Geomancy

What materials do I need?

Step 1: Obtain Your Casting Tools: A set of 4 identical dice, set of 4 popsicle sticks with one dot marked on one side and two dots marked on the other, or set of 4 coins. These are what you will throw to form the seeding figures in your geomancy chart. Assign each tool one of the four elements (Fire, Air, Water, Earth) by placing a small dot somewhere on it with a colored marker (red for fire, yellow for air, blue for water, green for earth). Alternatively, you could purchase dice that are already in those colors, or use quarters with different images on the tails side that are assigned to each element. 

How to cast: Take your tools, roll them about in your hands, and then throw them onto a nice level surface like a table. You'll want to make sure the surface is clear with no obstructions so that the tools can move naturally before settling on an answer. Create the geomantic figure by arranging the tools vertically in order like so, with Fire at the top and Earth at the bottom. There are 16 possible figures. If you'd like to go deeper into the significance of these figures, click here. 

Step 2: Set up Your Geomancy Chart: In the Western Geomancy tradition, you have the option of using two kinds of charts; the Shield Chart and the House Chart. The Shield Chart is always used first since its structure helps you fill out the whole chart. The House Chart functions like an astrology chart, where the 12 houses are arranged counterclockwise in a circle. The House Chart is useful for mapping the angles between houses (aspects) that will change the effect of the energies acting together in the chart. Since it is easiest and most common to only use the Shield Chart when doing a reading, that is what we'll be focusing on right now. Click here to learn more about the House Chart. 

Step 3: Come up with a question you want to ask the universe. Geomancy is most straightforward with questions leading to yes/no answers (i.e. "Will I meet the love of my life in the next year"), but open ended questions (i.e. "What is the meaning of my life") will get you an answer too. 

Step 4: Cast the 4 Mothers. The first 4 boxes in the Shield Chart are called the Mothers. You will cast your tools 4 times while thinking about your question, and fill out each box in order from 1-4 with the figure you get from the tools. 

Step 5: Fill out the rest of the chart. Unlike tarot spreads, casting is only done for the first 4 houses and matrix math is used to fill out the rest of the 16 boxes. The energies of the reading spread out through this matrix. Click here to learn more about how intention manipulates probability. 

Step 6: Chart Analysis. You've finished filling out the shield chart, and now you get to figure out what it all means, and what the answer to your question will be. Meanings are derived from two primary places, the House (the box on the chart) and the Figure (the actual figure you wrote down when you cast your tools). The Houses and Figures all have meanings ascribed to them. Click here to find out more.  Here are two interpretation methods to get you started on reading your chart:

1) Witnesses and Judge. These three boxes are the "final judgment" of your question. They will tell you whether the outcome will be favorable or unfavorable for you, but they will not tell you whether or not the situation will come to pass or not. For that, see Perfection. The Judge is the last box, and gives you the overall flavor of the reading distilled into one figure. Witness 1 (Box 13) generally represents the past, Witness 2 (Box 14) generally represents the future, and so therefore the Judge can be interpreted as a representation of the present moment in which the question occurs. Study the meanings of the figures present in the Witnesses and Judge, they will give you a sense of whether the verdict is positive or negative for you based on whether the figure is positive or negative (figures can have multiple meanings in different situations, so don't despair. Click here for more information on figures). 
 
2) Perfection. The method of perfection is what will give you your "yes" or "no," or more accurately whether or not the question you asked will come to pass in reality or not. To find out whether the chart perfects or not, you have to look at two houses on the chart, the House of the Querent (the person asking the question, which is always H1) and the House of the Quesited (can be any of the houses on the chart, not including the Witnesses, Judge, and Sentence boxes). First, look at House 1 and note the figure within. Now identify the house of the Quesited based on the question asked. In our example, the house is about love, so the House of the Quesited will be H7. Note the figure within. If the figures in H1 and H7 match, you have perfection and the answer to your question is "Yes." If not, then the answer could be "No."

I say "could be" because the method above, called Direct Perfection, is not the only mode of perfection that exists and there could be more "Yes" energy hidden in the chart. Click here to find out more. 


Now you have everything you need to do a basic Geomancy reading! Of course, there are layers and layers of meaning to explore within these charts that can give you a deeper understanding of the situation surrounding your question. Click here to do a deep dive into more ways to interpret the chart. Happy casting!