I was looking over some of the threads in /r/occult on Reddit recently and came across a perplexing, bemusing thread that…not gonna lie, it made me too angry to reply to it.  Like, not enraged Tea Party-like flaming anger, but there was just so much wrong with the OP’s views that I had a hard time knowing where to begin.  They admitted they were new, but I contented myself with downvoting and upvoting replies appropriately in the thread.  The gist of the thread was that the OP was looking for “propper [sic] grimoires”, at first for display purposes like home decor but later to actually read and investigate.  After having been suggested the Clavicula Solomonis, the OP did some searching on Amazon, but decided he didn’t want ”Knock-off / Edited / Bad copies of the book”, trying to find “the acutal [sic] book itself”.  From his later replies in the thread, he didn’t necessarily want the original manuscripts, just the “original text” instead of something that had been “edited into oblivion”.

I…what is this, I don’t even.  Essentially, what he’s asking is like asking for the original Gospel of John, Dao De Jing, or something similar, the very first copy taken down by hand without any of the translation, editing, or whatnot.  None of the attached philosophy or editing, just the good ol’ original text without any of the extra embellishment.

This is such a bad question that I honestly don’t know how to reply except “no, stop it, you’re doing it wrong”.  Actually, no, it’s so bad, it’s not even wrong.  Grimoires (literally “grammars”, methods and rules for learning and applying magic that often contain exact ritual specifications in addition to magical and ritual frameworks) aren’t discrete texts that arose independently in occult vacuums.  Grimoires, then and now, were part of a thriving (and often underground) tradition of magic that was derived from older grimoires before them and helped derive newer ones after them.  They were more academic than hedgewitchy formularies or herbals, and less philosophical than outright religious tractates on angels or heresies, but were still fairly academic texts.

The big issue is that academic rigor nowadays is much different from academic rigor back then.  Combining hearsay with experimental or anecdotal data, plus plenty of appeals to authority (Plato, Aristotle, Vergil, and Solomon were some of the faves back then), as well as flawless incorporation of spiritual and material knowledge yielded sometimes awkward but applicable logical results in magic.  The primary method of transcribing this method was by manuscript and handwritten text; given the expensive nature of book publishing and the fact that vanishingly few publishers would want their names sent to the Inquisition for starting up a Renaissance Llewellyn, there was really no other choice but to copy, write, and transcribe grimoires from book to blank book.  This would by nature make the texts different through copy differences and transcription errors, sometimes in significant ways (differences in sigils, holy names, and words of power especially).

Plus, these texts were also largely written and copied by people who were actually doing the work, reading and incorporating those texts into their own occult practice, perhaps keeping the text intact with as few errors or differences as possible, sometimes adding in their own information or experiments, sometimes blending in information or technique from multiple sources.  Whether they wanted to keep to the tradition verbatim, add in their own supplements, or make changes based on their own experiments (e.g. “method X won’t work as written, use improvised method Y for expected results”), the end results gave grimoires a life of their own, growing and changing with different generations of occultists and magicians.

Another big source of edits in the grimoires was that their source information was often unintelligible or poorly understood to begin with.  Many of the oldest texts we have out there in the grimoire tradition are in Greek or Hebrew, and many European occultists simply had bad understanding of either language; the phrase “it’s Greek to me” came from this very situation by monks with the same problem.  Between translation to translation to copy to copy, names or nuances might have been changed or lost, especially based on the aesthetics of the transcriber’s eye when it came to magical circles, diagrams, or sigils.  This is especially bad with Hebrew, as can be seen in many manuscripts of the middle-to-late Renaissance, where any word with “Hebrew letters” is downright illegible.  There’re good arguments to be made that these illegible or overly-and-poorly stylized Hebrew letters sometimes became magical sigils in their own right, which again would undergo changes from copy to copy.

And then there’s the whole notion of “forged” grimoires.  So what if something is a “forgery”?  What would it have been forged from?  Who even cares?  Half of the texts used in the Renaissance, medieval era, and back were variously attributed to the Jewish prophets, Christian apostles, Greek philosophers, rabbinic authorities, and so forth often with no real connection between what the prophet/philosopher/apostle/etc. was known for and what the text was about (cf. Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, or the “Diadem of Moses” from the PGM, or Pietro d’Abano’s Heptameron).  The attribution of a text to a spurious author doesn’t really change the nature of the text; the real question on evaluating whether a magical text is legitimate is whether its magic is legitimate.  As Crowley said, “let success be thy proof”.  By this metric, then, even copies of the Necronomicon (a wholly and fully fictional text from Lovecraftian mythos that some authors took and ran with) are legitimate, because their magic works.  Who cares if it was made up out of whole cloth, or whether it was based on older sources?  If it works, it works; if not, trash it and start with a different text.

Asking for an “original grimoire” is…well, it’s a stupid request.  If you’re looking for an actual manuscript from the 1500s, you’d be better off trying to bribe one of the curators in the Bodleian or Ashmolean Libraries, or be willing to shell out thousands on eBay or something.  If you’re looking for the original text from which something came from, you’re on a fool’s errand.  Consider the Key of Solomon, which has some of its earliest known copies from the 1400s; we find similar information in the Grimoirum Verum and Liber Juratus, with information in Liber Juratus coming from the Hygromanteia and Sefer Razielis, which is based on the Sefer Raziel ha-Malakh, which comes from a tradition dating back to the classical Sefer ha-Razim and Greek Magical Papyri.  From Liber Juratus and the Key of Solomon, in turn, we also have material that formed the basis of the Heptameron, which is a close sibling or cousin to the planetary conjurations of the Munich Manual of Necromancy; from the Heptameron we have Trithemius’ method of drawing spirits into crystals, which itself forms the basis for much of my work.  Asking what the original source for all this stuff is, without edits or changes or translations, is like asking who the first guy who talked to angels with using a wand and circle.

I understand the want for a “critical edition” or “authoritative copy” of a text, I really do, but it’s something we take for granted in our modern age when we have Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia and people from on-high or centralized systems telling us what’s cool and what’s not.  But this is hard to do when different copies of a given text are equally useful as tried by different people or handed down in different traditions, difficult when you’re looking at centuries of living tradition and practice that introduced features rather than bugs, and impossible when there’s no authority to judge authenticity or correctness.  Magic is often seen as belonging to orthopraxy instead of orthodoxy, proper practice instead of proper doctrine; magic involves actually doing stuff more than it does simply learning it.

Compared to most of my friends (but not you, Kalagni), I have a pretty extensive Amazon wishlist filled mostly with books.  Every year in early autumn, I start prioritizing the things I want for my birthday and Christmas, and usually get a good haul, even if only by blowing my holiday bonus and Christmas checks on the stuff.  (Also, if you ever wanted to get me anything from my list to support my magical endeavors, rest assured I will definitely give you a shoutout and put a good word or eight in for you with the spirits.)  This past winter was particularly bountiful, getting something like eighteen new books from my Amazon wishlist, which is pretty awesome.  I’m slowly making my way through them all, and one of the more interesting ones was the book Communing with the Spirits: The Magical Practice of Necromancy by Martin Coleman.  It’s basically a beginner’s text on necromancy, or communing and working with the spirits of the dead; though I probably won’t have much opportunity to use the knowledge, I still wanted a good reference for the art to at least know my stuff on it.  Plus, it had good reviews on Amazon, which made it appealing to add to my library.

This is the second edition of the text, published in 2005 by Xlibris Press.  The 196pp. book is on the better side of standard quality, with a suitably formal and plain cover, spine, and back design.  The text quality has a number of errors and could definitely use some better editing (I found too many typographic and punctuation-based errors to track, and some of the pages seem slightly skewed, both of which detract and distract from the content of the text.  While the author had a few lucid points here and there, Coleman’s favorite word throughout the book was “must”; the book halfway read like a catechism of dogmatic faith and a rulebook for tabletop RPGs with all its strict delineations of how the world is and must be.  At a high level, the book’s method is elegant and simple though not without its fair share of work, but comes across as overly condescending to the spirits, if not outright controlling and forceful.  While indicating a very few good techniques and tricks, the book is more distasteful and stunted in reach than it denies.

Coleman begins with defining necromancy as literally “seeing with the dead”, a method of divination or obtaining information through the agency of dead spirits.  The book is pretty clear from the start that this is not an introduction to magic: there are no basics on banishing or shielding, breathing or meditating, or any other introductory topics.  It assumes a basic faith in magic, non-physical entities a.k.a. spirits, and Divinity, and goes from there.  For being a guide to necromancy, this is where the book shines, especially since the method used by Coleman is fairly tradition-independent, able to fit into any paradigm or method of magic or devotional practice.  It focuses on the use of three sets of spirits (one’s ancestors, one’s divinatory spirit, and one’s operative spirit) as well as how to begin working with them and how to maintain a relationship with them.

The structure of the book starts with the basics of what magic is and how spirits fit into magic, how to begin working with the spirits of the dead in the form of one’s own ancestors, how to set up and maintain an ancestor altar, how to control and manage effects of the spirits on one’s life, how to obtain and work with a divinatory spirit, how to conjure or summon spirits, how to obtain and work with an operative spirit for work besides intel-gathering, and other methods of working with the dead.  The book follows a fairly natural procession from basic necromantic practice to more detailed applications of the art, and Coleman has warnings and injunctions throughout the book indicating that one should not continue to read without having done X months of practice with some type of spirit or other.  At the end of most chapters Coleman includes a set of criteria by which one can judge their success or efforts in working with the spirits of the dead, which is helpful to one learning the art.

However, Coleman seems to have several rules that dictate all workings with the spirits:

1. Spirits cannot inherently be trusted.
2. Spirits are basically children that must be watched and governed strictly.
3. Spirits must be trained rigorously like pets (at best) or beasts (at worst) in order to be of any use.
4. Spirits will always try to take advantage of the necromancer and, once the necromancer makes a single misstep, will be of no further use to the necromancer.
5. Spirits will easily fall into depression and once they fail at a task even once will be of no further use to the necromancer.
6. Absolute control of all spirits to the letter must be maintained at all times.
7. Everything in the spirit world works exactly one way, which is the way Coleman describes them.

Like I mentioned before, Coleman’s favorite word is “must”, as in how the necromancer-to-be must treat spirits in this manner, must give spirits only so much food to feed them, must know that such-and-such rules apply in all circumstances, and so forth.  It gets real old after a while, especially from my point of view, where reality (on all planes and in all worlds) works more-or-less by consensus or by fluctuating rules or models.  In other words, Coleman has a fairly rigid worldview that cannot account for experiences that happen outside his dogmatic style of necromancy, and many workable or beneficial things that one can do would be illegal or offensive to him.  While I understand the dangers in working with spirits of the dead and why Coleman proposes so much caution in dealing with them via a set of strict guidelines, he comes across as pompous and commanding to the point of ridicule.

Then again, Coleman also has a number of contradictions or flaws in the details.  For example, one part of the book mentions that strong alcoholic drinks are never to be given to the spirits of the dead, then that shots of whiskey can be given as favors or rewards in shot glasses, then only if they’re given in bowls, and so forth.  Another time, Coleman says that necromancers are, on the whole, unable or unfit for working with divine powers or religious frameworks, but also references and discusses magico-religious traditions and arts that involve both devotion to higher powers and working with lower ones.  From my experience in talking with my own psychopomp patron and my other necromancer friends, a lot of what Coleman teaches just doesn’t hold up; for one, I and my friends would consider it a dangerous thing to work with the dead without going through or walking with some divinity or other.  Coleman himself even proposes prayers and workings involving the angel Raphael and the Abrahamic God to release or send off the dead, so I’m unsure where he gets some of this stuff from.

One of the biggest issues I had with Coleman’s book was how he treated spirits.  Though he initially described building friendships with his ancestors and divinatory/operative spirits, he constantly instructs the reader to never build anything more warm than a business or transactional relationship with their spirits.  Even then, Coleman considers spirits to be untrustworthy, and so should be treated like pets or trained servants.  He considers the art of necromancy to be a benefit for his spirits, elevating them to higher spiritual states, but keeps them on short leashes and never describes how the work a necromancer does with a spirit is beneficial for the spirits themselves.  While working in magic is always going to be dangerous to an extent, it’s almost absurd the degree to which Coleman pushes the reader to never give spirits any slack or independence.  It fits in closely with a medieval Christian or Solomonic view of the spirits in that anything that isn’t angelic or divine is inherently evil and untrustworthy, but beyond that, even the Lemegeton and Clavicula Solomonis deals with spirits better and more thoroughly than Coleman does.

While I like the framework for necromantic practice Coleman proposes, as well as some of the details of technique (protective charms, cleansing washes, incense for summoning and working with spirits, etc.), “Communing with the Spirits” read like an extra-dry Dungeons and Dragons book on necromancy.  It would fall fairly solidly in the tradition of Solomonic magic, though it claims tradition-independence, due to how it views and treats spirits of the dead as inherently wicked or untrustworthy.  The method of practice Coleman proposes is slow, steady, and solid, with the book indicating a two- or three-year practice before all the book’s subject matter can be applied fully, which I like (cf. Draja Mickaharic’s methods).  However, while the method is good, the means is disrespectful to the spirits as I read it.  The book lacks sources and references, and though the progression of practice is well-structured in the book, Coleman appears to become confused between some of his contradictions and flaws.  The number of typos and odd formatting in some places is weird for a second edition, too.  Overall, the book isn’t the greatest, and should be taken with a pretty large grain of salt or four if read or applied.  It’s a decent introduction to working with the dead at a high level, but otherwise, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Since one of my most favorite topics in occultism and magic is divination, specifically the divinatory art of geomancy, why not talk about that? I know a lot about it, and not many do, so let’s go with it. If nothing else, you’ll come away slightly more educated, and I’ll come away with something looking like productivity. With that in mind, let’s continue this little series of posts on geomancy, “De Geomanteia” (On Geomancy). This week, let’s talk about this figure:

Acquisitio

This is the figure Acquisitio.  In Latin, its name means “Gain”, which is pretty common in lots of other traditions, but can also be named as “grasping” or “incoming fortune”.  If you (quite literally) connect the dots, you might come up with a figure that looks like a bowl collecting money or an old-style bag of money.

First, the technical details of this figure.  It’s associated with Jupiter in direct motion and the astrological signs of Sagittarius or Aries, depending on whom you ask; due to its Jovial qualities, it’s also associated with the sephirah Chesed.  It has the air and earth lines active with the fire and water lines active, and is overall associated with the element of Air.  It is an even figure with six points, relating to objective situations rather than internal or subjective events.  It is a stable and entering, showing it to be slow-moving and long-lasting where it appears.  In the body, it signifies the hips, thighs, and liver.  Its inverse figure (everything this figure is not on an external level) is Amissio, Loss, showing that this figure is all about gaining, getting, obtaining, amassing, and having things stay within reach as opposed to loss or losing things.   Its reverse figure (the same qualities of this figure taken to its opposite, internal extreme) is also Amissio, showing that there is no other kind of state between loss or gain except loss or gain.  Its converse figure (the same qualities of this figure expressed in a similar manner) is itself, showing Acquisitio to be unique in how it expresses its geomantic symbolism.  Acquisitio is all about gain in every way, from getting more money to catching a cold; as a figure of Jupiter, it’s extremely favorable except in any case when one wants to lose, get rid of, or avoid something.

In my meditation on Acquisitio, I found myself walking down a cold city street swathed in grey: grey buildings, grey skies, grey windows, all very elegant but all very uniform.  All around me, people are walking in black suits and clothes, and I can’t see anyone’s face.  Out of nowhere, a hand presses a gold oblong coin into my own; though I can’t find who gave it to me, it’s the only thing with color here.  It doesn’t really affect my mood and I don’t feel attachment to it, but it does feel nice to have the wealth; it’s still just a coin, a symbol of value.  Walking past the shops, no two alike but all busy yet bleary inside, I find another coin, and then another on the sidewalk.  It’s nice, but it’s really just a distraction from all the loud non-communication non-interaction going on around me.  I spot a bit of color amidst the grey at the end of the street: a toy store or a pawn shop, with people inside smiling and laughing and interacting with each other.  I see everything that I could possibly want, and settle on some books, inks, pens, and parchment; the jolly shopkeeper, asking me playfully what took me so long to get there, readily accepts some of the coins as payment and follows me over to the table where I start drawing: plans, code, blueprints, layouts, whatever.  He looks over my results, trades me another gold coin, and wishes me good luck and a good start.  I leave; the skies are blue, and I find an empty lot on which I make my own building and storefront.  People come in steadily and pay me for services I perform for them, giving me even more of the gold coins.  Eventually, I leave, and sell the building and lot to another customer, and keep on moving.

Like its inverse figure Amissio, Acquisitio is a fairly straightforward figure, implying all that its name implies.  Acquisitio, meaning “gain” or “within reach”, represents obtaining, increasing, taking, getting, receiving, and finding things.  In all cases and in every place in a geomantic reading, Acquisitio means gettin’ it.  Whether this is a good or bad thing, however, depends on whether you want to get it or not.  Generally speaking, people like augmenting, increasing, or getting stuff, so Acquisitio is solidly set in the more favorable of geomancy figures, behind Fortuna Maior and Caput Draconis, though they have their own difficulties, as well.

Acquisitio is a figure of Jupiter in direct motion, Jupiter at its strongest and most beneficial, as well as its most expansive.  Being so powerfully Jovian in nature, Acquisitio reflects these in the most concrete way possible: good luck and good earnings.   Jupiter is the Greater Benefic in astrology, being one of the most fortunate planets (at least when fortunately placed), and is often used in magic for expansion, increase, wealth, and fortune.  These qualities of Jupiter are ancient even in worship, and he was often supplicated for all the good things and benefits in life, especially those of a material nature.  Quoth the Orphic Hymn to the god of Jupiter:

Source of abundance, purifying king,
O various-formed from whom all natures spring;
Propitious hear my prayer, give blameless health,
with peace divine and necessary wealth.

Acquisitio is all about transactions and goods.  It has the focused and material elements of air and earth active, with emotional water and spiritual fire passive, and is overall associated with Air.  As such, Acquisitio is a figure that indicates a need for interacting and working with others.  While wealth can simply be found on the street or by happenstance, which is always nice, wealth and benefits are more reliably and regularly found in working with others, giving so that you can get in return.  This is how businesses turn a profit, after all; all service-providers require someone to serve, all producers require consumers, and nobody works in a vacuum or on an island.  When there’s no interaction, there can’t be any real exchange, and without exchange, material goods just sit there motionless without any use or value.  Even money is a symbol that needs to be exchanged and used in order to be useful; amassing a Scrooge McDuck-like vault of money won’t do you any good unless you actually use it.  Again, this has distinctly Jupiter connections (itself a planet associated with Air): just as grace is a gift freely given, we only find ourselves in grace when we give it to others.  Then again, keep in mind that money alone won’t buy you happiness; without water or fire in Acquisitio, it’s strictly a figure for worldly fortune and gain without any deeper help.

Still, Acquisitio isn’t always favorable.  There are lots of times in life when losing something is much more helpful, especially when one is overwhelmed.  Consider a walled garden: with the proper planning and layout, the entire garden can be covered from one side to the other, filling the entire place with rich, lush, productive, healthy plants.  However, try to plant more than that, or let the garden grow on its own uncontrollably, and it starts to cause problems like fighting over resources, luring pests or rodents in, and having things die off without the proper attention and care being paid to them.  Expansion is good but only to a certain point, after which things become too much to handle.  And even then, sometimes contraction and cutting stuff off is still helpful; when one wants to clear away the extra, trim off the fat, or make do with less, Acquisitio is not helpful.  Saturn, too, has his role to play (we’ll get to those figures next).

When Acquisitio appears in a reading, it generally indicates gain, increase, and good fortune.  It often indicates patience and prudence in character, and it signifies success when trying to find lost or missing objects, goals, and people.  It’s not great in matters of health, often indicating catching some disease or other, but unless the rest of the chart is dour, it indicates strength as well.  Needless to say, it’s favorable in the houses of ownership and finances: second for money and movable possessions, fourth for real estate, fifth for gambling and speculative ventures, sixth for pets and small livestock, eighth for inheritance, tenth for career, and twelfth for large livestock and wild animals.  When found with the Part of Fortune, expect easy access to resources, whatever you may need.  Magically, Acquisitio is awesome for wealth and financial magic, especially in money drawing or money holding rituals, as well as trying to find lost or misplaced things.  It may have the side effect of gaining weight, but then again, that’s Jupiter for you.

A while back, I mentioned something about geomantic superfigures, which has recently become another focus of mine.  The De Geomanteia posts I’m doing are awesome for getting me to revisit old topics in geomancy, and I feel like the superfigures (I should a devise better name than that, perhaps “geomantic emblems”?) are something to be worked on a little more.  In a nutshell, geomantic superfigures are 19-row figures that, if you take any four consecutive rows, yields one of the 16 geomantic figures, and all 16 selections of four consecutive rows yield all sixteen geomantic figures exactly once.  They’re basically microcosms of the universe represented geomantically.  I suggest reading the old post above on the geomantic superfigures to get an idea of what they are.  There are 256 different geomantic superfigures, which is significant since 256 = 16².

I developed the idea for geomantic superfigures emblems a while ago as an exercise in combining a particular problem from computer science algorithms and DNA sequencing with geomancy, and though it seems useful, I never really developed a use for it, and so the idea and the list of 256 emblems just sat there gathering dust.  Recently on the Geomantic Campus mailing list, the geomancer prunesquallori picked up the idea and did some more analysis on it, and came up with a few awesome observations:

1. Each geomantic emblem has 19 lines, but the last three lines must always be the same as the first three lines, i.e. line 1 = line 17, line 2 = line 18, line 3 = line 19).
2. Because of the repetition of lines, we can reduce the size of the geomantic emblem to 16 lines without losing any information.  This is a far more appealing number than 19, geomantically speaking.
3. One can rotate the 16-line emblems line by line, i.e. old line 1 becomes new line 16, old line 2 becoming new line 1, … old line 16 becoming new line 15.  This, when combined with the above, will yield another valid geomantic emblem.
4. Each emblem can be rotated a total of 16 times, which produces a cycle.  Because there are 256 emblems, each of which can be rotated into or is rotated from another 16 emblems, we can reduce the 256 emblems to 16 if we ignore what position we begin at.

Consider the geomantic emblem from the last post, which we described as the binary string 0000100110101111000.  This figure contains, taking successive groups of four consecutive bits (0 represents a passive line and 1 an active line), the geomantic figures Populus, Tristitia, Albus, Rubeus, Carcer, Fortuna Maior, Coniunctio, Puer, Amissio, Acquisitio, Puella, Caput Draconis, Via, Cauda Draconis, Fortuna Minor, and Laetitia.  However, notice that the last three binary digits and the first three are the same; we can reduce the figure in size to the emblem 0000100110101111.  We can take for granted that the last three bits are going to be 000 since the first three are 000, so we leave them unwritten.  If we rotate the emblem by two bits to the right, we get 1100001001101011 in 16-bit form, or 1100001001101011110 in 19-bit form, which is another valid geomantic emblem.  This geomantic emblem contains, in order, the geomantic figures Fortuna Minor, Laetitia, Populus, Tristitia, Albus, Rubeus, Carcer, Fortuna Major, Conjunctio, Puer, Amissio, Acquisitio, Puella, Caput Draconis, Via, and Cauda Draconis.

Knowing that we can break down the emblems into 16-bit strings, or 16-line emblems, makes interpreting and using them a good bit easier.  For a simple elemental interpretation of the emblems, consider that a normal 4-row geomantic figure has one row for each of the four elements fire, air, water, and earth from top to bottom.  If we magnify the geomantic emblems into four groups of four rows, the first set of four rows can be assigned to fire as a whole, the second set to air, the third set to water, and the fourth set to earth.  Within these sets, we assign each individual row to an element as we would normally, so the first row of a set is assigned to fire, the second to air, and so forth.  By using this scheme, we can interpret the geomantic emblem as having whole geomantic figures representing how a particular element manifests.

Moreover, in using this scheme, we then can have lines that represent a particular element within a particular element.  The fire row of the fire quartet of lines would be “fire of fire”, or pure fire; the air row of the fire quartet would be “air of fire”, the interactive or mobile force of fire.  The system would continue so there’d be sixteen combinations: fire of fire, air of fire, water of fire, earth of fire, fire of air, air of air, and all the way down to earth of earth at the bottom.  By seeing how the interplay of elements works within the elements themselves, we can get a deeper understanding of the emblem they appear in.  Conversely, if we take the pure elemental lines out of the emblem and combine them, we can get a geomantic figure that can capture the essence of the emblem.  In this manner, there would be 16 emblems per geomantic figure.

As an example, consider the emblem 0000100110101111 from above.  Breaking it down into four groups of four lines, we have Populus (0000), Carcer (1001), Amissio (1010), and Via (1111).  Populus represents the force of fire in the emblem, Carcer the force of air, Amissio the force of water, and Via the force of earth.  If we took the pure elemental lines (fire of fire, line 1; air of air, line 6; water of water, line 11; earth of earth, line 16), we get the figure Tristitia (0001).   If we look at the emblem 1100001001101011, we have Fortuna Minor (1100) for the force of fire, Albus for the force of air (0010), Coniunctio for the force of water (0110), and Puella for the force of earth (1011).  Taking the pure elemental lines, we get the figure Puella (1011).  Fortuna Minor in this emblem would be especially powerful, since it’s a figure ruled by fire appearing as the force of fire in the emblem.

Also, consider that in having a 16-row emblem, we have the same number of rows required to develop a full geomantic chart, which can also help elaborate or expand on the nature of the sequence of figures that combine to form a geomantic emblem.  Given the emblem 1100001001101011, using Fortuna Minor, Albus, Coniunctio, and Puella for the four Mother figures, we find that the Judge is Coniunctio, the Sentence is Amissio, the Via Puncti doesn’t lead anywhere, the sum of the chart is 94, the Part of Fortune is in house 10, and the Part of Spirit is in house 2.  The rest of the chart I leave for the reader to derive, but interpreting this chart could yield even more information on a particular geomantic emblem that would help in unfolding its meaning or core.

Going back a bit, I mentioned above that there are 16 cycles of emblems, where if you rotate a particular emblem 15 times in succession you get another valid emblem.  Repeating this for all 16 emblems yields 256 total emblems.  Starting from an arbitrary point, the 16 16-bit cycles are:

1. 1000010011010111
2. 1000010011110101
3. 1000010100110111
4. 1000010100111101
5. 1000010110011110
6. 1000010110100111
7. 1000010111100110
8. 1000010111101001
9. 1000011001011110
10. 1000011010010111
11. 1000011010111100
12. 1000011011110010
13. 1000011110010110
14. 1000011110100101
15. 1000011110101100
16. 1000011110110010

Keep in mind that, because emblems can be cycled, you could all start these so that they start with the part of the emblem that goes 1111 and still have valid emblems.  It’s probably better to picture them as rings or bands instead of strings to emphasize their cyclic nature.  They’re presented above so that they start with 10001 for convenience.

Since there are 16 cycles, each of which can produce 16 emblems, I figured that there would be a way to link each cycle to one of the 16 geomantic figures, affording yet another way to classify the emblems but in a helpful non-elemental manner.  This would help in picking out specific emblems from the set of 256, such as by saying “the emblem in the Albus cycle beginning with Puella”.   However, doing this is tricky, since the cycles are independent of starting point, and so using arbitrary lines in the emblem is about as good as labeling two otherwise identical spheres A and B based on where you happened to touch them first.  A lot of the methods I first tried  made use of assigning a “start point” somehow, which defeated the whole purpose.  Other methods I tried allocated multiple emblems to a given figure but skipped over others entirely, which was also unhelpful.

However, in the end, a method of allocating the sixteen emblematic cycles to the sixteen figures of geomancy was found!  How, might you ask?  With a lot of work and structural analysis, that’s for damn sure.  Stay tuned to see what that method is and what the sixteen emblematic cycles are corresponded with.

Last time I brought up the geomantic emblems (previously called geomantic superfigures, 256 16-line “figures” that each contain all 16 geomantic figures within themselves), I described a few bits about the elemental representation and force within each figure.  In the process, I described a method where each geomantic emblem can be elementally analyzed and given an “elemental essential” rulership, by taking the “pure elemental” lines, and also how to split up the emblems into four figures to give them an entire geomantic chart as background.  However, I also mentioned that all 256 emblems could be reduced to a set of 16 by rotating them around; in other words, there are 16 sets of 16 topologically equivalent geomantic emblems.  16 is a significant number in geomancy, as my astute readers may have noticed, and I brought up how tempting and tantalizing it would be to assign a set of rulerships that correspond these 16 sets of geomantic emblems to the 16 figures of geomancy.  I didn’t have the method done just then, but I’ve finally come up with a way to link the two sets of symbols.  The correspondences are, using the list from last time:

1. Laetitia: 1000010011010111
2. Carcer: 1000010011110101
3. Fortuna Minor: 1000010100110111
4. Puer: 1000010100111101
5. Acquisitio: 1000010110011110
6. Populus: 1000010110100111
7. Coniunctio: 1000010111100110
8. Albus: 1000010111101001
9. Tristitia: 1000011001011110
10. Rubeus: 1000011010010111
11. Amissio: 1000011010111100
12. Puella: 1000011011110010
13. Fortuna Maior: 1000011110010110
14. Caput Draconis: 1000011110100101
15. Cauda Draconis: 1000011110101100
16. Via: 1000011110110010

How did I go about finding these correspondences?  A lot of math, hand-wringing, and sangria, that’s for sure.  If, dear reader, you’re interested in finding out how I corresponded the figures to the emblems, please continue after the break, but I’m going to warn you.  This post is long and at times tedious, and is full of binary mathematics and lots of 1s and 0s.  This post is only for the hardcore geomancy geeks like me out there, and it helps to have a solid footing in computer science, basic/low-level programming exercises, and binary/discrete mathematics.  Even I’m kinda shocked by how lengthy and pointlessly in-depth this post is, if that’s any indication of what you’re in for.  If you want to stop reading now, I forgive you and completely understand.  If you want to find out why I allocated the above emblems and their rotated variants to the figures like I did above, read on.  Either way, expect another post in the near future on how to use these emblems, their geomantic rulership, and elemental analyses in magic and divination!

To be clear about what I’m doing, I’m trying to figure out a way to assign the sixteen cycles of emblems (or emblematic cycles) to the sixteen geomantic figures.  I went over a way that relies on the lines of a particular emblem before to find one kind of ruling figure for a set of sixteen emblems, but that left me feeling unsatisfied, since 16 sets of 16 emblems each effectively share the same structure, just rotated a little differently.  Different rotations of the same emblematic cycle would change elemental ruler due to the line positions of the bits, but the underlying structure would remain the same.  What I wanted to do was to find a way to assign the emblematic cycles themselves to the geomantic figures regardless of “starting point” or orientation.  This requires looking at the structure itself in such a way that any analysis or interpretation would yield the same results independent of “starting point”; the elemental method of interpretation last time (taking the “fire of fire” line, etc.) is based on “starting point”, so any similar method here would have to be thrown out.  The best way to go about doing this is to find four binary methods of grouping the emblematic cycles that are independent of each other and equally distribute the sixteen emblematic cycles among themselves (i.e. eight per group).  Once this is done, each would be assigned a different element (fire, air, water, earth), and the choice would be translated into a 1 or 0.  This would yield a four-bit binary number, or a geomantic figure.

First, let’s start with the same listing of emblematic cycles from last time.  They’re all conveniently aligned to all start with 100001…, so let’s start from there.

1. 1000010011010111
2. 1000010011110101
3. 1000010100110111
4. 1000010100111101
5. 1000010110011110
6. 1000010110100111
7. 1000010111100110
8. 1000010111101001
9. 1000011001011110
10. 1000011010010111
11. 1000011010111100
12. 1000011011110010
13. 1000011110010110
14. 1000011110100101
15. 1000011110101100
16. 1000011110110010

Keep in mind that, because emblems can be cycled, you could all start these so that they start with the part of the emblem that goes 1111 and still have valid emblems.  It’s probably better to picture them as rings or bands instead of strings to emphasize their cyclic nature.  We want a common starting point for all the figures, just to keep them aligned, but this is only a matter of convenience.

The first thing to notice is that, because these emblems contain all sixteen geomantic figures, there’s going to be repeated values of some bits.  Populus, for instance, appears where you take those four consecutive 0s, and Via when you take the four consecutive 1s.  Carcer occurs where you take the two consecutive 0s with a 1 on each end, and so forth.  However, if you ignore the repeated values of each bit and “collapse” them into a single bit, you end up with patterns that look like the following:

1. 1000010011010111 → 10101010
2. 1000010011110101 → 10101010
3. 1000010100110111 → 10101010
4. 1000010100111101 → 10101010
5. 1000010110011110 → 10101010
6. 1000010110100111 → 10101010
7. 1000010111100110 → 10101010
8. 1000010111101001 → 10101010
9. 1000011001011110 → 10101010
10. 1000011010010111 → 10101010
11. 1000011010111100 → 10101010
12. 1000011011110010 → 10101010
13. 1000011110010110 → 10101010
14. 1000011110100101 → 10101010
15. 1000011110101100 → 10101010
16. 1000011110110010 → 10101010

We find that, by collapsing the repeated bits into a single bit (the ones that were collapsed are presented in boldface above), we get alternating 8-bit sequences of 1s and 0s.  This also applies to the 1 at the end of an emblematic cycle and the 1 at the beginning, with the final 1 being “folded into” the first if this case happens (emblematic cycles 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 14).  The alternating sequence of bits makes sense, because we can’t have multiple Populi or Viae consecutively without throwing off the bit count or the alternation.  If we transform these sequences such that a “collapsed” (bold) bit becomes a 0 (indicating duplication) and a “standalone” (unbolded) bit becomes a 1 (indicating duplication), we get the following orders:

1. 00100111
2. 00100111
3. 00111001
4. 00111001
5. 10110001
6. 00110110
7. 10110001
8. 00110110
9. 10001101
10. 00011011
11. 10011100
12. 10010011
13. 10001101
14. 00011011
15. 10011100
16. 10010011

Looking at that list (we’ll call them the change sequence of the collapsed cycles), we find that there are only eight sequences that each appear twice, allowing for a two-fold grouping of the cycles.  Using Roman numerals to mark these sequences, we have the following:

1. 00100111: emblematic cycles 1 and 2
2. 00111001: emblematic cycles 3 and 4
3. 10110001: emblematic cycles 5 and 7
4. 00110110: emblematic cycles 6 and 8
5. 10001101: emblematic cycles 9 and 13
6. 00011011: emblematic cycles 10 and 14
7. 10011100: emblematic cycles 11 and 15
8. 10010011: emblematic cycles 12 and 16

Knowing that the 256 emblems can all come from different rotations of the 16 emblematic cycles, we can similarly group the above eight change sequences into two based on whether they’re rotated or not.  In this case, we find the two sequence cycles 00100111 and 11011000, which we’ll term the 111 and 000 sequence cycles, respectively.  By circularly rotating these cycles around, we get different change sequences, which are derived from the pattern of repeated and standalone bits in the emblematic cycles.  The sixteen emblematic cycles and eight sequence cycles can then be divided up into these two groups:

• 111 Sequence Cycle Group
  • emblematic cycles 1, 2, 3, 4, 11, 12, 15, 16
  • sequence cycles I, II, VII, VIII
• 000 Sequence Cycle Group
  • emblematic cycles 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14
  • sequence cycles III, IV, V, VI

Let’s investigate the sequence cycles within the two groups above.  By performing single-bit binary addition (0 + 0 = 0, 0 + 1 = 1, 1 + 0 = 1, 1 + 1 = 0), also known as the exclusive or (returns 1 if both bits are different, returns 0 if both bits are the same), we can obtain a new binary sequence.  This is how one “adds” figures in geomancy, so let’s try it with the sequence cycles.  It turns out that, because there are four sequence cycles within the 111 and 000 groups, there are twelve possible ways of adding them together (six within the 111 group and six within the 000 group).  Adding two sequence cycles yields an 8-bit number, as follows:

• 111 Sequence Cycle Group
  • I + II = 00100111 + 00111001 = 00011110
  • I + VII = 00100111 + 10011100 = 10111011
  • I + VIII = 00100111 + 10010011 = 10110100
  • II + VII = 00111001 + 10011100 = 10100101
  • II + VIII = 00111001 + 10010011 = 10101010
  • VII + VIII = 10011100 + 10010011 = 00001111
• 000 Sequence Cycle Group
  • III + IV = 10110001 +  00110110 = 10000111
  • III + V = 10110001 + 10001101 =  00111100
  • III + VI = 10110001 + 00011011 = 10101010
  • IV + V = 00110110 + 10001101 = 10111011
  • IV + VI = 00110110 + 00011011 = 00101101
  • V + VI = 10001101 + 00011011 =10010110

If we break down the 8-bit results into two 4-bit results, transforming them into geomantic figures (where the leftmost bit represents the fire line, a 0 represents a passive element, and a 1 represents an active element), and then add the geomantic figures, we get the following:

• 111 Sequence Cycle Group
  • 00011110 → 0001 + 1110 = 1111  → Tristitia + Cauda Draconis = Via
  • 10111011 → 1011 + 1011 = 0000  → Puella + Puella = Populus
  • 10110100 → 1011 + 0100 = 1111 → Puella + Rubeus = Via
  • 10100101 → 1010 + 0101 = 1111 → Amissio + Acquisitio = Via
  • 10101010 → 1010 + 1010 = 0000 → Amissio + Amissio = Populus
  • 00001111 → 0000 + 1111 = 1111 → Populus + Via = Via
• 000 Sequence Cycle Group
  • 10000111 → 1000 + 0111 = 1111 → Laetitia + Caput Draconis = Via
  • 00111100 → 0011 + 1100 = 1111 → Fortuna Maior + Fortuna Minor = Via
  • 10101010 → 1010 + 1010 = 0000 → Amissio + Amissio = Populus
  • 10111011 → 1011 + 1011 = 0000 → Puella + Puella = Populus
  • 00101101 → 0010 + 1101 = 1111 → Albus + Puer = Via
  • 10010110 → 1001 + 0110 = 1111 → Carcer + Coniunctio = Via

Notice that there are four combinations of sequences that yield Populus, while the other eight yield Via.  These groups that together yield Populus (sequence cycles I and VII, II and VIII, III and VI, and IV and V) are important, and help us distinguish between individual emblematic/sequence cycles.  Even if we had a different set of rotated sequence cycles to add, the combinations of their respective 4-bit patterns would still yield Populus and Via in the same orders.  Using letters to distinguish between these groups:

1. sequence cycles I and VII; emblematic cycles 1, 2, 11, 15
2. sequence cycles II and VIII; emblematic cycles 3, 4, 12, 16
3. sequence cycles III and VI; emblematic cycles 5, 7, 10, 14
4. sequence cycles IV and V; emblematic cycles 6, 8, 9, 13

Let’s try the addition trick within the individual sequence cycle groups.  Consider group A, which contains emblematic cycles 1, 2, 11, and 15.  We know that emblematic cycles 1 and 2 share the same sequence cycle, as do 11 and 15.  So, adding the sequence cycles for emblematic cycles within the same group will yield the boring result of 00000000.  However, adding the sequence cycles for emblematic cycles not in the same cycle but within the same group (e.g. emblematic cycles 1 and 11, 2 and 16, 5 and 10) yields other results we can look at:

1. I + VII = 00100111 + 10011100 = 10111011
2. II + VIII = 00111001 + 10010011 = 10101010
3. III + VI = 10110001 + 00011011 = 10101010
4. IV + V = 00110110 + 10001101 = 10111011

Notice that the addition of sequence cycles in groups A and D have two 0s in their results (i.e. they overlap two times), while the addition for groups B and C have four 0s (i.e. they overlap four times).  We’ll call these the 2-0 and 4-0 addition groups, based on how the sequence cycles between them interact with each other or how many times the sequences overlap between each other.  So, we have this information as well:

• 2-0 Addition Group
  • emblematic cycles 1, 2, 11, 15, 6, 8, 9, 13
  • sequence cycles I, IV, V, VII
  • sequence cycle groups A, D
• 4-0 Addition Group
  • emblematic cycles 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14
  • sequence cycles II, III, VI, VIII
  • sequence cycle groups B, C

Now, consider that we have the 111 sequence cycle groups (groups A and B), and the 000 sequence cycle groups (groups C and D), alond with the 2-0 addition group (groups A and D) with the 4-0 addition group (groups B and C).  We now have the beginnings of a decision tree for our sequence cycle groups:

1. 111 sequence cycle, 2-0 addition group
2. 111 sequence cycle, 4-0 addition group
3. 000 sequence cycle, 4-0 addition group
4. 000 sequence cycle, 2-0 addition group

So now we have a four-way grouping of the emblematic cycles, each with four emblematic cycles each.  If this is starting to sound like the beginnings of an either/or chain that would yield a 4-bit number (i.e. a geomantic figure) for each emblematic cycle, you’re doing well.  If you’re still confused at this point about what the hell I’m doing, take a break, get some coffee, and review some of the steps from before.  We’re halfway done.

Let’s back up a bit now and go back to the collapsed sequences from above, the ones with bolded bits to indicate collapsed rows in the emblematic cycles:

1. 1000010011010111 → 10101010
2. 1000010011110101 → 10101010
3. 1000010100110111 → 10101010
4. 1000010100111101 → 10101010
5. 1000010110011110 → 10101010
6. 1000010110100111 → 10101010
7. 1000010111100110 → 10101010
8. 1000010111101001 → 10101010
9. 1000011001011110 → 10101010
10. 1000011010010111 → 10101010
11. 1000011010111100 → 10101010
12. 1000011011110010 → 10101010
13. 1000011110010110 → 10101010
14. 1000011110100101 → 10101010
15. 1000011110101100 → 10101010
16. 1000011110110010 → 10101010

In each geomantic emblematic cycle, there will always be a mixture of standalone bits and collapsed bits, four of each to be precise.  Half the bits are 1s and the other half are 0s.  Of the collapsed bits, two will always be 0s (indicating where Populus or Carcer lie in the emblem), and two will always be 1s (indicating where Via or Coniunctio lie in the emblem).  Further, two of the collapsed bits will be derived from four bits (indicating either Populus or Via), and two will be derived from two bits (indicating either Carcer or Coniunctio).  Let’s focus on the collapsed bits, this time counting how many bits they were collapsed from in the original emblematic cycle, starting from the leftmost collapsed bit:

1. 1000010011010111 → 10101010 → 4, 4, 2, 2
2. 1000010011110101 → 10101010 → 4, 2, 4, 2
3. 1000010100110111 → 10101010 → 4, 2, 2, 4
4. 1000010100111101 → 10101010 → 4, 2, 4, 2
5. 1000010110011110 → 10101010 → 4, 2, 2, 4
6. 1000010110100111 → 10101010 → 4, 2, 2, 4
7. 1000010111100110 → 10101010 → 4, 4, 2, 2
8. 1000010111101001 → 10101010 → 4, 4, 2, 2
9. 1000011001011110 → 10101010 → 4, 2, 2, 4
10. 1000011010010111 → 10101010 → 4, 2, 2, 4
11. 1000011010111100 → 10101010 → 4, 2, 4, 2
12. 1000011011110010 → 10101010 → 4, 2, 4, 2
13. 1000011110010110 → 10101010 → 4, 4, 2, 2
14. 1000011110100101 → 10101010 → 4, 4, 2, 2
15. 1000011110101100 → 10101010 → 4, 4, 2, 2
16. 1000011110110010 → 10101010 → 4, 4, 2, 2

All the above counts start with 4 due to the alignment of the emblematic cycles, all starting with 10000…, but this is okay.  In fact, for this bit of analysis, we’re going to ignore that first count of 4 anyway, since the below trick will work regardless of alignment with the same caveat as above.  This means we have a group of three numbers, two of which are 2 and the third is 4, referring to a sequence of bits that translate to 00, 11, and 1111.  These groups can combine in exactly four ways: 00111111, 11001111, 11110011, and 11111100.  The emblematic cycles that have these combinations are:

• 00111111: emblematic cycles 1, 2, 3, 4
• 11001111: emblematic cycles 5, 6, 9, 10
• 11110011: emblematic cycles 7, 8, 13, 14
• 11111100: emblematic cycles 11, 12, 15, 16

We can group the above into two categories: the ones that start with 1111 and the ones that end with 1111.  We’ll call these the V1 and V2 categories, standing for “Via first” and “Via second” (if we look at these eight-bit numbers as two geomantic figures).  So, we now have

• V1 Collapsed Bit Group: emblematic cycles 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16
• V2 Collapsed Bit Group: emblematic cycles 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10

Because of the way the V1 and V2 collapsed bit groups contain the emblematic cycles, they’re independent of both the 111 and 000 sequence cycle groups and the addition groups.  Now we have three methods of grouping, which yields eight groups of two emblematic cycles:

• 000, 2-0, V1: emblematic cycles 8, 13
• 000, 2-0, V2: emblematic cycles 6, 9
• 000, 4-0, V1:  emblematic cycles 7, 14
• 000, 4-0, V2:  emblematic cycles 5, 10
• 111, 2-0, V1:  emblematic cycles 11, 12
• 111, 2-0, V2: emblematic cycles 1, 2
• 111, 4-0, V1: emblematic cycles 15, 16
• 111, 4-0, V2: emblematic cycles 3, 4

This is awesome, but keep in mind that we’ve been working so far off of the 8-bit sequence cycles that were reduced from the complete 16-bit emblematic cycle.  8-bit numbers can only be uniquely identified based on three binary choices or classifications, while we need four choices.  So, at this point, we need to step back and take a look at the emblematic cycles themselves.  It’d be nice if we could point to some “crucial” or “seed” point in the emblematic cycles that would decide this for us, but when we deal with cycles, we’re effectively dealing with circles.  We need to find some way to distinguish between the pairs given above in a regular manner that makes sense across all groupings.  Mathematically, this makes sense, but it also paves the way for the element for this last choice: earth.  If we consider the other three elements (fire, air, and water) to be immaterial without an earthy basis, then those three elements provide an “ideal”, “astral”, or “imaginary” form that can lay out a blueprint.  When it comes time for that blueprint or idea to be manifested, it can be done in one of two ways, which we’ll call masculine or feminine.  This last choice is strictly how an idea becomes real, how a vague form of change can give birth to a concrete form that changes.  It’s like developing an algebraic formula from integral calculus.

While we’re talking about elements, let’s also assign elements to the three choices we have so far:

• 000/111 Sequence Grouping: Fire.  This was the first pattern we picked up on, based on how the emblems manifest based on their changes.  These sequences help provide the manner of expansion within the figures, acting as a kind of blueprint that can still be easily molded or reshaped into other blueprints by rotating them around.  This is closest to the element of fire, which provides the idea and force for things grow, similar to the the original idea or design behind something.  We’ll assign 000 sequence groups the bit 0 for being more passive and at rest at once, and 111 sequence groups the bit 1, for being more active and in flux at once.
• 2-0/4-0 Addition Grouping:  Air.  This was the second pattern we picked up on, by crossing the boundaries laid by the sequence groups and finding how different emblematic cycles connected with each other.  The ones that formed a collection through adding into Populus were marked as being within the same addition group bonded more cohesively than others, and air is the element associated with things sticking to or working with each other.  We’ll assign cycles in the 4-0 addition group the bit 1 for having more overlap and being more interactive, and the cycles with 2-0 as their addition group the bit 0 for having less interaction.
• V1/V2 Collapsed Bit Grouping:  Water.  This was the third pattern we picked up on, through seeing how the figures expanded in their own manner.  Although the sequence groups specify what to expand, the collapsed bit groups indicate by how much, providing the growth or famine in the positions to be expanded.  Just as water takes the shape of its container while retaining the same volume, so too will these values of bit expansion/contraction fill up the spaces given to them before.  Cycles in the V1 group will be given the bit 1 for being more fluid and active at first, and cycles in the V2 group will be given the bit 0 for being more passive and at rest at first.

For reasons above, we know this fourth and last decision must be for the element of earth.  But what might that choice be? For that, we need to inspect the pairs of the emblematic cycles themselves.  Here they are, based on the groupings given above:

• 000, 2-0, V1
  • emblematic cycle 8: 1000010111101001
  • emblematic cycle 13: 1000011110010110
• 000, 2-0, V2
  • emblematic cycle 6: 1000010110100111
  • emblematic cycle 9: 1000011001011110
• 000, 4-0, V1
  • emblematic cycle 7: 1000010111100110
  • emblematic cycle 14: 1000011110100101
• 000, 4-0, V2
  • emblematic cycle 5: 1000010110011110
  • emblematic cycle 10: 1000011010010111
• 111, 2-0, V1
  • emblematic cycle 11: 1000011010111100
  • emblematic cycle 12: 1000011011110010
• 111, 2-0, V2
  • emblematic cycle 1: 1000010011010111
  • emblematic cycle 2: 1000010011110101
• 111, 4-0, V1
  • emblematic cycle 15: 1000011110101100
  • emblematic cycle 16: 1000011110110010
• 111, 4-0, V2
  • emblematic cycle 3: 1000010100110111
  • emblematic cycle 4: 1000010100111101

Although we need to decide based on the structure of the emblematic cycles, it’s not readily apparent what that choice might be.  All of the emblematic cycles must contain an equal number of 0s and 1s, and all combinations of “components” (100001, 1001, 101, 101, 11, and 1111) must appear and overlap in equal amounts that sometimes cross group boundaries.  All the pairs of emblematic cycles above must change equally to balance each other out in the end.  Finding any mathematical pattern in this instance seemed futile, especially since this appears to be dependent on the structure itself.  In the end, the rule I’m going by is, starting after the figure Tristitia as it appears in the cycle, whichever cycle in the above groups reaches five active lines first is the “active” earth line.  We’ll call these cycles “speedy”, while the ones that fall behind “slow”.  This is another way of saying “pick the cycle that has 1111 appear first, or if both cycles have 1111 appearing at the same time, pick the one that has 11 appearing closest after that”.  This is the only time we rely on the order of the bits within the emblematic cycles themselves which uses an anchor point, but this is the only way to accomplish this method.  So, we have the following bit speed groups:

• Speedy: emblematic cycles 2, 4, 5, 9, 12, 13, 14, 16
• Slow: emblematic cycles 1, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 15

And that’s our fourth and final decision!  Putting them all together, we have the following table:

And, presented in a simpler list form:

1. Laetitia: 1000010011010111
2. Carcer: 1000010011110101
3. Fortuna Minor: 1000010100110111
4. Puer: 1000010100111101
5. Acquisitio: 1000010110011110
6. Populus: 1000010110100111
7. Coniunctio: 1000010111100110
8. Albus: 1000010111101001
9. Tristitia: 1000011001011110
10. Rubeus: 1000011010010111
11. Amissio: 1000011010111100
12. Puella: 1000011011110010
13. Fortuna Maior: 1000011110010110
14. Caput Draconis: 1000011110100101
15. Cauda Draconis: 1000011110101100
16. Via: 1000011110110010

Is this system of correspondences perfect?  Probably not.  For one, this is entirely new research without anything to back it up.  I’ve never seen this written about or spoken about in any tradition of geomancy, and I have no reason to believe that it was ever done or devised before.  For two, I developed these methods of deciding which emblems get which element active or passive almost arbitrarily, based on how I came across them and how it felt.  This was largely a mathematical exercise, but there are some spiritual components to this that directed what to look for and how to combine them (when I wasn’t just throwing math at the emblems to see what’d stick).  For three, there are a few things that bug me about the emblematic cycles.  For instance, every geomantic figure has an inverse (Populus and Via, Puer and Albus, etc.).  It might be expected, then, that the geomantic emblematic cycles would correspond to this same method, such that the emblematic cycle of Populus would have Via as its inverse (take all the points in the emblematic cycle, invert them, and rotate it accordingly to sync it up with the rest of the cycles).  However, the inverse emblematic cycle of Populus is actually Caput Draconis.  The inverses of the emblematic cycles are, in order as above:

1. 16
2. 4
3. 15
4. 2
5. 8
6. 14
7. 9
8. 5
9. 7
10. 13
11. 12
12. 11
13. 10
14. 6
15. 3
16. 1

It might be that there’s another method of organizing or allotting the emblematic cycles to the figures so that the inverses of the figures would agree with the inverses of the emblematic cycles.  However, the inverse function is the only one that might possibly apply to both geomantic figures and their respective emblematic cycles.  Reversion, for instance, won’t work; the reversion of Populus is also Populus, but no such emblematic cycle could possibly revert to itself; the same goes with conversion, as well.  Maybe it doesn’t make sense to apply these functions to the cycles directly, instead interpreting them elementally (as in the previous post).

And, dear reader, since you’ve made it this far (I hope), I really thank you for sticking around.  This was a puzzle that took me a good few days of constant thinking to solve, and though I’m wary of how strong the system is, it’s at least a good start.  I hope you at least got the gist of what I was trying to do; if you have any questions about the hows or whys of the above post (the more specific the better), please let me know down in the comments.  We’ll pick up next time with what these emblems can be used for in geomantic divination and magic, and how to make really awesome designs incorporating different depictions of the emblems.

Since one of my most favorite topics in occultism and magic is divination, specifically the divinatory art of geomancy, why not talk about that? I know a lot about it, and not many do, so let’s go with it. If nothing else, you’ll come away slightly more educated, and I’ll come away with something looking like productivity. With that in mind, let’s continue this little series of posts on geomancy, “De Geomanteia” (On Geomancy). This week, let’s talk about this figure:

Carcer

This is the figure Carcer.  In Latin, its name means “Prison”, which is pretty common in many traditions, but also called “constriction” or “bound together”.  If you (quite literally) connect the dots, you might come up with a figure that looks like a ring, a cell, or two people facing away from each other.

First, the technical details of this figure.  It’s associated with Saturn in retrograde motion and the astrological signs of Capricorn or Pisces, depending on whom you ask; due to its Saturnine qualities, it’s also associated with the sephirah Binah.  It has the fire and earth lines active with air and water passive, and so given to the element of Earth.  It is an even figure with six points, relating to objective situations rather than internal or subjective events.  It is a stable and entering, showing it to be slow-moving and long-lasting where it appears.  In the body, it is associated with the knees and bones.  Its inverse figure (everything this figure is not on an external level) is Coniunctio, the Conjunction, showing that this figure is not decisive, not transient, and not sociable or in contact with others.  Its reverse figure (the same qualities of this figure taken to its opposite, internal extreme) is the same, Carcer itself, showing that this figure is the same from all points of view.  Its converse figure (the same qualities of this figure expressed in a similar manner) is Coniunctio, showing that it is cyclical, pausing, and foundational.  Carcer is fairly negative as far as geomantic figures go, often indicating delay, restriction, obligation, and isolation from one’s desires.  One is often held back or restrained from contact or completing one’s works when this figure appears, even literal imprisonment; however, due to its isolation, it also indicates stability and security.  It is favorable when one wants to maintain or enforce a given situation, but generally poor otherwise.

The inner temple, the inside of a large pyramidal structure, empty and barren, the floor covered with sand.  The ancient large door, once bright and intricately engraved, has been sealed shut long ago, nobody able to open it; the sand eroded its carvings, the dust covers what color remains.  The whole chamber echoes, all softly aglow from the dust.  Light pours in through a single aperture high up on the apex of the pyramid, far out of reach for any contact or assistance.  The only thing present in the entire chamber is an old man, long ago incarcerated in this prison.  He angrily puts around his prison endlessly, forever stuck, forever sealed away, reaching down into the sand with a clenched fist and throwing it at the light in frustration and acrimony, screaming in fury.  He has much to say and much to do, having been planning for years, but has no way to enact what he wants; all he can do is think and wait, held back by the walls that enclose him.  He has no means to interact or to connect with others; he can think of things only so much, and nothing deep due to the lack of inspiration, religion, and philosophy to draw on.  He is both physically, intellectually, and emotionally starved.  All he thinks about are plans; scribbles on the walls and in the sand guide him, shifting here, erasing there, reincorporating old ideas there.  Without anyone to see him, help him, or value his plans, he can do nothing. 

Carcer is a tough figure to deal with, not gonna lie.  As a figure of Saturn, Capricorn, Earth, darkness, and stability, Carcer takes all that symbolism and runs with it in the most concrete way geomancy knows how.  The name itself, meaning “prison”, is again indicative of its significations: something is trapped, held back, restrained, delayed, or refrained from accomplishing or interacting with others.  Then again, this idea of resolute, impermeable structure has its upsides, too.

In the geocentric model of the universe (pretty reliable when it comes to Hermetic philosophy and cosmology in general), where the Earth is at the center of the cosmos, the rest of the planets revolve around the Earth in concentric “shells” or spheres.  Above the Earth, we have, in order, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, then the background fixed stars, and beyond that we have, essentially, the Divine Source.  Saturn is the last planet, the last distinctly formed thing, separating the manifested world from the manifesting and unmanifest world; going the other way, Saturn is the first planet where form is possible, coming from the Source of manifestation doing its job, and allowing Matter to afterward fill the outlines of Form that Saturn provides.  Saturn is about limitations, boundaries, walls, and definition, and so is a natural ruler of prisons, obligations, responsibilities, and being held to something.  It represents the guiding forces that show us “up to this point and no further”, indicating where we need to expand and by how much, and often how.

Further, by having set boundaries, one can keep one’s identity and sphere safe from the outside.  Prisons may keep what’s inside from getting out, but they also keep what’s outside from getting in.  Still, outside influences can determine the shape of those boundaries, often in the form of social obligation and restriction, which the prisoner inside must follow; this is where the astrological signs of Capricorn (indicating social responsibility and obligation to goals) and Populus (being with others and having to fit into a given definition and role) give Carcer some of its astrological symbolism.  Either sign works, but in my experience, attributing the social pressures of Populus and the need or obligation to fit in and follow through with others works better with the image of Carcer.

Elementally, Carcer is an Earthy figure, but is probably better described as “dry”, having both the dry elements of fire and earth active without the moist elements of air or water present.  Moisture is the quality that allows forces to mingle, flow, and actively interact with each other; Carcer has neither of these.  The natural motions, how the different elements tend to move in their pure states, don’t help the image here, either: Fire burns upward, Earth falls downward, both moving away from each other.  The elemental structure of Carcer implies a total disconnect and separation from other forces, without any sort of emotional or communicative interaction to bridge the gap between them.  One can have all the plans and specifications in the world and all the resources to execute them with, but without a method to bridge the two, one will just be drawing in the sand unable to accomplish anything.

The shape that the figure Carcer makes is a circle, which itself has some valuable information for the geomancer.  Circles are lines with no beginning and no end, completely demarcating a whole area from the rest of the world. As such, circles are often used in magic to separate, isolate, seal in, or shut out, and many conjurations or rituals make use of circles for protection of the magician or for isolation of a spirit to be summoned.  Circles can also be indicative of repetition and getting trapped in a loop, indicating delay, such as when a spirit tries to escape and gets caught in a loop ’round and ’round the circle.  Chain links and wedding rings, both circular, also keep one locked into a given situation for better or for worse.  Without any change in situation, Carcer is a stable figure, and without any change in direction or in perspective from the outside, Carcer is also liminal.

When Carcer appears in a geomancy reading, it’s going to indicate restriction and delay, no matter where it appears.  As Judge, it indicates that the status quo will be enforced, likely due to obligations or a set regulation that must be followed by multiple parties; elsewhere, it indicates stress or tension without chance for resolution, having to put up with something for the time being and dealing with any obligation or responsibility one’s been tasked with.  Being Saturnine, it can often indicate sparseness, poorness, paucity, and having precious little of something.  It’s good when things need strictness, isolation, security, or stability, but otherwise, it tends to be a pretty dour figure.  Carcer is helpful in magic when one wants to lock something down or keep things fixed in a certain situation, such as keeping one’s job when others are being given pink slips, it’s also good when wanting to induce paucity or greed in others’ lives and spheres, if not outright disconnecting them from sources of help or assistance they might otherwise rely on.

Alright, so now that we’ve gone over what the geomantic emblems are, how we can analyze them elementally, and how we can assign cycles of the emblems to the sixteen figures of geomancy, I wanted to give a bit more analysis and start getting into how we can use these emblems.

First, we know we can take a 16-line emblem and break it down into four 4-line geomantic figures.  We can assign each of these figures to the four elements, and take lines 1, 6, 11, and 16 to form an essential figure that represents the geomantic emblem elementally.  For instance, the Fire Subelemental Figure of a given geomantic emblem can be constructed by taking the fire lines in order: fire of fire (line 1), fire of air (5), fire of water (9), and fire of earth (13).  The Air, Water, and Earth lines can be constructed similarly by taking those respective subelemental lines.  By adding the subelemental figures together, we can obtain an “elemental sum” figure that represents how the elements interact in the emblem as a whole, as opposed to the overarching essential elementa figure that defines the emblem elementally.

We can also use these four figures as four Mothers in a geomantic chart, and use the chart as a whole to understand the emblem.  Just by adding the four figures together, though, we can obtain a “sequential sum” figure, which is the same as the Right Witness from the geomantic chart generated by the emblem.  As it happens, only even figures can ever be the sequential sum of an emblem, with Populus happening twice as many times (64) as any other sequential sum (32) except Via, which never happens.  Although the Judge of the geomantic chart generated from the emblem (we’ll call it the “Judge sum”) indicates how the emblem effects itself in the world (qualified by its elemental essence), the sequential sum indicates from what perspective or what cause it wants to act (Right Witness vs. Judge).  Coincidentally, the elemental sum figure of the emblem represents the Left Witness, just as the subelemental figures represent the four Daughters of the geomantic chart (fire subelemental figure is First Daughter, etc.).

When we go to cycles, there are several operations we can perform on a geomantic emblem just like how we can perform on a geomantic figure: inversion (flipping the bits from 1 to 0 and from 0 to 1), reversion (reading the emblem from the 16th line to the 1st), and conversion (inversion + reversion).  Unlike geomantic figures, which may have themselves as conversions or repeat the same figure between their inversion and reversion, the geomantic emblems have unique inversions, reversions, and conversions that don’t repeat.  Just as the emblems fall into specific emblematic cycles, so too do their inversions, reversions, and conversions.  The cycles have a specific pattern of this:

• Populus: inversion Caput Draconis, reversion Fortuna Major, conversion Rubeus
• Via: inversion Laetitia, reversion Fortuna Minor, conversion Cauda Draconis
• Albus: inversion Acquisitio, reversion Tristitia, conversion Conjunctio
• Conjunctio: inversion Tristitia, reversion Acquisitio, conversion Albus
• Puella: inversion Amissio, reversion Puer, conversion Carcer
• Amissio: inversion Puella, reversion Carcer, conversion Puer
• Fortuna Major: inversion Rubeus, reversion Populus, conversion Caput Draconis
• Fortuna Minor: inversion Cauda Draconis, reversion Via, conversion Laetitia
• Puer: inversion Carcer, reversion Puella, conversion Amissio
• Rubeus: inversion Fortuna Major, reversion Caput Draconis, conversion Populus
• Acquisitio: inversion Albus, reversion Conjunctio, conversion Tristitia
• Laetitia: inversion Via, reversion Cauda Draconis, conversion Fortuna Minor
• Tristitia: inversion Conjunctio, reversion Albus, conversion Acquisitio
• Carcer: inversion Puer, reversion Amissio, conversion Puella
• Caput Draconis: inversion Populus, reversion Rubeus, conversion Fortuna Major
• Cauda Draconis: inversion Fortuna Minor, reversion Laetitia, conversion Via

Now we have a number of ways to understand the emblems:

1. figure sequence from expanding the emblem: the order of the figures as they appear within the emblem
2. essential elemental figure: the condensation of the pure elements taken from the subelemental lines of the emblems in their proper places, representing the elemental force of the figure as a while
3. subelemental figures: the condensation of specific elements taken from the subelemental lines of the emblems in their places, representing how each of the four elements within each emblem presents itself geomantically
4. geomantic chart: the geomantic chart that is generated by taking the emblem as four Mothers in sequence
5. Right Witness/sequential sum figure: the figure that appears as Right Witness in the geomantic chart generated by the emblem, or the combination of the four figures presented in the geomantic emblem in sequence, indicating from what perspective or what cause it wants to act
6. Left Witness/elemental sum figure: the figure that results from adding the four subelemental figures of the emblem, or the Left Witness in the geomantic chart generated by the emblem, indicating how the elements interact in the emblem as a whole as well as how the emblem is affected by external situations
7. Judge sum figure: the figure that appears as Judge in the geomantic chart generated by the emblem, indicating how the emblem effects itself in the world
8. emblematic cycle: the structural basis underlying the
9. inverse emblem: everything this emblem is not on an external level
10. reverse emblem: the same qualities of this emblem taken to its opposite, internal extreme
11. converse emblem: the same qualities of this emblem expressed in a similar manner

For example, for the geomantic emblem 1000010110100111, we have the following information:

• figure sequence: 1000 (Laetitia), 0000 (Populus), 0001 (Tristita), 0010 (Albus), 0101 (Aquisitio), 1011 (Puella), 0110 (Coniunctio), 1101 (Puer), 1010 (Amissio), 0100 (Rubeus), 1001 (Carcer), 0011 (Fortuna Maior), 0111 (Caput Draconis), 1111 (Via), 1110 (Cauda Draconis), 1100 (Fortuna Minor)
• essential elemental figure: Via (water)
• fire subelemental figure: Amissio (fire)
• air subelemental figure: Acquisitio (air)
• water subelemental figure: Fortuna Maior (earth)
• earth subelemental figure: Acquisitio (air)
• elemental sum figure: Carcer(earth)
• Judge sum figure: Carcer (earth)
• sequential sum figure: Populus (water)
• emblematic cycle: Populus
• inverse emblem: 0111101001011000 (Caput Draconis cycle)
• reverse emblem: 1110010110100001 (Fortuna Major cycle)
• converse emblem: 0001101001011110 (Rubeus cycle)

This gives us a huge amount of information for each of the 256 emblems, and this is all still fairly preliminary research, too.  Now that we have all these tools and methods of interpreting and understanding the emblems, the big question is how?  And for what purpose?  What do the emblems represent, and how do they fit into the larger idea of the cosmos, divination, and magic?

Each of the geomantic figures is composed from the four elements, and whether those elements are active or passive.  In a way, the figures represent 16 states of the cosmos at any given time, little snapshots of how any situation is evolving and resolving into a new state.  The geomantic emblems combine all 16 geomantic figures into a cycle, representing whole cosmoses on their own, complete situations and how they can be represented through a process of continuously evolving geomantic figures.  Read one way, the force within an element becomes more and more subtle, first appearing as earth then as water, then air, then fire, eventually being left entirely above what it was, while other forces come into play to take the place of the ascended element.  Read another way, the forces within an emblem begin a process of descent from the highest and most subtle realms to the most dense and material, describing a process of materialization and concretization instead of reification and deification.

Each situation has a beginning, a process that leads from the beginning to the end, and the end itself which must reflect the beginning.  We know that, although our emblem analysis uses 16 lines, emblems as a whole were first discovered as 19-line superfigures.  However, the final three lines must be the same in each emblem as the first three lines, which provides the repetition that allows the emblem to overlap onto itself as a cycle and allows for the complete expansion of the emblem into 16 figures, which are both ways the emblem reflects the beginning in the end. Certain patterns always appear in each cosmic process, and some parts of each process have the same flow.  Consider the geomantic emblems: all the geomantic emblems have the same constituent parts (the 16 geomantic figures), but these don’t appear randomly within the emblem.  We know that Laetitia must always be followed by Populus which must always be followed by Tristitia, which can be followed by either Albus or Fortuna Maior.  Similarly, we know that Caput Draconis must be followed by Via which must always be followed by Cauda Draconis, which can be followed by either Puer or Fortuna Minor.

All this boils down to a simple(?) choice.  When one wants to influence a situation to go a certain way or to inspect a particular state of a situation/the world, look to the geomantic figures.  When one wants to create a whole system or investigate how cosmic processes work as a while, look to the geomantic emblems.  Whether it’s for divination, magic, planning, meditation, theurgy, or other occult work, emblems are systems, while figures are states within a system.  Knowledge of systems requires a wider view than any specific view alone; one needs to step back or have foreknowledge of what’s going on in order to correctly assess what process one finds themselves in, and then what can be done to proceed along the process in a desired manner (if the process is changeable) or in a manner that can at least be known in advance (if the process is unchangeable).

In a way, it’s like the difference between knowing the astrological forecast for a given event at a given time, and seeing how the interaction of the natal/electional horoscope for an event and its progression or transits affects a situation, process, or life across its duration.  The difference is state versus system, or single snapshot versus whole process.

So, how can the geomantic emblems be used?  Though this is still really new stuff that needs exploration and experimentation, I’ve got a few ideas:

• Jewelry and talismans: incorporate the emblems into magical items, either graphically (drawing or writing the emblem onto the item) or structurally (knotting, braiding, or shaping the item to resemble the emblem).  The emblem can be used to bring about a prescribed process and flow of a situation.  Likewise, they can be engraved on wands or staves to represent a middle pillar of the world, kind of like a world-tree or similar central supporting force underlying a conduit of power.
• Representations of the cosmos: by enlarging the definition of “system” to reflect the entire cosmos, entire cosmological processes can be understood on a grand scale as an interplay of the elements.  Alternatively, they can be seen as processes that define or mark a whole sequence of events, much as a person’s natal chart or a talisman’s electional chart, that indicates where strengths, weaknesses, and dignities lie.
• Decoration and resonance: I’ve done some experimenting with using graphical presentation of the geomantic emblems as sigils or decorative motifs, including a set of armband tattoos that look like a cross between an arabesque lattice and a scifi data printout.  Generating infinite arabesques from the emblems or incorporating them in an area or on art by necessity also incorporates the energy of the geomantic figures, as well as their flow and elemental associations, that can subtly affect the nature or energies in a given place.

Your thoughts?  Hopefully the geomantic emblems aren’t too far above your head, dear reader, and maybe you might even be willing to share some of your thoughts and possible applications of them in divination and magic.

Want a short and fast empowerment ritual?  How fortuitous, because here’s one for you to try out!

I got the idea after talking with Fr. Rufus Opus and getting a short Hermes contemplative ritual from him.  It was his special kind of mashup between a Trithemius-style conjuration, invocation of a god, and contemplation, which turned out really well.  At the beginning, the ritual uses the climactic line and descriptor of intent from the Headless Rite (PGM V.96) to solidify the magician’s power and authority in the cosmos.  It’s basically a consolidation and concentration of the entire force of the Headless Rite into a short statement of intent, which works pretty awesomely.  It’s not a substitute for the whole Headless Rite, but it works as a shorter version of the Preliminary Invocation.  I’ve gotten into the habit of using it before any major ritual and incorporating it into my morning ritual schema.

If you have it, anoint your forehead and palms with Abramelin or similar solar/holy oil.  Face north, and either raise both your arms up in a Y-formation (generic pose of power) or with the right hand extended in front of you and the left up and behind you (Egyptian fighting pose).  and say the following words of power.  Imagine them glowing across your forehead, with the beneficial sign in the middle.  In Greek letters and in transliterated Roman:

ΑΩΘ ΑΒΡΑΩΘ ΒΑΣΥΜ ΙΣΑΚ ΣΑΒΑΩΘ ΙΑΩ

AŌTH ABRAŌTH BASYM ISAK SABAŌTH IAŌ

Extend the arms out to your sides, palms facing forward, and say the following incantation.  While saying the incantation, feel the words vibrate throughout the cosmos, and feel yourself taking in and incorporating all of existence within you as a king would his kingdom.  I’ve provided the incantation in four variations: Greek text, transliterated Roman, translated from the PGM, and the Liber Samekh variant translation:

ΥΠΟΤΑΞΟΝ ΜΟΙ ΠΑΝΤΑ ΤΑ ΔΑΙΜΟΝΙΑ ΙΝΑ ΜΟΙ ΗΙ ΥΠΗΚΟΟΣ ΠΑΣ ΔΑΙΜΩΝ ΟΥΡΑΝΙΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΑΙΘΕΡΙΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΕΠΙΓΕΙΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΥΠΟΓΕΙΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΧΕΡΣΑΙΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΕΝΥΔΡΟΣ ΚΑΙ ΠΑΣΑ ΕΠΙΠΟΜΠΗ ΚΑΙ ΜΑΣΤΙΞ ΘΕΟΥ.

Hypotaxon moi panta da daimonia hina moi ē hypēkoos pas daimōn ouranios kai aitherios kai epigeios kai hypogeios kai khersaios kai enhydros kai pasa epipompē kai mastix Theou.

Subject to me all spirits so that every spirit heavenly and ethereal, upon the earth and under the earth, and on dry land or in the water, and every aversion and scourge of God may be obedient to me.

Subject to me all spirits, so that every spirit whether heavenly or ethereal or upon the earth or under the earth, on dry land or in the water, of whirling air or rushing fire and every spell and scourge of God may be obedient to me.

A note on the translations: the Greek text says “…pasa epipompē kai mastix Theou” at the end, which I translated as “…every aversion and scourge of God” but which Liber Samekh reads “…every spell and scourge of God”.  The difference lies in the word “epipompē”, literally “sending upon”.  The term is one of two ways classical thinkers defined an exorcism or banishment.  The first, “apopompē”, just means “sending away”, or a general GTFO to an evil spirit, curse, disease, demon, or harmful spirit.  “Epipompē” is a specific kind of banishing where you redirect the evil influence to another target, e.g. “instead of harming me, go find some whore in the street who really deserves this” or “bring your blessings to me and send away all maladies to the ends of the earth”.  This part about “every spell and scourge of God” means any harm or curse, intentional or accidental, that could possibly have supernatural causes, which a magician would also like to have control over in addition to any other spirit.

Since one of my most favorite topics in occultism and magic is divination, specifically the divinatory art of geomancy, why not talk about that? I know a lot about it, and not many do, so let’s go with it. If nothing else, you’ll come away slightly more educated, and I’ll come away with something looking like productivity. With that in mind, let’s continue this little series of posts on geomancy, “De Geomanteia” (On Geomancy). This week, let’s talk about this figure:

Tristitia

This is the figure Tristitia.  In Latin, its name means “Sorrow”, but also has the names of “upside down” or “relapsed” in some Arabic traditions, as well as the names of “damned” or “diminished”.  If you (quite literally) connect the dots, you might come up with a figure that looks like a stake, a pit, or a collapsed building.

First, the technical details of this figure.  It’s associated with Saturn in direct motion and the astrological signs of Aquarius or Scorpio; due to its Saturnine qualities, it’s also associated with the sephirah Binah.  It has only the earth line active with everything else passive, and so given to the element of Earth.  It is an odd figure with seven points, relating more to internal states of the subjective mind than external states of objective reality.  It is a stable and entering, showing it to be slow-moving and long-lasting where it appears.  In the body, it signifies the lower legs, ankles, and circulatory system.  Its inverse figure (everything this figure is not on an external level) is Cauda Draconis, the Dragon’s Tail, showing that this figure is not quick to change, not prone to end, not externally calamitous.  Its reverse figure (the same qualities of this figure taken to its opposite, internal extreme) is Laetitia, joy, showing that this figure is not happy, not free, not open or easily-seen.  Its converse figure (the same qualities of this figure expressed in a similar manner) is Caput Draconis, the Dragon’s Head, showing that it is similarly slow-moving, stable, and able to continue in a single direction for a long time.  Tristitia is about going down or going south in any way, including lowered spirits, depression, depressed health, lowered expectations, and getting stuck in a rut.  It often refers to an internal state of failure or self-crossing, as opposed to an external incarceration or being cursed from outside, and is generally unfavorable.  However, it is helpful for anything related to land, subterranean or chthonic matters, and keeping things secret or stable.

Rock climbers can have it tough, especially when they feel obliged by their hobby to scale behemoths of mountain that, no matter how far they ascend, always makes them feel like they’re stuck at the bottom of an infinite height.  It’s slow and rough, too: he has to clutch to any crevice he can find, if he can find one at all.  Any slip or mistake, and he falls, falls, falls, and no matter how much he pretends the distance below him is trivial, he feels like his own progress up the mountain isn’t getting him anywhere at all.  Driving a nail into the rock face (ting, ting, ting) is slow work, and has to be done over and over again to support him.  He has to take out his old stakes, and successfully pulls one out at the cost of tearing a few feet of rope; he yells in a brief shot of fear, though he secures himself just afterward.  His heart sinks with every mistake and mishap he makes, but with every mistake he makes a bit of progress, though not on the mountain itself.  Despite the cold wind whipping around him and feeling desolate and deserted, he has no choice but to continue.  With his only choice to go, go, go, he has to continue toiling to do anything.  Right now, it sucks, and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.  He will survive and succeed and surmount this cliff, but not before a long, and hopeless journey first.

Like its reverse figure Laetitia, Tristitia is another emotional figure that represents pretty clearly what its name signifies: sorrow, grief, sadness, depression, malaise, malcontent.  It’s nothing particularly good, and what’s worse is that it takes time for it to pass.  Unlike cheerful, easy-come easy-go Laetitia, Tristitia lingers even when it’s not nailed down.  Happiness is often found in passing while doing things proper to one’s nature, but Tristitia prevents actions from being done due to being in a depression.  It’s tough to deal with, but it too shall pass.  However, the image of Tristitia as a stake or nail also give it the implication of support, structure, stability, foundation, and construction, in all of which Tristitia is fairly favorable.

Having only the earth line active and all others passive, Tristitia is ruled and assigned to the element of Earth.  According to Cornelius Agrippa (book I, chapter 3), Earth is assigned the qualities of being dry, cold, thick, dark, heavy, and quiet.  Earth’s natural motion is downward, since it’s the weightiest and heaviest of the elements, and is also the most mutable and the basis for all other things that exist in our world (pure elements only exist in their respective realms).  Put into human terms, Tristitia is pure work, focusing strictly on material results, but has the effect of bringing melancholy or depression (downward spirits) into one’s life.  Plus, with Earth being the most stable and most rigid of the elements, the effects of Tristitia (and, similarly, toil and depression) last for a long time as well. 

This is closely associated with its association with Saturn, being the slowest-moving and darkest of the planets, also being the Greater Malefic and usually pretty awful to work with.  Saturn rules over pain, trouble, being harassed, melancholy, depression, paucity, scarcity, and sometimes even mortal trouble.  However, Tristitia is associated with Saturn in direct motion, indicating that it’s actually proceeding in matters and accomplishing something, as well as with airy and bright Aquarius.  Though Tristitia represents downward motion, if not the bottom of the barrel, it can also be said that when you’re at the bottom the only way out is up.  Aquarius, unlike rigid Capricorn, is eager to develop new methods of tackling and ruling the world, and so uses its melancholy as a base to build new structures to rise back up.  In this case, Tristitia is like the dark of a tunnel one is wandering through, guided only by the barest glimmer of light, or the promise of a ledge for a weary rock-climber to eventually rest on.

Tristitia has interesting connections with the other two figures ruled by Saturn, Carcer and Cauda Draconis (its inverse figure).  While Carcer represents external delay and obligations, Tristitia represents internal obligation and getting stuck in a rut.  It’s the difference of where the issues of delay and force come from: Carcer indicates outside forces imprisoning one usually due to displeasing or misunderstood aims (fire and earth active), while Tristitia shows an internal depression dragging one down from achieving any good (only earth active).  On the other hand, Cauda Draconis indicates a lack of support and that things are ripe for ending (everything but earth active), while Tristitia represents a lack of support but with no other choice but to continue on (nothing but earth active); having opposite elemental structures, their end goals are different, but they manifest similarly.  Cauda Draconis also indicates someone actively laying a curse against a victim, while Tristitia can show being crossed or being blocked or held down by one’s own choices.  Tristita is a deeply internal figure, showing problems caused or continued by oneself even though the external world may have nothing to do with it.

In geomancy readings, Tristitia means decrease, though not necessarily loss; any amount, health, support, or concordance will be put under strain and often wane under the influence of this figure.  It’s good in matters of acquiring or owning land, agriculture, construction, or keeping things hidden, dark, obscured, secret, or underground in any sense.  Otherwise, Tristitia is pretty unfavorable in most matters, sometimes indicating demotion at work, tightness of funds, a decrease of respect or recognition, and so forth.  Tristitia in magical use is probably best suited to keeping things hidden or secret, and also to keeping things fixed or stable for a long time; inscribing Tristitia on cornerstones or on foundation stones would be very good uses, as well as using it on talismans for agricultural fortune and fecund harvests.  Used maliciously, Tristitia is excellent for inducing lethargy, depression, or malaise in victims, being an offensive and outgoing source of Saturnine energy.

Between the sufferings of both modern public school education and psychological neuroses, a lot of people fall into one of two camps of belief:

1. I can be anything I want and be good at everything I do.
2. I can’t do anything no matter how hard I try.

Both of these beliefs are false, as I reckon them.  In a way, they’re two sides of the same coin, with each influenced by and growing upon the other.  The first belief (that of supercapability) is overly positive to combat any self-doubt, but when taken to its extreme, it fails the holder of that belief and leads one into the second belief (that of incapability).  That second belief is borne out of sorrow and doubt, but is also easily refuted in at least one action which can cycle back into the first belief.  Some people never cycle between the two, getting stuck in one belief or the other, but either way these beliefs are simply wrong.

According to the doctrine of astrology and Hermetic philosophy, we’re all born with several things, such as a purpose, a history, a goal, and a set of things we’re good at and a set of things we’re bad at.  Taken together, plus a little extra, this might all be construed as one’s True Will, the thing we’re supposed to be carrying out in order to fulfill our role in the cosmos as children of the Divine.  After all, the whole point of Hermeticism and Neoplatonism is to reclaim our true heritage and value as children of gods and co-creators of the cosmos, and we can’t know what we’re supposed to create without knowing what we’re good at and where we’re supposed to be.  Knowledge of our True Will helps us focus our efforts on the things we should be doing, which is almost always correlated with what we’re good at.

In addition to knowledge of our True Will, there are several spirits among the heavens that can help us find out what we’re supposed to be doing.  Among those, there are the threefold keepers of Man: the angel of the nativity, the Holy Guardian Angel, and the angel of the profession.  The angel of the nativity is the guy whose name is derived from the natal horoscope based on the five hylegical places, and is a guiding spirit who helps us out in this life for this incarnation.  While the HGA is more for our Selves across incarnations and the heavens, the angel of the nativity is a spirit specific to this life for what we need to do now.  In a way, it’s like the good angel on the shoulder of cartoon characters, but is more knowledgable about what we’re supposed to be doing and how we’re supposed to be doing it.  The other name for this spirit is the natal genius, or the birth-spirit, that helps us do what we need to do for ourselves and our Selves in this life.  In other words, it tells us what’s Right for us to do.  And, like I said before, when we do something proper and Right for us, it tends to be easy or flawless. 

We often call people “genius” when they’re really adept or smart at something, but it wasn’t originally a title of intelligence or mastery.  Instead, “genius” referred to the guiding spirit who helps us be good at certain things because that’s the role we’re supposed to fill; it’s kinda like a cosmic version of Huxley’s “Brave New World”.  Knowing what we’re good at via our genius helps us figure out our talents, the things we’re innately good at in the cosmos.  This could be anything from simple skills such as memorization or a good eye for measurement to whole fields like mathematics or biology or counseling.  Whatever we’ve got a talent in, we should probably explore and make use of. 

Still, just because one has talent in something doesn’t mean one has mastery.  Mastery in something can be called proper technique, the totality of knowledge in how, why, and what methods to use for a particular goal or end result.  Talent helps with building technique, but talent alone doesn’t cut it.  Talent needs refining through building skill, which can be thought of as learned technique as opposed to inborn technique through talent.  Skill helps refine talent to be used for specific, fine things in a regular, repeated manner that talent alone may not be able to do.  It’s like the difference between having a vague subconscious understanding of something and a total comprehension and coherent knowledge of it.

Other people, however, have little to no talent in a given technique, but still want to learn that technique.  In this case, skill is all they have to go on.  They’ll need to become more skillful to make up for the lack of talent, but this doesn’t mean they can’t learn technique or master something.  It just means they’ll have to learn and focus more on building up the skill that people with talent may already be good at.  However, spending time to build up skill in something in which one has little talent often takes time away from building up skill in something one does have talent for.  Keep in mind that talent implies that we’re supposed to be good at something and that we’re supposed to do it; if one shows talent in something but is wasting one’s skill on something else, they’re probably being misguided.

A lot of modern society treats all people the same, which is usually a good thing.  After all, I enjoy and favor equality of rights and opportunity for all, because we’re all still human and capable of basic humanity with human needs.  However, things go awry when society treats us all as having the same talents, skills, capabilities, and inclinations for things.  This kind of social conditioning does real damage, because it assumes everyone has the same basic drive and same basic talents, when this assumption doesn’t hold up.  Some people are very good at written language but awful at mathematics, some good at art and some good at sports, and so forth; we should afford people the chance to explore everything if they so choose, but we shouldn’t force them to pass standardized tests that assume everyone’s at an arbitrary level of technique for an arbitrary number of subjects.

Not everyone is going to be good at everything.  That’s just a fact of life, and that’s quite alright.  There are going to be subjects, fields, and tasks at which we aren’t suited but that others are.  This isn’t to say that we should settle for mediocrity and laziness for ourselves instead of striving to know and become more than we are, but we shouldn’t try to become a jack of all trades when we’re really only good and supposed to be good in a handful of them.  There are so many roles to fill in the world that requires dedication, single-mindedness, and talent in addition to skill, any number of which might be considered taboo or dangerous or outré, even though they’re just as necessary as any other.  Society may say it knows what’s best for itself, but it doesn’t.  We’ve all got a purpose, indicated by our talent and genius, and we need skill to make ourselves perfect.  Only with genius, skill, talent, and technique will we be able to know and carry out our True Will, and make progress on the path to becoming full-fledged co-creators of the cosmos once again.

One of my favorite webcomics (which is ending this year at 10+ years old, alas!) is Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire.  In addition to being a painfully/punfully witty and action-packed high-fantasy webcomic, it also centers around the young Dominic Deegan, a career seer, an oracle who receives visions, and occasional savior of the world.  Given my own divinatory inclinations, this shouldn’t surprise anyone that I like the comic so much.

Despite my guesses that DD’s artist Mookie isn’t an occultist or seer himself (though I could be wrong), he does hit the mark fairly close when it comes to certain topics and problems that come to divination.  Among my most favorite comics is the one from January 5, 2007, where Dominic says a bit about the nature of divination to his students in a class for second sight.  His students are shocked, shocked to know that part of their required reading involves the massive “A Brief History of Everything (Unabridged Version)” :

When a seer looks into a crystal ball and spouts some cryptic message, it’s not because second sight is inherently mysterious.  It’s because the seer doesn’t know what he’s looking at and he’s probably disguising his ignorance with cliché mysticism.  To master second sight you must have knowledge, which is found in books, which is why we have so much required reading for this class.

Later on, his students complain about the amount of homework he assigns on the first day of class, and assume that Dominic used his own second sight to find out that no other teachers had assigned them homework.  Dominic himself then pops by, having overheard the students, and says that he had actually looked at their other teachers’ syllabi in the teacher’s lounge.  After all, Dominic remarks, “knowledge is power”.  A few days later, while discussing how uncool of a teacher he’ll be with his girlfriend and his archmage-school dean mother, he explains why he sadly guesses most of his students will drop the class:

Second sight is hard.  It requires a solid knowledge of history, politics, religion, arcane theory and even geography to really be of any use.  Otherwise it’s just looking at pictures.

When I do a divination for someone, I often ask them what’s on their mind, what brings them to the shop, what problems they might have going on.  They might bring up a specific problem or a concrete, pointed query, which is awesome, but more often than not they’ll try to cover a broad swathe of their lives with something like “I wanna know what’ll happen in my love life” or something equally vague.  I’ll help guide them to specific questions, because geomancy really shines when given something like that, but also because I need a working context for a chart in order to understand what it’s telling me.  Knowing that Puella falls in the 7th house is all well and good, but without knowing how it specifically relates to the query and the other circumstances in the querent’s life, I don’t really have a way to understand what it means.

Unlike some traditions of diviners and seers who’re trained to be clairvoyant or mystic enough to not require knowledge of the query or its context, I need context.  It’s why I read so much on current events and why I read up on other practices, beliefs, cultures, sciences, histories, and the like.  It’s why I engage the querent in conversation first and see what’s generally going on in their life from their perspective.  It’s why I ask questions probing into their life during the reading to clarify some of the symbols (with only 16 geomantic figures to represent all the infinity of the cosmos, I use any and all help I can get to whittle down the possibilities).  Context matters in divination, and it helps me be more specific and, thus, more helpful to the querent than if I worked without it.

Some diviners and readers often work with vague queries and, through skill and mastery with no small amount of intuition, can delivery fairly specific answers relevant to the querent though the querent may not have said anything about them.  Some divination systems like Tarot can cultivate such an intuition, but more often than not it’s a talent.  Still, when one works with vague questions, much more often than not one is going to get vague answers.  It’s a result of having a limited number of symbols that can mean any number of things without knowing how to whittle it down.  This lack of context can take a potentially meaningful message and water it down into uselessness, effectively turning it into a Forer effect-style blurb (consider how general newspaper horoscopes can be).  It sucks when this happens, because it gives divination and diviners of all kinds, including astrologers, a bad name.

Divination is probably best seen as a form of intelligence gathering, in which one draws a distinction between data and information.  Data is a Latin word literally meaning “that which is given”, or things that one has at their disposal.  Information comes from Latin as well, originally meaning “to shape” but figuratively meaning “to instruct” (which has similar etymology and figurative meanings).  One can define information as “data that makes a difference”; if data tells us nothing new, it’s not really helping us to inform ourselves.  Not all data is information; some data is just noise or is erroneous.  Not all information is data; sometimes information can be obtained through patterns of the data or through an analysis of other analyses.  Divination helps one obtain data or to make sense of patterns in data, but it’s only one method.  To produce truly useful information, one should correlate divination and divined answers with historical research, official expertise, and other sources of information.  Although it’s good to trust divination, it shouldn’t be the only thing one goes by.

Marie Laveau, the queen of voodoo in New Orleans, was a renowned seer and reader, but she also worked as a hair stylist for professional high-class clientele.  Working in that kind of environment exposed her to a wealth of gossip, hearsay, and rumors that she was able to verify or refute on her own or with the help of others, which helped her be seen as much more intuitive to her occult clients.  Likewise, Jason Miller takes a dim view of just relying on divination.  Even as far back as ancient Greece, prophecies from the Oracle at Delphi were debated, tweaked, and analyzed in order to be made of use by the groups who received them (cf. the “wooden walls” that protected the Athenians).  Unless it’s really the only thing one has to go by (which is damn-near never in our modern information-based culture), divination needs to be correlated and buffed out with any and all other information out there.

Specificity and a refining of data matters in order to obtain useful information, especially in an occult art like divination.  No matter how real or vivid a vision may appear, or how explicit a Tarot reading may seem, any divined answer should always be reflected upon, backed up with other information, and analyzed in order to clear out any ambiguity, solve any riddles, and reduce any metaphors to their concrete basis.  Much of this can be fixed by having a wide breadth of knowledge, and many gaps can be filled simply by phrasing one’s query specifically and clearly to the diviner.  Still, as awesome as divination may be, it’s a flaw of any system that works with a finite number of symbols that one needs backup and thought to whittle down the infinite to the finite.

Since one of my most favorite topics in occultism and magic is divination, specifically the divinatory art of geomancy, why not talk about that? I know a lot about it, and not many do, so let’s go with it. If nothing else, you’ll come away slightly more educated, and I’ll come away with something looking like productivity. With that in mind, let’s continue this little series of posts on geomancy, “De Geomanteia” (On Geomancy). This (last and final) week, let’s talk about technique instead of figures. Specifically, let’s talk about how to apply geomancy and geomantic figures to magic.

Yes, dear reader, magic. That fabulous art and science of causing a change in conformity with will, the thing I talk about near non-stop on this blog.  This (yet again) lengthy post on geomantic technique will review just a few of the ways one might apply geomancy to magic, since the sky is literally the limit here (at least in terms of celestial spheres).  So get a drink and a snack, put on your robe and wizard hat, and let’s begin.

Just as the planets in astrology can lend themselves to either divination or magic, so too can geomancy by incorporating the figures and their associations in magical ritual, talisman creation, and the like.  Keep in mind that a geomantic figure is nothing more than a collection of elemental forces, where each of the four elements is either active or passive, present or missing, on or off. In one sense, each geomantic figure can be seen as an alchemical formula that reveals a particular state of the cosmos.  Further, by figuring out the ruling element of the mixture, we can divine the overall elemental nature of a certain combination of elements. For instance, Coniunctio (air and water active), with its fluidity in emotional response and mental communication, lends itself very well to the element whose primary nature is wet: Air.

In addition to their elemental formulae and overall correspondences, the geomantic figures are also associated with the planets and signs of the zodiac.  Through these, they’re tied into the ancient and well-known field of planetary magic, which can incorporate the geomantic figures as well into their rituals.  For instance, when I want to work with the darker, more destructive side of Mars, I’d probably pick Rubeus or Cauda Draconis; for wealth magic, I’d go with jovial Acquisitio.  This also ties the geomantic figures into the planetary sephiroth in Qabbalah, which is an extensive set of systems in its own right.  For instance, Coniunctio is associated with Virgo and Mercury, and through those the sephirah Hod, the number 8, the color orange, and the like.  If you’ve forgotten what those are, review the other De Geomanteia posts on the figures for their elemental, planetary, zodiacal, and qabbalistic associations, the paragraph on the “technical details” of the figures near the start and the last paragraph that describes their divinatory and magical interpretations.

Another way to understand the figures is by expanding them to entire charts.  Due to the nature of geomantic chart construction, there are 16×16×16×16 = 65536 possible legal charts used in geomancy, but subsets of them have special properties.  One set, which I call “unique charts”, is the set of all charts that make use of 15 geomantic figures without repeating (excluding the Sentence figure, which of mathematical necessity must repeat from the foregoing 15 figures, and none of the figures in the first 15 figures of the shield chart can be Populus, which would induce repetition).  There are 16 such unique charts, which makes the prospect of linking each one to the sixteen geomantic figures tempting.  One of the members on the Geomantic Campus Yahoo! mailing list (which everyone interested in geomancy should join), Frater Pyramidatus, uncovered a way to assign these 16 unique charts to the 16 figures of geomancy as a way to expand and fully capture the “essence” of the figure in a whole geomantic chart.  Though I won’t reproduce the method or the full set of charts here, the Mother figures to generate each chart are as follows (in order from First to Fourth Mother):

1. Populus: Caput Draconis, Amissio, Fortuna Maior, Tristitia
2. Via: Puer, Caput Draconis, Tristitia, Albus
3. Albus: Fortuna Minor, Rubeus, Puer, Amissio
4. Coniunctio: Laetitia, Fortuna Minor, Puer, Coniunctio
5. Puella: Cauda Draconis, Caput Draconis, Tristitia, Albus
6. Amissio: Fortuna Minor, Rubeus, Carcer, Cauda Draconis
7. Fortuna Maior: Puella, Cauda Draconis, Tristitia, Albus
8. Fortuna Minor: Acquisitio, Puella, Albus, Fortuna Maior
9. Puer: Rubeus, Laetitia, Caput Draconis, Puer
10. Rubeus: Caput Draconis, Carcer, Albus, Fortuna Maior
11. Acquisitio: Rubeus, Laetitia, Cauda Draconis, Caput Draconis
12. Laetitia: Coniunctio, Puella, Fortuna Maior, Tristitia
13. Tristitia: Rubeus, Laetitia, Cauda Draconis, Puella
14. Carcer: Rubeus, Laetitia, Puella, Puer
15. Caput Draconis: Puella, Puer, Tristitia, Albus
16. Cauda Draconis: Laetitia, Fortuna Minor, Acquisitio, Cauda Draconis

Further, because of the mathematics of geomancy, whole charts can be added to each other to yield new charts by adding each figure in one chart to its corresponding figure in the other (e.g. chart 1 First Mother + chart 2 First Mother = chart 3 First Mother).  Based on this, we can obtain charts (not unique, but still significant) that similarly reflect the force of whole planets.

1. Moon (Populus + Via): Amissio, Puer, Albus, Fortuna Maior
2. Mercury (Albus + Coniunctio): Rubeus, Laetitia, Populus, Fortuna Minor
3. Venus (Puella + Amissio): Albus, Fortuna Maior, Laetitia, Fortuna Minor
4. Sun (Fortuna Maior + Fortuna Minor): Cauda Draconis, Acquisitio, Fortuna Maior, Tristitia
5. Mars (Puer + Rubeus): Fortuna Maior, Tristitia, Acquisitio, Cauda Draconis
6. Jupiter (Acquisitio + Laetitia): Albus, Fortuna Maior, Puer, Coniunctio
7. Saturn (Tristitia + Carcer): Populus, Populus, Acquisitio, Coniunctio
8. Lunar Nodes (Caput Draconis + Cauda Draconis): Fortuna Maior, Tristitia, Rubeus, Fortuna Minor

These charts can be used as talismanic images in their own right or augmented to other talismans to represent the entire force of a particular figure or planet.  Frater Pyramidatus also managed to link up the whole system of unique charts assigned to each geomantic figure into a more overarching diagram called “the Geomantic Pyramid”, which combines the geomantic figures, elements, and notions of the Male Principle and Female Principle.  It’s an interesting read, though I haven’t found a way to incorporate it into my own practice; Frater Pyramidatus operates (I believe) in a stricter Thelemic current, so maybe students of that tradition will get more out of it.  Still, I’ll leave the interested reader to join the group above and read for themselves.

In a similar manner, you might also use the geomantic emblems, or sequences of 16 lines like a geomantic figure that contain the essence of all 16 geomantic figures in a cohesive, single icon.  There are 256 such emblems, which can be analyzed elementally on their own, or grouped into 16 cycles of emblems.  Each cycle is associated with a particular figure, giving whole families of emblems a particular geomantic force underlying its nature.  If individual geomantic figures, which are combinations of the four classical elements, represent different states of the cosmos, then the geomantic emblems can be used to represent whole cosmoses or processes of the universe from one state to another fluidly.  The magical uses of these emblems is still mostly unexplored, but it wouldn’t do any harm to find a particular emblem structurally associated with a particular figure you want and elementally associated with a particular stage you want in a given situation and incorporate it into talismans or subtly-occult jewelry.  The notion of order, transition, and flow within the geomantic emblems does beg more investigation, especially in terms of “universal geomantic descriptors” of the cosmos.  You might do well to check out some of my meditations on how they might be explored and understood.

I once mentioned, long ago and separate from De Geomanteia, a particular set of geomantic mudras, or shapes and gestures one can make with the hands to concentrate and meditate upon the figures.  They can also be used as magical gestures, as well: in ritual, when wanting to direct the force of  a particular geomantic figure outward, one would make the mudra with the right (dominant) hand; when wanting to direct it inward towards yourself, one would make the mudra with the left (submissive) hand.  Consider the ASL sign for “I love you”, which is the mudra for Coniunctio, or the standard gesture used for Christian blessing, which is the mudra for Fortuna Maior.  When wanting to cause destruction or to lay a curse on someone, you might use the mudra for Cauda Draconis towards the target (like the surfer shaka/hang loose gesture).  These mudras can be thrown up in formal or informal ritual to act as a focus or “geomantic weapon” in their own right, depending on the need and context.  As a rule, the mudra should be selected based on the force desired: if one wants to start something new, one might throw the mudra of Caput Draconis, but if one wants someone to cut something out, one should use that of Cauda Draconis.  Based on the ruling elements of the figures and the natural motion of the figures (fire and air tend to go upward, water and earth tend to go downward), one could hold the mudra at different heights to affect the motion of the force:

• Fire (burns upward): held high to “catch” and pull in Fire energy, held low to “burn away” and send out
• Air (moves around but tends upward): any height works, but similar to Fire
• Water (flows around but tends downward): any height works, but similar to Earth
• Earth (falls downward): held low to “catch” and pull in Earth energy, held high to “drop” and send out

Plus, due to the “pure” elemental nature of the figures Laetitia (Fire), Rubeus (Air), Albus (Water), and Tristitia (Earth), these mudras are especially powerful for invoking and working with the elements.  Due to their internal, subjective nature, mudras for figures ruled by Fire and Water are more naturally suited to the left hand, with the right hand more suited to the external, objective elements of Air and Earth.  These attributions of right and left are assumed for a right-hand dominant magician; they may be kept the same or reversed for a left-hand dominant magician.

Every time I’ve talked about a figure in this series, I mentioned how you might get a certain shape or image if you play connect the dots with the figure. That method of making images or pictures by connecting the dots in different ways to form a variety of sigils; depending on the figure and depending on the method, a number of different sigils can be devised for a single figure.  Cornelius Agrippa gives a plentiful list of geomantic sigils in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy (book II, chapter 51) which can be used directly in magic or incorporated into talismans, either on their own or in conjunction with other signs and symbols, such as planetary squares, images and occult art, statement-derived sigils a la chaos magic, or qabbalistic diagrams or patterns.

Another use of the sigils, though I haven’t experimented with it personally, is to conjure the intelligence of the individual geomantic figure itself.  Beyond calling them “spirit of Puella” or “angel ruling over Fortuna Maior”, I had an idea to use the Hebrew names for the figures (based on Stephen Skinner’s Geomancy in Theory and Practice) and append the requisite -(i)el onto the end of the names.  Though I haven’t had experience with calling on these angels in relation to the geomantic figures, they should get good results, considering that their names are directly tied to those of the geomantic figures.  Instead of using these angels, one might conjure the angels ruling the zodiac signs or the planets associated with the figures (e.g. Malchidiel, angel of Aries, for Puer).  Instead of using the sigils for the geomantic figures as the seals for these angels, one might also draw out their names on their associated planetary qameas (using the Qamea of the Earth for the angels of Caput Draconis and Cauda Draconis).  These are names based off the traditional names of the figures; should you contact them and get different names or sigils specific to them, let me know, because it’d be nice to have a set of standard names for these guys.

• Populus: Qehilahiel (QHLHIAL, קהלהיאל)
• Via: Derekhel (DRKAL, דרכאל)
• Albus: Labaniel (LBNIAL, לבניאל)
• Coniunctio: Chiburel (ChBURAL, חבוראל)
• Puella: Halechiel (HLChIAL, הלחיאל)
• Amissio: Abodel (ABUDAL, אבודאל)
• Fortuna Maior: Elihiel (OLIHIAL, עליהיאל)
• Fortuna Minor: Sheqiohel (ShQIOHAL, שקיוהאל)
• Puer: Nilchamel (NLChMAL, נלחמאל)
• Rubeus: Adomel (ADUMAL, אדומאל)
• Acquisitio: Hashigiel (HShGIAL, השגיאל)
• Laetitia: Nishoiel (NShUAIAL, נשואיאל)
• Tristitia: Shefeliel (ShPLIAL, שפליאל)
• Carcer: Sohariel (SUHRIAL, סוהריאל)
• Caput Draconis: Rashithiel (RAShIThIAL, ראשיתיאל)
• Cauda Draconis: Siumel (SIUMAL, סיומאל)

There are records and methods of assigning different letters to the geomantic figures, whether in the Roman, Greek, Hebrew, or Enochian languages.  Examples can be found in Golden Dawn’s use of Enochian Chess (images of the “chessboard” can be found here) as well as John Heydon’s Theomagia (book III, pp. 15-18, or pp. 323-325 on Scribd).  John Michael Greer also gives examples of assigning Roman letters to the geomantic figures in his book Art and Practice of Geomancy, perhaps based on Fludd’s or Heydon’s associations.  However, like with assigning numbers to the figures to tell time, I haven’t gotten good results in assigning the geomantic figures to letters to indicate names of people, places, or the like.  I’ve heard of others do so well enough, so your mileage may vary.

One way to incorporate geomantic divination into magical planning or geomantic magic involves the inspection of a given geomantic chart.  Say a querent wants to know whether something will happen that they really want to happen, but the chart denies the query and says “no, it won’t” (review this post on perfection, affirmation, on denial if you’re foggy on this).  By inspecting the significators of the querent and quesited, one can see what can done to “edit” the reality described by the chart to induce a perfection (though it might be best to limit this to the significator of the querent).  One might consider “adding” or “removing” elements from one’s life to change their significator into another one (such as “adding” Air to Puella to change it to Via, or “removing” Water from it to change it to Carcer), and see what effects that would have in the geomantic chart (either redrawing the whole chart from scratch or just superficially editing the house chart).  Doing the same with whole geomantic figures can also be done, such as adding Puella and Puer to form Coniunctio.

An old style of Arabic geomantic magic involves the use of taskins, or specific orderings of the sixteen geomantic figures as a kind of talisman.  One shown in Stephen Skinner’s book was used to find water, and there are references to other taskins to find treasure or similar objects.  I haven’t found very many of these, since it seems to be really old or obscure geomantic knowledge (at least as published in English or European publications), but one could use such orderings (say, four sets of four figures aligned to the four quarters based on their elements) for altar arrangements, geomantic Tables of Practice, or similar talismans.  Such orderings might share similarities with the geomantic emblems I mentioned above, but due to the dearth of information on the Arabic, African, or Middle Eastern uses of taskins in European languages, this is pretty much an unknown.  Unfortunately, until I learn Arabic or until someone who does is willing to take on a few translation projects for me, not much is going to change in this situation.  Although some taskins might be ordered by astrological principles (ruling planet, ruling sign, etc.), other takins might be derived from the unique charts above or the geomantic emblems.  Definitely something to experiment in the future with.

To give an example of geomantic magic, say Jane Doe wants to marry John Smith in the next year.  Marriage can be benefitted magically from a number of figures, but Coniunctio is probably the best.  So, to achieve her desired goal, Jane might do any or all of the following:

• Make a talisman of the figure Coniunctio with associated mercurial, Virgoan materials and timing, since Coniunctio is a figure representing union, a coming together of forces and people, and marriage; such a talisman might have a sigil of the figure on one side and its associated unique chart on the other.
• Conjure Chiburel, the angel watching over Coniunctio, perhaps under the guidance of the angel of Mercury Raphael, to invoke and manifest the forces of Coniunctio between herself and John.
• Intone the vowel epsilon (associated with Mercury) in a day and hour of Mercury over an image of her and John put together, with a sigil of Coniunctio drawn over them, perhaps incorporated with yet other sigils a la chaos magic.
• Throw the geomantic mudra for Coniunctio (which looks a lot like the ASL sign for “I love you”) around in John’s presence, perhaps visualizing a sigil for Coniunctio directed or “thrown” at him.
• Make a small hemp or chain bracelet tied or knotted in a manner that makes use of the geomantic emblem for Coniunctio, starting at the position where Caput Draconis appears, repeating a short incantation to lure, tie, and conjoin John to her.
• Cast a candle spell that uses six candles set out in the dot pattern of Coniunctio in a day and hour of Venus, placing a picture of her between the candles of the earth line and a picture of John between the candles of the fire line.

Assume for a bit that a geomancer throws a chart to see whether it’s possible that they can be married in the next year; the chart comes up with a negative answer, with Tristitia as the significator for Jane and Fortuna Maior for John.  There’s no perfection, but the structures for Tristitia and Fortuna Maior are similar, differing only in the water line (i.e. Tristitia has water passive, Fortuna Maior has water active).  Jane might consider “adding” the elemental force of water to her own self and life, perhaps by reaching out emotionally to connect with John more than she is or swimming more and being surrounded by blue and watery things, which would have the effect of transforming Tristitia to Fortuna Maior, which would induce perfection by occupation, turning the negative answer from the chart into a positive one.  The same could be accomplished by working with the figure Albus similarly, since Albus and Tristitia combine to form Fortuna Maior, perhaps by being more reflective and in touch with oneself, or by working with the angel Labaniel to make one more watery and spiritually deep.

At their core, the geomantic figures are another set of symbols that can blend or bind with other symbols in magic.  You might incorporate the geomantic figures into sigils, or use the sigils of the geomantic figures themselves, in a sigil web.  Drawing the geomantic figure on consecrated paper or scrolls to keep as talismans, or using candle arrangements in the form of geomantic figures, would be good ritual uses of the geomantic figures.  Conjurework and hoodoo might also benefit, by using the geomantic figures as talismans on paper or clay, burning or crushing them up into dust, and mixing them in with other powders to lay over someone as a target/victim/beneficiary.  The ability to use geomantic figures and geomancy in magic is as wide and varied as the kinds of magic out there entirely, so feel free to experiment and use the geomantic figures in whatever way might seem useful or interesting.

As a rule, before performing any magic working (geomantic or otherwise), it’s suggested that the magician perform a divination to make sure it’s both advisable and feasible to use magic to a particular end.  In other words, the magician should always ask “can I use magic to attain my goal?” before actually using magic as a part of planning.  To understand these charts, see whether the Judge is favorable to the working and whether perfection exists with the proper house.  Magic is related to four houses in geomantic charts:

• Sixth house: magic you ask others to do on your behalf as a service
• Eighth house: magic you do generally, e.g. those that involve lesser spirits, demons, witchcraft
• Ninth house: magic you do with celestial, theurgic, divine, or philosophical forces, e.g. astrological talismans, prayer to attain a desired end
• Twelfth house: magic done by others against you, especially without your knowledge

Additionally, you might want to inspect the seventh house (anyone working with you, a partner, a consultant, a spiritual worker, etc.) and the fourth house (the end result of the magical operation) to get a feel for other factors in magic-related situations.  The Part of Spirit, or Index, often indicates spiritual considerations related to queries and their resolution, which is doubly important in questions of magic.

And that concludes my 20-part series De Geomanteia, a weekly series of posts on the sixteen figures that constitute the alphabet of geomancy as well as four posts on geomantic technique. This series was a lot more fun to write than I expected it to be, and you guys gave some really good feedback during the whole process both on the blog and off.  Thank you, dear readers, for sticking it through with me, and I hope you learned at least a bit about this venerable and ancient divination system, if not inspired to use it in your own work. Would you guys have any other questions, queries, quandries, or comments to make about geomancy?  Or would you have anything to share in addition to what I’ve posted, especially about incorporating geomancy with magic?

As I mentioned last time, I completed the small little journey I set out on about five months ago to describe each of the geomantic figures and a bit about geomantic technique on my blog at the rate of one post per week.  It’s been a fantastic trip, and I hope you guys got a lot out of it; it encouraged me to dig through my old notes and meditations on the subject, as well as having spurred me to do more original geomantic research.  Since some people like things being made easy for them, I present to you a list of all the De Geomanteia posts I made, separated out into the posts on technique and the figures.

The posts on geomantic technique:

1. On the Via Puncti and its variations in the shield chart
2. On perfection, aspect, favorability, and affirmation
3. On determining time and timeframes with geomancy
4. On using geomancy and the figures in magic and ritual

The posts on the geomantic figures (not in chronological order):

1. Populus
2. Via
3. Albus
4. Coniunctio
5. Puella
6. Amissio
7. Fortuna Maior
8. Fortuna Minor
9. Puer
10. Rubeus
11. Acquisitio
12. Laetitia
13. Tristitia
14. Carcer
15. Caput Draconis
16. Cauda Draconis

Feel free to share this or any of the other posts in the De Geomanteia series.  This certainly won’t be the end of geomancy posts here at the Digital Ambler, that’s for sure, so keep an eye out for more meditations on the figures and technique in the future.

Also, I wanted to thank all my readers for making this an awesome week.  On Tuesday, the Digital Ambler crossed the 100,000 hit mark, which is a fantastic milestone.  It’s a nontrivial thing, too, since the blog has only been online for less than two years!  Between Facebook, Twitter, and other people’s blogs and sites, I’ve been getting lots of traffic in ways I wouldn’t've imagined a year or so ago (like from Bungie gaming forums or discussions of grimoires I’ve only dreamed of working with).  You guys are awesome for having helped me out and been with me on this fantastic Hermetic journey, and I see no signs of it stopping anywhere soon.  Keep reading, dear readers, and I hope you enjoy the future with me.

Happy geomancing and happy ambling, you guys!

After all this time, I’m finally getting around to reading Michael Cecchetelli’s excellent text the Book of Abrasax, however slowly that might be.  I’m still just getting into the material, but it’s already off to a good start, especially since he starts off with a ritual I already use frequently: the Calling of the Sevenths, also called the heptagram or heptasphere rite.  I use this daily in my morning ritual schema, as well as whenever I need a quick rebalancing and recharging.  What’s interesting is that Cecchetelli adds in a bit after the intonation of the vowels by calling on four barbarous words of power in a manner reminiscent of the LBRP.  It’s interesting, and I like the effect.  It also reminded me of Stephen Flowers’ Hermetic Magic, where he also introduces the heptagram ritual along with a calling of the quarters, but using different words of power and introducing divine images or godforms to associate with the words.  It’s interesting stuff, and I don’t know why I wasn’t using this before.  (Flowers also used these same words to form the working circle of the magus, as shown on the book’s cover).

Flowers’ work is based on the Greek Magical Papyri (specifically here II.104ff, XII.87ff), which forms the basis for the associations of the names and images with the cardinal directions.  Cecchetelli uses a different set of names for the cardinal directions but doesn’t include the images, and I don’t know off the top of my head where he got his associations of the names with the directions from.  Neither text offers associations of names with the depths, the heights, or the center, even though both authors incorporate the names into the heptagram/heptasphere ritual which make use of these three directions.  In my own experiments, I combined these two sets of names by using Flowers’ attribution of the names to the cardinal directions and used the two other names from Cecchetelli’s list for the vertical dimension (with the spelling corrected to conform with the most commonly seen forms of the words).

With all that in mind, my resulting list of associations between names, directions, planets, vowels, and images becomes this:

1. East: ΕΡΒΗΘ (ERBĒTH).  A winged dragon with a crown of clouds rising above the horizon.
2. North: ΣΕΣΕΓΓΕΝΒΑΡΦΑΡΑΓΓΗΣ (SESENGENBARPHARANGĒS).  An infant child sitting atop a blossoming lotus.
3. West: ΑΒΛΑΝΑΘΑΝΑΛΒΑ (ABLANATHANALBA).  A crocodile with the tail of a snake arising from the waters.
4. South: ΛΕΡΘΕΞΑΝΑΞ (LERTHEXANAX).  A falcon with its wings stretching out to their full wingspan.
5. Down: ΔΑΜΝΑΜΕΝΕΥΣ (DAMNAMENEUS).  A young maiden looking forward with a torch in her left hand and a spear in her right.
6. Up: ΑΚΡΑΜΜΑΧΑΜΑΡΕΙ (AKRAMMAKHAMAREI).  An old man looking downward with a ring of keys in his right hand and a staff in his left.

Although the divine images for the cardinal directions came from the PGM via Flowers, no images were given for ΔΑΜΝΑΜΕΝΕΥΣ or ΑΚΡΑΜΜΑΧΑΜΑΡΕΙ; these I came up with based on what was revealed to be after asking the names and the spiritual entities associated with them.  They seem to work well for me, though admittedly aren’t traditional and are influenced by their planetary associations.  I prefer Flowers’ attributions of the names to the directions over Cecchetelli’s mostly because I can find more extant texts with the same or similar words and directions.

Though there are six names given above, there are seven points of the heptagram ritual; the point missing from the above list is the center point.  I reserve this point for my own HGA, using his name as a word of power in its own right and focusing on his appearance as he appears to me.  You might do the same, or reserve it for your patron/matron deity, other agathodaimonic entity, or your own divine Self using your craft name (a la the Headless Rite‘s “I am thy prophet Moses/Ankh-Af-Na-Khonsu…”).

When used with the heptagram ritual, the words of power essentially correspond to calling the quarters or the Watchtowers, but in a non-angelic or early Hermetic manner.  Although Flowers and Cecchetelli both keep themselves to the four cardinal directions, I like the added use of the third dimension plus my own HGA being with me (once that connection is forged, any method to keep that connection open or make it stronger helps).  So, to call the respective directions using these names, I’d probably go with a structure like the following, visualizing the proper divine image for each name:

ΕΡΒΗΘ, take thy place before me!
ΑΒΛΑΝΑΘΑΝΑΛΒΑ, take thy place behind me!
ΛΕΡΘΕΞΑΝΑΞ, take thy place at my right!
ΣΕΣΕΓΓΕΝΒΑΡΦΑΡΑΓΓΗΣ, take thy place at my left!
ΑΚΡΑΜΜΑΧΑΜΑΡΕΙ, take thy place in the heights!
ΔΑΜΝΑΜΕΝΕΥΣ, take thy place in the depths!
(name of HGA), take thy place with me, now and at all times, here and in all places!

Of course, I wanted to do a bit of research in what these names mean, if they mean anything at all.  In a lot of cases when it comes to these barbarous words of power, there is no etymology to be found, though interesting conjectures might be made or results found through gematria and isopsephy.  ΕΡΒΗΘ is part of a frequently-seen Setian formula in the PGM, usually in damaging or harmful contexts; ΑΒΛΑΝΑΘΑΝΑΛΒΑ and ΣΕΣΕΓΓΕΝΒΑΡΦΑΡΑΓΓΗΣ are very common words used all throughout the PGM though with no known origin besides a possible Hebrew or Aramaic etymology, but often used for beneficial purposes.  ΛΕΡΘΕΞΑΝΑΞ is part of a much longer word known as the Aberamen formula, itself a palindrome which contains the name of Thoth.  ΔΑΜΝΑΜΕΝΕΥΣ is known to be one of the six Ephesia Grammata, hypothesized to refer to the Sun since ancient times, but has also been seen in the PGM for love and luck.  ΑΚΡΑΜΜΑΧΑΜΑΡΕΙ is a word I’ve come to know as a Semitic phrase translated to “cast off the nets”, as in any boundaries or bindings that would prevent a ritual from working.  Beyond this, unfortunately, my research skills don’t turn up much.

As for the images, those are a bit easier, given that we know already to look at Greco-Egyptian symbolism.  Serpents are often seen as forces of great power, especially that of vital or creative essence; being both of the earth (crawling) and of the sky (flying), the flying serpent is not unlike the image of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, with whom ΕΡΒΗΘ shares some similarities.  Falcons are solar symbols, and is known to be the countenance of the Egyptian god Horus or Ra, depending on the timeframe.  Crocodiles are seen as gateways to the underworld and an animal of Set, countering the lighter images of the winged serpent and falcon.  The lotus is, much as in Eastern symbolism, an image of purity and eternity, and combined with the image of the infant symbolizes divinity being born into the world (the North is the Egyptian direction of holiness and immortality).  The images of the keyring and staff as well as of the torch and spear are a little more modern, to me, since they were things I “tuned into”, and so don’t have clear Egyptian correspondences.  The keyring and staff suggest the power over freedom (unlocking and locking as well as barring from and supporting one), while the torch and spear suggest active force (illumination, flammability, battle, direction).

Regardless of their occult meaning, the words work, which is the important thing.  For those who already do or have experience with the LBRP or calling the quarters/Watchtowers, you already know more or less what to expect with this.  When I use the calls of the names after the heptagram rite, I end up feeling distinct presences at the directions, kinda like guardians or gatekeepers, neither wrathful nor peaceful.  I like it, and it makes me feel safer and more powerful all at once.  It’s probably something I should’ve been doing in some form by this point, but I’ll also probably tweak and change it as needed until I come up with something a little more stable and fixed.  Using all six names isn’t strictly necessary; the four cardinal directions alone will suffice, using either Flowers’ or Cecchetelli’s associations of the names to the directions, but I prefer to use all six.  Using that extra third dimension helps me establish a magical zone or operant field, much as using the Qabbalistic Cross, “parting of the veil”, L(B/I)R(P/H), or what-have-you.

Being an active blogger, apparently, and who gets a decent amount of daily traffic (who recently passed the 100K hit count, thank you guys so much!), I like to amuse and confuse myself at what you guys actually like to read here.  I mean, seeing how I blog on everything from orgone technology to angelic conjurations and religious politics, I’ve got a fair bit of knowledge built up and a good number of posts to help share it.  Still, every so often I wonder why people read my blog, and what they might be interested in reading.  After all, feedback is one way to fine-tune writing, and you, dearest readers, are just the ones to give it!  So, here are a few questions for you to consider and answer down in the comments below:

1. What drew you to my blog in the first place?  How’d you hear about it, and how do you tend to read it (RSS feed, WordPress Reader, links from Twitter or Facebook, etc.)?  Do you ever bother to check out the comments on the posts?  Do you ever bother to comment on the posts?
2. I’ve made a fair number of designs for Tables of Practices, talismans, lamens, and the like.  Have you found any of them to be useful in your own work?  Have you made anything incorporating or based off of the designs you’ve found here?  Are there any designs in particular you’d like to see me create, improve, or focus on in the future?  Are there any seals, images, sigils, or pictures from magical texts you’d like to see me redraw or remake for a new age?
3. I really enjoyed doing my series of posts on geomancy, De Geomanteia, since it’s a large topic that I know a lot about and enjoy talking about.  Are there any other series you’d like me to consider doing in the future?  Any other large topics you’d like me to delve into more thoroughly, both for my benefit and yours?  What would you like me to talk about, generally and specifically?  One series I thought about doing would be a modern reinterpretation of images of the Zodiac (e.g. Virgo as the Robot Bitch, Aquarius as the Internet-Addicted Jihadi, etc.); would you all be interested in things like this?
4. One of the most-viewed pages on my blog is my post on the shorthand I developed for personal use.  I never expected this to be so popular a thing, but I guess a lot more people are interested in stenography than occultism.  Do any of you actually use this shorthand?  If so, have you used it for sigilization, simple writing, calligraphy, or just as an exercise in bored creativity?  Are there any other posts you come here specifically to reference (the page on Planetary Conjurations from the Munich Manual is another popular one)?
5. I hear tell that a lot of people are impressed with the vast knowledge and intellect I display here on my blog (I disagree with the qualifications and adjectives used), but some readers have expressed interest in simpler, introductory-level posts every so often for the beginner or less bored.  What kinds of introductions, 100-style topics would you like to see me discuss?  Or would you rather me stick to the higher-level, philosophical stuff?  Would you rather me put things in terms of theory and back-end occult mechanics, or actual ritual and real-world experiences, or some mix of the two?
6. Are there any other blogs you know of similar to this one as far as topics, philosophy, magic, and the like go that you’d suggest (and aren’t already in the blogroll to the right)?  I’m always on the lookout to expand my blogosphere and knowledge by observing the work of others who actually do the Work.
7. What are some of your interests in the occult?  Are you more into hearth- or kitchen-witchery?  Do you dig Western ceremonial, grimoire, or Solomonic magic?  Are you more of an energy worker, orgone/radionics/reiki channeler, or a psionics practitioner?  Do you read for the philosophy or the practice?  Are you here just for the lulz and passing interests, or are you here to start yourself off on your own path?  Do you have a label for yourself, or do you describe yourself by what you do?  Do you have a specific culture or racial heritage you tie yourself and your work to?
8. I live, work, and Work in the Washington, DC area of the US, and do readings and offer classes at Sticks and Stones in Fairfax, VA.  Are any of my readers close enough to get a small get-together going for magicians and occultists?  If I were to offer classes at Sticks and Stones with a focus on Hermetic magic and the like, what would you like to see me teach, if you could come by?

If you read my blog regularly, or even if this is your first time browsing around, feel free to leave a bit of feedback in the comments below.  Help me make my blog more awesome, and everyone’ll benefit.  I don’t have much to entice you with to make you comment, but I can give you a hug through the ether if that’s okay.  This isn’t to change the focus or scope of the blog (it is still my blog, after all), but knowing what some of my readers think can help me get more ideas myself.

While idly browsing around Reddit and the rest of the vasty deep of the Internet, I encountered an absolutely fantastic website for people working in Greco-Roman or Hellenic pagan paths, the Biblioteca Arcana.  I was directed to the site while looking up some information on dice-based divination, and ended up discovering something a little more interesting: a system of divination that uses the Greek letters much as modern diviners use the Elder Futhark runes.

The system is pretty easy to learn.  There are 24 letters in the Greek alphabet (ignoring the obsolete digamma, qoppa, and sampi), and each letter is associated with a particular oracular verse or lyric that begins with that letter (much as an acrostic).  Select a letter through some random means (dice, selecting a stone from a bag, etc.), and the oracular verse corresponded with the letter is the answer.  This is effectively divination by Greek letters, or grammatomancy.  Since all the oracular verses are fairly short, it’s only a minor chore to associate the Greek letters with the meanings of them, no more tedious than learning runes.  It might even be simpler, since the traditional technique didn’t allow for multiple letters being drawn or reversed letters (though I’m sure the system could be modified to allow for it, definitely something to try out).

The dude at the link above, Apollonius Sophistes, offers three methods of selecting letters randomly: using stones or potsherds inscribed with one letter on each, using four sheep knucklebones, or using five six-sided dice (noted as 5d6 in RPG terms).  The knucklebones and dice, when rolled, give a number associated with a particular letter.  While I’m fond of the first method, I wanted something that was simpler to carry around.  Considering that there are 24 letters in the Greek alphabet, why not use that number to our advantage?  We can factorize 24 into 4 and 6, so one method is to use the a four-sided die (1d4) to select a “hexad” of letters (hexad 1 = Α through Ζ, hexad 2 = Θ through Μ, etc.), and to use a six-sided die (1d6) to select the letter within the hexad.  So, say we roll the dice and get 3 on the d4 and 5 on the d6.  So, we look at the fifth letter in the third hexad, which is Ρ (Greek rho, not Latin pee).

Alternatively, 24 divides into 2 and 12; we could use a twelve-sided die (d12) and roll it twice, once to determine whether we look at the first dodecad of letters (first dodecad =  Α through Μ, second = Ν through Ω) and again to determine the specific letter within that dodecad.  We might say that an odd number on the first roll is associated with the first dodecad and an even number with the second.  So, say we roll 2d12, and we get the numbers 4 and 11.  4 is even, so we look at the eleventh letter in the second dodecad, which is Ψ (Greek psi).  Alternatively, instead of rolling 2d12 and using the first roll for its parity, we might roll a 1d12 with a 1d2 (i.e., flip a coin), but that requires having something extra on hand. 

At any rate, what’s awesome about this style of grammatomancy is that we can combine the oracles given above with the technique of stoicheia, where each of the Greek letters is assigned to a particular magical force.  Consider that there are 12 astrological signs, seven traditional planets, and four classical elements plus Spirit/quintessence.  Thus, 12 + 7 + 4 + 1 = 24, the number of letters in the Greek alphabet.  The seven vowels (Α through Ω) are assigned to the planets (Moon through Saturn); the five complex consonants (Θ, Ξ, Φ, Χ, Ψ) are assigned to the elements (Earth, Water, Air, Fire, Spirit); the twelve simple consonants leftover are assigned to the twelve signs of the zodiac in order (Β with Aries through Τ with Pisces). 

Through the use of the association of the zodiac signs with the simple consonants, we might use Agrippa’s association of the Olympic deities with the signs (book II, chapter 14) to arrive at big-name gods instead of just signs if we want a less astrological bend to this; similarly, we might use his association of the elements (book II, chapter 7) and of the planets (book II, chapter 10) to the directions.  We might want to go this route if we want to know which god or wind is favorable to appeal to or would hinder us, though all divination and oracles come from Apollo and/or Hermes in traditional reckoning.  This is in addition to using the numerical values of the letters in isopsephy or Greek gematria, as well, for another layer of interpretation that you might consider.

I’ve always held writing to be magical (as it damn well is, coming from Hermes-Thoth-Odin-whoever), and I’ve always wanted to try using writing itself as divination besides automatic writing.  Runes never clicked with me, but this style of Greek grammatomancy seems much more appealing; it’s probably just an aesthetic thing, but hey, aesthetics matter, and it fits much more closely in the systems and currents I work with than a writing system far removed in time, space, and symbolism.  I strongly suggest checking out the dude’s page and experimenting with this and other techniques of his; I know I will.  As a good academic should, he even posts his sources and scans of original Greek texts where applicable, which is pretty awesome.  I’m pretty psyched to learn this style of divination, if you guys couldn’t tell.

One of the areas where I catch flak as a ceremonial magician is that people constantly assume I’m some kind of spiritual control-freak.  It’s true, lots of Solomonic literature makes use of perilous heavy-handed conjurations against demons and the like, but that’s not the kind of work I often find myself faced with.  I mean, far be it from me to grab Astaroth or some Old One by the tentacles and whip them around the planes to get me a lil’ more coin in my purse.  I’d rather go the route of respect and honor, which is just as much an exchange of effort as anything else and even more effective in the long-term.  Working in a framework of respect involves being humble when needed, but the notion of humility is something that not a lot of people understand.  I suppose magicians have this problem extra-bad, and it’s not unwarranted that I hear tell of haughty magicians whose photos are in the dictionary under “hubris”.

As in many religions, humility is seen as a virtue, usually meaning a recognition of oneself, one’s talents, one’s skills, and one’s accomplishments, with nothing (good or bad) added and nothing (good or bad) removed.  Similar definitions exist across cultures, but that’s the general idea.  I like to use its etymology (as always) to help me clarify what it means; in this case, the word has its origins in the Latin word humus, meaning “earth”.  Humility is the state achieved by being brought low, down to the earth, or with your feet on the ground.  It’s often seen as diametrically opposed to pride, which I don’t quite agree with, because pride is often needed to drive one on to act.  There are also times when I find some expressions of humility to be ungainly debasing or badly humiliating that achieve nothing but hurt or harm, so it might be helpful to break these two words out into four: humility and modesty, pride and boastfulness.

To me, pride and humility are very similar concepts.  Pride is recognition of all that you are and can be or do; humility is recognition of all that you are and have done in the grand scheme of things.  In other words, these things are statements of truth.  Boastfulness or hubris, on the other hand, and its inverse of modesty are essentially lies we tell to ourselves or others.  Boastfulness is the lie we tell to make ourselves to be more than we actually are; modesty is the lie we tell to make ourselves less than we actually are.  I ended up with this four-way distinction by combining my two favorite sources of religious and spiritual philosophy, Buddhism and Hermeticism.

In my early days in studying religion, I was really into Theravada Buddhism.  It’s a simple, elegant, and effective tradition of Buddhism that was easy enough for a middle schooler to read into and understand the basic tenets of.  I recall reading somewhere (but I can’t seem to find it anymore) that, once upon a time, Buddha was confronted by someone who thought he wasn’t being humble at all.  The Buddha in the old sutras did often expound on how difficult, how rare, how unfathomable the thing he did (complete and total enlightenment) was in the grand scheme of things, even though he frequently told his students to give up exaggerating and lying and boasting of all kinds.  After all, if the Buddha could obtain enlightenment, everyone could, so it couldn’t be as rare as he said so!

Not so, replied the Buddha.  If enlightenment were as common as his prosecutor was suggesting, then other people would be following those teachers and the Buddha would just be another arhat.  The Buddha was recounting a fact that there hadn’t been anyone like him in quite some time, that there wouldn’t be anyone like him for another stretch of time, that the road he took to get to his point was not easy, that he had in fact accomplished a miraculous release from samsara.  He was also recounting that anyone could, in theory, accomplish this, and he was teaching a method that other people could accomplish to attain the same states.  After all, the Buddha was human, too, and as such indicates that all humanity can obtain enlightenment.  Whatever the Buddha did, anyone else can do; that they haven’t indicates how difficult it was.  What the Buddha was not doing was lying about his attainment, neither overstating what he was doing or making himself out to be some cosmic savior and redeemer of all things that exist (though he would have liked to, I’m sure), nor was he making the path out to be easy or kind to people and making himself seem like a weak or intellectually simple person.

In other words, he was humble about his attainment, but he wasn’t being modest about it.  Lying goes against the Five Precepts of Buddhism, which includes exaggeration of any kind, be it for one’s own sake (boasting) or against one’s own sake (modesty).

Granted, modesty does mean “to keep due measure” or “freedom from self-exaggeration”, or a synonym of humility, but often enough it’s used to belittle oneself and make one seem less than they are.  Consider a woman’s beauty, which is often kept regulated in many cultures: I’m against head-coverings, face-veils, and the like because it turns a beautiful form into a shapeless blob so that they won’t tempt men with their sultry ways and sex-radiating hair.  Less severely, consider a servant before his king.  Let’s say that this servant is an expert in several fields of engineering, but due to his stature before the regent, he can’t discuss his accomplishments or expertise without being directly prompted, and even then he has to defer to the excellence of the king.  He’s making himself to be less than he is for the sake of modesty, which reduces his worth instead of increasing it unless the king is somehow made to know of the servant’s actual expertise.

As for pride?  Pride is accepting that we have accomplished and learn things, and that we can accomplish and learn yet more.  It’s something that keeps us going and something that helps us establish our value and rank in the world.  As opposed to Buddhism, Hermeticism informs my notion of pride.  It’s bad to be prideful, or literally “full of it”, but it’s no bad thing to be proud of oneself.  After all, humanity has an important role to play in the world, both for the spirits and for our fellow mankind, and it’s just as important to realize that we’re awesome.  In the Hermetic view, we’re considered the children of God/the gods and, as such, given permission and ability to interact with and communicate with our older sibling spirits, if not outright granted authority to act over them and the world around us.  It’s bad to lord it over other spirits (a la boastful Solomonic invocations), but as children of the gods, it’s also our job to manifest, create, order, and reckon the cosmos according to our roles in it.  And, as the angel Michael once told me, when something in the cosmos does not do their job and their job needs to be done, we need to make them do it.  Qabbalistically, humankind is seen as the angelic choir of Malkuth, meaning that it’s our job to maintain and uphold the order and functionality of this material world of ours and its connections to the worlds and cosmos around us.

It’s a fine line to walk between pride/humility and boasting/modesty.  Often enough, I err on the side of caution and go into modest-mode, since the lying incurred by that rings a little less harmful than the lying incurred by boasting.  Still, I often get on some of my friends’ nerves by being humble to the point of modesty, but that could just be the culture I find myself in which finds more value in pride than humility.  I frequently comment on how awesome and fantastic (in the senses of awe and fantasy) the things I do are, but I always back it up with how little I feel I’m actually doing, coupled with how little I’ve been studying and practicing this stuff.  As of this writing, I’ve only been at my Hermetic stuff for just over two years, and my geomancy stuff at six or so.  These are not long periods of time, and even though I had a head start and good resources to work with, I know that other people with less than me in any sense can make just as good progress just as fast as me.  People trust me with the messages and forecasts I deliver with divination, and I try my hardest to get it right with them, despite that the techniques I use are barely occult or arcane at all.  The stuff I do as a service for the world is important and needed, which I’ll do when there are no others to do the work, which I’ll help when there are, and which I’ll teach when there aren’t any yet but there are those willing to learn.

That’s both my humility and my pride.

Recently, someone asked me about the differences between invoking, evoking, summoning, banishing, and all that jazz.  As a ceremonial magician, there’s a lot of different ritual I use depending on the need that can fall under different categories, each with a different label.  Then again, much of the ritual is fluid enough to defy categories or change between them with the use of a few different words.  So, let me clarify my stance (and only mine, I dunno how much others may agree with me on this) on the difference between the following words: invocation, evocation, conjuration, summoning, exorcism, banishment.  After all, I seem to be doing so well with clarifying my use of particular words, so why not?

Let me clarify first that much of the distinction drawn between these words is strictly a modern thing.  Traditional sources and grimoires from the medieval and Renaissance eras made no distinction between invoking and evoking, and used these terms interchangeably with conjuring and exorcising.  Because humanity likes to bin and classify everything endlessly, drawing the thickest lines between the smallest groups, and because we’ve inherited a knack for classification from our Platonic and Aristotelian philosophical forefathers, we insist on making these distinctions known.  In my practice, I tend to stick to the broadest, most applicable words used, mostly because these categories are strictly artificial and not always replicable in magical practice.  Ultimately, when working with the spirits, shit either gets done or it doesn’t.  This isn’t engineering where we can always follow the same procedures to obtain the same results, because magic doesn’t work like that, more often than not.

First, let’s talk about the high-level word “conjuration“.  It comes from Latin, literally meaning “swearing together”.  In a conjuration, one makes a pact, agreement, or oath with one or more spirits (or other brand of non-physical entity, that kind of classification can be talked about in a later post).  The oath taken can be just a simple request or a trade of services (you do/give X for me, I do/give Y for you), or something more complicated such as appearing physically in the name of some higher power.  In this sense, “conjuration” is the most general term to be used for any work with spirits.  A similar term is “adjuration“, or “swearing to”, often used to force a spirit to accomplish or do something.  This is a little more forceful and heavy-handed, and is often used in some of the more traditional Catholic or Solomonic rituals to really bind a spirit to the magician’s will.

Similar to conjuration, the word “exorcism” also means “binding by oath”.  It comes from Greek through Latin, originally meaning “to cause to swear”.  Even as late as the Renaissance period, this word was used in the same way as “conjuration” to refer to any ritual where one works with a spirit under some oath, pact, or agreement.  However, as most of these rituals were historically done to get rid of spirits, “exorcism” eventually picked up the meaning of “conjuration so as to banish”.  Since a lot of ritual texts from the Renaissance use “exorcism” and “conjuration” interchangeably, I also consider “exorcism” to be a very high-level broad term though with connotations or implications of getting rid of something.

Speaking of, let’s talk about what “banishment” is.  This is probably the most agreed-upon term of the bunch, and is also the only one of the bunch that has a Germanic origin instead of a Greek or Latin one.  ”Banishment” is getting rid of spirits or other entities or energies, depending on your view of magic and models thereof.  Whether this is from one’s own personal sphere or internal world, or from one’s external surroundings and a given place, “banishment” gets rid of, clears out, and bars the entry of spirits into a particular area.  Simple enough, I think, though some people would align “exorcism” to be a kind of banishment; in these cases, “banishing” refers to cleansing one’s sphere and inner world, while “exorcism” is clean an external area or person.  This is certainly a modern meaning of the words, but are fairly interchangeable.

On the other hand, we have the words “summoning“, “invocation“, and “evocation” to refer to rituals that introduce or call up spirits in a particular area.  Of them, “summoning” is the broadest, and refers to calling on any spirit for a particular need; we summon them, they’re present, and then stuff gets done either with or without a charge or pact that would be signified with “conjuration”.  After that, we have “invocation” and “evocation” as two different kinds of summoning, or as synonyms for it.  Going by etymology, the former means “call in” while the latter means “call out”.  Still, more than any other set of terms, these were never seen as different in traditional texts.  I can’t stress this enough: any distinction that might be drawn between them is (as far as I’m aware) purely a modern thing.  Even if it’s a useful distinction for some people to make in theory, it’s ultimately not that big a deal or a difference in practice.

The difference lies in the use of the prefix “in-” versus “e(x)-”.  Some people might distinguish the difference in “invoke” versus “evoke”, especially in non-magical contexts, as a “calling upon a higher power for aid” versus a “calling forth or summoning”.  In magical settings, one might invoke a god for aid but evoke a spirit for a conjuration, perhaps invoking a god to swear by.  Alternatively, one might invoke a power to buff one’s sphere out or imbue oneself with the blessings of a particular spirit, but would evoke a spirit to accomplish things external to one’s sphere and body.  However, this isn’t always the case; the Roman notion of evocation was to call on the gods of an enemy city to abandon them and come to the side of the Romans for aid, which would normally fall under the notion of invoking enemy gods.  Similarly, the old myths have various instances of people invoking the gods for aid and then having the gods appear next to them or otherwise manifest for their external aid, which would often be considered evocation.  Depending on what one expects and one’s magical background, the same ritual might work to produce internal results, external results, or some combination of the two.  As a rule of thumb, one pulls power through an invocation and pulls out spirits through evocation, but this is still a very rough rule that has a lot of exceptions.

Like I mentioned, magical ritual can produce a wide variety of results; there is no laboratory setting or control group to measure effects against, and different people may perceive different effects resulting from the same act.  The old authors and magicians didn’t see much of a difference between many of the terms, and used yet others that we’ve largely forgotten or don’t like anymore (such as “karcist” from Fr.MC’s “Crossed Keys”, or to a lesser extent “exorcist” from any number of old grimoires that have a particularly strong Christian bent).  There are two primary ways of working with spirits: having them come to you in some way or having them leave you in some way.  The specific ritual in question might accomplish either of these aims in any number of ways, depending on tradition or philosophy, but that’s pretty much it.  These categories of ritual simply don’t hold up for any but the most rigidly defined and limited of magical practices, and don’t accomplish much on their own.  I feel like this is a debate for people who study magic more than practice it, anyway.

I’ve sometimes remarked on this blog that I feel like I live in a video game or role playing game of some sort, what with my magic rings and enchanted swords and whatnot.  Largely, this is due to my having been exposed to a lot more gaming than I have magic, and it’s no secret that lots of games like Dungeons and Dragons or other RPGs borrow liberally from occulture and magic literature, though it may not be by the book or realistic in any sense I’m aware of (though if anyone has a fireball spell they’d be willing to share, hit me up).  That said, magic is also guilty of borrowing from literature and gaming as well.  For instance, take the infamous Necronomicon from the Cthulhu mythos of H.P. Lovecraft; although this was just a fictional book from a fictional story, many authors have taken it upon themselves to write their own kind of Necronomicon that fits in with the Cthulhu mythos and related entities.  This kind of magic, fictional though it may be, works all the same, to the point where it even begins to freak me out.

Consider it this way: the more people that believe in a certain idea, the more “real” that idea becomes.  Many people across history have heard of and believe in Christ as the Son of God; as such, the idea of Christ is immensely powerful.  A smaller version of this includes any story, myth, fable, or creature whose tale is told time and time again.  If some number of people have read a particular book, have thought about its characters, spoken their names aloud, dreamed or daydreamed about the things those characters did, then all that happens in that book becomes real to an extent.  The more exposure an idea gains, the more powerful that idea becomes; hell, the more belief an idea gains, the more powerful it becomes.  If even one person believes in an idea, that suffices to accomplish work.  Thus, it follows that stories that are popular can be used, and since magic often makes use of “real” entities such as spirits, angels, gods, and goddesses with their own myths, the characters, magic, and the like from within those stories can be used in magic.  After all, I’ve often heard that the Bible is the greatest story ever told [citation needed], and what’s to distinguish the storiness of the Bible from any other book, or for that matter a game, movie, or anime?

One of my friends is familiar with the SNES game Chrono Trigger to no small degree, to the point of being able to recite all of the game’s lines, whether in the Japanese or English versions.  However, being a magic user himself, he’s also adept at working with the entities and magic system from the game.  He’s mentioned astrally travelling some of the halls of Zeal and the other castles from the game, as well as spiritually hanging out from the realms depicted, learning and gaining much from those places.  In addition, he’s also good with working with the spirits, entities, and magic from the anime series Slayers, to the point where I’ve been able to witness some of the neat effects from his working with fire and water.  Being a chef, he makes use of this magic to no small degree in the kitchen, and his food readily attests to that.  (He still owes me a guest post here eventually on the unique elemental system of Chrono Trigger, which I would greatly appreciate before the next apocalypse deadline.)

My boyfriend, on the other hand, is increasingly working with the magic and spirits of the PS2 game Final Fantasy X.  In that game, there are a group of specially-gifted people known as summoners who are able to work with an ambient magico-spiritual force that appear as floating balls of light, called “pyreflies”.  These pyreflies can coalesce into entities, such as physical apparitions of the dead known as “unsent” or as fiendish monsters.  However, certain holy shrines contain ensouled statues called fayth, and if the fayth deem a summoner worthy of working with them, the summoner can call upon the fayth to summon an aeon.  These aeons are used to protect the people in the world of Spira from a titanic, evil mega-aeon known as Sin.  Leaving much of the plot aside, my boyfriend is beginning to astrally travel to the world of Spira, talk with one of the protagonists of the game (High Summoner Yuna herself), and work with the fayth themselves.  It’s interesting work, especially since the mythology of Spira and Final Fantasy X is rich as far as video games go, but still incomplete enough to leave theory and philosophy wanting.  Seeing how much of the in-game Yevonese religion is based on Shintoism, Buddhism, and Catholic Christianity, it’s not terribly hard to see how much of this can work or put into practice.

As for myself?  Beyond being peripherally involved with my friends’ ventures above, I’ve been dabbling in some fictional magic myself.  Specifically, I’m getting started with the magic from the Wraeththu series of books, also called dehara (literally meaning or homonomous with the word for “gods”).  To briefly review the background, Wraeththu is a race of “mutant humans” who are both androgynous and hermaphroditic, able to reproduce among themselves as well as “incept” young human males (transform via ritual blood infusion).  In addition to being uniformly beautiful, lean, and fit, Wraeththu also possess strong innate magical, psychokinetic, and telepathic powers.  The dehara system of magic utilizes an ambient life force called agmara, out of which the deities and thoughtforms as well as magical actions are created.  There are to be a total of three books total on dehara magic (right now, only Grimoire Dehara: Kaimana is released), each associated with one of the three castes of Wraeththu society.  The dehara magic system is a kind of blend between chaos magic principles, Wraeththu mythology, and neopagan rituals (complete with a Wraeththu variation on the Wheel of the Year).  Refreshingly, it requires very little in the way of physical tools and supplies, with much of the magic done through meditation and projection into an astral temple called a nayati.

Admittedly, working with these kinds of magics can be awkward with my other magical projects, but it does offer interesting modes of working that still augment each other nicely.  It’s a lot like learning different languages: two languages can still arguably say the same thing, but how they say it can be radically different.  The theory behind each system of magic can offer new ideas for exploration when compared against other theories, or help provide explanations and approaches to solving a problem when other theories may fail.  As a result, it’s hard for me to seriously claim that any one system of magic is innately “better” than any other, though I may be biased towards more devotional and Hermetic ceremonial stuff all the same.  Fictional or not, may as well explore magic like any other adventurer.

What about you?  Have you ever thought about using magic known explicitly to be fictional, or have you tried it?  Are there any games, movies, anime, or books you find interesting enough with enough magical content to make use of?  For more talk on this topic, Jason Miller just wrote a post about it yesterday.