CASTING FIELDS
The stones and their meanings are only half the story. The other half is the surface you cast them onto. I have included five charts below, but here are several approaches you can take:
The Circle Method- The stones are dropped into a plain circle. Some stone diviners form the circle with a cord or rope, the ends tied in a knot. Make the circle between 12 in/30 cm and 16 in/40 cm in diameter. Some read this with a ‘clock’ approach. You start with the 12 to 1 area, and work your way around the circle, each segment of the ‘clock’ being further and further away in time. Or, read all the stones in the circle a wholistic way, from a ‘now’ perspective—what stones landed near each other? Did any stones point to another stone? Which stones landed alone?
The Past-Present-Future Method-The stones are cast or dropped on a field, with two diagonal parallel lines (/ /) around eight in/20 cm apart. The stones are then read in an upper-left to lower-right direction, the upper-left corner being the past, the center section the present situation, and the lower-right section, the future. Given the casting field, you may want to drop the stones in a diagonal fashion, from corner to corner.
The Layout method-the stones are used like cards, with a layout, and each position in the spread has a specific meaning. You draw the stones, one at a time, from the bag while focusing your attention on the meaning of that particular position in the spread.
The Single Stone Method-You discard the idea of a casting field altogether. You concentrate on your question or issue and draw one stone from the bag. The stone you draw is considered to hold the answer to your question.
Stone divination is very free-form way of divining. It relies heavily on your own judgement, your intuition, your narrative talents, and your ability to see patterns and connections between the various stones. It also makes you part of a very long tradition–your earliest ancestors probably divined by casting stones too!