Geomancy (gee-oh-man-see) gets its name through the Greek words geo meaning ‘earth’ and mantikos meaning ‘divination’. Simply put, geomancy is the art of divination using the earth as the medium, much the same as a tarot reader uses cards as a medium.
I was interested to discover that I have used geomancy in two forms, albeit by association rather than directly through my use of dowsing rods and pendulum, and more directly by doing Feng Shui.
Typically geomancy can be any method of divination that manipulates the earth, its stones, and other resources. Thus the use of gem stones, crystals, pebbles and the like for divination are all forms of geomancy.
Feng Shui, very popular in Australia and other Western cultures since the mid 1980s, is the ancient Chinese art of location and divination. The name means Wind/Water and is used extensively to locate the correct positioning for buildings, trees, and other land based features. The positioning needs be very accurate to ensure a pure and strong flow of CHI, broadly interpreted as ‘energy’. Badly positioned structures and fixtures delay the flow and bring the negative ‘energy’ SHA-CHI. We can associate Chi and Sha-Chi with good and bad luck respectively, although this is understating their impact and importance.
Although very impressive in scope, particularly in the modern world, Feng Shui’s roots have more in common with Western geomancy when you look at ley lines, called ‘dragons’ and ‘dragon-killers’ or Ti Li in Chinese.
Studying the layout of the Stone Circles, Dolmens, Menhirs, and other placed monoliths and ancient memorials throughout the British Isles and Europe, we can follow the route of these ley lines. This is where dowsing connects with geomancy, because we can use the divinaory tools of dowsing to locate the lines. The lines do not generate the energy, they define the paths taken by the streams of earth energy.
However, geomancy is not limited to positioning. Ancient diviners cast pebbles, sand, stones, grains, twigs, or made random marks on the ground, and then interpreted the results using their intuition, divine guidance, or other methods.
Information gleaned would be used to predict the outcomes for future crops, breeding of animals (and people too), outcomes of wars and trade bargaining.
I wanted to do some intensive research into geomancy and how to use it, on the internet however, there seems to be an overwhelming perception that geomancy should be interpreted as the same as Feng Shui, rather than akin to Feng Shui: they are not the same; they are similar.
I finally had some luck, through perseverance and found the following site http://www.princeton.edu/~ezb/geomancy/agrippa.html. It made my long search very worthwhile. This is an entire book on geomancy by Roman Historian Agrippa, where we can read his understanding of this ancient art. It is called Henry Cornelius Agrippa – His Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy of Geomancy translated into English by Robert Turner, London, printed for John Harrison, at the Lamb at the East-end of Pauls. 1655
In my opinion geomancy is an interesting foray into the mindset of ancient Europe, however, viewed in a modern perspective it holds little that other, more recent divination techniques already offer in more useful methods. That said it is still a skill worth knowing and practising – who knows, perhaps we can rediscover some important relevance for out modern future on this ancient earth.