John Michael Greer - Earth Divination, Earth Magic: A Practical Guide to Geomancy

EARTH DIVINATION, EARTH MAGIC

A Practical Guide to Geomancy

John Michael Greer

AEON

First published in 1999 by Llewellyn Publications

Aeon Books Ltd
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Copyright 2019 by John Michael Greer

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ISBN-13: 978-1-91280-707-9

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

O ne of the most widely respected voices in contemporary occult studies, John Michael Greer is the award-winning author of more than fifty books, including The New Encyclopedia of the Occult, The Druidry Handbook, The Celtic Golden Dawn, and Circles of Power: An Introduction to Hermetic Magic. An initiate in Freemasonry, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, Greer served as the Grand Archdruid of the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA) for twelve years. He lives in Rhode Island with his wife Sara.

John Michael Greer is also the author of eleven fantasy and science fiction novels and ten nonfiction books on peak oil and the future of industrial society, and also blogs weekly on politics, magic, and the future at www.ecosophia.net.

PART I

EARTH DIVINATION

CHAPTER ONE

The forgotten oracle

G eomancy is a traditional Western way of divination based on intuitive contact with the subtle energies of the Earth. Nowadays, it's probably the least well-known of the major methods of divination belonging to the Western world's magical traditions; it's no misstatement, in fact, to call it the forgotten oracle of the West.

Even using the word geomancy in modern times risks a good deal of confusion. This term, which is derived from the Greek words ge, earth, and manteia, prophecy or divination, has come to be used in recent years for a flurry of different and mostly unrelated topicsfrom feng shui and related systems of spatial design, through ancient traditions of omen interpretation and prophetic lore based on earthquakes and other geological events, to speculations involving ley lines, megaliths, and hidden patterns embedded in the landscape. Each of these has something to do with the Earth, and something (although not always much) to do with divination; none of them have anything significant in common with the subject of this book.

From the high Middle Ages until the end of the Renaissance, by contrast, the word geomancy (and its equivalents in other Western languages) meant one thing only: a specific method of divination using a series of sixteen figures formed of points, and the philosophy andpractice centered on that methoda philosophy and practice based on a deeply magical understanding of the flow of elemental energies through the living body of the Earth. This same meaning of the word remained standard within the secret or semi-secret magical orders that carried on the traditions of Western occultism during the heyday of scientific rationalism, and it is the meaning that will be used here. This is not to dismiss the other traditions and teachings just mentioned; some of them deserve careful study on their own. The point that needs to be made here is simply that they have nothing to do with the kind of geomancy we will be discussing, and should not be confused with it.

A glimpse of geomancy

So what is geomancy? The best way to learn that is to see the method in action on a first-hand basis. As a first step in that direction, pick up a pen or pencil and a piece of paper. Think about a situation you are facing, one that is likely to have either a favorable or an unfavorable outcome, and then clear your mind and make a line of dots or dashes at random on the paper. Don't count the number of marks while making them. Do the same thing three more times, so that you have four lines of marks on the paper, like the ones below:

Now count the marks in each line separately. If the first line has an odd number of marks, that equals a single dot at the top of the geomantic figure you're producing; if an even number, that equals two dots .

If the second line has an odd number, put one dot as the next part of the figure, or two dots if the number of marks is even. Count the other two lines in the same way, to produce a figure made of four elements, each one a single or double dot. The result should be one of the figures in .

The favorable or unfavorable nature of the figure shows the most likely outcome of the situation. The meanings and symbolic name of the figure you have produced offer keyssome of the many used in more advanced approaches to geomancyto the context of forces surrounding and shaping the situation and your place in it.

The traditional method of geomantic divination starts with four figures, not one, and then uses those four to generate a series of other figures that contribute to the meaning of the complete geomantic chart. Still, the process as you've just experienced it is geomancy in a concentrated form: using what we usually think of as chance to derive one of the geomantic figures, and then using that figure to cast light on a question or a situation.

The eclipse of geomancy

From a historical point of view, it's surprising that the art of geomancy needs even this much introduction. Geomancy was among the most popular of all divinatory methods during the last great magical revival in the Western world, the time of the Renaissance. Henry Cornelius Agrippa and Robert Fludd, two of the most important writers of that revival, both produced significant works on the subject. So did John Heydon, that master plagiarist of the English Renaissance magical scene, whose Theomagia, or the Temple of Wisdome contains a wealth of half-understood geomantic lore rarely touched since his time. These and other Renaissance texts drew on an entire literature of medieval European and Arabic works on geomancy, in which the basic techniques of geomantic divination had been expanded and applied in a vast range of ways.

Astrology was always the most important of medieval and Renaissance divination methods, because of its more extensive vocabulary of symbols and its deep connections to the way the entire universe was understood before the scientific revolution. Still, geomancy also had a significant role as a system of divination and a tool for thought. It made use of a great many astrological elements for its own purposes, and it may have been more commonly used as a means of ordinary divination.

The reason for this last point is not hard to find. In the days before computers, at least, the compilation of a horoscope required a substantial amount of paperwork and a solid grasp of mathematics, but a geomantic chart could (and can) be produced by anyone willing to learn a fairly simple process. This same simplicity makes geomancy perhaps the best introduction to traditional Western divination for the modern student.