African Bone Throwing: History, Tradition & the Sangoma Practice

The Living Tradition of African Bone Throwing

Of all the bone reading traditions in the world, none is more sophisticated, more culturally embedded, or more spiritually rich than the bone throwing practices of Southern Africa. While Western practitioners often approach bone reading as a personal divination tool, in Southern African cultures it is inseparable from healing, community, ancestral communication, and the sacred role of the sangoma — the traditional healer and diviner.

Understanding this tradition — its history, its spiritual framework, and its living practice — is essential for anyone who wishes to engage with bone reading respectfully and with genuine depth.

What Is a Sangoma?

A sangoma (plural: izangoma) is a traditional healer in Nguni cultures — primarily Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi, and Ndebele peoples of Southern Africa. The word comes from the Zulu uSangoma, derived from the name of the spirit Sangoma.

A sangoma is not simply a fortune teller. They are a healer, a spiritual intermediary, a community counselor, and a keeper of ancestral wisdom. Their primary role is to diagnose the spiritual causes of illness, misfortune, and conflict — and to prescribe remedies that address those causes at their root.

Sangomas are called to their vocation through a process called ukuthwasa — a period of illness, dreams, and spiritual crisis that signals the ancestors' call. This calling cannot be refused without serious consequences. The training that follows typically lasts several years under the guidance of an experienced sangoma.

The Bones: What They Are and What They Mean

A sangoma's bone set — called izinhlola in Zulu — is a collection of objects that has been built up over years of practice and spiritual guidance. It typically contains:

• Animal bones — From animals with specific spiritual significance: lion (courage, authority), hyena (transformation, the shadow), crocodile (the ancestors, the deep), baboon (wisdom, the trickster), various birds
• Cowrie shells — Associated with the ancestors, money, and the feminine principle
• Dominoes or dice — Representing chance and the unpredictability of fate
• Coins — Material concerns, financial matters
• Small figures — Representing different types of people or spirits
• Stones and natural objects — Each with specific assigned meanings

The set is not purchased — it is built through spiritual guidance, with ancestors directing which objects to include and what meanings to assign. The bones are considered living spiritual entities, not merely symbolic objects.

The Casting Process

When a sangoma throws the bones, they enter a state of heightened spiritual receptivity — not quite trance, but a focused openness to ancestral communication. The client sits across from the sangoma. The bones are held in both hands, shaken, and cast onto a mat or animal hide.

What follows is not a mechanical reading of symbols. The sangoma reads the entire cast as a living message from the ancestors — noting which objects landed face-up or face-down, which are clustered together, which are isolated, which are near the client's side of the mat and which are far. The reading is interactive: the sangoma makes statements and the client responds “Siyavuma” (we agree) or remains silent, guiding the reading toward accuracy.

This interactive quality is distinctive. Unlike Western divination, where the reader speaks and the client listens, sangoma bone reading is a dialogue — between the sangoma, the client, and the ancestors.

The Role of the Ancestors

In Nguni spiritual cosmology, the ancestors (amadlozi) are not distant historical figures — they are active participants in the lives of their descendants. They communicate through dreams, illness, coincidence, and divination. When things go wrong in a person's life, it is often understood as a sign that the ancestors are trying to communicate something important.

The sangoma's bone throwing is a formal channel for this communication. The bones do not speak on their own — they are moved and arranged by ancestral forces to convey specific messages. The sangoma's training teaches them to read these messages accurately.

This ancestral framework is not metaphorical. For practitioners within the tradition, the ancestors are genuinely present during a bone reading, genuinely communicating, and genuinely invested in the wellbeing of their living descendants.

Ukuthwasa: The Calling and Training

The path to becoming a sangoma begins with ukuthwasa — a period of spiritual illness that signals the ancestors' call. Symptoms include recurring dreams of ancestors, unexplained physical illness, behavioral changes, and a sense of being pulled toward the healing path.

Once the calling is recognized and accepted, the trainee (ithwasa) enters an apprenticeship with an experienced sangoma. Training typically lasts two to five years and includes:

• Learning the meanings of the bones and how to read them
• Learning medicinal plant knowledge (muti)
• Learning ritual protocols for different types of healing
• Developing the ability to communicate with ancestors
• Undergoing personal healing and spiritual transformation

Training concludes with a graduation ceremony (ukugidwa) in which the new sangoma is formally recognized by the community and their ancestors.

Other African Bone Throwing Traditions

While the Nguni sangoma tradition is the most widely known outside Africa, bone throwing practices exist across the continent:

• West Africa — Ifá (Yoruba): One of the most complex divination systems in the world, using a divining chain (opele) or palm nuts (ikin) to access a vast corpus of sacred verses. Practiced by babalawos (fathers of secrets) and spread throughout the African diaspora via the Afro-Cuban Lucumí and Brazilian Candomblé traditions.
• Southern Africa — Hakata (Shona): A divination system using four carved tablets, each with a face-up and face-down meaning. The combination of the four tablets' positions generates 16 possible configurations, each with specific interpretations.
• East Africa — Geomancy traditions: Various forms of sand and object casting practiced across East African cultures, often integrated with Islamic geomantic traditions.
• Central Africa: Numerous traditions of object casting, often using seeds, nuts, and natural materials specific to local ecosystems.

Cultural Respect and Appropriation

For non-African practitioners drawn to bone reading, the question of cultural respect is important. The sangoma tradition is a living, sacred practice embedded in specific cultural and spiritual contexts. It cannot be extracted from those contexts and practiced authentically by outsiders.

What non-African practitioners can do:

• Study the tradition with genuine respect and curiosity, without claiming to practice it
• Develop their own bone reading practice inspired by universal principles (casting, relational reading, object symbolism) without appropriating specific cultural elements
• Support African practitioners and teachers by purchasing their work, attending their workshops, and amplifying their voices
• Acknowledge the African origins of bone reading when teaching or writing about the practice

The bones speak across cultures. But they speak most clearly when approached with honesty about who you are and where you come from. For those who feel called to deepen their own divination work while honoring the roots of these traditions, tools like the Tarot Journaling Prompts offer a way to cultivate personal reflective practice, and the 30-Day Tarot Practice Workbook provides structure for building a consistent connection to symbolic languages. The 52-Week Tarot Journey supports a year-long exploration of archetypes that echo the universal patterns found in ancestral wisdom traditions. For those drawn to ritual and energetic boundaries, the Sacred Space Cleanse is a meaningful way to prepare the inner and outer environment for sincere work, and the Emotional Filter Ritual Kit offers a grounded approach to clearing the energetic residue that can cloud intuitive clarity.