Bone Throwing/Casting

## What is Bone Throwing?

Bone throwing is one of the oldest forms of divination and can be found across multiple cultures throughout history. Because of this, there are multiple ways to practice throwing the bones and ways to interpret their meanings. If you come from reading traditional tarot or runes, you may find bone throwing frustrating and difficult. Unlike other forms of divination, throwing the bones is highly intuitive and bone sets are extremely personalized; no two sets or readers will be the same. Because of this, it's a highly effective form of divination, whether you are reading strictly for yourself or others.

Throwing bones, also called osteomancy, is an ancient form of divination probably originated with various tribes in Africa. Throwing bones as a means of foretelling the future or divining the past might also have been used among indigenous American and South American tribes. However it originates, throwing bones means to cast a collection of bones, seashells, stones and other items onto a hard surface and then read messages and patterns that emerge. Each piece of the collection means something different and depending on how it lands will give the reader insight.

Throwing bones are essentially just a set of tools used to divine the future. They usually consist of bones (obviously), shells, trinkets, and other such miscellanies. No two bone-throwing sets will be the same. Each witch crafts and collects their bones based on their throwing style and often a set will change significantly over time.

Each piece of the set has a meaning, but the meaning of the individual pieces is not as important as how the pieces relate to each other. How they fall, where they touch, the distance or lack thereof of each piece comes together to form a narrative that helps to illuminate the question that the caster has asked.

Many people avoid bone throwing because it seems like a difficult form of divination to learn. It seems very intuitive and not terribly concrete and a lot of people are used to the fairly cut and dry meanings that you can find in beginners tarot books. While bone throwing is certainly more interpretive and intuitive than other forms of divination, it’s not difficult to learn. The creation process is actually the most vital step of learning to use them. It familiarizes you with your set and unlocks a deeper connection with your tools than you may have been able to build with commercial divination tools.

## Pros and Cons

### Pros:

1. Throwing bone sets are entirely personal. You can add and remove pieces, make things up, and adjust to your liking in any way you see fit. There’s no right or wrong way for your bone set to be!

2. Bone throwing is also an excellent way to harness psychic power if you just don’t quite know how to tap into it. This method of divination will help you access those deeper psychic messages and improve your intuition massively.

3. There’s also something to be said for how straight-up badass this form of divination feels. It can help you to connect with the earth, with past generations of witches, and with your primal nature. This is a tool made from what you have available, natural items, hand-me-down trinkets, and such. It’s shaped by your reality and your circumstances and that is something that is often lost in a digital age. If you sometimes find yourself struggling to connect with the physical, human part of your spiritual self, bone-throwing can feel like a revelation.

### Cons:

1. Bone throwing can be a fairly volatile form of divination. If you’re not in the right headspace, are having a particularly “blocked up” day psychically, or the bones simply don’t like your question, you may get no answer at all! Thankfully, it’s usually easy to tell when this happens. A reading will feel flat and uninspired at times like this and you’ll know to put the bones away for another time.

2. If you’re not someone who has a psychic side, this kind of divination might never work for you. Now, I want to make it clear here that I firmly believe that EVERYONE has psychic capabilities, but only some people know how to access them. Some people have blocked these abilities since childhood. Some people have been told that their intuition is silly and not worth listening to. Others have discounted their imagination so many times that they think that any idea not directly related to physical reality is fake. And many of them don’t realize it! If you don’t have any kind of psychic capabilities right now and would like to learn, I fully believe that it IS possible to learn that skill, and bone throwing might be a great tool to help you work through those barriers.

3. Bone throwing sets can be quite delicate. This can make them a little more difficult to travel with and a lot harder to read in public spaces (it’s not fun to have a bone go skittering across a crowded floor to potentially be stepped on and crushed!) If you do a lot of divination in public spaces or you travel a lot, it might be hard to keep a set of throwing bones intact. There are ways to mitigate damage while traveling, but if you’re in this boat, you may want to consider making your set with sturdiness in mind.

## What is Used in a Bone Throwing Set?

Creating your own set of throwing bones should be a fun, intuitive process. It may be something you do all in one afternoon, but more than likely, this process will take you a bit longer. Once you start, the pieces tend to just find their way to you. You may start with 3 pieces, or 5, but as you go about your regular life, you’ll start noticing things that just beg to be added to your set. People will drop by with strange gifts for you, you’ll find odd items that call to you, and before you know it, your bone-throwing set will be complete.

So what kind of items are you looking for? Even though I am calling this a bone-throwing set, the items don’t all have to be bones. In fact, if you feel squeamish about it, you don’t have to include any bones! For me, collecting feathers and bones and pretty rocks was always a favorite pass time but you might lean another way. Perhaps you love seashells or you have a collection of antique trinkets. You can include things like buttons, bits of driftwood, bottle caps, crystals, carved wood figures, and pretty much anything else you can think of. The main criteria should be whether it speaks to you.

Does it feel right in your set?

Each item will represent something in your set. You will need to choose one bone to represent yourself (this should be comparatively a bit larger than the rest). What meanings you attach to each bone are up to you. Just make sure you have enough pieces with a wide enough array of meanings so that you can get more detailed readings and not be left grasping at straws.

The meaning behind each item and the item's relation to each other is important. How did they fall? Where are they located? Are they touching each other? How far apart are they? Together, the set works to answer the question the caster has asked of it.

## Things You Could Include In Your Set

The key to building your osteomancy set for throwing bones is to choose items that hold meaning to you. And each item should represent something a little different than the others. They also should be relatively the same size. For example, you don’t want to include a large birch branch that’s ten times the size of your grandmother’s button. Anything that calls out to you can be included! Things from nature, things from around your house, things that you find on the street, and more! Some people choose only natural items like bones, seashells and stones. Others choose a mixture. Still others choose ONLY household items for their osteomancy set. The choice is completely yours! Don’t let anyone tell you there’s only one right way…there’s no divination police who will knock at your front door to arrest you if your osteomancy set doesn’t have ALL bones!

### Things The Peices Could Represent

1. The self
2. Health
3. Wealth
4. Family
5. Love
6. Magic
7. Yes
8. No
9. Evil/Bad intentions
10. Male
11. Female (these gender bones are useful when you don’t know who is involved in a situation and want clarification)
12. One/Many (this should be a two-sided item)
13. Truth (this shows your heart’s true desires)
14. Other (for if you want to read for someone else)
15. Fated or Decision (another two-sided item indicating whether you can change the situation)

### Items

Bones

Seashells

Small sticks/twigs

Stones

Crystals

Acorns

Seed Pockets

Coral

Seaglass

Marbles

Buttons

Small Toys

Clothespins

Coins

Jewelry/Jewelry pendants

Keys

Heirlooms

Thimbles

Mementos

~The List is Endless!!

### Differnet things some items could represent

**feather**- flight, travel, communication, messages from the dead

**coin**- yes/no

**wishbone**- luck, prosperity, good fortune

**skeleton key**- transition, open doors, opportunity, crossroads, decisions

**quartz point**- amplification, positivity, protection, versatility

**amethyst**- soul, afterlife, psychic ability

**fossil**- past, ancestors, perseverance

**claw**- past, present, or future depending on the size

**white shell**- purity, hope, innocence

**curved bone**- yes/no

**sors bone**- fate, destiny, external influences (*this is not an actual bone in the body. Instead, its a term, originating from another form of divination, to refer to the smallest, thinnest, or rarest bone in your set. You do not have to prescribe this meaning to any of your small/thin/rare bones.)*

**human finger**- singling out an issue

**white river rock**- purity, innocence, food intentions

**black river rock**- banishment, bad luck, evil

**barnacle**- smothered, overwhelmed, chaos

**alligator claw**- luck, prosperity, opportunities, success

**coyote bone**- trickery, apprehension, fooled by appearances

**bean**- growth, fertility, opportunity

**buckeye nut**- abundance, fertility, luck, achievement, employment

**hag stone**- protection, spiritual transformation, messages

**dice**- numbers

**button**- connection, bonds

**tooth**- communication, truth, lies, rumors (depending on how it faces)

## How to cast the bones

### The Setup

The basic setup is a cloth with two circles on it, one inside the other. The smaller circle is everything that’s directly involved, inside the larger circle are things indirectly involved, and everything that falls outside of that isn’t a factor. An idea for a throwing cloth could be a black cloth with a gold halo spray-painted on it. Things that fall inside the circle are relevant, inside the halo area are vaguely related, and outside the halo are irrelevant. Feel free to play with this basic setup, try different styles, or make up your own. Remember, this divination set should be completely yours!

It’s also a good idea to have a bag or a box to keep all the pieces together when you’re not using them. Lost pieces can throw off an entire reading.

When you’re ready to begin using your set, it’s time to start digging deep and finding your psychic self. Don’t worry though, we’re going to take this step by step.

Begin by setting up your cloth on a soft surface. Very hard surfaces can cause pieces to go bouncing away. I generally read on a carpeted floor or a yoga mat.

Set the self bone in the very center of your cloth. Take the rest of your set in your hands (or a bowl, whatever you prefer) and focus on your question or the situation you would like illuminated. You can toy with the bones, shake them a bit in your hands or let them pour from one hand to the other if it helps.

When you’re ready, cast the bones onto the cloth. This can take some practice. You may find that when you first start everything falls in a clump all in one spot or you may find that you send most of the pieces flying off the cloth. Try it as many times as you need to get comfortable throwing the bones so that they spread out on the cloth but not off the cloth, though one or two pieces flying off the cloth can be indicative of things that are REALLY not involved.

Now comes the part that I cannot teach, this part you must learn through experience. Reading the bones is a bit different for everybody. Observe how the bones fall, make sure you know which piece represents what meaning, and then simply let your mind fall blank. Don’t overthink it. Don’t try to figure out what it says. Just be still. Listen and wait. See if anything comes up. Is there a narrative playing out in your head that matches the bones? Can you “feel” what some bones are trying to convey? Do you have a thought persistently nagging at you? Pay attention to these things. They might very well be your intuition telling you the messages that the bones are giving you.

If you don’t feel anything at first, it’s ok. Like any magical skill, this one can take time to get right. Experiment, work at it regularly, and pay attention. Half of psychic intuition is simply learning to be aware of the messages you’re receiving. And of course, have fun!

### How the Bones Land

Again, there are multiple ways to read bones. You can work heavily with your ancestors for a more interpreted reading, relying on them to bring you inspiration while reading the bones. Others with a more scientific mind rely on a more analytical approach, connecting meaning to the pieces based on science and their placement on the cloth. Others still work with the spirits that live in the individual objects, listening to them as they whisper back details. When you are first starting out, you may find a more analytical approach to be best, because its more like traditional tarot in that the location is associated with a specific question, body part, or event while each piece of the bone throwing set is also prescribed a predetermined meaning, such as a wing bone meaning travel. When it doubt, go with your gut.

Despite the different ways to read bones, many practitioners use some similar techniques. To begin with, a question is always asked. Bone throwing can provide a narrow or wide perspective, depending on the situation, and therefore the question needn't be perfectly worded or specific. Most people find asking a question about something that is weighing heavily on you that you may or may not be able to completely put into words is best. However, if you come with a specific and perfectly worded question, bone throwing will still work just fine and allows for a more focused reading. Once the question is asked, the reader shakes the bone throwing set and casts them. Where you cast them is up to you. Some cast on a hard surface or on a fur or cloth with nothing on it; others on a cloth with designated regions; while others still cast in a design drawn in the dirt. Again, where you cast is entirely up to you. I have thrown on cloth with designated regions and on blank surfaces. Once the bones are cast, they are analyzed and meaning is prescribed to their placement to offer insight into the question asked. Remember to record all your readings in your journal or Book of Shadows. Sometimes it takes a little while for the full message to come into view, so return to your notes for a couple of days after the reading and add to your notes.

Once cast, there are many ways to read the bones:

> **Left to Right-** The bones are considered on a timeline from left to right, with the bones on the left representing the past, those in the middle the present, and those on the right the future or possible outcomes.
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> **Distance from the Reader-** Those closest to the reader represent the past, middle present, and those furthest away represent the future or possible outcome.
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> **Non-Linear Orientation-** The items are not read in a linear sequence, but instead interpreted as a whole based on their placement on the surface and to each other. This relies more heavily on spiritual guidance.
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Of course, these are only a couple of ways to read and by no means the only ways. I encourage you to use your intuition while reading and change up how you read based on the questions being asked.

Another quick was to interpret yes or no questions, is by using a set entirely made up of bones or cinnimon sticks, and casting them. If any of the bones are crossed, its a yes, if none of the bones are touching, its a no. If some of the bones are barely touching, it could be either a maybe, a weak yes, or a weak no. (You decide!)

## Afterword

Most of the information on this page come from these three pages, as well as the creators prior knowledge.

https://otherworldlyoracle.com/throwing-bones-osteomancy/

https://thetravelingwitch.com/blog/2018/5/14/throwing-the-bones-how-to-make-and-use-a-bone-set

https://www.flyingthehedge.com/2019/10/bone-magic-series-throwing-bones-build.html