Nigel Pennick - Creating Places of Power: Geomancy, Builders Rites, and Electional Astrology in the Hermetic Tradition

CREATING PLACES OF POWER

The archaic lore that traditional builders in Europe once used to bring structures into creative harmony with their physical and spiritual environments has become all but inaccessible to students of the mysteries in todays world. Creating Places of Power remedies that, placing a wealth of once-secret lore in the readers hands. Encyclopedic in its scope and detail, this is the definitive work on a crucial dimension of old earth magic.

JOHN MICHAEL GREER, AUTHOR OF THE SECRET OF THE TEMPLE AND THE TWILIGHT OF PLUTO

In Creating Places of Power, Nigel Pennick, an established authority on folklore, folk magic, and ancient beliefs with more than 60 books to his name, hones his work on the European ancestral heritage of geomancy, sharing fascinating facts and practices that are accessible and also of value today. Crammed with a generous sharing of wisdom, this illustrated book is highly recommended.

JUNE KENT,PUBLISHER AND EDITOR OF INDIE SHAMAN MAGAZINE

The geomantic layout of the city of Karlsruhe, Baden, Germany. (Nigel Pennick)

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I would like to thank Patrick McFadzean for his help with astrological texts.

Contents

Preface to the New Edition

Since I wrote this book a quarter century ago, the inexorable process of human dislocation from Nature has continued apace. Global destruction of the natural world, ecological degradation, and the proliferation and use of weapons of war has expanded and accelerated. This vanishing world is in need of rescue, but the powerful glamour of technologies that produce an illusion of mastery are accelerating its destruction. Gleefully, exponents of virtual, digital illusions assert that place, time, and space have ceased to have any real meaning. But virtual reality is only an illusion. It has not replaced the realities of existence, the nature of the planet we live on, or the stark fact of the human condition. Whether or not we choose to comprehend it, we are in the real world. We are subject to the same forces, the same conditions, as our ancestors. They developed cultures that worked with Nature, conducting life in harmony with the cycles of the cosmos. They understood that we are part of Nature and when we deny this, we demolish the foundations supporting life on Earth. But the ancient skills and wisdom that sustained our ancestors have been banished to the borderlands and in some places, utterly extinguished. Traditional cultures the world over are based upon the archetypal realities of the physical world, and a spiritual understanding of our place within a system far greater than ourselves. In the vast span of time that humans have lived on this planet, this present phase is clearly an aberration. The current effects of unbridled human activity on the environment are obvious to all except those who wear virtual-reality headsets.

I offer this new edition as a record and a teaching of the eternal principles that exist at a far more fundamental level than the conflicting political and religious theories and ideologies that currently have hegemony over most of the peoples of the world.

NIGEL PENNICK
OLD ENGLAND HOUSE
ST. WINNALS DAYMARCH3, 2022

Introduction

And do not ask me by chance who is my master or which deity protects me. I am not bound to revere the word of any master.

HORACE, NULLIUS IN VERBA: EPISTLES

Nothing in existence exists separatelyeverything that is present in the cosmos is continuous with its surroundings and is the product of its own unique historical circumstances. Wherever we choose to look, there is nothing that exists now, or that has existed in the past, that has not come into being because of a multiplicity of events and processes. Everything can be traced back to the time when the world came into being aeons ago, and even before that. When humans make things, there is a precise moment when the artifact comes into being as a separate entity. Although it has not been created out of nothing, it has a precise time of birth. Because each time has its own quality, it affects whatever comes into being at that instant. There is a right time to do something, and a wrong time. We have the power to decide this moment.

All physical artifacts occupy space. Buildings especially define space by enclosing and articulating it. When space is used with understanding, a tangible reality is created. This is presence. There is no presence without time, and it is in time that all things exist. All material things have physical and temporal dimensions. Just as their presence is defined by where they begin and end in space, so they are also defined by where they begin and end in time. Because there are both favorable and unfavorable times to begin a venture, or to finish an artifact, it is desirable to have the ability to distinguish them. If we ignore the possibility of knowing, then we increase the likelihood of doing something at the wrong time and failing in whatever we do. So, throughout history, people have employed various techniques to determine the qualities of particular moments. Divination, chronomancy, and astrology came into being to inform us of the nature of these time qualities, and to predict them.

Figure I.1. European traditional building techniques date back over 7,000 years. This is a modern reconstruction of a Celtic lake village (original before 500 BCE) at the Pfahlbaumuseum at Unteruhldingen, Lake Constance, Germany. (Nigel Pennick)

This book is about recognizing and dealing with earthly time and space, especially in the spheres of sacred and secular building. In this book, I reassemble the European ancestral heritage of geomantic practice. Its principles have existed in Europe in some form or other for over 7,000 years. In this book, I give instances of this tradition that come from various parts of Europe and beyond. Such principles have been present throughout history and are found within both Pagan and monotheistic religions for they recognize an archetypal perception of human existence on Earth. Because they are eternal, they are meaningful today and of value to everyone who uses them.

NIGEL PENNICK
BAR HILL
JULY 26, 1998 CE

CHAPTER 1

Patterns of Existence

Consciousness, the Gods, and the Stars

The octave teaches the saints to be holy.

LATIN INSCRIPTION ON A MEDIEVAL CAPITAL AT THE ABBEY CHURCH OF CLUNY, FRANCE

PATTERNS

Since ancient times, people have recognized that nothing in the world occurs by mindless, random chance, but has a meaning related to the structure of existence. Every time that we recognize a pattern, this reality is reasserted. The form of patterns is almost infinitely diverse. Since the earliest times, people have seen human faces in rocks, humanoid forms in trees, animal shapes in the clouds, and other seemingly nonrandom patterns. These they have taken as evidence for the creative, communicative action of a conscious cosmos that sometimes they personified as divine beings. By scrutinizing natural or generated patterns, diviners learnt to extract information from the given natural world. Through study and experience, the skilled diviner can have an intimate knowledge of the common pattern that he or she can see, comparing it with an inner conceptual image. When the outer patterns of the world concur with the diviners inner patterns, then meaning is recognized, and the status of the patterns can be evaluated. When they do not concur, then by close comparison the differences can be determined and evaluated, too.