The current discussion on the pros and cons of gambling has concentrated on what are often the tragic results of poor judgment and lack of self-control. These dangers are real enough, yet by focusing exclusively on them we misunderstand the ritual symbolism that underlies gaming.
Even the citizens of ancient Rome played dice once a year, at the festival of Saturnalia, in honour of the god of plenty (though the wagers were only nuts, not money). Far from being evil, or even simply neutral, gambling is often described in traditional mythology as an embodiment of the workings of the universe itself.
Scandinavian myths tell us that dice and runes, ie numbers and letters, were given to human beings by Odin, king of the gods. The gods are said to play at tables, a game whose moves are partly determined by dice, using golden boards that remain unbroken even after Ragnarok, the gods' downfall. This suggests that the gods themselves are subject to fate: that number and measure rule all things. Indeed, the word "dice" comes from the Latin datus, meaning that which is "given" by fortune.
In the ancient world, the forces of randomness were personified as the unpredictable will of the gods, or of Fortune herself. The wheel of Fortune and the mill of Fate are images that reveal the unalterable cycles of change in the world, embodied in the turning heavens as well as in the fall of the dice. The game board was seen as the four-quartered Earth, with the players' moves determined partly by the dice, ie by Fate.
Gambling is depicted here as a ritual that pits the human intellect against the unpredictable forces of chance that surround us. It is a concentrated form of the risk-taking behaviour we carry out every day, where luck deals us different talents and circumstances but we must use our intelligence to turn these to advantage. Gambling trains the mind to handle risk.
Many gaming boards, dice and images of people playing games of chance and skill have come down to us from the ancient world. Board games, in particular, are shown as the warrior's recreation, training him in the complex judgments needed in the chaos of battle when unpredictable factors interact with his skill and judgment at breakneck speed.
A spectrum of skill runs from games of pure luck, such as dice or the Lotto, to games of pure intellect, such as chess. But even games of pure luck challenge our judgment. They test our ability to wager only what we can afford to lose and to know when to walk away with our winnings, or to cut our losses and stop playing, a skill we need in more calculating ventures.
"Do not put all your goods aboard ship for trading," wrote the poet Hesiod in the 7th century BC, "for it is a bad thing to meet with disaster at sea. Leave the greater part at home: due measure is best in all things." Equivalent advice holds for those who play the stock market today.
Gambling on the horses is, likewise, a "game" that mimics the real wagers made by venture capitalists of all kinds. Horse breeders trust their money to the quality of their bloodstock in every race without ever needing to place a bet; investors judge that the skill of the manufacturer they back will outweigh the vagaries of chance - and so trust their money to their own good judgment.
Gambling can thus train and exercise the mind in taking real-life risks. But as its ancient symbolism shows, it is also a ritual honouring the dual influences of chance and skill in our world. To put one's trust in Fortune alone is the mistake of the gambling addict, and Mercury, the god of calculation, duly gets his revenge when the bean-counters move in on the bankrupt. But both chance and skill are active in our lives all the time; we ignore either at our peril.
The sober citizen who has an annual flutter at the races should perhaps be seen as imitating the dice-playing Romans - piously offering ritual acknowledgment of the continuing presence of Fortune throughout our lives.
· Prudence Jones is co-author of A History Of Pagan Europe