Dice-based divination systems

[StoatCatcher]

As far as I'm aware dice don't seem to be used as much for divination purposes. The only one I've seen so far that incorporates them as a core part of the design is the Mo divination system from Tibet. There are a few other oracles where one can use dice to generate the results like the I Ching (I personally use four dice as in the four coins method) for generating hexagrams, Geomancy for generating the four mothers at the start of the process, the only other one I've seen is John Opsopaus describing it as an alternative to using knuckle bones for the Greek Alphabet Oracle that he describes in his book.

Do any of you know of any other oracle that is based around them? Have you created any yourself?

 

[sapainca]

Grimoire of John Fian has short chapter about it (7 pages). It states its old tradition from North Berwick region.

It uses six dices, two are larger... I know there is another longer text of similar method featuring examples but just cannot find it.

Sorry I cannot be of more help.

 

[altima]

Was alos going to recommend Grimoire of John Fian, MO is a tibetan divination system that uses dice.

 

[Yazata]

Here's one by @yuiluy

Thoughts on my approach to dice divination?

I searchd for a way to do dice divination, but the methods I found were very unsatisfactory, and since I dabble in chaos magick I decided to create my own way of divination with dices. I'm not saying it works, but I was able to loosely predict some events thanks to it. So the way I do it is that...

wizardforums.com

 

[querent k]

As far as I'm aware dice don't seem to be used as much for divination purposes. The only one I've seen so far that incorporates them as a core part of the design is the Mo divination system from Tibet. There are a few other oracles where one can use dice to generate the results like the I Ching (I personally use four dice as in the four coins method) for generating hexagrams, Geomancy for generating the four mothers at the start of the process, the only other one I've seen is John Opsopaus describing it as an alternative to using knuckle bones for the Greek Alphabet Oracle that he describes in his book.

Do any of you know of any other oracle that is based around them? Have you created any yourself?

Elemental Divination: A Dice Oracle by Stephen Ball

 

[Thebes]

The book Ensouling the Effigy had a clean method of spirit communication. With three coins, dice, or cards, you decide what half are affirmatives (A) and what half are negatives (N).

AAA - Yes
AAN - Yes, but...
ANN - No, but...
NNN - No

You then ask a series of Yes and no questions, narrowing down to a better answer.

It might be interesting to make a special D6 or D4 for this. I tried making resin dice and including various inks and stones. It can work, but I never got anything good enough to use regularly.

 

[querent k]

A 'dreidel' spinning top has 4 sides marked with Nun, Gimel, Hei, Shin. I bought a set of 4 of these the other day to put on the altar spelling out
the Nes Gadol Haya Sham ('a great miracle happened there'). Obviously, they could also be used for divination, but haven't tried yet.

 

[StoatCatcher]

Grimoire of John Fian has short chapter about it (7 pages). It states its old tradition from North Berwick region.

Interesting one, thanks.

Post automatically merged: Mar 13, 2026

Here's one by @yuiluy

The "What is Divination" link in that thread is very nice.

Post automatically merged: Mar 13, 2026

The book Ensouling the Effigy had a clean method of spirit communication. With three coins, dice, or cards, you decide what half are affirmatives (A) and what half are negatives (N).

AAA - Yes
AAN - Yes, but...
ANN - No, but...
NNN - No

You then ask a series of Yes and no questions, narrowing down to a better answer.

It might be interesting to make a special D6 or D4 for this. I tried making resin dice and including various inks and stones. It can work, but I never got anything good enough to use regularly.

This is very reminiscent of how modern solo tabletop roleplaying books structure their oracles used to answer plot questions without a game master. There's lots of different ways to get these results depending on which system you use.

It honestly surprises me not many people seem to have adapted the many tables in this genre for an actual divination system or at least not have posted about it.

Post automatically merged: Mar 13, 2026

Elemental Divination: A Dice Oracle by Stephen Ball

This one almost seems like an elemental reskin of the Mo divination method.

 

[Amadeus]

This was probably the first ever system I used, I was a kid and experimenting.
Method 1. 3 dice. Yes and no. 345678910, 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18. 3 being a strong no, 18 a strong yes.
Problem, these must be perfect dice and give you a random outcome. Some dice I had were weird, like in the TV shows about rigged dice in Vegas.

Odd and even, yes & no method.

Then there was something with 3 dice, each number had a longer story behind it. I'm not sure what book this is from. There were the good numbers and bad, All I can remember is that 15-18 were exceptionally good and so was 3.

They were a great introduction to pendulum and later tarot, can't really see myself throwing dice now.

 

[stratamaster78]

The book Ensouling the Effigy had a clean method of spirit communication. With three coins, dice, or cards, you decide what half are affirmatives (A) and what half are negatives (N).

AAA - Yes
AAN - Yes, but...
ANN - No, but...
NNN - No

You then ask a series of Yes and no questions, narrowing down to a better answer.

It might be interesting to make a special D6 or D4 for this. I tried making resin dice and including various inks and stones. It can work, but I never got anything good enough to use regularly.

That looks simple yet effective which can be the best kind of divination.

With Dice you could assign A to even numbers and N to odd numbers.

3 Dice could give a 4-6-2 which is AAA or 2-2-6 which is still AAA

If you rolled 5-3-5 it’s NNN or 1-5-3 is still NNN etc

I like it.

 

[Lurking Magician]

Book – PDF - John Opsopaus - The Oracles of Homer and the Bones [epub & pdf]

From the Amazon Description: This book is a practical handbook for two authentic ancient Greek divination systems: the “astragalomanteinon” or astragalos (hucklebone) oracle and the “Homeromanteion” or Homer oracle. In the former, the diviner casts five hucklebones to select one of 56 oracles...

wizardforums.com

This book uses greek astragalos (dice made from the bones - ankles - of goats/sheep/cows), and divinates both in a set of 5 (by picking a greek god) and in a set of 3 (by picking an Homer verse from either the Iliad or the Odyssey)

At least the second option (the Homer divination) should be ancient, and used by the greek themselves, but I'm not sure how affidable the pairing between dice results and verses is

 

[StoatCatcher]

Book – PDF - John Opsopaus - The Oracles of Homer and the Bones [epub & pdf]

From the Amazon Description: This book is a practical handbook for two authentic ancient Greek divination systems: the “astragalomanteinon” or astragalos (hucklebone) oracle and the “Homeromanteion” or Homer oracle. In the former, the diviner casts five hucklebones to select one of 56 oracles...

wizardforums.com

This book uses greek astragalos (dice made from the bones - ankles - of goats/sheep/cows), and divinates both in a set of 5 (by picking a greek god) and in a set of 3 (by picking an Homer verse from either the Iliad or the Odyssey)

At least the second option (the Homer divination) should be ancient, and used by the greek themselves, but I'm not sure how affidable the pairing between dice results and verses is

I totally forgot about this one! Thanks for reminding me of it (even though I actually can't see the thread yet).

I really love the idea of taking a bunch of striking quotes from classical books and using them for dice divination like this. Theres plenty of books that would be really interesting to use for this.