Reading Room · Fortune-Telling Methods · Method
What is geomancy?
Geomancy is a method of divination that interprets sixteen binary figures, each built from four lines of dots, each line either odd or even. Its name comes from Greek roots meaning divination by earth, and it reached Europe from Arabic texts, where practitioners studied and transmitted its figures over many centuries.
Facts checked on against 16 sources, 8 of them museum, university, archive, library, government or primary texts.
Key facts
Every line comes from a source listed at the bottom of the page. The small numbers point to it.
| 1241–1242 (AH 639) | The brass geomantic instrument by Muhammad ibn Khutlukh al-Mawsili is dated to this year and probably made in Damascus.1 |
|---|---|
| 1531 | Cornelius Agrippa's Three Books of Occult Philosophy is cited as including geomancy.234 |
| 1655 | Robert Turner publishes an English translation of the Latin treatise Of Geomancy attributed to pseudo-Agrippa.5 |
| 1889 | Franz Hartmann's The principles of astrological geomancy appears, later revised as Geomancy: a method of divination.6 |
| 1972 | Israel Regardie's A Practical Guide to Geomancy presents the figures mainly through their astrological signs.7 |
The sixteen figures and how they are cast
Geomancy uses sixteen symbols, each made of four lines with one dot (odd) or two dots (even). Traditional casting traces sixteen rows of random dots, and the counts in each row yield four primary figures called the Mothers.89
The remaining figures are built from the Mothers. Regardie describes the Four Daughters as derived from the Mothers and the Four Nephews as formed by adding pairs of the preceding figures, while the Judge is constructed from the Right and Left Witnesses.8
The chart contains the four Mothers, four Daughters, four Nephews, two Witnesses and a Judge. The Right Witness represents the questioner, the Left Witness the subject of the question, and the Judge the outcome.109
Britannica describes three steps: asking a question, casting the points and figures, and interpreting the figures arranged in a tableau. Most geomancers follow the Arabic casting, with sixteen lines of dots marked from right to left.11
Correspondences and houses
Each figure was associated with a compass direction, a planet, a zodiacal sign, one of the four Western elements and a season, and in Arab and early medieval geomancy the figures were correlated with the 28 lunar mansions.10
Regardie attributes the figures to the four elements, the seven planets and the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Since medieval times the figures have been assigned to the twelve astrological houses, with the first house relating to life and the querent.810
Geomancers do not agree on a fixed ordering of the sixteen figures. Some order them by elemental makeup, others by planets or signs.12
Origins and transmission
The art known in the West as geomancy appears to be a distinctly Islamic development that later reached the Byzantine and Latin worlds. Ilm al-raml, called khatt al-raml in Arabic, emerged in the Islamic world.132
Britannica states that the European practice flourished in Europe and Great Britain until the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Reason. From the 12th to the 17th centuries it was second only to astrology, described as the daughter of astrology.1110
What the tradition holds
How practitioners describe it, in their terms. Described, not endorsed.
Regardie states that the Golden Dawn tradition invokes the element of Earth through the God-name Adonai ha-Aretz, associated with Malkuth on the Qabalistic Tree of Life. Greer's books place the geomantic practice within the Golden Dawn style of invoking and banishing pentagrams and hexagrams.87
Practitioners in the Islamic world describe geomancy, or ilm al-raml, as an art of marks in sand; Ashmolean's curator Francesca Leoni describes it as a divinatory technique known as the science of the sand.1415
What the evidence shows
What historians, scientists and controlled tests have found.
The British Museum's 13th-century brass geomantic instrument is described as turning a first series of four dials to create four dot patterns, from which the geomancer derives twelve further patterns. Its inscriptions list the sixteen positions or houses of the geomantic tableau.114
Britannica notes that feng shui and sacred geometry have been erroneously labeled as geomancy and are not used for divination, and that the original contexts of old divination traditions are virtually impossible to discover.11
Worked out from the evidence
Not stated outright by any one source. It is worked out from the sources cited.
Not yet confirmed
- Where and when the sixteen-figure system first took shape remains debated among historians of Arabic divination.
- How closely the Arabic sand method and the medieval European chart were connected in their early transmission?
Sources
Museums, universities, archives and primary texts first. Every fact is paraphrased and nothing is copied; Wikipedia is never cited.
- islamicworld.britishmuseum.org: Divination equipment - The British Museum: Islamic Gallery. Read on · Museum
- mysticryst.com: Geomancy History: Earth Divination Systems | Complete Guide – Nicole's ritual universe. Read on · Reference
- gutenberg.org: A History of Magic and Experimental Science, Volume 2 (of 2). Read on · Primary text
- timesofindia.indiatimes.com: [TOI](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com "News"). Read on · Reference
- princeton.edu: Medieval Geomancy. Read on · University
- archive.org: Geomancy. Read on · Primary text
- alexandercummins.com: An Earthly Garden: Towards A Geomancy Bibliography — Dr. Alexander Cummins. Read on · Reference
- archive.org: Full text of "Israel Regardie - A Practical Guide To Geomantic Divination". Read on · Primary text
- mysticryst.com: Geomancy: The 16 Figures & Arabic Origins | By Nicole Lau – Nicole's ritual universe. Read on · Reference
- fengshuisociety.org.uk: What is geomancy? - The Feng Shui Society. Read on · Reference
- britannica.com: Geomancy | Definition, Figures, & Facts | Britannica. Read on · Reference
- prismavisions.com: The Sixteen Figures of Geomancy – Prisma Visions. Read on · Reference
- archive.org: Full text of "Islamic geomancy and a 13th century divinatory device". Read on · Primary text
- hyperallergic.com: Divination, Geomancy, and the Supernatural in Islamic Art. Read on · Museum
- islamicart.museumwnf.org: Geomantic Instrument - Discover Islamic Art - Virtual Museum. Read on · Museum
- wordtrade.com: Geomancy - Wordtrade.com. Read on · Reference