Cultural Practices: Bone Fortunetelling

Cultural Practices: Bone Fortunetelling

“This is the most reliable method of telling your fortune. The bones never lie. Go on, pick one. Now throw it on the fire. The heat makes cracks in the bone and I read the bone cracks to tell your destiny.” - Aunt Wu

The reading that Aunt Wu gives Aang is actually inspired by a real and very ancient form of Chinese pyromancy known as jiǎgǔ (甲骨) or oracle bone divination. Oracle bone divination was primarily practiced during the late Shang dynasty (~1200 BC) and was often used to predict the fate of royalty and other people who held great power. You can imagine why Aunt Wu chose this form of fortune telling for Aang.

However, there are a few differences between how oracle bones were used in real life compared to in the show. Most obviously, a question had to be painted or carved on to the bone first, usually an ox’s shoulder blade or a turtle’s underside, before being heated and cracked. Nonetheless, I still feel that the show captured the epic scope of these readings, which focused more on potential catastrophic events and shifts in power rather than on love and romance.

Finally, have some fun facts:

Oracle bone script is considered to be the earliest known form of Chinese writing and is the progenitor to many East Asian scripts, most notably hanzi and kanji.

Aunt Wu’s oracle bone stand resembles Longshan pottery. Longshan (龍山) was a late Neolithic culture in northern China from about 3000 to 1900 BC. Her fortune telling being over 3000 years old and her decorations being over 5000 years old only strengthens my fan-theory that Aunt Wu is supernaturally old.

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