How geomancy works
Geomancy is one of the oldest divination systems in the Western world. It turns a handful of random choices into a chart of sixteen figures, then reads that chart as a story about your question.
Where it comes from
The word means “divination by earth”. Arab diviners made marks in sand, and the method travelled through North Africa and Spain into medieval and Renaissance Europe, where it was widely practised. Because it needs nothing more than a pen and paper, it spread easily and survives today.
The sixteen figures
A figure has four lines. Each line has one dot or two. Reading from the top, the lines stand for Fire, Air, Water and Earth. A single dot means that element is manifest; a double dot means it is latent. Four lines with two choices each give exactly sixteen combinations, from Via (all single) to Populus (all double). Browse them in the figure guide.
Casting the four Mothers
Each line is an odd-or-even choice: tap a pencil a random number of times and count, roll a die, flip a coin. Do this sixteen times and you have four figures, the Mothers. Everything else in the chart is worked out from them by simple arithmetic.
Building the shield chart
- Daughters: built by turning the Mothers on their side. The first Daughter takes the head line from each Mother in turn, the second takes the neck lines, and so on.
- Nieces: pairs of Mothers or Daughters added together. Adding two figures means adding dots line by line: an odd total gives one dot, an even total gives two.
- Witnesses: the Right Witness is made from the first two Nieces and stands for you; the Left Witness comes from the last two Nieces and stands for the matter.
- Judge: the two Witnesses added together. It describes the relationship between you and the matter, and acts as the answer.
- Reconciler: the Judge added to the First Mother, a check on how things finally turn out.
There is a built-in check: because the Mothers and Daughters are the same dots rearranged, the Judge always has an even number of dots. Only eight figures can ever be the Judge.
Reading the chart
Start with the Judge and Witnesses. A favorable Judge is a yes, an unfavorable Judge a no, and a mixed one depends on its surroundings. The Way of the Points traces the head line back through the chart to find the hidden root of a situation. For finer detail, the first twelve figures go into the twelve houses: the first house is you, the house that matches your topic is the matter, and the fourth house shows how it ends.
A word of caution
Geomancy is a tool for reflection. It cannot see the future with certainty, and it is no substitute for professional medical, legal or financial advice. A clearly phrased question matters more than anything: the chart answers exactly what you ask.