Many years ago I while I was working through Ali Bongo’s Book of Magic making every prop I could, I was also busy knocking together a little wooden box painted differently on each side and filled with soil by instruction from Techniques of High Magic by Francis King and Stephen Skinner (mine was a childhood of contradiction). This was my first experience of geomancy; literally earth divination. However, casting and then divining the geomanic figures was a long process and I quickly got distracted by my newly made Pongolian Compass.
That was my brief brush with geomancy, until (ahem) years later when I’m all grown up and I attend Tabula Mentis XIII and hear Les Cross introduce Astrogem Geomancy. There was always something about geomancy that spoke to me and now it was shouting again as Les described his system of geomanic divination using gem stones to suggest the geomanic figures. Les refers to the figures as geomes and I like that so I’m going to use it as well. Les provides a short email course on the basics, but I suggest you buy his book if you want to go in depth. The system is as simple (for basic readings) or as complex (for really in-depth analysis) as you want it to be as it utilises not only the geomes, but almost the planets, the star signs and the astrological houses.
As the spirit of geomancy grabbed me, I wanted to play around with the themes and the idea of earth magics and this has led me to start experimenting with some wooden geomantic dice alongside my gemstone set. I cut the dice from Beech (the tree of learning) and used a very simple pyrography technique to burn the geomantic symbols. I think the next step will be to make a wooden board to mark the houses, I’m hoping that the wooden board will double for both sets.
Let the readings begin!
PLEASE NOTE: Ali Bongo’s Book of Magic was the best ever book of magic a kid could own, great effects that you enjoyed making a performing. Wonderful stuff.
Comments by Nik Taylor