In ancient times people used milfoil stalks to divine good or bad fortune.
Tips
history
筮 is not used independently in modern Chinese. It survives in classical pairings like 卜筮 (divination by shell-cracking and by stalks) and 筮仕 (to take up one's first official post, after the divination once cast for it).
register
Archaic and literary only, seen in old ritual texts and etymology notes, not in everyday speech.
