DIVINATION STICKS

What you see above are two big Cim Buckets (Chinese: 簽筒) used for divination.  Actually the common Cim Buckets are as big as a cup or a glass.  They are made from wood, bamboo or plastic.   To get the divination, one needs to hold and shake the Cim Bucket hard enough for one of the bamboo divination sticks to fall onto the ground.  Before that, the person seeking the divination needs to kneel in front of the deity and ask a question.

Here you see me posing next to the big Cim Bucket and the extra long Cim or divination sticks.

I am holding up a divination stick made from bamboo.  The stick has both Chinese and Arabic numerals written on it. 

Since this particular Cim Bucket is so big, one cannot hold it up to shake.  So one needs only to pick a stick without looking at the numbers.

The querent (the person seeking the divination) would have to pay 30 sen to get a slip of paper containing the divination for the number drawn.

There are a 100 divinations that correspond to the numbers on the sticks.

This is the poem or divination for stick number 23.  The prophecy here is an average one.

Here is more information about 
At a Taoist temple, there is the famous "stick divination" method where you have to shake a container with about 100 sticks and see which one falls out and there will be a number on the stick. 
To confirm the validity of the answer given by the deity, the querent will pick up and toss two jiaobei blocks (筊杯). Each block is round on one side and flat on the other. A successful answer requires one side flat and one side round to be shown when tossed, a failed answer will result in two round sides tossed. In some practices, much emphasis is placed on denial when both sides flat are tossed; some legends that say when this happens, the deities are laughing at the querent. The querent will have the option to ask for a fortune again until a successful answer can be made.

Following a successful fortune, interpretation may be needed to comprehend the answer. They will then go to the temple counter and check the number of the poem that matches that of the divination stick drawn. The poem will contain the divination.  Answers can be interpreted by a temple priest or volunteers at the temple counter or can be interpreted by the querent. In many cases, an offering is made prior to the asking of the question in order to carry good favor from the higher powers. These offerings typically consist of incense, fresh fruits, cakes, or monetary donations.

SOURCES:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kau_cim
http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?tsn=1&nav=messages&webtag=ab-taoism&tid=53