Friday, March 29, 2024

What is Geomancy?

The art of geomancy considers the relationships of natural hills, waterways, and earth surface features as understood by the diviner-surveyor from a totally earth-cosmos overview. Western Geomancy is divided into three main lines of research and work:
1. Mathematical (geometric) line and grid projections by map
2. Physical inspection of ancient lines, sites and verification
3. In field detection of same and all types of earth energies usually by means of dowsing.

There is a fourth way known as Feng-Shui.(Bill Cox ,1982, The Cameron Auremeter in Action) from:
http://dowsers.new-hampshire.net/faq.htm

[Maat's note:  We probably won't cover Feng Shui at this site...  If I get a chance, I'll post some links to good places on the web to get more information about Feng Shui.]

Here are two .zip files of Geomancy programs:
geo.zip
geomanc.zip

Geomancy is a system of divination in which the diviner scatters pebbles, grains of sand, or seeds on the earth and then interprets their shape and position. The occultist Agrippa used this as a basis for a method of making marks on the earth with a stick, (modernized to marks on paper with a pencil or pen) and then interpreting them. The interpretation is partly intuitive and partly by means of a system of positions reminiscent of I Ching hexagrams.

19th century writers used the word in relationship to the Chinese practice of feng-shui (wind and water). Feng-shui is concerned with the relationships between human beings and the subtle energies of nature, particularly in relation to the setting of buildings, and the interaction between human life and earth currents. Feng-shui experts determine the most advantageous locations for roads, bridges, canals, wells and mines in relationship to earth energies. Sites of graves were also an important consideration. Often bodies were not buried until the proper burial site was determined; sometimes bodies were unearthed and reburied.

There seems to be a relationship between the Western form of geomancy and feng-shui since the position of pebbles, sand, or seeds has something in common with the acupuncture pressure points on the "body" of nature and its energies. Likewise, the Chinese concepts of subtle earth energies parallel Western concepts of ley lines and dowsing.

Geomancy was considered by the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims as a "powerful magic" inspired by the "Djennoun", the benevolent or malevolent underground beings who obeyed Salomon and who can both inspire and torment men. In ancient Egypt, Greece, and in the East (where it is known as the "sand science") geomancers were diviners who interpreted natural signs and also scholars who "listened" to the earth. They knew how to tame the Djennoun, those spirits born of the depths of the earth, symbols of natural forces. They knew the telluric places, searched for springs, told where to build palaces and houses, in agreement with the geodesic forces, the so-called "the exits of dragons" by the Chinese. Practiced at first by shamans and sorcerers, geomancy slowly became a rich and complex divinatory art that influenced -and still influences- political and strategic decisions, as well as the decisions of everyday life.

Kings and influential people consulted them before going into battle, concluding an alliance or making any important decision. They had to be in agreement with the Earth, with Mother Nature, with the elementary forces before acting. The tales of the Arabian nights, within the marvelous story of Aladdin, tells of the use of geomancy, "He sat on a sofa, put the square of sand before him, uncovered it and, after having smoothed the sand, he cast his points, drew the figures and made the horoscope... (And)... discovers that Aladdin lived on earth in great splendor."

At last, geomancy came to Europe around the year one thousand, thanks to Arabian scholars and the Spanish Jews. It soon spread to Italy and is mentioned in Dante's "Divine Comedy." Like astrology -with which it has many links- or Tarot, it became a respected divinatory art.

~from Maat's Book of Shadows