use astragali alongside runes and cards, cleaned from butcher scraps or bought as replicas in wood, cast bone or bronze.

Three kinds of people who work with knucklebones

People who work with knucklebones today usually come from one of three directions. Archaeologists and epigraphers read the oracle pillars as everyday documents and reconstruct from them how people made decisions 1,800 years ago. In Mongolia, shagai are passed down in families and thrown at the lunar new year, half game, half a look at the year ahead. And in Western divination circles, some people use astragali next to runes and cards. What they share is an attitude already carved into the ancient pillars: the throw answers a question you have asked in earnest.

What we don't promise

We do not claim that knucklebones predict the future or that a deity steers the fall; that is belief, not a finding. We do not pass off an invented "original" oracle table: the ancient verses are published in scholarly editions, and the key below is explicitly a modern aid. And we advise against leaving important decisions about health, money or law to a throw.

Practically: how to work with it

• Get some astragali. Cleaned sheep knucklebones are sold online and by some butchers; alternatively use four small wooden blocks and mark their sides 1, 3, 4 and 6.
• Frame one question. A question that can be answered with yes, no or wait. Write it down.
• Fix your key before you throw. The simplest form for four bones is in the table below. It is a modern aid, not an ancient table.
• Throw once. No re-throwing until it fits. Whoever throws again is not consulting the oracle but their own wish.
• Record and review. Write down question, throw and feeling, and look back in a few weeks. That turns the oracle into a mirror, much as with oracle cards or geomancy, another ancient lot oracle built on chance figures.

A simple modern key for four knucklebones

Throw	Reading
Sum 4 to 9	Let it go
Sum 10 to 15	Wait
Sum 16 to 24	Go ahead
All four sides different	The Aphrodite (Venus) throw, the lucky throw of antiquity
All four show the same low side	The Dog, the worst throw of antiquity

Frequently asked questions

What is astragalomancy?

Divination with astragali, the ankle bones of sheep or goats. The bones are thrown, the sides they land on are counted and interpreted with a table.

What values do the sides of a knucklebone have?

In the Greek tradition 1, 3, 4 and 6. The 2 and 5 are missing because the bone does not come to rest on its rounded ends.

What were the knucklebone oracles of Asia Minor?

Stone pillars from the 2nd century AD carved with all 56 combinations of five astragali, each with its sum, a deity and a short oracle in verse. Anyone could consult them in the marketplace.

Do all sides of a knucklebone land equally often?

No. The broad sides each come up in roughly four out of ten throws, the narrow sides in only about one in ten. The exact values depend on the individual bone.

What is the Venus throw?

The best throw with four astragali, when every bone shows a different side. The Greeks called it Aphrodite, the Romans Venus; the worst throw was called the Dog.

Is knucklebone divination still practiced?

Yes. In Mongolia families throw sheep ankle bones (shagai) as a game and an oracle, in southern Africa traditional healers throw sets of bones, and in Western divination circles astragali are used alongside runes and cards.

Sources and further reading

• Pausanias, Description of Greece, Book 7 (Achaia): the oracle of Heracles at Bura.
• Johannes Nolle, Kleinasiatische Losorakel (lot oracles of Asia Minor), Vestigia 57, Munich 2007.
• Fritz Graf, "Rolling the Dice for an Answer," in S. I. Johnston and P. T. Struck (eds.), Mantike: Studies in Ancient Divination, Leiden 2005.
• Florence Nightingale David, Games, Gods and Gambling, London 1962.
• UNESCO, "Mongolian knuckle-bone shooting," Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (2014).
• More in the magazine: How to read runes · How to read oracle cards · Geomancy · The three Fates

Divination is described here as a cultural and personal practice. It is not a basis for medical, financial or legal decisions. Questions about an order: 28@templeofdesire.com.