I have been writing all of my life – whether papers for school, reports for work,  reviews for my web site, or writing in a journal. I have always written. I wrote my first book in the fourth grade. I wrote it and my mom typed the pages for me. I also illustrated it. I actually wrote two books that year, but I can only find one right now. The other book was about ghosts (I was a strange fourth grader).

My first book.

It was also lavishly illustrated.

So it is a bit surprising to me that it took me so long to write an adult book. I always thought I would write a tarot book. But there are literally hundreds of books on tarot and most of them already cover the things that I would have written, so I never wrote one. Instead I wrote a book on bone reading. I wasn’t especially thinking about writing a book. I had written a 16 page booklet as a take home for my bone reading students. The idea was that by having the booklet with all of the key points written down, the student could give their full attention to the hands on portion of the class. Of course they were free to write notes in the booklet if they wanted to – I even left blank pages at the back for them to do so. But they didn’t have to.

Long story short I used that booklet as a starting point for my book. I asked myself what “I” would want in a book on bone reading and that is what I wrote. I have been the fortunate recipient of knowledge from several excellent bone readers who graciously shared their knowledge and experience with me. But my reading style is not exactly like any of theirs.  My set is different from theirs, my assigned meanings are mostly different and my interpretations are influenced by my life experiences.  Because bone reading is such an personal and intimate form of divination there are likewise some limitations as to what I can teach my reader. There is no “standard” set of bones that I can teach to. I have no idea what the people who purchase this book  are going to have in their bone sets. Even if they order a set from one of the vendors selling them like Lucky Mojo, Dr. E’s Conjure Doctor site, or The Mystic Dream, they will be getting a set that consists of the pieces that were available to the vendor at the time. Availability changes constantly. Most people then add several pieces of their own to the set they bought.  For the same reason I cannot teach my reader what the pieces in their set mean. I came to the conclusion that all I could do is show how I read the bones using one of my bone sets with the meanings that I use. That way the reader can get some ideas that they can use to develop their own bone reading technique. That is the way that I was taught as well.

The first half of the book gives some basic information – what bone reading is, where to get a set, what to do with the set to get it ready to read, etc. The second half of the book provides illustrations of and explanations of how I interpreted actual readings. With the permission of the clients that I read for I photographed their reading, turned the photos into illustrations so that they would be easier to see, and explained how I interpreted the bones in each reading. The interpretations in the book are not necessarily the interpretations that the client heard. When reading I let myself be guided by spirit and I am interacting with the client. Since I did not record the readings I can not convey what I said during the actual reading. But I can explain what the various configurations of pieces “could” mean looking at them after the fact.  Here is an example:

This is the full throw:

And here is an illustration of a section of the reading. This particular section was closely clumped together with some pieces covering others so the pieces are numbered and described for ease of identification. The next page gives the interpretations. However, most of the illustrations contain far fewer pieces so they are not numbered – a few pieces are shown followed immediately by the interpretation.

The interpretations given are based on the suggested meanings given earlier in the book. Now you may look at that same section and come up with an interpretation that is totally different and that is OK. My goal is not to have you adopt my meanings and interpret the way I interpret. My goal is to show you one possible interpretation in order to show you the mechanics of the way I read. I am hopeful that once you see and understand the mechanics you will be able to adapt them to develop your own personal style of reading. Likewise the meanings. My meanings are not the “correct” meanings. They are just the meanings that I use, and even I change them dependent on the situation. But to show you the mechanics we have to have a common language.  If you like the meanings in the book please feel free to use them. If you don’t please feel free to reject them. It’s all good.

There are four readings in the book. There are also descriptions of how to do specialized readings of various types. You can see the whole Table of Contents here.

My wish for you if you purchase the book is that you will find it helpful in developing or enhancing your bone reading technique. Learning to read the bones can be frustrating at times. But I hope that you will stick it out because it is one of the best divination systems available in my opinion.

The book will be available on May 4th, 2014 from Lucky Mojo. Sunday attendees at the Hoodoo Heritage Festival will get a free copy and a goody bag from me, as well as swag from all of the workshops they attend that day. It will also be available from Amazon at some future date. if you are attending the festival and want a reading please sign up here. Spaces are filling fast!

Happy Bone Reading!