Divination Dice

I've mentioned my dice a couple of times now. This is the set I'm using. Yes, it's a Mythos-themed set. That almost stopped me from buying them. My dice are devoted to a particular deity, and everything about this set was perfect for what I needed except for that Mythos connection. Which wouldn't really matter, except...well, look at mine.

That symbol that takes the place of the largest number on each and every piece? Yeah. I don't keep them in the box they came in (though I did keep the box), but that stmbol is always there on each one. But there's a flow to everything that has drawn me toward Yog-Sothothery, so there's a story to this.

I started with astragalomancy by using my old set on tabletop rpg dice. I haven't played a game they'd be needed for in, oh...too many years to figure out what number to attach. Those dice have their own story, though, and I've kept them all this time. Getting enough of a grasp on the basics of using modern polyhedral dice for divination that I knew this is, indeed, something I'm interested in working with led me to realizing I shouldn't keep using that old set for it. As I said, that set has its own story. I needed two more of one piece, one more of another, and a set that had no history other than being used for divination.

The line of sets mine comes from drew my attention because of that Mythos connection. It held my attention because each set has all the pieces I needed. But I'm sure I can find a set that isn't a Mythos thing, I thought. And then my eyes saw the set I now have! Other sets were interesting, but this set was perfect! Except...well, that very special new version of what is very obviously the Elder Sign. (The company that makes the dice calls it the Astral Elder Sign. The artist calls it the Universal Elder Sign and has offered it to the Mythos community for free use for non-profit projects. Projects intended to bring in profit require some request for permission.) I spent some time thinking about it, looking at other sets, praying to the deity the dice would be dedicated to, and kept wandering back to that set. 

It was the center of this version of the Elder Sign that really locked it in for me. Traditionally, you get two versions of the Elder Sign. There's the one that looks like a little branch, which was preferred by Lovecraft, though he intentionally was vague about what the symbol should look like. And then there's the one that looks like a pentagram with curved points and has a little flame in the center. This one, though...pentagram, curved points, flaming eye with a keyhole-shaped pupil! 

That eye at the center holds a lot of meaning for me. The symbol was not a reason to pass on these dice, after all. And the longer I use the dice, the more I think about the symbol and it takes on a more personal meaning for me.

A few years ago, I read the book When the Stars Are Right: Towards an Authentic R'Lyehian Spirituality by Scott R. Jones. One of the things he talks about it that book is not the Necronomicon, but a Necronomicon. Creating your own personal Necronomicon, sort of like an art journal combined with a Mythos type Book of Shadows. I've been working on that. I won't share the completed page here, but one of the steps on one of the pages includes my own alterations to the symbol on the dice.

My mind whispers of the many years ago when I read Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus Trilogy and was introduced to the idea of the Pentagon being a pentagon because it is containing something. (Which makes the idea of some military private misspeaking a "vocab word" seem so dangerous!) I think of the things that flaming eye with the keyhole pupil means to me. I turned the arms of the star/points of the pentagram into tentacles because, for me, the Elder Sign is not so simple as just a symbol to protect against the Great Old Ones. I think of it as being a symbol of Yog-Sothoth.

I have a lot to sort out the words for before I'm ready to write it. The short version is that I think Mythos stories are filled with unreliable narrators. When we talk of what things are in the Mythos, we're really talking of how the characters have processed their experiences and communicated their beliefs. That's not how these energies have to be accepted in an occult practice. This is a lot of effing the ineffable, not believing Lovecraft, Derleth, and others have written literal facts. Yog-Sothoth does not have to be some maybe-evil-maybe-just-too-big-to-notice-and-care sentient cosmic force that is determined to swallow our universe as soon as he gets the chance. Going deeper with putting my thoughts into words right now will result in a couple of hours of typing a chaotic ramble. Okay, that's appropriate. It's not what I have planned to do with my evening, though.

I do not completely dismiss or reject the original meaning of the Elder Sign. This version had grown in meaning for me.