Well, I’ve finished another round of drawing all of the geomantic signs. They turned out well. Three in particular continue to plague me every time I return to them:  Acquisitio, with a whole hand grasping a very full bag of money, always seems to resist being properly drawn.  Puer always seems to be a little more linear than some of the more organic images.  Fortuna Major is too “30,000 feet” and not personal enough.

And three of the images are still not particularly ‘right’, even though the picture I’ve drawn is “on target” for what the image is supposed to show.  Rubeus, the upturned goblet is a little too clean or normal, but it should be a little dirtier, and maybe a glass on the floor of a room, preferably one just involved in a celebration, would be better.  Tristitia is a stake being driven into the ground, but a friend of mine today pointed out that it could just as easily be a grave, and that many people would recognize the inherent sadness in that a whole lot more clearly than a stake being driven into the ground.  The Draconii, Cauda and Caput, could be more clearly linked to each other by having the dragon’s body undulate off one card, and then undulate onto each other.

if you click through to Flickr, you’ll be able to see these cards in a little more detail, using the four sub-portraits I created of each of the four quadrants: upper left, upper right, lower left and lower right. (As an aside, would there be anyone interested in reading an article I’m working on, about how to increase one’s skills as a magician by practicing drawing? I think it would be really useful, but I’m just me…  It’s one of the ways that Bryan Jackson inspired me to learn in public… he learned an instrument, I’ve been practicing drawing, but I think there are lots of lessons here.)

Someone asked me today if one uses the cards specifically for divination, and I think the answer is “no”.  One should continue to do the regular method of doing geomancy, which is to generate a lot of random dots, and then count the dots to determine odds and evens, and then use four such sets of randomized dots to generate the first four signs of a geomantic chart… On the OTHER hand, I do think these can be used as explanatory aids, a la PowerPoint, to explain a client’s reading to them, and give them some suitable visuals to work with as you interpret a chart for them.

The sixteen images above, of course, can also be used as loci or places for storing information in a Palace of Memory. They’re clear, they’re deeply visual and replicable, and they bear enough relationship to one another in this grid that they can be used to explain a lot of information in a short amount of time, as long as you have a sense of how to store that information. The images can also be used as ‘doorways’ or visual aids for scrying, and once I’ve added the relevant astrological information to those ‘banners’ around the edges, the blank spaces, I’ll be better prepared to use them for that purpose.

Via Flickr:
I found that making these cards or telesma of the sixteen geomantic figures has really helped me know and own them at a deep level. Normally, each sign consists of a sigil or sign composited of single and double dots. These images, though, are their traditional visualizations. This is the second time I’ve drawn all of them, and I’ve gotten better at it. Some of them, I really need more practice at, and others, I feel like I have ’em down…

Liked it? Take a second to support Andrew on Patreon!