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Episode 192: Osteomancy pt. 1
147 Plays2 hours ago
Welcome back, Witches! This week, we’re kicking off Part 1 of our Osteomancy series, diving into the background and history of bone divination. From ancient cultures and ancestral practices to how osteomancy evolved over time, we’re laying the groundwork for understanding this powerful and often misunderstood form of divination. So get in, Loser—because we’re starting at the bones.
Resources
- Awaken Center for Human Evolution (n.d.). Bone Casting (Osteomancy) and Ancestral Wisdom. Awaken Center for Human Evolution. https://university.awakenche.org/knowledge-base/bone-casting-osteomancy-and-ancestral-wisdom/
- The Future is Known Bone Throwing.Org (n.d.) Historical Origins and Development. The Future is Known Bone Throwing.Org. https://bonethrowing.org/historical-origins-and-development/
- Mrs. B (n.d.). Throwing the Bones: An Appalachian Practice of Divination and Ancestral Wisdom. Luna Owl. https://luna-owl.com/2025/05/15/%E2%9C%A8-throwing-the-bones-an-appalachian-practice-of-divination-and-ancestral-wisdom-%E2%9C%A8/
- Phansi Museum (n.d.). Throwing the Bones: Divination in Southern Africa. Phansi Museum. https://artsandculture.google.com/story/throwing-the-bones-divination-in-southern-africa-phansi-museum/jwXR4TVSwdHqeA?hl=en
- Reality Pathing (2025). The Cultural Significance of African Geomancy Explained. Reality Pathing. https://realitypathing.com/the-cultural-significance-of-african-geomancy-explained/
- Jack Wellman (n.d.). What is Casting Lots? Should Christians Cast Lots Today?. What Christians Want to Know. https://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/what-is-casting-lots-should-christians-cast-lots-today/
- Grant, A.J.. Osteomancy: The Ancient Tradition of Bone Throwing. (2025). https://ajgrant.substack.com/p/osteomancy-the-ancient-tradition
- Throwing Bones: How to Make & Read Osteomancy Sets. (2024) https://otherworldlyoracle.com/throwing-bones-osteomancy/
- Asher, Lucas. The Power of Bones: History & Myth (2024). https://www.veritastabletop.com/osteomancy-history/
- Otherworldly Oracle. (2024). Throwing Bones: How to Make and Read Osteomancy Sets. Otherworldly Oracle. https://otherworldlyoracle.com/throwing-bones-osteomancy/
- Define Pagan (n.d.). How to Ethically Source Animal Bones for Spiritual Practice. Define Pagan. https://www.definepagan.com/featured-articles/ethically-sourced-ritual-bones-ancient-wisdom-meets-modern-mindful-practice/
- The Future is Known Bone Throwing. Org. (n.d.). Types of Bones and their Meanings. The Future is Known Bone Throwing. Org. https://bonethrowing.org/types-of-bones-used-and-their-meanings/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Witchcraft Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Do you feel drawn to learn more about witchcraft and the occult but feel lost on where to start? Then welcome to Get In Loser, We're Doing Witchcraft, a podcast all about what it means to be a witch and where to get started on your journey.
00:00:11
Speaker
Join us as we navigate through various witchy topics and share what we've learned about the craft.
What is Osteomancy?
00:00:16
Speaker
So get in witches for part one of our two-part series about osteomancy.
00:00:42
Speaker
I've been so boring outside of the concert.
00:00:50
Speaker
Did you e ah super pretty little lunar moth? Yes, I did.
Gifting and Collecting Moths
00:00:58
Speaker
It's super cute. Sophia and Maro got that for me for my birthday.
00:01:03
Speaker
and You're going to have to put a picture of it on the podcast because i know that way our listeners can see this super cute little lunar moth. It's beautiful. know. Now it matches, not matches, but now my you know my little death's head moth that I've had for a while that Anthony got me as a little friend.
00:01:20
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Yeah. He's been all by himself on my shelf. I thought it was a drawing at first and I was like, oh my God, no, it's actually real. Yeah. Yeah. That's super cute. We had talked one time about how um we were talking about like stuff that we find on Etsy all the time where you just like add it to a wish list or like you'll put it in your cart and then you never buy it.
00:01:41
Speaker
And so we were like joking about that. And she was like, oh, my gosh, i found this place that has like bugs. And she was showing them to me. And i was like, oh, I have a death's head. And so we were like just looking at them. And I was like, I love the Lunar Moth. And so she got me one because she's precious.
00:01:58
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adore her. Yeah, that's really cute. I, whenever Avery was littler at, when she went to British reception, they had these like, there were like kind of blocks that the kids could stack and play with, but they were clear. And inside the block was like bug.
00:02:19
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and So it's like a resin bug. Yeah. Like different like beetles and spiders and grasshoppers and shit. And I'm like, this is the coolest thing ever. And I was just like, wow, I wish I would have – I mean, she played with them at school. She would steal them. and so for a little while, we had like just a collection of little fucking resin bugs all over the house that were in like block form.
00:02:41
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And used to love them. And I'm just like, man, I never even heard of that or seen it before kids. Yeah. It was pretty cool. I wonder if you could find something like that on Etsy. I feel like Etsy is where you find all that kind of stuff.
00:02:55
Speaker
Probably. But I'm like, to me – to me I'm just like, well, I never saw it in stores. And so wonder if it was, if there's some sort of like teacher wholesale page or something in England that just sells shit like that. Because like, where would you buy that at? Right. But they are pretty cute.
00:03:14
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That sounds really cute. Yeah. But we're not talking about bugs. We're not. We're not.
How Does Bone Divination Work?
00:03:22
Speaker
What are we talking about today? We're talking about something just equally as weird. o amazing i mean, it's not weird, but you know what I mean? It can be a weird topic for some people. So before anyone gets their paintings in a twist and emails us and said, you said osteomancy was weird and it's not. It's not. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying like some topics for some people might be considered.
00:03:40
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Weird. Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that. We're all weirdos. And you know I guess trigger warning, we're talking about bones. Yeah. We're talking about bones. If anyone's sensitive to that, I don't know. That's what osteomancy is. Yes. yeah So and take us off.
00:03:58
Speaker
Have you ever been scrolling on TikTok or watching a movie? and seen someone toss bones onto a cloth to divine the future. It's usually framed as something mysterious and maybe even a bit ominous, ancient, exotic, or even fictional. But the truth is, bone divination isn't a modern aesthetic or something only seen in movies. It's actually one of the oldest ways humans have tried to understand the world. And we're going to dive straight into this topic in a two-part series starting right now.
00:04:27
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So osteomancy is an ancient divination practice where bones are cast or thrown and their messages are interpreted based on how they land. Practitioners pay attention to everything.
00:04:41
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The unique meaning of each bone or object, how they're positioned, how close they fall to one another, and even the direction they point. Every detail becomes part of the story that is being read.
00:04:55
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Bones have always carried symbolic and spiritual power. Long before modern games, they were essentially the original dice. Even today, when we roll dice, we still perform tiny rituals like shaking them or blowing on them, all hoping for luck.
00:05:12
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That instinct to trust fate, chance, or something divine is an ancient tradition that we've unknowingly carried into modern life, and it seems that most early dice were made from bones, and the most commonly used ones were animal ankle and knuckle bones.
Global History of Osteomancy
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The exact origins of osteomancy are hard to trace, but many historians point to ancient Asia, especially China, though osteomancy wasn't limited to Asia, and it appeared across Eurasia, North America, and beyond.
00:05:46
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Indigenous groups like the Mysticini Cree and the Neskapi Inu were also known to use bone divination in practical ways. The Inu, for example, burned caribou bones to map out future hunting routes, believing the cracks revealed where game would be most abundant.
00:06:06
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A widespread form of bone divination involves fire where practitioners throw bones into flames and read the cracks. And this practice was especially prominent during the Shang dynasty. Scapula bones were ideal here because of their flat surfaces. It made the crack patterns easier to interpret, which led to a form of osteomancy that is known as scapulomancy, which is basically just osteomancy, but scapulas only.
00:06:34
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And turtle and tortoise shells were also commonly used in this practice historically. Did you know turtle shell was bone? I had to look this up. Because I was like is there a like, is it bone or is it like a specific type of material? And the internet says turtle shell was bone apparently.
00:06:51
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So I learned something new. No, learned something new every night. Yeah. Historically, bones were seen as something powerful. They were objects that carried memory, spirit, and meaning. And for many ancient cultures, bones weren't just leftovers of the body. They were believed to hold essence, connection, and even messages from the unseen world.
00:07:11
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And that's why bones became tools for divination in the first place. Not because they were convenient, but because they were symbolically charged. Before modern science tried to explain everything with logic and probability, people understood the world through signs and divine influence.
00:07:28
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When bones were cast, burned, or marked, the results weren't seen as random. They were interpreted as communication from ancestors, spirits, or even cosmic forces.
00:07:39
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Archaeological evidence shows that humans have been using bones for ritual and divination for thousands of years. Some of the earliest known oracle bones date back to Neolithic China around 6600 to 6200 BCE. e These weren't casual objects. They were carefully prepared, marked, and used in sacred contexts.
00:08:00
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So when we talk about osteomancy, we're not just talking about the method of divination.
Comparing Divination Practices
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We're talking about an ancient way of understanding the world, one where bones served as bridges between the physical and the spiritual.
00:08:14
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Before we go balls deep in osteomancy, I think it's a good idea to briefly discuss what osteomancy is in relation to other divinatory practices. A lot of people, when thinking about divination, flatten all divination into a random symbol equals a message when there is so much more nuance to it than that.
00:08:31
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And at the broadest level, when looking at osteomancy versus rune casting versus tarot, etc., all of these divination systems rely on a way for spirit, fate, or the unconscious to speak. However, the medium, cosmology, and interpretive authority matter and are vastly different between them.
00:08:47
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So for osteomancy or bone throwing, at its simplest, it's divination through the remains of life. The medium is usually animal bones, and we're going to delve into the weeds of that in a bit. So please don't be yelling at your phone at us saying, but you forgot teeth and shells. We know. We'll get there.
00:09:05
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Osteomancy works through the throwing of bones, shocker, but the bones can also be dropped, scattered, or arranged. The meaning is drawn from how they land, their orientation, which bones touch or separate, and the relationship from one bone to the other. And as far as as far as the cosmology goes,
00:09:24
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Bones are not neutral tools. You're going to hear me say this at least three times in this episode and the next episode, but bones are believed to retain the spiritual essence of the animal belonged to and act as intermediaries between the living and the dead, humans and animal spirits, the community in the unseen world.
00:09:42
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In osteomancy, the material itself has agency and the bones speak because they once lived. So compared to casting lots... This is divination through impartial chance. This involves the use of pebbles, sticks, marked objects, coins, shells, or other small tokens. And in this practice, meaning comes from the numeral groupings and binary outcomes. So yes versus no and pre-assigned meanings. The power in casting lots comes from fate, divine will, or sometimes in randomness itself.
00:10:15
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The lot is neutral, and it's all about decision-making, and historically, it was used for justice, leadership selection, and divine judgment. Side note here, when I was researching casting lots, all of the research was from Christian bloggers, and one in particular when I was researching wrote, and I quote, Today, there is no need to cast lots and most certainly to consult with mediums, palm readers, or diviners as this is an abomination to God. You can seek godly counsel from an experienced Christian counselor, pastor, elder, or deacon instead.
00:10:48
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No one asked you.
00:10:52
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No one asked you. So, um yeah, I thought that was pretty funny. I was like, okay. um Calm me down. bad so yeah.
00:11:06
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Comparing osteomancy to rune casting, this is divination through sacred symbols. The medium here are the runes carved into stone, wood, bone, or clay. Runes are cast or drawn, and the meaning comes from the symbol itself, how it's oriented, whether it's upright or reversed, and the position within the spread of runes casted.
Misconceptions About Osteomancy
00:11:27
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Each rune embodies a cosmic principle, and a Norse mythology, Odin sacrificed himself to gain them so the runes are earned knowledge, not random information or tokens. And then lastly, osteomancy compared to tarot.
00:11:41
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which as you probably already know, because I'm sure you've listened to our tarot episodes. Tarot is divination through structured archetypes and symbolism. The medium here is a fixed deck of illustrated cards divided into the major and minor arcana.
00:11:57
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And the cards are shuffled and drawn into spreads and meaning comes from the imagery of the card, the position of the card within the spread and the relationship between cards. Tarot is thought to be a symbolic mirror and often focuses on interstates rather than external events. And it's also narrative based and tells a story rather than delivering an omen.
00:12:18
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Osteomancy encompasses a tactile, ancestral, and animistic experience when practiced. One of the most distinctive things about bone throwing is how physical and embodied it is.
00:12:30
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You're not just pulling a card or reading a symbol on paper, you're handling real objects that once belonged to living beings. Bones carry an ancestral quality. They connect the practitioner not only to animals and nature, but also to traditions passed down through generations. In many animistic worldviews, everything has spirit or essence, and bones are seen as especially potent because they represent life, death, and transformation all at once.
00:12:59
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So when someone casts bones, it's not just divination, it's a conversation with material memory and spirit. If we look at the personal system versus the formal systems, bone throwing is often deeply personal and there's no single universal rulebook.
00:13:16
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The meaning of each bone, object, or charm can vary wildly depending on the practitioner, their culture, and their lived experience. A bird bone might symbolize freedom for one person and ancestral guidance for another. The same object can carry completely different meanings depending on who's reading it.
00:13:36
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The flexibility is part of the magic of osteomancy. It's intuitive, it's evolving, and it's often shaped by personal relationships with the objects themselves rather than fixed interpretations.
00:13:49
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As with most things within the pagan and witchcraft realm, there are so many misconceptions in pop culture. Pop culture hasn't exactly helped clarify what bone throwing actually is, and shocker, it's often portrayed as dark, sinister, or associated with those quote-unquote forbidden magics.
00:14:11
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We've seen it used in horror movies and how they interpret creepy rituals or villain aesthetics. Bones get framed as ominous props rather than sacred or meaningful tools.
00:14:24
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In reality, many bone-throwing traditions are practical, spiritual, and grounded in community, survival, and the connection to the natural world. They're not about curses or the theatrics, but rather they're about guidance, communication, and understanding. So the gap between how osteomancy is practiced and how it's portrayed says more about the modern discomfort with death and the natural world than it does about the practice itself.
00:14:52
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And I think it really just shows how practices from non-Christian belief systems are constantly demonized and pushed in a rhetoric of evil. Ain't that the truth? Yep. So looking a little bit deeper into the history and origins, osteomancy appears across cultures precisely because bone was one of the earliest ritual materials that humans used consistently.
00:15:16
Speaker
Bones were durable, symbolically potent, and already embedded in survival through hunting and food. preparation. That combination made bones essential tools for use in divination. Archaeological evidence suggests, as Tiffany mentioned, that bones have been used in osteomancy as early as the Neolithic period. Modified animal bones were polished, carved, scorched, or deliberately broken in and they've been found within ritual contexts. While archaeologists are careful not to outright say that these were divination tools, their placement at burials, shrines, and in communal gathering sites suggests that bones were used in ritual and symbolic ways to our prehistoric ancestors.
00:15:56
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Early shamans and medicine people utilized animal bones, and it was thought that they obtained those bones through animal sacrifice and not casual killing. In many early societies, hunting itself was a sacred act, and the animals' remains, especially bones, were, again, believed to retain spiritual power.
00:16:15
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Casting or interpreting bones became a way to communicate with ancestral spirits, animal allies, or cosmic forces to seek guidance on survival, migration, weather, or
Osteomancy in Cultural Traditions
00:16:25
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conflict. One of the clearest archaeological findings come from Ostrogali, or knuckle bones, particularly from sheep, goats, or deer.
00:16:34
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Ostrogali have been found in Neolithic and Bronze Age sites across the Mediterranean, Central Asia, and the Near East, and these bones appear in ritual graves and temples. Over time, Ostrogolomancy developed into a formal divinatory system in ancient Greece and Rome, where bone throwing was associated with gods such as Hermes and Apollo.
00:16:57
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And as we've already mentioned, osteomancy wasn't just tied to one people or culture, but rather we see it cross-culturally throughout history as we keep saying. So for instance, if we look towards Africa, especially Southern African traditions, in Southern African systems, like those connected to sangomas and other traditional healers, the bones are part of a larger spiritual language. Sets often include animal bones, shells, stones, beads, and other meaningful objects. Each item carries layered symbolism tied to ancestry, community, and the spirit world.
00:17:35
Speaker
What's especially important here is that the practice is often communal and ancestral rather than individualistic. The bones are seen as a way for ancestors to speak, guide, and correct. It's not just like a what does my future look like question, but what do the ancestors want me to understand right now?
00:17:57
Speaker
And in West African cultures, especially with the Yoruba people, there's a long history of divination practices that involve bone throwing. Their system of of divination was known as IFA, and I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly, and it involves using palm nuts, cowry shells, and bones or other objects.
00:18:15
Speaker
And in the Yoruba tradition, the diviner communicates with the Orishas to gain insight, not just for personal use, but for communal rituals, healing, and maintaining harmony within the community.
00:18:27
Speaker
And if we look at areas like China, Mongolia, and Siberia, across Asia, bone divination has taken many forms, and many of these are some of the oldest in recorded history.
00:18:39
Speaker
In ancient China, oracle bones, which were often tortoise shells and animal scapulas, were used in rituals where questions were carved into the surface and then heated until cracks formed, and those cracks were interpreted as messages from the spiritual realm.
00:18:56
Speaker
And I was reading online because it seems like a lot of people, um whenever we were researching this, kind of go back and forth on the differences between osteomancy and oracle bones. So some people say that not all bone throwing is osteomancy and that the Chinese oracle bones used during the Shang dynasty most closely aligned with pyromancy and not casting. However, I think it's just like apples to apples at this point. And there is still that shared symbolism between the two that reinforces that. There's a global pattern that bones were not just seen as bones, but they were ways to transmit a message from the spiritual world to the human world. And because of that, I don't see why it wouldn't be considered osteomancy.
00:19:37
Speaker
In Mongolia and Siberia, shamanic traditions also used bones in divination and ritual. Bones were connected to animals as spirit allies, guides, or symbols of cosmic order. Here, osteomancy wasn't just predictive, but it was part of a broader shamanic worldview where humans, animals, and spirits were deeply interconnected.
00:19:59
Speaker
Looking at indigenous North American practices, Among the indigenous peoples in North America, bone divination often had practical and spiritual purpose at the same time. So as I mentioned briefly earlier, some groups used bones, especially from animals like caribou or deer to seek guidance on hunting, travel, or survival. The act of casting or burning bones wasn't separate from daily life.
00:20:25
Speaker
Rather, it was woven into decisions that affected the entire community. And rather than being abstract or symbolic, osteomancy here was grounded in relationship with the land, with animals, and with ancestral knowledge.
00:20:40
Speaker
It was a way of listening to the world rather than trying to control it. Looking at like European folk magic and cunning traditions, in Europe, bone-related divination shows up less as a formal system and more within folk magic and cunning traditions.
00:20:58
Speaker
Bones, charms, and animal remains were used by wise women, cunning folk, and village healers as protective objects, omens, or tools for insight.
00:21:08
Speaker
While European traditions didn't always develop a codified system of bone throwing like some African or Asian practices, bones still carried symbolic and magical significance.
00:21:19
Speaker
They were tied to ideas of death, fate, protection, and the liminal space between the worlds. So even when osteomancy wasn't named as such, the underlying logic was still there. Bones as messengers between the visible and the invisible world.
00:21:36
Speaker
And so the question always it comes up, why bones specifically? As I mentioned earlier, bones were durable and often believed to retain spiritual power. So that's the third time I've now said this on this episode. But there's more Bones outlast flesh, they carry the memory of life, and they are believed to be liminal objects. They sit at at the threshold between death and continuity. Lastly, from an archeological standpoint, bones are one of the few ritual materials that survive long enough to be found. And then we're going to tie up this part of the episode with, well, I guess just this episode in general, with some cultural significance and spiritual context.
00:22:15
Speaker
When we talk about osteomancy, it's important to remember that this practice did not disappear from the archeological record. It not only survived, but it adapted and continues today, especially in African and African diasporic traditions.
00:22:29
Speaker
Across many African cultures, bone divination is practiced by sangomas, shamans, healers, and diviners who are trained through lineage initiation and direct relationship with the spirit world. Within these traditions, bones are not just tools, but messengers. and Each bone carries with it its own history, energy, and ancestral voice, and the act of casting them becomes a conversation, not just a reading.
00:22:54
Speaker
Within the African diaspora, bone divination persists despite centuries of disruption from colonization, slavery, and forced religious conversion. At its core, osteomancy is not about predicting the future, it's about relationships. And it's about listening to those who came before, honoring the spirits who walk with us and understanding that wisdom doesn't just come from symbols or cards, but can come from what remains and what endures. And so this is the end of part one of our episode on osteomancy. But next week, come back because we're gonna have a part two where we talk more about is
00:23:32
Speaker
what like how to practice it and what you would need and the different types of readings that can come about through osteomancy. So we'll see you then.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:23:54
Speaker
That's a wrap on this episode of Get In Loser We're Doing Witchcraft. We hope you had as much fun as we did. If you love this episode, we'd be eternally grateful if you left us a five-star review wherever you listen to your podcasts. It helps more witches, seekers, and magical misfits find our show.
00:24:10
Speaker
Want even more Get In Loser content? Join our Patreon or Supercast Coven. As a member, you'll get early access to episodes, a monthly newsletter, exclusive printable shadow work and grimoire pages, access to our witchy book club, promo codes for merch, and so much more.
00:24:24
Speaker
Just check the show notes for the link or search Get In Loser We're Doing Witchcraft on Supercast and Patreon. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at GetInWitches or email us at We'reDoingWitchcraft at gmail.com. Join us next week where we finish our deep dive on osteomancy. Until then, stay magical, stay curious, and as always, blessed be you witches.