This is the third in a series of posts about Geomancy, preceded by Puer and a look at the whole table of figures. If you find it valuable, consider backing my Patreon at the $3 or $5 level.

We come to the second figure in the chart of sixteen figures. The figure looks something like this:

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Instead of the brightness and paleness of pink and white, this time we’re confronted with a dark green earthiness. Green in a green background, with black and green as the figure and its ground — only one narrow stripe of red relieves the greenness. The second figure in geomancy is Amissio, consisting of six dots arranged in this pattern that resembles two triangles both pointing upwards. It’s generally regarded as a figure of loss, which is what the word Amissio means in Latin: Loss.

In imagery, Amissio is said to represent a bag of money, its drawstrings loosened, and dumped out. Held between thumb and forefinger, the skin of the bag is just that — a shell, emptied of what made it valuable — the living, fluid coin of the realm that served as the tool of commerce, the proof of measurable success, the engine of well-being, the current of currency. It’s all gone. Spent. Poof. Zoom. Whups.

In elemental terms, loss is a very earthy experience, or an experience of Earth. You had a thing, and you lost or gave it away. It was matter that you claimed ownership over. And now it is matter that belongs to someone else. From the ‘outside’, Amissio looks like a very material thing — first you had money, and then you didn’t; a thing was in your possession, and likely on your person in some fashion, and now it isn’t on your person or in your house. It has departed from you. That’s a very materialistic experience.

From the inner experience, though as shown in this quilt square, Amissio is a Fire-driven experience. The elemental Fire is our passion, our energy, our drive, and our ambition — and from the view inside ourselves Amissio is the result of passion and energy: we saw a thing in the marketplace, so we traded cold hard cash as a result of passion. However, there are many reasons this might not be a good trade: the coat is already damaged by moths; the stock-tip didn’t mention the crooked board members who are robbing their own company; the valuable antique lamp is really a forgery; the foundations of the house are damaged and the repairs will be expensive. In all sorts of ways, Amissio signals a loss of some kind, or the trade of something good for something not quite as good.

The structure of the figure in elemental terms is relevant: The single dots of the Fire line (top) and the Water line (lower middle) reflect against the double-dots of the Air line (upper middle) and Earth line (bottom). Amissio, or financial loss, is often the result of our passions and our emotions reaching a highly-energetic state of sympathy and attunement with each other, to the detriment of our intellects (Air) and our practical grasp of the real-world state of affairs (Earth). Amissio indicates that our passions and our emotional needs have overwhelmed both common sense and realistic assessments of the present lay of the land.

The good thing about Amissio is that it’s a mobile figure —the band of glittering green around the band of red signals that Loss is an unstable experience, and rarely permanent. Loss means that you had a thing, and it’s gone now. Yet many things that are lost, are recoverable in some fashion. You might not get the same thing back, but you could have something similar, something like what was lost. You can also forget that you lost the thing, or that the money was spent. There are relatively few things that, once lost, the experience remains constantly before your mind.

There are other kinds of loss besides the loss of material things, though. In some questions, Amissio can be a favorable result. “Will I get rid of this disease?” for example, an indication of loss can be considered a positive indicator. Likewise, “Am I in love with this girl?” yielding a result of Amissio, indicates that yes, you do — you lost your heart to her. “Should I trust this friend with important information,” why… yes, you should — if you want that information spread all over town.

Like all mobile figures, Amissio indicates a spread or a scattering of results. Another way to say this is change. If we take the figure Amissio as a form of change, then it’s worth thinking about it as a slight change for the worse. This is true even in questions of health or love — before an illness can be lost, there is the moment of the healing crisis (the vomit, sweats, tears, or diarrhea) which must be endured. The loss of one’s heart to another involves a fair bit of distress, too: the course of true love never did run smooth. This is not a fully disastrous answer to a question, but it does imply a change toward negative conditions, at least temporarily, where you have fewer options and choices than you did before.

When structured with astrological information, Amissio is associated with Venus — after all, it’s only by spending money beyond good sense and mere functionality that beauty and luxury are created. Likewise, this is a figure associated with Taurus, the bull sign, for its suggestions of indolence and lassitude — the lazy man earns little money, and that’s sometimes ascribed as a loss. Yet even if vacations cost money, they may still be genuinely needed for the health of body, mind, and soul.

In questions of health, Amissio indicates trouble in the throat or neck — the thyroid, the esophagus, the tongue, the airways, the carotid veins and artery. Amissio’s shape is suggestive of this part of the body — the open spaces for air placed between the activity of the head and the activity of the heart.

In physical terms, the sign of Amissio is of an average height but with big bones and a broad body. Amissio people have long necks and large head, wide shoulders and long feet, and round faces. They have tight, small mouths, but the eyes are wide and attractive. Men tend to have a lot of facial hair, while both men and women have long and thick hair. Visible scars are likely. In terms of character, Amissio people tend to be tactless at least, and sometimes overly straightforward or blunt. Their first response to most situations is emotional: either the fire of anger or the water of tears. They tend to value their personal honor highly, but they’re not always honest or honorable about how they let their honor play out.

Amissio is one of the figures that often appears in a geomancy question as the Judge, or final result, of a divination. In that context, the idea of slight change toward the worse makes perfect sense: this figure doesn’t indicate total ruin, but it does suggest a setback or a closing-off of options. The money is spent, the purse is empty, and a financial loss (or a loss of courage, or sense, or the cost of visiting the doctor) is in the figure.