41 beans, 9 eyes
Fava Bean Reading
Split forty-one beans into three, take them away four at a time, and the remainders build a nine-eye table. A symbolic re-enactment of a folk tradition that runs from Central Asia (kumalak) to Anatolia. For entertainment, no sign-up, nothing is sent to a server.
Instant scatter
Scatter the beans
Think of a topic and press the button. Over three rounds the 41 beans are split in three and counted off by fours on this device; the remainders fill the table.
Privacy: The scatter is generated on this device; nothing is sent to or stored on BakFal's servers.
What is fava bean reading?
Bean reading is an old folk tradition in which a set number of dry seeds are scattered on a cloth and the resulting arrangement is interpreted. It goes back to the kumalak tradition of Central Asia, where Kazakh and Kyrgyz readers use forty-one pieces, sometimes stones, sometimes beans. The arithmetic is what makes it interesting: splitting into three and taking away fours leaves 1 to 4 in each eye, and the reader looks at whether those numbers are odd or even, which eye they fall in and the table as a whole.
What do the nine eyes say?
In the tradition the top row is called the head (mind and thoughts), the middle row the heart (feelings and bonds) and the bottom row the road (movement and everyday matters). The columns, left to right, stand for the person asking, the link between and the outside world. BakFal treats the middle eye of each row as that row's key eye. The numbers match four elements — 1 fire, 2 water, 3 wind, 4 earth — and an odd count is called an "open" eye, an even count a "closed" one.
Is this a real prophecy?
No. The table comes from the remainders of 41 randomly split beans. The readings describe the symbols of a tradition and give no information about the future. They are not medical, legal or financial advice; do not base important decisions on this result.
Will the same scatter come up again?
Every click splits the beans again, truly at random. With thousands of possible tables, seeing the same one twice is very unlikely.