Geomancy · Overview

Geomancy

Geomancy is a form of divination built from sixteen figures, each made of four lines containing either one dot or two. A reading begins with four figures, traditionally produced by making uncounted marks in sand and reducing each row to odd or even. These four “Mothers” supply the chance element. The remaining eleven figures of the shield chart—the Daughters, Nieces, Witnesses, and Judge—are then derived from them by fixed operations. Once the Mothers have been cast, nothing in the construction is left to taste, intuition, or convenience. The system reached Latin Europe through translations from Arabic in the twelfth century and circulated alongside astrology and other divinatory arts. It survived the arrival of print and was still being published as a practical method in the seventeenth century, when writers such as Robert Fludd explained how it could be used to judge questions about journeys, marriages, illnesses, thefts, and proposed actions.

What makes geomancy especially worth including here is that most of its machinery can be checked. Each figure is essentially a four-bit pattern, so the sixteen traditional figures are simply the sixteen possible ways of arranging one or two dots across four lines. There is no disputed image to reproduce and nothing that needs to be drawn from somebody else’s reconstruction: the complete table follows from the structure of the system itself. The same is true of a shield chart. Only its first four figures are cast; the other eleven are determined from them. Anyone who doubts a chart can work through it again and see whether the Daughters were copied correctly and whether each later figure follows from the pair before it. Interpretation may still be debatable, but the chart being interpreted does not have to be taken on trust.

The figures here are cut out of Robert Turner's 1655 English of Of Geomancy, printed with the Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy. Historical spellings such as Aquisitio are retained, while obsolete letterforms are modernized for display; the planet beside each pair is the one that table gives.

From cast points to a geomantic shield An odd row of points becomes one dot, an even row becomes two; four such lines make the figure Puer; eight figures at the top of a shield combine in pairs into four Nieces, two Witnesses, and one Judge. A row becomes one line odd → one dot even → two dots Four lines become a figure Puer one · one · two · one dots, read from top to bottom The shield narrows by pairs 4 Mothers 4 Daughters Nieces Witnesses Judge
Odd and even rows make the lines of a figure. Whole figures then combine through the shield until only the Judge remains.

The figures, the method, the shield

  • The sixteen figures All sixteen with their dots, their planets, and what each is made of.
  • How a shield is made The method step by step, with the 1655 English beside every step and the Judge's parity proved.
  • Cast a shield Four Mothers, and the eleven figures that follow from them, built one move at a time. Nothing is stored.
  • Houses and meanings The twelve house topics and Turner's complete figure-in-house judgments, with scan locators.
  • Disputed attributions Two zodiacal lists and three elemental schemes, shown side by side instead of reconciled.

The whole method in six moves

Enough to follow a shield without leaving this page. How a shield is made takes each of these apart, quotes the printing for it, and works an example through.

  1. Cast sixteen rows of points

    Four rows at a time, made without counting them. An odd row leaves one dot, an even row leaves two, so four rows give one figure.

  2. That is four Mothers

    Sixteen rows, four figures. These are the only chance in the shield; everything after them is worked out.

  3. Read them down for four Daughters

    Set the Mothers side by side and read the columns instead of the rows. No new points — the same sixteen lines, transposed.

  4. Add the eight in pairs for four Nieces

    To add two figures, take them line by line: alike leaves two dots, unlike leaves one. That is the only operation in the art.

  5. Add the Nieces in pairs for two Witnesses

    The right one carries what the Mothers came to, the left what the Daughters came to. Turner calls them the Coadjutrices, or Testes.

  6. Add the Witnesses for the Judge

    One figure, and it always has an even number of dots — not by convention but because every cast point has been counted twice on the way up. Turner calls it the Index of the whole figure.

All sixteen

  1. The greater Fortune Sun
  2. The lesser Fortune Sun
  3. Via Moon
  4. Populus Moon
  5. Aquisitio Jupiter
  6. Lætitia Jupiter
  7. Puella Venus
  8. Amissio Venus
  9. Conjunctio Mercury
  10. Albus Mercury
  11. Puer Mars
  12. Rubeus Mars
  13. Carcer Saturn
  14. Tristitia Saturn
  15. ☊ Dragons head the Dragon's head and tail carry no planet here
  16. ☋ Dragons taile the Dragon's head and tail carry no planet here

Meanings, houses, and disputed attributions

Each figure now has Turner's general account of its nature and the complete set of house judgments from the 1655 English. The source wording and scan locator stay together; where Turner gives one rule for the Dragon's Tail instead of twelve separate passages, that is exactly how it is shown.

The zodiacal correspondences are present as two separate lists because the printing disagrees with itself. Acquisitio, for example, is Pisces in the first list and Aries in the second. The three elemental arrangements are kept separate for the same reason, including the first list's unassigned figures.

The first four Mothers occupy Houses 1–4, the four Daughters Houses 5–8, and the four Nieces Houses 9–12. The Witnesses and Judge are later parts of the shield, not extra houses. A cast can therefore show the source judgment for the figure in each of its first twelve places without pretending that the Judge itself is a thirteenth house.

These pages provide the source material for reading a shield; they do not turn it into an automatic oracle. Turner's final method asks the practitioner to compare repeated figures, the house of the question, and the Judge together. That act of judgment is presented as a practice to study, not hidden behind a generated answer.