cleromancy

After the lots have been cast at the cleromancy center and the counting begins, these dedicated pedestrian sojess will secure positions around the lot casting baskets, and with their heads nodding like agama lizards, they will follow the rhythm of the cacophony coming out from the throat of the presidential officer.

Vestigial representations of the occult were harnessed in "Cleromancy," Nate Young's exhibition of six works from the past year that obliquely layered a range of personal and political histories, touching on subjects such as black jockeys, the Great Migration, divining, and family mythology.

If, as Adrienne Rich argues, writing is re-naming, when dealing with the long dead, writing also becomes a form of cleromancy (the casting of bones, lots or stones).

Gambling studies should take a broad view of the field and consider activities that are not strictly gambling but similar to it, such as cleromancy and secular uses of drawing of lots, to give us perspective on societal and cultural aspects of gambling.