Geomancy

Geomancy (from Greek geōmanteia < geo, "earth" + manteia, "divination"; a calque of Arabic ‘ilm al-raml, "the science of sand"), is a method of divination that interprets markings on the ground, or how handfuls of soil, dirt or sand land when someone tosses them. The common form of divinatory geomancy involves interpreting a series of figures formed by self-similarity and a recursive process.

Once practiced by commoners and rulers alike, it was one of the most popular forms of divination throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Books and treatises on geomancy were published up until the seventeenth century, some by respected philosophers and academics, when most occult traditions generally fell out of vogue. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn attempted to bring about a revival of old occult arts, including geomancy, but given the short time they desired to master certain arts, geomancy as taught by the Golden Dawn turned into a simple lookup method with interpretation and analyzation of full charts remaining untaught. Modern teachers and practitioners of geomancy include John Michael Greer and Stephen Skinner, who encourage the education of geomancy by writing new books on the subject as well as translating and republishing old works on geomancy.

Literary background

The poem Experimentarius attributed to Bernardus Silvestris (Bernard Silvester), who wrote in the middle of the 12th century, was a verse translation of a work on astrological geomancy.

Either Gerard of Cremona (c. 1114–87) or Gerard of Sabionetta (Sabloneta), who lived in the thirteenth century, wrote or translated Astronomical Geomancy from Arabic into Latin. An original in Arabic is possible, as the traditional method of structuring a geomantic divination follows the direction of Arabic writing. There has been disagreement among scholars over which of these two men was responsible for this text.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "geomancy" appeared in vernacular English in 1362 (vernacular English at this time was the language of the lowest classes; Latin and French were the common languages of the middle class, gentry, and nobles).

Geomancy's first mention in print was Langland's Piers Plowman where it is unfavorably compared to the level of expertise a person needs for astronomy ("gemensye [geomesye] is gynful of speche"). In 1386 Chaucer used the Parson's Tale to poke fun at geomancy in Canterbury Tales: "What say we of them that believe in divynailes as …geomancie…" Shakespeare also used geomancy for comic relief.

It was explained as divination (in the same sentence with pyromancy and hydromancy) in the best-selling Travels of Sir John Mandeville, as "geomantie that superstitious arte" in a book of alchemy, and defined in Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa's Philosophy of Natural Magic: Complete Work on Natural Magic, White & Black Magic as a form of divination "which doth divine by certaine conjectures taken of similitudes of the cracking of the Earthe."

In Ben Jonson's Elizabethan comedy The Alchemist, the character Abel Drugger is a practitioner of geomancy.

In the story of Aladdin often included in "The Arabian Nights" called "The History of Aladdin" both the African Magician and his brother use geomancy to find Aladdin to do him harm.^[1]

Western methodology

Geomancy in the Western tradition requires a tool to make short marks with and a surface to make marks upon; geomancy was originally performed with a stick and a flat surface of sand, but has also been performed with wax tablets and styluses or a pen and paper. Modern methods of geomancy include, in addition to the traditional pen-and-paper or sand methods, using geomancy cards, random number generators, or thrown objects.

Diviners in medieval Europe used parchment or paper for drawing the dots of geomancy but they followed the traditional direction of notation, right to left, for recording the dots. Western occultism still defines geomantic technique as marking sixteen lines of points in sand or soil with a wand or on a sheet of paper. The points are not counted as they are made (thus forming the random number generator needed for any technical divination method). The geomancer counts the number of points made in each line and produces either a single dot (for an odd number of points) or two dots (for an even number) for each line. The pattern of dots produced by the first to fourth lines are known as a figure, as are the fifth to eighth lines, and so on. While not affecting the generation of the figures or interpretation of the reading, all writing and marking is done right to left as a tradition, hinting at geomancy's Arabic roots.

These first four figures, or the matres (or Mothers) form the next four figures, the filiae (or Daughters). This process involves taking the first line of each of the matres and combining them in order to form the first filia, then taking the second line of each of the matres, and so on. After the eight matres and filiae are formed, the four nepotes (or Nieces) are formed by adding pairs of the figures together (the first and second Mothers, the third and fourth Mothers, the first and second Daughters, and the third and fourth Daughters respectively). This process of addition involves summing the number of points in the combined lines of the figures, dividing by two, and taking the remainder in the same manner as how the original matres were produced. This is the same procedure in logic as the exclusive or, where if two lines differ, then the resulting line will have one point; if they are the same, then the resulting line will have two points. From the four nepotes, the two testes (or Witnesses) are formed in the same manner as the nepotes: the first and second Nieces form the Right Witness, and the third and fourth Nieces form the Left Witness. From the Witnesses, using the same addition process, the iudex, or Judge, is formed. Additionally, a sixteenth figure can be generated by adding the Judge and the First Mother; this figure is termed the Reconciler.

The Mothers, Daughters, Nieces, Witnesses, the Judge, and the Reconciler are entered into a specialized table, known as the Shield chart, through which the binary processes (reminiscent of the Cantor set) that form the figures that complete the chart become apparent. Generally, the Judge represents the answer to the question, the Right Witness describes the querent's side of the question, the Left Witness represents the quesited's side, and the Reconciler represents the effect of the outcome upon the querent. Based on this chart alone, the geomancer can dedeuce root causes to the situation, hidden influences, the outcome, the effect of the outcome on the querent, and general trends and events in the querent's life.

Western geomancy traditionally incorporates many elements from astrological techniques, and for this reason is referred to as "astrological geomancy" in some texts. The most observable example is the borrowing of the astrological houses in the House chart. In this type of chart, the houses have the same meanings as they do in astrology. Based upon the query, significators may be chosen in the manner of horary astrology, and the aspects and modes of perfection that apply in horary astrology were altered to fit this use in geomancy. Other examples of astrological technique used in geomancy include assigning zodiacal rulerships to the geomantic figures, linking geomantic figures to parts of the body based on zodiacal rulers, aspects, and assigning planetary spirits, intelligences, and genii to the figures based on their ruling planets. Although documents from the 12th century explain the theories and methodologies of this type of geomancy, it was more recently popularized by occultist Franz Hartmann in his book The Principles of Astrological Geomancy. Due to the number of similarities between astrological and geomantic technique that had become ingrained into Western occultism by the sixteenth century, the French court astrologer Christopher Cattan claimed that geomancy was the daughter of astrology, despite this not actually being the case.

Geomancy and mathematics

The four binary elements of each figure allow for 16 different combinations, each called a tableau. As each chart is generated from the four Mothers, there are a total number of 16⁴, or 65536, possible charts. Due to the mathematics of the chart, only figures that have an even number of points total can become Judges^[2]; each of the eight Judges then has 8192 charts associated with it. Traditional practitioners of geomancy use this knowledge as a type of parity check on the chart to ensure that no mistakes have been made while computing the figures.

In each chart, if all sixteen figures are observed (the four Mothers, the four Daughters, the four Nieces, the Witnesses, Judge, and Reconciler), at least two of the figures must be the same. However, as the Reconciler is usually termed an optional figure, 16 combinations of Mother figures can yield a chart where the Mothers, Daughters, Nieces, Witnesses, and Judge are all unique. Notably, Populus cannot appear in these charts, since mathematically it either requires two figures to be the same in order to be formed, or produces a duplicate figure when added to another figure. In such charts, the Judge will always be one of Conjunctio, Amissio, Carcer, or Acquisitio. The sixteen combinations of Mothers, in order from the First to the Fourth Mother, are

Puer, Caput Draconis, Tristitia, Albus
Conjunctio, Puella, Fortuna Major, Tristitia
Puella, Puer, Tristitia, Albus
Puella, Cauda Draconis, Tristitia, Albus
Rubeus, Laetitia, Puella, Puer
Rubeus, Laetitia, Cauda Draconis, Puella
Rubeus, Laetitia, Cauda Draconis, Caput Draconis
Rubeus, Laetitia, Caput Draconis, Puer
Acquisitio, Puella, Albus, Fortuna Major
Laetitia, Fortuna Minor, Puer, Conjunctio
Laetitia, Fortuna Minor, Acquisitio, Cauda Draconis
Cauda Draconis, Caput Draconis, Tristitia, Albus
Caput Draconis, Amissio, Fortuna Major, Tristitia
Caput Draconis, Carcer, Albus, Fortuna Major
Fortuna Minor, Rubeus, Puer, Amissio
Fortuna Minor, Rubeus, Carcer, Cauda Draconis

Mathematician Ron Eglash, while studying fractal structures in African culture, identified a binary recursive process that used self similarity to create a random number generator from an initial set of lines that the geomancer draws on the ground. This technique was brought to Europe by way of North African Islamic mystics. It is very likely that these mystics had previously obtained the approach from traditional African societies by way of interactions between the West African and North African trade or Islamic kingdoms. Unlike the practices in many other regions (e.g. the Middle East and China) which utilized base 10 numeric systems, the base 2 system utilized in geomancy had long been widely applied in sub-Saharan Africa. Partly inspired by the geomantic technique, Gottfried Leibniz, a German mathematician, developed the binary code theory, which later was the base for Boolean algebra and modern computers.^[3]

Other forms of geomancy

The Arabic tradition consists of sketching sixteen random lines of dots in sand. This same process survived virtually unchanged through its introduction to Europe in the medieval era, and survives to this day in various Arabic countries. Sikidy and other forms of African divination also follow techniques that have remained virtually unchanged.

In Africa one traditional form of geomancy consists of throwing handfuls of dirt in the air and observing how the dirt falls. It can also involve a mouse as the agent of the earth spirit. Ifá, one of the oldest forms of geomancy, originated in West Africa, and uses the same sixteen geomantic figures as in Arabic and Western geomancy with different meanings and names; the process is shortened to using only two figures. In China, the diviner may enter a trance and make markings on the ground that are interpreted by an associate (often a young or illiterate boy). Similar forms of geomancy include scrying involving the patterns seen in rocks or soil.

The Chinese divination practice of the I Ching has several striking similarities to geomancy. It includes a series of binary trigrams (as opposed to tegtragrams used in geomancy) that are generated at random, the resulting figures of which are taken in combination. However, the figures are not added or reorganized as in geomancy, but are instead taken to form a single hexagram. While there are 2³, or eight, trigrams, there are 2⁶, or 64, hexagrams. This yields a smaller set of resulting charts than geomancy. Further, the similarities between the I Ching and geomancy are superficial: the I Ching is of Chinese origin, while geomancy has its roots in the African Sahara.

In Korea, this tradition was popularized in the ninth century by the Buddhist monk Toson. In Korea, geomancy takes the form of interpreting the topography of the land to determine future events and or the strength of a dynasty or particular family. Therefore, not only were location and land forms important, but the topography could shift causing disfavor and the need to relocate. The idea is still accepted in many South East Asian societies today, although with reduced force.^[4]

In the 19th century, Christian missionaries in China translated feng shui as "geomancy" due to their observations of local shamans and priests manipulating the flow and direction of energy based on aesthetics, location, and position of objects and buildings. While incorrect to call it so, the term "geomancy" now commonly indicates feng shui. Similarly, the introduction of a similar Indian system of aesthetics and positioning to harmonize the local energies, vastu shastra, has come under the name "geomancy". Due to the definition having changed over time (along with the recognized definition of the suffix -mancy), "geomancy" can cover any spiritual, metaphysical, or pseudoscientific practice that is related to the Earth. In recent times the term has been applied to a wide range of other occult and fringe activities, including Earth mysteries and the introduction of ley lines and Bau-Biologie.

References

^ George Stade, The Arabian Nights
^ Marcia Ascher, Malagasy Sikidy: A Case in Ethnomathematics, New York: Academic Press, 1997.
^ Transcript of Mathematician Ron Eglash's talk on fractals and their manifestations in various African cultures
^ Peter H. Lee and Wm. Theodore de Bary eds, Sources of Korean Tradition Volume 1, New York: Columbia University Press, 1997.

External links

Medieval Geomancy, Princeton professor Elizabeth Bennet's web site
Collegium Geomanticum, John Michael Greer's (now-defunct) web site
Ron Eglash's home page (Ethnomathematician)
Wim van Binsbergen's home page (African studies professor)
TED Talk by Ron Eglash (geomancy is mentioned in the video chapter "Bamana Sand Divination")
Astrological Geomancy at Renaissance Astrology