Yes – it’s that freaky oracle scene from the 2006 film 300, directed by Zac Snyder – oracles evoking the random or at least cryptic utterances that pop up in one form of cledonomancy

(9) CLEDONOMANCY (CLAMANCY & CHRESMOMANCY)

Serendipity and synchronicity.

Or crowd-sourcing your divination.

Cledonomancy is divination by chance events or overheard words, using the prefix cledon- from the Greek root for rumor.

“A kind of divination based on chance events or encounters, such as words occasionally uttered…rumor, a report, omen, fame, name.”

In some ways cledonomancy seems the inverse of cryptomancy or divination by omens, at least omens as big, bad or weird events. Instead cledonomancy involves mundane events of chance significance or synchronicity.

Apparently one example of cledonomancy was for the querent to whisper a question into the god’s ear at a shrine (presumably of a statue or something similar) and then listen for the god’s answer among chance words of pedestrians outside the shrine.

This is also styled as clamancy, divination by random shouts or cries heard in crowds, at night or so on – although I also have a soft spot for chresmomancy or divination by the ravings of lunatics, or its contemporary equivalent of Twitter.

As a method of divination, it has a certain appeal and force to it – serendipity in common parlance or what Jung styled as synchronicity. It also seems immensely practical – easy to do at home (especially through ‘surfing’ radio, television, or internet), at work, or generally out and about.

As a school of magic, it would seem to be in the same territory of entropomancy, chaos magic, or wild magic as cleromancy.

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