I haven't found much information on osteomancyon here, so I thought I would write a forum post about it.
Quick disclaimer: This post discusses dead animals and some of the linked sources have pictures of animal parts, so please be forewarned if you are squeamish about that sort of thing. Also, there are different ways to do osteomancy, so take things written here with a grain of salt; if something here doesn't work for you or your practice, you can change it. Also, I haven't been studying osteomancy as long as many diviners have, so I am certainly not the be-all and the end-all to osteomancy.
What is osteomancy?
Let's break down the word: "osteo-" (as in the bone condition osteoporosis) and "-mancy" ( as in the divining technique necromancy). So osteomancy is divination with bones.
However, other things are often used when performing osteomancy, such as dead plants, shells, and stones.
So how do you do it?
This varies greatly; I've heard of people burning bones and analyzing the scorch marks and breaks; if you hunt or slaughter farm animals you could divine using the bones of the animal; I'm currently working on a technique to divine using random bones I come across in the woods. However, for the purpose of this post, I'll be focusing on a common method, which is bone casting or bone throwing.
This is when you have a set of bones that you toss onto a surface, and then analyse how they fall.Most osteomancers (including myself) I have come across have an osteomancy set, which allows the osteomancer to form a bond with that set, as well as have ameaning for each part of the set.
For example, the pieces of my set are catered to the types of things that are relevant for me to divine. The piece that represents love in my set specifically represents my sexuality and the type of relationship I look for. The pieces that represent my flaws specifically represent things I need to work on, not necessarily things that would apply to others.
To give an example of an osteomancy reading:
Say you are wondering what you need to do to make yourself open to new relationships. Your set includes a "love bone," a "personal flaws bone," a "spirituality bone," and a "physical health bone." You toss the bones onto a blanket. The "love bone" falls in the middle, with the "personal flaws bone" apart from the "love bone" and covered by the "spirituality bone." The "physical health bone" falls on the floor, not on the blanket. You could analyse the bone casting this way: the "love bone" is in the middle because that's the focus of the reading, the "personal flaws bone" isn't touching the "love bone" because some of your flaws would be destructive in a relationship, the "spirituality bone" is covering the "personal flaws bone" because focusing on your spirituality will help you work on the flaws that are pushing love away, and the "physical health bone" fell off of the blanket because your physical health isn't relevant to your love life.
This is just an example, obviously, and is oversimplified, but it's simply to give an example of how an osteomancy reading might go.
How do you put an osteomancy set together?
To start off, you need pieces that represent something to you. Remember, they don't all have to be bones. Perhaps you have a quartz crystal a family member gave you. That coud represent family to you, so you could put it in the set.
You can also figure out the meaning of a piece by doing a reading with it. This works best when you already know what the other pieces represent. By doing a reading, you get in tune with a piece, and you observe how it interacts with other pieces.
Make sure everything you put in the set feels right to you. If you put something in and it doesn't feel like it's working for you, take it out.
Whenever I add a piece to my set, I break it in by doing a reading, to get familiar with the energy of a piece. This is also something I did when I first put my set together, and I found it to be really helpful in getting to know my set.
How to you get bones, and how do you clean them?
There are different ways to get bones. You can order bones online if you wish. I personally like to use bones I gathered and cleaned myself, but do what works for you.
If you would prefer to gather the bones yourself, start by looking into the laws where you live. You don't want to accidentally take home the skeleton of an endangered animal! After doing this, you can start looking for bones.
Some ways to get bones:
- Befriend hunters in your area
- Roadkill (be safe; if it's on a busy street, don't risk it!)
- Wooded areas that you have permission to go into
- Visiting farms
It's important to be safe when gathering and cleaning decomposing animals, of course. I'd recommend looking up "vulture culture" if you're interested in learning how to handle dead animals and how to clean and whiten bones. (Be warned that if you search this, you will inevitably find pictures of decomposing animals).
I'll go over the bone cleaning steps briefly here, with the assumption that there isn't tissue still on the bone:
- Degrease the bone: This gets any grease from the animal out of the bone, which keeps it clean and helps whiten it. I do this by soaking the bones in a mixture of water and laundry detergent for a week or two depending on how dirty they are.
- Whiten the bone: Absolutely never use bleach for this, as that isn't good for the bone. Use hydrogen peroxide, but be careful! Hydrogen peroxide can be dangerous if the percentage is high.
- Coat the bone: This is optional, and not something I generally do. This step is just coating the bone in a clear sealant to keep it clean.
Sources/Further reading:
Though I don't generally like a lot of things about the Tumblr witch community, death-witch-envy on Tumblr is a good source for osteomancy, and has some great posts about other things as well.
This article has an instance of cussing and has pictures of animal parts, so don't search the link if you are sensitive to that, but it's helpful: http://archaichoney.com/blog/2016/5/1/bone-reading-intro-starting-guide
A brief article on osteomancy and some of its different methods: https://www.thoughtco.com/bone-divination-2562499
