The Geomantic Figures, Personalities, and Myers-Briggs/Kiersey Types

The other day, on an exceptionally slow Friday afternoon with little to do, my friend and I were bullshitting in my cube.  We were talking about things as varied as problems with Linux installation, Halloween plans, crude sexual humor, astrology, and on and on.  After all, we were bored, and half the office was out anyway.  Topic led into topic, and we were discussing some of the recent training courses and classes we had taken, including such droll ones as business communication and assertiveness strategies.  A staple of such communication-related classes is how different people communicate differently based on their personalities, and a particular favorite discussion involves something called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI).  This is a classification based on Carl Jung’s understanding of different personalities and how they interact with the world around them based on four dichotomies:

• Direction of focus: Extroversion (E) or Introversion (I)
• Method of informing oneself: Sensing (S) or Intuition (N)
• Method of making decisions: Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)
• Method of living life: Judging (J) or Perceiving (P)

By taking a long, multiple-choice questionnaire, which gathers data on details of your life and how you view yourself, this data can be interpreted so as to whittle down your personality into sixteen different personality types based on the four dichotomies above.  These personality types are given in four-letter initialisms such as ENTJ, ISTP, ESTJ, and so forth.  The MBTI describes how each of the dichotomies function, and how each of the sixteen personalities differ from each other and how they can get along well.  Because of this, the MBTI is a favorite of managerial training, as it neatly bins people into a particular category that managers can use to better organize their offices.  Of course, this is an extraordinarily simplified version of the whole story; there are dozens of issues with using the MBTI as if it were actually a thing, as one’s type can change over time based on how and when they take the test, and most people tend to fluctuate between two or three types based on their emotional or mental state.  These difficulties are expected, however, according to the Myers & Briggs Foundation.

My friend and I were joking that, in the time it would take to take the full, official MBTI test, I could draw up someone’s horoscope by hand and interpret it for them, getting at least as good personality results.  We both heartily admit that the MBTI test is pseudoscience and, worse, time-consuming for not a lot of payback.  To demonstrate this, I went to one of my favorite astrological websites, asked for my friend’s birth info, and did an informal chart delineation and description for him.  He found it fascinating; he’s not particularly spiritual, woo, or religious in any sense, but he’s certainly open-minded enough to entertain and consider a few things.  It seemed like I was able to give him plenty of information about himself that seemed more-or-less on the money.  Granted, there’s the Forer effect to consider, but the MBTI has just as much an issue with that as astrology does, and I consider myself a little more specific than your regular newspaper horoscope.

Anyway, we were comparing the results from my hasty horoscope interpretation for my friend and the MBTI results he normally gets, and I was struck by something that should’ve been obvious to me.  There are 16 Myers-Briggs types, and each type is composed of four qualities, each of which can be expressed in one of two ways.  This is the same mathematical structure that underlies the 16 geomantic figures: each figure is composed of four elements, each of which can be expressed in one of two ways.  Because the day was wearing on and we were getting ready to leave soon, I made a note for myself to investigate a possible method of correlation between the geomantic figures and Myers-Briggs types later on.  Well, here I am, and I think this could be a useful bit of data for geomancers, especially when compared against older works that describe a connection between personalities and specific figures.

So, let’s try this in the simple, most obvious way first and see where we end up.  A geomantic figure has four elements, and a Myers-Briggs type has four dichotomies.  Is there a way to link the four dichotomies to the four elements?  Let’s take a look at the four dichotomies and see what they mean for us.

1. Extroversion (E) and Introversion (I).  This dichotomy indicates where people put their energy and how they get their energy.  Do they like to spend time in the outer world of people and things, or in the inner world of ideas and images?  Do others view them as outgoing or as reflective?  Are they more comfortable in groups or alone?  Do they rush into things without thinking, or do they think too much to start something new?  This relates to how one directs their energy, and whether they direct it upon people or have it directed upon themselves; Extroversion is the active, manipulating principle here, and Introversion the passive, manipulated principle.  This is connected to Fire; Extroversion is active, and Introversion is passive.
2. Sensing (S) and Intuition (N).  This dichotomy indicates how people get information about the outside world and the main means of accepting it.  Do they prefer to pay attention to the concrete/objective data their senses give them, or do they pay attention to the patterns and possibilities that can be extrapolated from them?  Do they consider “what is real” to be more important, or “what is meant”?  Do they prefer to start with facts to build up to a big picture, or start with a big picture and work down to the details?  This dichotomy relates to the method of obtaining data and filtering it for use later, with Sensing being more blunt and focused on the low and Intuition being ephemeral and focused on the high.  This dichotomy should be given to Air, with Sensing being passive and Intuition being active.
3. Thinking (T) and Feeling (F).  This dichotomy indicates what sort of information one relies upon to make decisions.  Do they put more emphasis on objective principles and facts, or on the personal concerns of those involved?  Do they prefer logical fields such as technology and science, or humanistic fields such as literature and art?  Is one more alarmed by something that is inconsistent, or by something that is inharmonious?  Do you prefer to be impersonal and consistent in dealing with others, or warm and sentimental?  This dichotomy discusses the meaning of data in their lives and what they value as information, with Thinking being emotionless and impersonal and Feeling being emotional and tactful.  This is related to the element of Water, with Thinking being passive and Feeling being active.
4. Judging (J) and Perceiving (P).  This dichotomy indicates how one structures their outer lives and how they deal with the world outside.  Do they focus on making decisions or having things decided before acting, or do they prefer to stay open to final decisions because they need more information?  Are they task-oriented with things planned out, or casual with minimal planning?  Do they work before play, or mix them together?  Do they work to avoid deadlines, or do they work only because of them?  Are they so goal-oriented that they miss new information that could change the goal, or are they so focused on getting information that they miss making decisions?  This dichotomy is about structure, with Judging being rigid and fixed for the sake of achievement and Perceiving fluid and flexible for the sake of investigation.  This dichotomy would best be given to the element Earth, with Judging being active and Perceiving being passive.

Given the above analysis that links each dichotomy to one of the four elements, and each choice of the dichotomy to be either active or passive, we can associate each of the Myers-Briggs types to one of the sixteen geomantic figures:

Let’s take a look at my own Myers-Briggs type, ENTJ.  According to the M&B Foundation, ENTJ is described as a driving organizer, planner, vision-focused, decisive, initiating, conceptual, strategic, systematic, assertive, critical, logical, organized, and one who pursues improvement and achievement.  ENTJs are known as ambitious, efficient, outgoing, independent, and effective organizers of people and long-range planners.  The corresponding geomantic figure, according to my method of corresponding them to Myers-Briggs types, is Puer, the Boy, associated with the planet Mars direct.  Puer is known to be brash, rash, bold, and assertive, eager for love and war, fierce, easy to anger, and extraordinarily self-assertive.  ENTJ puts a prettier face on it than the other parts of Puer, but according to this only-kinda-not-really-joking Myers-Briggs Asshole Index, “scruples are alien to them…they have no compunctions about petty details like ruining someone else’s life, and if they can get away with it they will gladly stab you with the dagger themselves”.  So, all told, I think ENTJ is a good fit for Puer, both positively and negatively.  Taking a cursory look at the other Myers-Briggs types and the other figures, this correspondence appears to work more-or-less well.  I think it’d be good to do an in-depth analysis of these correspondences and match the positive and negative traits of each Myers-Briggs type with the personality descriptions of the geomantic figures throughout the Western corpus, but that’s a lengthy topic for another time.

However, there’s a few things that bug me.  When going through the dichotomies and picking out which dichotomy was related to which element, I got stuck several times.  It quite easily feels like two or three of the dichotomies can easily relate to multiple elements.  For instance, Judging/Perceiving is about how one approaches the external world and the structure in it.  Yes, I said this was Earth, and for good reason: how structured do you want your life, really?  At the same time, how one structures is how one plans, and how one plans is also quite related to Fire.  However, Fire was given to Extroversion/Introversion, which itself could be given to Water (with E being passive water and I being active).  The whole thing can loop back on itself, so it may be that the Myers-Briggs type dichotomies don’t always relate well to the individual elements.  I feel fairly confident in my correspondences here, but it’d still be good to see how they might be better refined.

I’ve noticed on some websites that there’s a sort of secondary or alternative personality type classifier with pretty names for each of the Myers-Briggs types, like Fieldmarshal for ENTJ, Inspector for ISTJ, Performer for ESFP, and so forth.  This is a closely-related instrument to determine personality types, but still fundamentally different: the Keirsey temperaments, which were developed based on the MBTI but went back to the theory of the four humours and how they influenced temperament.  While the MBTI focuses on how people think and feel, Kiersey focuses on behavior; MBTI focuses more on the E/I dichotomy, while Keirsey puts more importance on the S/N dichotomy.  There are other differences, too, but the two have a degree of mutual intelligibility, and they’ve been mapped to each other for some time.  So, in that method, we could add another descriptors to that table above: the Kiersey personality type based on its corresponding MBTI match:

However, this is still based on the MBTI correspondence of the geomantic figures.  What if we were to start over with corresponding the figures to the Kiersey temperaments directly, and see how they correspond through that to the MBTI?  Would they be the same, or would there only be a degree of overlap, or no overlap whatsoever?  The Kiersey temperaments were developed as 16 wholes on their own; Kiersey doesn’t divide this up into a four-by-four grid of personality types like how the MBTI does, but ultimately relies on one of four main temperaments: logistical Guardians, tactical Artisans, diplomatic Idealists, and strategic Rationals.  Kiersey himself associates these with the four classical temperaments of melancholic, sanguine, choleric, and phlegmatic.  However, Kiersey’s 16 types can be grouped together based on four “rings”, each of which can have one of two roles (this should sound familiar).  This gives us two ways to assign Kiersey’s personality types to the sixteen geomantic figures.

One starting point we can use involves starting with the four main temperaments (Guardians, Artisans, Idealists, and Rationals), each of which includes four specific roles to determine an overall geomantic element.  After all, the 16 geomantic figures can be grouped into four elemental groups of four figures each; for instance, the Fire figures are Laetitia, Fortuna Minor, Amissio, and Cauda Draconis.  Similarly, the Artisan temperament includes the four roles of Performer, Composer, Promoter, and Crafter.  By associating the four Kiersey temperaments with the four elements, we can use the third and fourth rings of Kiersey’s descriptions to whittle down and specify a specific role within an overall temperament using a fully elemental structure that relies on the geomantic elements and subelements.  In effect, what we’re doing is we’re splitting up the 16 Kiersey roles by element, then by temperature (hot/cold within an element), then by moisture (moist/dry within a temperature).

However, I have an issue with Kiersey’s association of his temperaments with the classical ones.  He assigns Guardians to melancholic, Artisans to sanguine, Idealists to choleric, and Rationals to phlegmatic.  I don’t feel like this is correct at all, and the Wikipedia correspondence table from the Kiersey article reads like a thoroughly-jumbled version of Agrippa’s Scale of Four.  After thinking about this, I’m going to innovate off Kiersey’s system and reassign his four temperaments so that they become melancholic Guardians, choleric Artisans, phlegmatic Idealists, and sanguine Rationals.  This makes much more sense to me, based on my understanding of the humours and classical temperaments combined with Kiersey’s methods.

Those “third and fourth rings of Kiersey’s descriptions” I mentioned above are two dichotomies that Kiersey uses to specify sets of roles within an overall temperament.  The “third ring” is directive versus informative, also known as proactive versus reactive.  These describe how one communicates, whether one informs others to information or one directs others to action.  The “fourth ring” is expressive versus attentive, and describes how one interacts with their environment: those who prefer more overt action (being chatty, verbose, talkative) to covert action or inactivity (being all-eyes-and-ears, aware, circumspect, wary, watchful).  Of these two rings, I’d say that the “third ring” (directive/informative) relates to the elemental quality of moisture, with directive being dry and informative being moist.  The “fourth ring” is more about temperature, such that those who are expressive are hot and those who are attentive are cold.  In other words, we use the two dichotomies of elemental qualities (hot/cold, moist/dry) to determine a subelement within a given elemental group; Fire is hot and dry, Air hot and moist, Water cold and moist, Earth cold and dry.

Putting this all together, the method we have to correspond the Kiersey personality types to the 16 geomantic figures looks like this:

1. The overall Kiersey temperament indicates a particular elemental group of geomantic figures.
2. The “third ring” (directive versus informative) indicates the moisture of the geomantic figure within that particular elemental group.  If the personality type is directive, look at the geomantic figures that have a subelement of Fire or Earth within that particular elemental group; if informative, look at the geomantic figures that have a subelement of Air or Water.
3. The “fourth ring” (expressive versus attentive) indicates the temperature of the geomantic figure within that particular elemental group.  If the personality type is expressive, look at the geomantic figures that have a subelement of Fire or Air within that particular elemental group; if attentive, look at the geomantic figures that have a subelement of Water or Earth.

Our resulting decision chart that assigns the 16 Kiersey personality types to the 16 geomantic figures, then, would look like this below:

How much does this method overlap with the MBTI method of correspondence, using Myers-Briggs type as a key?

There’s a surprising amount of overlap between the MBTI method given first and the Kiersey elemental method given second.  Six figures come out with the exact same MBTI key, another six that are almost the same with one dichotomy off, and two each that are off by two or three dichotomies.  Notably, we didn’t completely miss with any of these figures such that all dichotomies were missed, which is a little surprising to my mind.  The cause for the differences, where they exist, could be in an imperfect match between the Kiersey system and the MBTI system, the difference in method between using a strictly elemental-grouping method (Kiersey) versus elemental-dichotomy method (MBTI), or just dumb luck.  Still, I’d’ve expected at least two figures to get completely wrong answers (dichotomies differ = 4) if it were just chance, but apparently we might be onto something with this.

Now, the above is just one method of assigning the geomantic figures to the Kiersey personality types, where we use the geomantic system of element-subelement rulerships and associate them with the Kiersey temperaments.  This touches on the use of the four-rings model of the Kiersey system, but doesn’t use it in the same way as we used the dichotomies of the MBTI system.  The second way of assigning the geomantic figures to the Kiersey personality types uses the four rings explicitly in the same way as we used the four dichotomies of the MBTI, so let’s take a look at all four rings of the Kiersey system:

1. Abstract versus concrete.  This first/inner ring deals with where a person’s mind is and how they shape their worldviews based on this.  Those who are abstract have their heads in the clouds and are more interested in big-picture stuff rather than the details; they focus on global, general, or theoretical issues, and are introspective and look inwards.  Those who are concrete are the opposite: they’re down to earth, interested in facts and sensory details, and are focused on practical matters or objective facts in their life.  Jung and the MBTI suggest that abstract is related to Intuition (N) and concrete to Sensing (S), which would suggest that this ring would be associated with the element of Air, but its phrasing and place in the Kiersey system would suggest that this should be more about the element of Earth and how grounded one is.  Thus, abstract would be passive earth and concrete would be active earth.
2. Cooperative versus pragmatic (utilitarian).  This second ring deals with the level of importance one gives to opinions from different people.  Those who are cooperative give more attention to other people’s attentions and doing the right thing regardless of its effectiveness, while those who are pragmatic give more attention to their own opinions (if any) and to the facts of a situation, and are more concerned with doing what works regardless of how others feel about it.  There is no direct correlation between a single Jung/MBTI dichotomy and this particular ring, but this ring in combination with the inner ring gives a single temperament; abstract cooperative personalities are given to Idealists (NF), abstract pragmatic to Rationals (NT), concrete cooperative to Guardians (SJ), and concrete pragmatic to Artisans (SP).  With this and the third and fourth rings, the straightforward correlation between Kiersey rings and MBTI dichotomies falls apart.  However, when given to a particular element, since this is about opinion and depth of feeling, I’d associate this ring with the element of Water, with cooperative being active water and pragmatic being passive water.
3. Directive (proactive) versus informative (reactive).  As above, this third ring is about how people communicate with others.  However, “communication” here is a poor word; it’s about interaction, and whether one acts upon others or whether one is acted upon by them.  In that sense, this ring should be given to Fire, with directive types given to active fire and informative to passive fire.
4. Expressive versus attentive.  As above, this fourth ring is about how people interact with their environment, but it’s not interaction in the sense of action-action but actual communication (I feel like Kiersey had somewhat odd definitions for these things, as psychologists do).  If one is expressive, one is talking more than listening; if one is attentive, one is listening more than talking.  In that sense, this ring should be given to Air, with expressive types given to active air and attentive types to passive air.

In a mangled form of Kiersey’s personality chart, here’s how we end up with our second variation of Kiersey personality types associated with the geomantic figures by associating the individual rings with individual elements:

With that, let’s compare it to our previous two systems and see how it compares by matching it with the MBTI key using the MBTI dichotomy method and the Kiersey elemental method given above and seeing how many match up.

Well, with this third method (“Kiersey Ring”), we get far fewer matches with either with the MBTI or Kiersey Elemental methods than we did with just those latter two alone.  We get several completely wrong matches, and far fewer close-but-not-quite matches.  Additionally, taking a cursory glance at the descriptions of the Kiersey/MBTI personality interpretations and the descriptions of the geomantic figures, it seems like this method really doesn’t work as well as either the MBTI or Kiersey Elemental methods.  Ah well, science for science’s sake.

Personally, I think this sort of correspondence (especially as it can be used for Jungian analysis of personality) can do with more investigation, and I plan to do so in the near future as a new line of geomantic research.  For now, however, I’d be inclined to stick with the Kiersey Elemental method of associating the geomantic figures to personality types, both Kiersey and MBTI.  Try using it in your work, and see how it turns out!  If nothing else, you can try a single-figure or full chart reading to determine something like “what is person X like” or “what is the personality/character of so-and-so?”, looking at the figure you get, matching it to a personality type using one of the Kiersey/MBTI methods above, and mulling that over in addition to what the geomantic corpus says.  It’d likely be a much shorter way of figuring that out compared to taking a full test, and it’s got at least as much scientific validity behind it, after all.  It’s not like these correspondences give us any new information for the geomantic figures on their own, as they’re already described quite thoroughly in the Western corpus with respect to personality and temperament, but since there’s plenty written about MBTI and Kiersey types in modern literature, such a correspondence can still be useful for those who know how to apply them.

Edit: I realize now that I misspelled “Keirsey” (e before i) throughout this article.  Mea maxima culpa.  I’m currently without a way to find-replace-all and don’t care to go through this post and correct every one.  I am, however, acutely aware of the error.