Just a quick update. I did a quick geomancy reading on how the rest of the night’s work would go. I used the simple draw-dashes-on-paper-with-your-eyes-closed method I’ve been showing you in previous posts. Today I got:

… acquisitio, which you may recall is a favorable geomantic figure. It stands for gain, and things within my grasp. Very nice!

I hope you all are enjoying the geomancy stuff… this week’s posts will give more elaborate and interesting reading methods. But, you have to crawl before you can walk, and these single-figure readings are also fun, to me anyway!

I thought since I’ve been making posts about geomancy, I’d better at least give you a basic run-down of the meanings of the 16 figures. I’m getting the majority of these meanings from John Greer’s book.

Here they are, grouped logically. Most of the figures come in pairs of opposites. I think it’s easiest to learn them this way, as the opposite figure usually has the opposite meaning:

 and 

• puer: Rashness, violence, energy. Generally unfavorable except in matters of love and war.
• puella: Harmony and happiness. A favorable figure for nearly all questions.

 and 

• amissio: Transcience and loss. Favorable for love but very unfavorable for material matters.
• acquisitio: Success, profit, and gain. Things within one’s grasp.

 and 

• albus: Peace, wisdom, purity. Favorable but weak.
• rubeus: Passion, power, fierceness, and vice. Crowley mentions in the Book of Thoth that this is one of the least favorable figures.

 and 

• fortuna major: Great good fortune, inner strength. Power and success.
• fortuna minor: Outward strength, help from others. Good for any matter in which a person wishes to proceed quickly.

 and 

• tristitia: Sorrow, suffering, illness, and pain. Unfavorable.
• laetitia: Happiness and health. Crowley says in the Book of Thoth that this is probably the most favorable of the geomantic figures.

 and 

• cauda draconis: A doorway leading out. Favorable for losses and endings, but generally unfavorable for other questions.
• caput draconis: A doorway leading in. Favorable for gains and beginnings, and generally neutral.

… and the final four are symmetric around their center, and as such, have no opposite figure:

 and   and   and 

• conjunctio: Combination of forces or people. Recovery of things that have been lost. Neither favorable nor unfavorable.
• carcer: Restriction, delay, limitation, inprisonment. Generally unfavorable.
• populus: Multitude, a gathering of likes (good with good, evil with evil). Neither favorable nor unfavorable.
• via: Change, movement, alteration of fortune. Favorable for journeys and voyages.

I’m out at the moment so I’m blogging from my phone again. I hope the picture turns out ok. Here’s another basic geomancy reading, using just a single figure. More advanced readings will be posted next week.

One of the nice things about geomancy is that all you need is paper and a pen! If you are away from cards, you can still do some serious divination.

I used the method I outlined in my last geomancy post to generate a single figure on the back of a reciept. My question was about how my futures trading would go for the rest of the week.

Once all the marks were tallied, I had made “albus”. The basic meaning is “peace, wisdom, and purity… good for beginnings and for profit.” Nice!

Geomantic figures are also classified as “stable” vs “unstable/mobile,” and albus is a stable figure. So, that also bodes well.

I became aware of Geomancy recently when reading the Book of Thoth. It points out a couple places where geomantic figures are relevant to a tarot card, and I started wondering what this geomancy thing was all about.

It turns out to be quite interesting! The term relates this system of divination back to the earth (note the “geo” in geomancy). If you read the Golden Dawn “knowledge lectures” on geomancy, they refer to invoking the correct earth spirit at the correct time of day, for example. Also, the historical way to generate the geomantic figures is by making marks in dirt.

But enough history… let me give you a taste of what it’s like, and in future articles we’ll get more and more elaborate about it.

First Geomancy Reading

The simplest form of geomancy reading would be to just generate a single geomantic figure and interpret it. What are these figures? Well, it’s basically four rows of dots, with each row containing either one or two dots. Doing the math, this means there are 2^4 = 16 total geomantic figures. Here they are:

Ok, so how do you generate them? Like I alluded to earlier, you can find elaborate ceremonies involving boxes of dirt in the literature. You can also just go the I Ching route and toss a coin (heads=1 dot, tails=2 dots) four times. That doesn’t appeal to me, though. I thought about it for a moment, and came up with this method, which suits me:

1. Get a piece of paper, and a pen
2. Close your eyes, breathe rhythmically, and get into a meditative state. Keep your eyes closed during the entire process.
3. Think about the subject of the divination, and keep this subject in mind for the following steps.
4. Draw three horizontal lines across the paper. Use your intuition to tell you where the lines need to go. With practice, you may find that your arm seems to want to go certain places. Don’t fight it.
5. Make marks on the paper. Make as many as you want, in as many places as you want. Let your intuition guide you. Don’t fight it. Don’t think about whether you have given the page adequate coverage or not. Just make marks where it feels right, and quit when it feels right to quit.

Now, add up the marks in each of the four areas of the page. An even number (including 0 marks) equates to 2 dots. An odd number equates to 1 dot. You have made a geomantic figure!

Here’s a scan of the one I just made. My question was about how my work will go this afternoon.

You can see, I’ve done the counting and put the appropriate dots on the right. This figure is Puella, which basically points to harmony and happiness. It’s a generally favorable figure in most situations.

So, for our first (very basic) geomantic reading, the outcome is pretty positive! My work should generally go smoothly and harmoniously tonight. That’s good, because I have a lot of work to do. I don’t need setbacks!

In my next few geomancy posts, I’ll discuss more and more elaborate divination methods using these 16 forms. I hope you’ll find it interesting. For further reading, I’d suggest Earth Divination, Earth Magic: A Practical Guide to Geomancy. You can find the Golden Dawn geomancy info in books like The Golden Dawn Journal: Book I, Divination and The Golden Dawn.