HOW TO PRACTICE ALECTRYOMANCY
So we can safely state that alectryomancy is a divination method at least four thousand years old and fairly-universally practiced. The practice is quite simple:
- A large circle, but not too large, is drawn in the dust and a number of sections will be marked off in this circle, depending on the number of letters in the alphabet you are using. The letters of the alphabet are either written in the dust, or a set of cards containing the letters are placed in each section of the circle. People practicing this form of divination on a regular basis may have had a heavy-cloth with the letters stitched or painted, or had a circle painted on a wooden barn floor, or laid out in a floor in mosaic tiles. You don’t have to place the letters in alphabetical order; in fact, it’s probably desirable that you don’t. You may even want to go with a design like the one you see in the picture above.
- Either a single seed or a small handful of seeds (sources differ) are placed in front of or on each letter. According to Raymond Buckland in his Fortune Telling Book, the person depositing the grains the bird will eat should say, as they place each allotment of seed or seeds, ‘Ecca enim veritatum’ which essentially translates as ‘Seek for Truth’, but you may wish to skip it or substitute some meaningful phrase of your own.
- Traditionally, either a white cockerel or a black hen is to be selected for this procedure, but it may come down to a matter of whatever chicken you have or can get your hands on. One source stated the chicken in question should have its claws well-trimmed, and that it should have its own claws fed to it, along with a tiny parchment scroll with an incantation written on it, before you start, but I think this particular stipulation is overkill. Feel free to skip it.
- Before the chicken was placed in the center of the drawn circle, prayers were said and incantations recited, asking the Gods/Spirits to guide the chicken to the right letters which would yield an answer to their question. At some point in this ritual, the question may have been stated aloud, but go with your gut on this one.
- The chicken was then placed in the center of the circle, and onlookers observed closely to see precisely which letters the chicken ate the grain from. Any section cleared of seed was replenished with fresh seed, and if the chicken wandered outside the circle, it was retrieved and placed once again in the center of the circle to continue pecking at seeds.
- When the diviners felt they had enough letters to work with, the Gods/Spirits were thanked, and the chicken was finally released from service. The letters from which the chicken had eaten seed were either gathered-up (if they’d been written on cards) or written-down as the chicken ate. The diviners would then essentially play a game of lexigramming, arranging and re-arranging the letters until they formed a word or name which made sense.
I categorize this as ‘artomancy’ because interpretation will depend on your familiarity with the nature, personality, and behavior of the bird you’re employing. If the chicken’s head bobs toward a section or two, but it doesn’t eat any of the grain deposited in that section, does that count as a validly-selected letter or no? If a seed falls on the line between two letters and the chicken eats it, does that mean both letters or just one of them? Also consider the bird’s demeanor. When you set the chicken loose in the center of the circle, did it get right down to business eating grain, or was it more desultory, even indifferent? That can be a part of the message too.