Divination with Corn Kernels

Geomancy – Land and Spiritlandandspirit.net/m/Geomancy/geomancy/

THE PRACTICE OF GEOMANCY

‘GEOMANCY’ derives from the Greek words GE,earth, and MANTEIA, divination or prophecy.

There has been an oracular divinatory tradition ofgeomancy in use for millennia across Arabia, Africa,Europe and Asia.

In some cultures and periods of history the termgeomancy has referred to a divinatory system wherebyforetelling was done principally by some method ofsand or earth casting.

For many other cultures geomantic practices have alsoinvolved direct contact with earthenergies, astronomical alignments,sacred geometry, spirit realms, sacredmountains and holy wells etc. as waysof understanding, living in andmanipulating the environment. Forthem geomantic knowledge wasemployed as an art and science forbetter living, dying and worship.

These two streams of geomancy havebeen practiced widely and oftenconcurrently. However it is to the earthdivinatory method that the word‘geomancy’ was first applied.

GEOMANCY AS EARTH DIVINATION

The earliest styles of divination involved reading cracks in the ground, throwing handfuls ofearth onto the ground, striking the sand with a stick to create random patterns, or randomlydrawing a number of stones, seeds, or roots, and recording the odd or even numbers ofdots generated as a single or two points respectively. Performing this four times generatesone of sixteen binary tetragrams – the geomantic tableaux – each with associatedmeanings and astrological correspondences. The top line of one or two points is the ‘head’,of the fire element, the second line the ‘neck’ – air element, the third line the ‘body’ – waterelement, and the bottom line the ‘feet’ – earth element.

From Arabia to Africa

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Hermes with the Sun and Moon

A Geomantic Tableaux of Sigils

The Arabs brought these geomantic practices to Africa and variations of it can be foundtoday all over the continent. Thissystem appeared in North Africa by theninth century, and quickly became oneof the standard systems of divinationthroughout the Arab world. In NorthAfrica it has developed into Afa (Afá inMina, Fa in Fon) and Ifa in Nigeria (Ifáin Yoruba).

In India Geomancy is called RamalShastra.

In Scandinavia Geomancy became theLater Norse Futhark. Another offshootbecame Napoleon’s Book of Fate.

From the Arabic to Europe

The main knowledge of geomancy, as adivinatory art, came to Europe via Arabic textsin the 12th century in Spain, and from therespread across Europe. Its origins may beeither Persian or Arabic. The Byzantines alsocalled it Rabolion or Ramplion.

In fact the word geomantia (earth divination)was a direct translation from the Arabic khattal-raml (sand writing), also known as ‘ilm al-raml (science of the sand) and darb al-raml orzarb al-raml (striking the sand). This last namecame from the practice of hitting the sandseveral times with a stick to read the patternsleft behind to decide whether one or twopoints.

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Al Mawsili – Arabic Geomancy board (British Museum)

Wooden Yoruba Divination Plate for Responses from theOracle of Ifa

Ramal Shastra Dice

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Later Norse Futhark

Meteorological Divination by Robert Fludd

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A Geomantic Wheel of Opposites

European Geomantic shield

Middle Ages and Renaissance

In Europe the divinatory system was widely practiced during the Middle Ages andRenaissance, and in the latter period Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Robert Fludd and JohnHeydon wrote significant works on this divination method, drawing on medieval andEuropean and Arabic works on the subject, in which the basic techniques of geomanticdivination had been expanded and applied in a vast range of ways, incorporating manyastrological elements.

The word ‘geomancy’ during this period referred to this specific method of divination usingsixteen figures formed of four lines of one or two points.

Geomancy is Integrated withAstrology

In Madagascar, this microcosmicdivinatory system, known as Sikidy, isintegrated under the title Vintana or‘Fate’ with astrology and amacrocosmic geomancy thatincorporates sacred wells, caves,cairns, standing stones and traditionalstraight trackways.

Queen Ranavalona I of Madagascarwas cited by missionaries as theepitome of ‘superstition’ as sheemployed Mpisikidy (geomancers) todefine her every move, perhaps the lastof the sacral monarchs who livedentirely according to the ancient canonical way oflife. She would only perform the correct acts of theday, observed the lucky and unlucky colours of theday, sat in the correct place in the palace for thehour and day, and journeyed only to those placesgeomantically correct for the astrological aspects ofthe time.

GEOMANCY – EARTH WISDOM FOR LIVING

Probably the oldest geomantic traditions currentlyextant, perhaps dating back 100,000 years, arethose of palaeolithic and mesolithic AboriginalAustralia.

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European Anatomical correspondences

Aboriginal Shaman at Work

Knowledge of local landscape for practical survival reasons such as food, shelter and routefinding is intertwined with traditions of landscapecreation by Dream-time ancestors, locallandscape spirits, sacred sites, cave paintingsand ‘song-lines’ across country.

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Songlines around Uluru

Integral to this knowledge is their proper location-specific and timely ceremonial use forearth magic purposes such as fertility and abundance of food, for education, to maintain thespiritual integrity of the sacred sites and song-lines, and ensure the harmony of the peoplewith their environment and each other.

The neolithic and bronze ages have left a wide legacy of sacred sites across Europe,Asia, Africa and the Americas that reveal in their design advanced knowledge of geomanticprecepts.

Triple Goddess Represented in the Design of Silbury in Whiltshire

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Underground Stream Crossing Beneath Stone Circle

Spirial Sacred Space Design

Megalithic temples and processional routes, standing stones and stone circles, pyramids,conical mounds and chambered cairns show evidence of a widespread and consistentunderstanding of sacred geometry and metrology, astronomical alignment to sun, moonand star rising and setting orientations, leylines, global geomagnetic grids, andunderground water veins.

Callanish Stones on Isle of Lewis

Eastern Geomancy

Indian culture has developed a corpusof geomantic knowledge known asVaastu that may date back to 6000B.C.E. and was well developed by thetime the cities of Harappa andMohenjo-Daro emerged in the IndusValley civilisation around 2600 B.C.E.

The Rig Veda (c.2000-1500 B.C.E.)contains early references, and theVastu Shastras (from 600 C.E.) are Sanskrit manualsfor constructing palatial temples and includedchapters on home construction, town planning, andhow efficient villages, towns and kingdoms integratedtemples, water bodies and gardens within them toachieve harmony with nature.

Astronomy, astrology, earth energies, Hindu religionand magic and the science of yantra (geometry) andmantra are woven together to create a cohesive setof architectural precepts for the design of bothsacred and secular spaces.

Feng Shui – A Long History of GeomanticKnowledge.

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Cheyenne Medicine Wheel (Source: Alan Bleakley)

Chinese culture, philosophy, religionand ancient science embodiesgeomantic knowledge now known asFeng Shui. The earliestarchaeological evidence of this isfound in the Yangshao and Hongshanneolithic culture sites dated to 5000B.C.E.

The Ba Gua or Eight Trigrams, afundamental cycle of both time andspace in Feng Shui attributed to Fu Xi(c.3300 B.C.E.), are identical to theEight-fold Druid Wheel of the Year,suggesting a common origin ofmetaphysical tradition.

The Ho Tu magic square is also ascribed by tradition to Fu Xi, and the Lo Shu magicsquare to Wen Wang in 2205 B.C.E. The sixty-four hexagrams of the Yi Jing (c. 1150B.C.E.) are an elaboration of the trigrams from yin-yang, a parallel development to thesixteen tetragrams of Arabic / African / European tradition.

The earliest written reference to Chinese geomantic practice dates back to Emperor Da Yu(c. 2200-2101 B.C.E). Cosmography, astronomy, astrology, numerology, earth energiesand landscape topography are woven with Confucian wisdom and Daoist magic into a bodyof architectural and landscape design as well as ceremonial practice that are used in thedesign of sacred, governmental and secular buildings and landscapes.

Feng shui is a geomantic tradition that includes written records forming the largest andoldest body of texts on the subject. It has a long continuity of practice, and while some fengshui practices have evolved over time with changes of environment and needs, the originalprecepts are still very much part of contemporary practice.

Classical Period

The legacy of iron age architecture is characterised more by defensive forts that utilisenatural topographical features to create places of sanctuary in troubled times, though thereis also clear evidence that Celtic cultures establishing political tribal capitals and chosetheir battlegrounds according to a well-defined geomantically-devised grid system acrossEurope, and that the Druid colleges of learning were sited at places of geomanticsignificance.

The Greco-Roman period shows evidence of geomantic design everywhere in thearchitecture and siting of temples and palaces, as well as wise words from Hesiod (c.700B.C.E) who instructs us “do not relieve yourselves into sacred springs”.

The ancient Greek schools of learning had links with the later Druids through thePythagoreans, and documented the geomantic geometry long known to the oral adepts.Euclid’s Sacred Geometry (c. 300 B.C.E.) codified much of this prehistoric knowledge,

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which was in turn transmitted into the Arabic culture through the Alexandrian library. This isbrought alive in the architecture of mosques, and then brought to Europe by the Moors toflourish in medieval Gothic church architecture.

The Romans noted, in their conquest of the Etruscans, standing stones set in linearpatterns over the entire countryside of Tuscany.

Romans also record discovering these ‘straight tracks’ in almost every country theysubjugated: across Europe, North Africa, Crete, and the regions of ancient Babylon andNineveh. Roman roads follow these earlier roads, themselves often aligned along globalgeomagnetic grid-lines.

The Normans and Beyond in Britain

In Britain the conquering Normans, like the Romans before them, employed geomancy tomaintain their royal/imperial power, and the royal families and religious institutions ofEurope and elsewhere have continued to employ geomancy to assert control and peaceover countries.

An example of this is the supplanting of Saxon conical church towers with Norman squarecrenellated towers of political / religious dominance.

The Middle Ages

The medieval stonemasons’ work encodes geometry, metrology, acoustics, astronomy,earth energies, mythology and magic in the great Gothic Cathedrals of Europe. Thelandscape was significantly redesigned using geometric principles in the middle ages bythe Cathars, Knights Templar and the Holy Church of Rome.

In his 1538-43 ‘Itineraries’ Henry 8 ’s antiquarian surveyor John Leland enquired of Morrisdancers from where their inspiration came for the complex dances they performed, to betold ‘from the mysterious grass circles that appear in our fields in summer-time’.

18th Century – A Druidic Revival

In 1740 the antiquarian Dr. William Stukeley first noted that the axis of Stonehenge and theAvenue leading from it point to the north-east, ‘whereabouts the sun rises when the daysare longest’.

He perceived the whole British landscape as laid out according to a sacred ‘druidic’ pattern,and etched with symbols of serpents and winged discs such as at Avebury.

At Barrow near Hull he found a great earthwork representing a winged circle, its trenchesarranged so as to measure the seasonal tides of the Humber Estuary, and found anothernear Navestock Common in Essex ‘…They have made plains and hills, valleys, springs andrivers contribute to form a temple three miles in length…They have stamped a wholecountry with the impress of this sacred character’.

He was active in the druid revival (which began in 1717 along with a number of othermagical societies) which returned to performing ceremony at the old Neolithic and Bronzeage sacred sites.

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The 20th Century – The Earth Mysteries are Rediscovered

The twentieth century saw a burgeoning of interest in Europe in rediscovering thegeomantic mysteries of the past.

The archaeoastronomer Norman Lockyear explored astronomical alignment and sacredgeometry at sacred sites in Greece, Egypt and Britain in the late eighteen and earlynineteen hundreds, and found alignments such as the Ley running from a round barrownorth of Stonehenge near the cursus, through Stonehenge, Old Sarum, Salisbury cathedraland two further Iron age hill-forts.

In the 1920s Alfred Watkins first became aware of the alignment of ancient British sites inthe early 1920’s, in what he described as ‘a flood of ancestral memory’. He coined the termLey to describe these paths across the landscape that include mounds, long-barrows,cairns, cursus, dolmens, standing stones, mark-stones, stone circles, henges, water-markers (moats, ponds, springs, fords, wells), castles, beacon-hills, churches, cross-roads,notches in hills, camps and hill-forts.

Joseph Heinsch and Wihelm Teudt echoed this research into Holy Lines and astronomicalaligments in the landscape in Germany, both published in 1929.

Reginald Allendar Smith’s major contribution to the Earth Mysteries field was to first publisharticles in the British Society of Dowsers journal in the 1930s reporting that he wasconsistently finding water under the same ancient sacred sites that were exciting the Leyhunters.

The engineer and archaeoastronomer Alexander Thom published between the 1950s and1980s a vast body of research into the astronomical alignments of neolithic sacred sitesacross Britain, Ireland and France.

He showed through vigorous research that the length of 2.72 ft – the Megalithic Yard – wasa common unit of measurement in the geometry of many megalithic monuments.

He also found a smaller common unit of measurement in the spiral carvings on certainmegaliths and concluded that the megalithic builders were sophisticated astronomersengaged in a detailed study of the movements of the heavenly bodies, incorporated intotheir structures over a long period of observation.

Modern Era – Geomancy for Health

Baron Gustav Freiherr von Pohl did extensive research into geopathic stress in the 1920sand1930s and kick-started modern research into the links between negative earth energiesand disease. He repeatedly found a 100% correlation between the location of beds ofpeople who had died of cancer and the paths of ‘black streams’ under their homes.

Pierre Cody corroborated von Pohl’s findings in France in the 1930s, as did Joseph Wurstand Jacob Stangle in Germany in the 1950s.

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In the 1960s and 1970s European researchers Hartmann, Curry, Wittman, Schneider, andlatterly Schneck and Merz have made significant contributions to the understanding of aseries of geomagnetic grids that cover the earth’s surface and have implications to healthas well as the location of sacred sites.

CONTEMPORARY GEOMANCY IS BORN

John Michell, in his “View over Atlantis” of 1969, was the first contemporary writer to usethe term ‘geomancy’ to embrace both the microcosmic divinatory system and the wholemacrocosmic field of ‘earth mysteries’.

This use of the term was then picked up by Paul Screeton, editor of ‘The Ley Hunter’magazine, and Nigel Pennick and Anthony Roberts, founders of the Institute of GeomanticResearch.

Since the late 1960s the expanded definition of the term Geomancy has come into generaluse.

A new global eclectic geomantic discipline is evolving which incorporates, in addition to themicrocosmic divinatory system, the macrocosmic context of leylines and other dowsableearth energies, planetary-wide topographical engineering and hidden patterns embedded inthe landscape, the design of megalithic and temple structures and other sacred spaces,sacred geometry and metrology, astrology and astronomical alignment, as well as religiousand magical ceremonial usage.

This includes local folk magic traditions as well as the large corpus of geomantic wisdom tobe found enshrined in the precepts of Hindu Vaastu, Daoist / Confucian Feng Shui, NativeAmerican Medicine Wheel teachings, and other global cultural traditions.

In addition to these classical subjects of the earth mysteries schools, contemporarygeomantic practice now also includes the new sciences of baubiologie, geobiologie, solardesign and green architecture, and of necessity technopathic stress.

CONTEMPORARY GEOMANCERS

Besides John Michell’s enormous contribution to our understanding of geomancy today,other notable recent and contemporary researchers into various aspects of the field includeKeith Critchlow, Robin Heath and John Martineau (sacred geometry and astronomy), JohnNeal (metrology), Guy Underwood, Paul Devereux, Tom Graves, Michael Poynder, ColinBloy, Billy Gawn, Sig Lonegren, David Furlong, Hamish Miller and Paul Broadhurst(dowsing and working with earth energies), Bruce MacManaway, Rolf Gordon, KatheBachler, Marko Pogacnik, Patrick MacManaway and Richard Creightmore (geopathicstress), Jeff Saward and Marty Cain (labyrinths), and Ivan MacBeth (stone circle creation)– all are well worth reading.

REFERENCES

John Michael Greer, Earth Divination Earth Magic, 1999

Anthony Roberts, Geomancy – A Synthonal Reappraisal, 1981

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John Michell, The View over Atlantis, 1969

Nigel Pennick, The Oracle of Geomancy, 1994

Graham Robb, The Ancient Paths: Discovering the Lost Map of Celtic Europe, 2013

Norman Lockyer, Stonehenge and Other British Stone Monuments AstronomicallyConsidered, 1906

Alfred Watkins, Early British Trackways, Moats, Mounds, Camps and Sites, 1922

Alfred Watkins, The Old Straight Track: its mounds, beacons, moats, sites, and markstones, 1925

Baron Gustav Freiherr von Pohl, Earth Currents – Causative Factor of Cancer and OtherDiseases, 1932

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