emmanuelg

Divination in the Bible

A minor recurring question in the Ecosophia blog and discussion lists ( www.ecosophia.net )–

“Why are Christianity and Judaism so bent out of shape about ‘divination?’ The very word ‘divination’ refers to the activity of trying to discover messages from God. You would think that they would be in favor of this sort of thing...”

It IS mysterious, but we can take a look at what the Bible says about divination, and also read between the lines for some insights that also consider the point of view of occult studies;

There are any number of websites that list Bible verses condemning divination. Here’s one with 100 such verses:

www.openbible.info/topics/divination

You see common themes in these verses. A lot of the prohibited practices described include things that would not be considered divination today, such as:

Burning one’s children alive as sacrificial offerings to a deity.

Consulting mediums - seeking to speak with the dead.

Necromancy - Trying to get information from the dead.

Sorcery - Trying to cause spiritual beings to do works for you.

There are other things that might be thought of as divination today, such as:

Interpreting Omens –

Telling Fortunes –

At the same time, there are many instances of approved activities in the Bible that would also be considered divination today, such as:

The Urim and Thummim

These were two objects attached to the sacred breastplate (ephod) of the high priest of the Temple of God, which held the Ark of the Covenant. They were consulted to give guidance from God.

Casting Lots

Proverbs 16:33 “The lot is cast in the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.”

Why is divination sometimes approved, and sometimes not approved?

If we omit sorcery, mediums, necromancy and sacrificing children from the discussion and focus only on things that would be currently considered divination, we might be able to get some insights.

Things We Don’t Know

We don’t know the actual shape of the Urim and Thummim, their natures, or how they were used in the official and approved divinations of Ancient Israel. We don’t know much about ‘Lots’ either. Explicit instructions were not recorded in the scriptures that come down to us today, although there are a lot of speculations.

Lots being cast into the lap is a good clue. It implies some sort of object or objects that would give a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, like flipping a coin or using a dye (single dice) to roll an even or odd number.

Lots cast in a yes or no fashion could be used to answer quite complex questions.

We see this series of yes/no questions in Jonah, (Jonah 1:7) where the sailors used lots to determine ever-smaller groups of persons on the ship to find out which person had angered God.

Lots were used by the Apostles to pick a new 12th apostle after Judas hanged himself (Acts 1:26).

There is a game called ‘20 questions.’ One player decides to think about an object, and another player can ask up to 20 yes-or-no questions to determine what the object is.

The Urim and Thummim were used for divinations in the Israelite temple. The inquirer, usually a King, a general or other high-powered person, would ask a question of the High Priest in the temple, and the High Priest would use the Urim and Thummim to divine the answer given by YHWH.

No one knows whether the Urim and Thummim were a simple yes/no system or something more complex. Even the meaning of the names ‘Urim’ and ‘Thummim’ are uncertain. Different scholars have proposed ‘Accursed’ and ‘Blest’ as a name pair, or ‘Illumination’ and ‘Information.’

The Urim and Thummim were only to be used by the High Priest, and only within the Temple.

Are There Similarities Between the Use of Urim and Thummim and Current Divination Practice?

Well, yes! Best practices for divination today include the consecration of a sacred space; a prayer for guidance and the exclusion of spiritual forces bent on causing mischief; Meditation on the outcome of the divination; Closure of the sacred space and giving of thanks for the answer. All of these things fit very well with the practice of only using Urim and Thummim in the Holy Temple by a consecrated priest.

Why Are There Restrictions on Divinations by Non-Priests?

This is a question worthy of meditation. For myself, I remember that when I took up divination through Geomancy, it soon struck me that more than half of divination is asking the right questions. The questions should be precise, not ambiguous or open to multiple interpretations. Geomancy requires identification of the location in the House Chart where the answer to the question is likely to occur. The House Chart and the Shield Chart are maps of meaning, and understanding where to look on the map is also a large part of it.

Most surprising to me, a Geomantic reading often gives additional information. Besides the answer to the question, you often get hints or answers about other issues that you did not know you needed to know.

Meditation on the answer you get is also crucial, because it can take your understanding of the issues that prompted your question into the realm of ‘The Things You Don’t Know That You Don’t Know.’ This is a key benefit of Divination– We all live our lives based on a large number of assumptions and understandings that we share with those around us–a context, if you will. Divination provides an opportunity and a mechanism to get us outside of our own understandings and assumptions, and provide a viewpoint outside of the context of our society.

Why Did Ancient Israel Restrict Divination?

They didn’t always restrict it. The ‘lots cast in the lap’ form of divination is described for use in making business decisions and settling minor arguments.

Divination on National issues, however, was limited to the top echelons of society for political reasons. The Tribes and later Kingdom of Israel could not afford to have just anybody getting divinations that addressed national policy. What if someone got a conflicting divination? Things like this were regarded as treason, and punished harshly.

Divination gives a person practice in asking hard questions. They get a mechanism for receiving answers that lie outside the Overton Window of acceptable discourse, and also practice in meditation on the meaning of information from outside of the context of society. From the point of view of leadership, none of these benefits are desirable traits for people that they want to herd in predictable directions. This may be why diviners and divinations are firmly outside the pale of acceptable society.

So if you are a Christian, you might still have the option to use divination in the greater context of prayer, sacred spaces and your community of faith. Children are trained up by their parents until it is time for them to make a life of their own. As a spiritual adult, it is up to you to decide for yourself what to do with these options.

More on the Urim and Thummim

Many people have given opinions on the nature of the Urim and Thummim. I have opinions on them too, based on shaky and incomplete information and giant leaps of pseudo-logic. I cheerfully offer them for your review–

Cultures preserve things, and sometimes the things they conserve come down to us in a different form. It could be the same for the Urim and Thummim.

In ancient Ur, the birthplace of Abram, they made barrel-shaped stone or metal seals that were rolled across clay tablets as a way to sign documents. They were often family heirlooms, and the loss of a seal was as grave an emergency as the loss of a credit card today. It is not too much to suppose that Abram had a seal or two, and took them with him when he left Ur. There could be multiple images on these seals. An interesting article on them can be found here:

https://www.worldhistory.org/article/846/cylinder-seals-in-ancient-mesopotamia---their-hist/

Now, fast forward a millenium or so. Israel has been taken over by the Persian Empire. Esther, a Jewish girl, becomes queen of Persia. Court official Haman decides to eradicate the Jews and does divinations to pick the best day to do it. The plan is foiled, and Jewish people begin to celebrate a great deliverance from destruction in the brand-new holiday, which they name ‘Purim’ after the Persian word ‘Pur’ for a cast lot. For the full details, read the engaging story in the Book of Esther.

A childrens’ game becomes part of the celebrations that involves spinning a top called a Dreidel; The top has a square cross-section and each of the four sides has a Hebrew letter – Nun, Gimel, Chai, and Shin. These letters are the first letters of a phrase in Hebrew that means “A Great Miracle Happened There.” Here is a link to the rules for the game:

www.scholastic.com/content/dam/teachers/blogs/alycia-zimmerman/migrated-files/how_to_play_dreidel_game_directions.pdf

Note the similarities between the Dreidel top and the cylindrical seals of the Mesopotamians:

A Dreidel has a Hebrew letter on each of its 4 sides, sometimes embossed into the side.

A cylinder seal has pictures embossed into the stone. Four pictures? Could happen...

OK, here’s where the really shaky guessing comes in. It could be that Abram carried a couple of cylinder seals with him when he left Ur in Mesopotamia to seek the promised land. These seals may have been passed down through the family as heirlooms, becoming the Urim and Thummim attached to the breastplate of the Jewish High Priest.

When it came time to make the Tabernacle that eventually became the Temple in Jerusalem, every part of it was made according to very detailed instructions that still take up a lot of pages in the Pentateuch. Even the breastplate (ephod) of the high priest has detailed instructions for exactly how to make it. But the Urim and Thummim? Not a word. Why not? Because (in my opinion) they were already in existence and being used. We have detailed instructions to attach them to one side of the ephod, but no instructions on how to make them or use them.

This gives me a mental picture of two stone cylinders that were originally Mesopotamian seals, hanging from the side of the High Priest’s ephod. Seals typically had a hole down the center so that they could be worn around the neck with a cord through the center. If each of them had four pictures, they could be rolled on a hard surface until they stopped with one face upwards, or spun in the air and dropped into sand for readings of divination.

Someone will wonder, “How useful could that be for divination?”

Someone else may ask, “Hmmm! I have seen something like this before, but where?”

Both of them may be on the right track. Here is where Geomancy comes in–

There are sixteen geomantic figures used in Geomancy; Four horizontal lines for each figure that are stacked on top of each other;

With a little examination, you can see that the sixteen figures can be created from combinations of four sets, each with two lines:

Geomantic Dreidels

Now, what if we make two dreidels, each of which has four two-line sequences of dots on its faces? Let’s also make one dreidel white and the other one black, and call them dreidel 1 and dreidel 2. If Dreidel 1 generates the top two lines of a Geomantic figure, and Dreidel 2 generates the bottom line, then you have a mechanical means to generate the sixteen figures of Geomancy, a simple divination system that can address complex questions.

Am I saying that the Jewish High Priest had a couple of Dreidels attached to his breastplate, and that he spun them to perform divinations in the Jewish Temple? Well, it could have been something like two dreidels. At the time of Esther, there may have been living memory of the form of the Urim and Thummim. Why did they pick the square-sided top as the format for the Dreidel? It could have been an adaptation of the form of the Urim and Thummim to celebrate the deliverance of Purim. No one knows for sure, but I think that this could be true.

How Deep Does the Rabbit Hole Go?

The Ark of the Covenant may have been removed before the destruction of Jerusalem, and some reports place it in Aksum, Ethiopia. If it is there, it has been there for about 3000 years.

Geomancy came from North Africa, a divination system where the figures are generated by striking marks into sand. Another method to generate the figures involves spinning two or four beads mounted on a wire, then clapping them onto a table to stop the rotation and give a geomantic figure. This format is much like the Mesopotamian cylinder seal with a hole through the center. It makes me wonder if the tradition of divination with Urim and Thummim was carried through Ethiopia, then back up through the Arabian peninsula, where it eventually became the Geomancy we know today. Of course all this is just speculation, and we can never know the answer. Or, can we?

Geomantic Reading

07 Jan 2023

Question: Is Geomancy a current form of the divination done with Urim and Thummim?

Selection: House Chart

Querent: House I, Quesited: House VIII

Mothers: Puer, Carcer, Populus, Populus

Analysis:

Querent: Puer

Quesited: Fortuna Minor

Conjunction: Fortuna Minor moves to XII, next to Querent;

Interpretation:

Querent: Puer – “Well, that’s a rash assertion you have made.”

Quesited: Fortuna Minor – Unearned luck. “However, through no skill of your own, you are correct.”

Fortuna Minor also moves to V and is trine to Puer in I. House of news/information; Confirms it is a lucky guess that happens to be correct.

Company Capitular: I and II, III and IV, V and VI, IX and X.

Note that Populus in X is beseiged by Rubeus in IX and XI.

XII and VIII (Fortuna Minor) further besiege the Rubeus-Populus-Rubeus group.

Since Populus amplifies the figures associated with it, this grouping could mean that a lot of powerful people are going to be very upset with this interpretation–Hard to believe, since few people read this blog, but there it is...

Populus rejoices in IV, and weakened in X; Puer rejoices in I; Laetitia weakened in VI; Fortuna Minor strengthened in V. – Really, really lucky guess.

Court Story: Rubeus, Fortuna Minor, Laetitia – Controversial at first glance, but evidence will bear it out.

Summary:

For Christians--

Divination can be done in a sacred space as a part of the other disciplines of a spiritual life, including prayer and participation in the community of faith. However, there is no Biblical support for Mediumship, Necromancy or human sacrifice.

Generally–

Divination was practiced and approved in Ancient Israel for guidance from God at the top levels of their society (Urim and Thummim by the high priest in the Temple) and in everyday life by the casting of lots. The Urim and Thummim may have been Mesopotamian seals adapted for use in Divination, continued in the form of the Dreidel today, and may survive today in the form of Geomancy.

Current Mood: surprised

20 March 2022

The Definitive Universal Fountain Of Unusual Smartness

Sometimes, you only begin to understand what you were doing after it is all done.

It is tempting, afterwards, to claim you planned it that way from the beginning...

A year ago, the manager of the store where I work found a better job, and decided to take it. I used to give her gag gifts from time to time. What better time for a gag gift than on the occasion of leaving?

I went to the garage and found a scrap of plywood that I had used for test-drilling holes, and as a backstop for cutting things with an exacto knife. It was not quite rectangular. In short, an ugly piece of scrap about 6 x 8 inches.

On its best side, I drew a circle with an ink pen, divided it into 12 segments with a ruler, marked the segments on the edge with the numbers 1 through 12, and wrote in pen (in lines that were almost straight)

Definitive Universal Fountain

Of Unusual Smartness

I drilled a hole through the center of an old popsicle stick, drew an arrow on it with a pen, and attached it to the middle of the circle with a screw and a washer. It took me about an hour, but I had made a wooden spinner like the ones you sometimes see in board games, except mine didn’t spin that well. And it was homely.

Then, I made the directions:

“The Definitive Universal Fountain Of Unusual Smartness (D.U.F.O.U.S.) will give you answers to the most difficult questions you will face in your new job. Ask the Dufous a question, then flick one end of the spinner. The arrow will point to a number.

Remove the Dufous Update Management Bulletin (D.U.M.B.) from the back of the Dufous. It contains 12 answers, previously gathered from the Wisdom of the Universe. The number indicates your answer.”

My boss tried it first. “Should we keep wearing masks at the workplace?”

The DUFOUS said, “You already know the answer.”

My boss looked up at me quizzically.

“Scary, isn’t it?” I said.

But I thought to myself, “It’s obviously a gag gift. Why does it seem to work?”

My co-worker took the DUFOUS with her, and I thought no more about it for a while. I heard that she kept it on her desk at the new workplace. Several months later, oddly, she came back to work at our shop. The new workplace didn’t work out, so she came back.

She would never say whether she tried out the DUFOUS. A couple of weeks later, she brought it into my area of the shop. “Here’s the DUFOUS,” she said, “Maybe you and the girls here can have some fun with it.”

The rules specify that the 12 DUFOUS answers have to be re-generated every three-and-a-half months. “Without thinking about it, write down the first 12 random answers that come to mind.” I did about half of them, and got the girls at work to contribute the other half.

The girls tried a couple of questions on their break. Again, the DUFOUS seemed to be giving good answers. What was going on? And for that matter, why did I take the time and trouble to make the DUFOUS in the first place?

I have been learning about various divination methods for a number of years. No one has a good explanation for how they work, but they do work, often astonishingly well. I had wondered at times though, ‘Where is the control group?’

One way to see if a new drug actually works is to divide a group of test volunteers into two sections. One section gets the real drug, and the other section gets a placebo. If the test volunteers do not know which drug they got, and if the actual drug lowers blood pressure better than the placebo (for instance), then you know the drug actually works.

But how could we do a control group with divination? Today I realized that the DUFOUS is an attempt at making a placebo divination method. The DUFOUS was never meant to be a divinatory method. From the beginning, it was only meant to be a gag gift, and no one saw it as anything other than a joke– until they tried it, and it kept giving good answers. But why is it giving good answers? Could it be that it is not possible to make a divination system that does not work?

“I’ll ask the DUFOUS,” I said to myself this morning.

“DUFOUS, is it possible for me to make a non-working Divination system?”

I spun the spinner. The arrow stopped just at the edge of “4,” almost in “5" but not quite.

I unfolded the paper to read #4.

It said, “The Simpsons on Netflix.”

#5 said, “Maybe.”

“Well, that didn’t work,” I said to myself. “Maybe the answer is ‘Maybe–‘ or maybe not...”

Then, it hit me. The internet is full of postings about episodes of ‘The Simpsons’ predicting one or another of world events. Of course, the difficult part would be to recognize the future event and its significance while watching ‘The Simpsons,’ in advance of the event!

The writers of ‘The Simpsons’ did not intend for it to be a divination tool, and yet people have identified synchronicities between episodes of ‘The Simpsons’ and major events in real life. ‘The Simpsons’ is a parody of modern life.

In a way, the DUFOUS was meant to be a parody of a divination system– And yet it works anyway.

If this is a rabbit hole, then the rabbit hole goes deeper than I thought at first. A ‘dufus’ is someone who has little knowledge or experience. It is an amusing name, used mostly in fun among friends, but with the potential for cruelty. “DUFOUS” (or DUFOOS) is a dufus way to spell ‘Dufus.’ No one would really ask advice from a ‘dufus’ about anything. Yet the divination system is designed to make a person ‘ask the DUFOUS.’

The name ‘DUFOUS’ is almost French; “Du” is a French contraction of “de le,” roughly meaning “of the.” In French, a “fou” is a madman, or an enthusiast, as in “Je suis fou de hockey (I am mad for hockey).” So, “du fou” would translate as “of the enthusiast/madman.”

“Du fous,” on the other hand, does not mean ‘of the enthusiasts.’ That would be ‘des fous.’ However, the phrase “Nous sommes du fous sportifs,” means “We are sports freaks.” If you shoe-horn it right, ‘Du Fous’ would mean “of the freakishly enthusiastic.” Would you ask a question of a person who was freakishly enthusiastic. Hmmm,... Yes, you might, and it might be a very good answer if it is something they care deeply about.

So MY question is answered – again it works– to say that synchronicities abound in a thoroughly interconnected universe such as ours. You just have to have eyes to see them, as do some of the folks who watch ‘The Simpsons.’

Thinking back on it, I created a divinatory device in a way that was much like a magical working. The rules for using it are laid out in a magical fashion. If someone participates in this magical system by agreeing to ask the DUFOUS a question, it will surprise no one who has experience with divinatory methods that a good answer comes out. Without meaning to, I have created a functional divination system. Yes, it works.

The spinner landed at the edge of #5 (Maybe), yet it did not point to ‘Maybe.’ My initial meditation on it was that it “Maybe not” landed on #5. So in answer to the question, “Can I myself create a non-working Divination System?” The answer is, “Maybe not.”

Indeed, I made a better effort at creating a non-working Divination System than I could have done, if I had consciously set out to do it. As it turned out, the test conditions were so good that I myself was (in the language of statistical testing) a blind participant in the very test that I was creating! I could not have come up with a way to do this on purpose.

It gives me a glimpse into how divinations work:

If I understand this rightly, you set up a divinatory system–maybe it could be anything.

You ask the question.

You get an answer.

You meditate on the answer–And perhaps it helps you think outside the box, consider a third alternative, ponder an answer that you could not find before.

Current Mood: Bemused

Geomantic Magic Diamonds

Introduction

To understand this article, you will need to be familiar with the concepts of Geomancy. It would also be helpful to have a grasp of Magic Squares.

If you are interested in Geomancy, I recommend “The Art and Practice of Geomancy by John M. Greer. Here’s a link:
https://www.amazon.ca/Art-Practice-Geomancy-Divination-Renaissance/dp/1578634318/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=john+greer+geomancy&qid=1587006509&sr=8-1

If you would like to know more about Magic Squares, I recommend these websites;

Grogono’s Magic Squares
https://www.grogono.com/magic/index.php

Cafe 64 Net – 4X4 Magic Squares
http://www.cafe64.net/numbers/4x4/4x4.html

There is a lot of detail available about Magic Squares, and even some information about using them with Geomantic figures. My goal is to summarize a way to put the two together and hopefully to provide a way to use them for divination. This is very much a project in development, and I am nowhere near a complete understanding of this topic. For those that may be interested, it is a place to start.

Developing the Geomantic Diamond

Magic Squares are typically a square arrangement of numbers in which all the rows, all the columns and the diagonals add up to the same number. They can be any size, but we will look at the 4X4 Magic Squares, each of which contains the sixteen numbers from 0 to 15.

Geomancy uses sixteen characters. Each of these can also be thought of as a binary number from 0 to 15. What would happen if we replace the numbers in a Magic Square with the Geomantic figure that shares its numeric value?

We will look at one Magic Square for this article, number 0105 from the Cafe64.net website (above). This is an example of a ‘Pan-Magic’ square or ‘Magic Carpet’ square;

Every row adds to 30. Every column adds to 30. Both diagonals add to 30. The 4 corners add to 30. Any group of 2X2 squares adds to 30, and the 4 corners of any 3X3 square within the 4X4 square also add to 30. There are 880 possible 4X4 Magic Squares—They all have at least some of these characteristics, and cafe64.net provides a picture of each one of them!
For our purposes, we are going to rotate this square 1/8 turn (45 degrees) so that it becomes a Magic Diamond. We are also going to add a picture of a geomantic figure to each box as well as the 4-digit binary number for each box;

This diagram is kind of busy! To help us take it in, what if we choose a colored path to connect each of the paired Geomantic figures within it? There are eight paired Geomantic Figures, so here is a list of them along with a colored path to represent them:

We can draw paths on the Geomantic Diamond to link the paired figures:

Phoenix Diamond 0105 with Paths

After some meditation on this picture, it seems to me to represent a Phoenix rising out of a fire;
Here is the fire;

And the Phoenix;

Here are the paths depicting the Phoenix rising from the fire, without the numbers and Geomantic Figures.

Note that the paths all overlap, to some extent. Some paths are only touched by the end of another path. Others have a segment of overlap, and others cross entirely over another path. Because of their connections, it is possible to find a path from any box to any other box, traveling along the paths. Notice also that each single colored pathway crosses over three boxes.

We can think of these as paths in space. Perhaps we can apply Geomancy to them! Returning the figures to the diagram, we can apply Geomantic thinking to this Magic Diamond and see where it takes us;

The three characters in each path can be thought of as a spectrum linking the two geomantic figures on each end. The character in the center of each path is typically the endpoint of another path. Its likely that the pathways drawn on the other 879 4X4 Geomantic Diamonds will often display different characters. Maybe topics for the future...

Notice also that some boxes have more connections than others.
Box 12 (Fortuna Major) is connected to three ribbons. It is also in the center of the Phoenix, so let’s call this node the Heart of the Phoenix.
Box 15 (Via) is connected to five ribbons. Since it is in the center of the Fire, we can call this node the Heart of the Fire.
Box 6 and Box 9, the Wings of the Phoenix, have two path connections each. We can call their connection points ‘nodes.’
These 4 nodes, which connect all the paths, are themselves arranged symmetrically within the Geomantic Magic Diamond.
We can look at a list of the 8 paths, which resemble the Querent – Judge – Quesited Triplicates in Geomancy. Perhaps unlike them, it’s not clear which end is the Querent, and which end is the Quesited! It may be more useful to think of each of them as a continuum. We can pay attention to the figure in the middle that holds the place of Judge;

From top to bottom above;

Grey: Change – Stability Judge = Fortuna Major Phoenix heart

Brown: Sorrow – Joy Judge = Via Fire heart

Red: Passion – Wisdom Judge = Via Fire heart

Orange: Fort Minor – Fort Major Judge = Via Fire heart

Yellow: Loss – Gain Judge = Via Fire heart

Green: Isolation – Cooperation Judge = Fortuna Major Phoenix heart

Blue: Beginnings – Endings Judge = Carcer Phoenix Right Wing

Purple: Man – Woman Judge = Conjuctio Phoenix Left Wing

The Heart of the Fire (Via) Judges five of these paths, and the Heart of the Phoenix Judges three of them. The wings each have their own Judge.

What story does this Geomantic Diamond tell us? It seems to me a bit like the story of a life.

The Phoenix rises from the fire, so we start with the fire first.
Starting with the Vertial axis, A journey from Fortuna Minor to Fortuna Major. Going Counterclockwise, a pathway from sorrow to joy. Then going right to left, a path from loss to gain. Then diagonally from passion to wisdom. All of us travel back and forth on these axes throughout life.

Ascending to the Phoenix Fortuna Major is the pathway from change to stability. Right wing, beginnings link to endings via Carcer – We all have a beginning and an ending, and we’re locked into it! Fortuna Major bridges Isolation to Cooperation; Cooperation links Puer to Puella, speaking of a relationship.
Fire seems to describe the experiences of building a life and maturing, and the Phoenix describes building a relationship. Again, the paths could be traveled in both directions. The direction might be different from one reading to the next.

Paths in Space

Perhaps we can look at these paths as ‘paths in space.’ We could take an individual Geomantic reading and put its figures along the paths, much in the same way that we put a geomantic reading into the House Diagram. A geomantic reading, including the Reconciler is a set of 16 characters. It’s just a matter of figuring out where to put the characters in the Geomantic Diamond.

Geomantic Principles

Figures generate other figures. Directions go Right to Left, Top to Bottom. End links to Beginning (as in the case of the Reconciler, and the House Chart). Analysis is in 3’s. --These principles are some of the basic ways of looking at a Geomantic Reading. Perhaps we can use them for placement.

The Shield Chart is generated from Right to Left, and Top to Bottom. Starting at the top, we put the 4 Mothers (M1 to M4) in the top four boxes. M1 goes in the Heart of the Phoenix, and M2, M3, and M4 are placed clockwise in the other 3 boxes. Daughter 1, and 2 (D1 and D2) are placed in the Right Wing, and D3 and D4 are placed in the Left Wing. The Nieces are placed under the Daughters. Daughter and Niece Placement generally follows a counterclockwise, Right-to-Left direction. The last four figures are placed in the bottom four boxes—Querent (Q1) , Judge (J) and Quesited (Q2) are placed counterclockwise in pretty much the same position as you find them in the Shield Chart. The Reconciler R is the final figure generated, and it goes in the bottom box of the diamond. This placement puts Judge (J) at the Heart of the Fire. This placement puts M1 and J above R, and M1 and J are used to generate R.

Why this placement, and not another one? I am really not sure. I tried a number of other placement patterns, and this one seems to work better than the other ones. Combining the motions of the 4 Mothers and the Querent-Judge-Quesited-Reconciler seems to trace a figure-8 or infinity sigil. The overall placement of Geomantic Characters is about the same as the Shield Chart, and the symmetry makes me happy. It just feels right to me. Perhaps there is a better placement pattern out there somewhere!

Geomantic Readings

It might be good to try some examples:

1)
15 April 2020 – How will today go?

The Shield chart casting (Left side, above) is inserted onto the pathways of the Phoenix Diamond (right side).

The hearts of the Fire and Phoenix are Amissio/Loss. The right wing node Albus/Wisdom on the lifespan
path and the left wing node Laetitia/Joy on the relationship path seem very positive.

Treating each path of three characters as a querent-judge-quesited triplet, we can follow the rising of the phoenix upward from the fire.

Fire Paths:

Orange; Populus-Amissio-Amissio. Many moving into loss. Note that Populus and Amissio combined make Amissio. This triplet path has an internal judge. Many/most triplets on the pathways do not form a Querent-Judge-Quesited triplet—But this one does. Pathway is Fortuna minor/major axis, so this may address financial losses.

Brown; Cauda Draconis-Amissio-Via. At the end of loss, a journey. External Judge=Tristitia (from Cauda Draconis + Via)
Pathway is Sorrow/Joy, so possibly an ending or new love and a journey.

Yellow: Albus-Amissio-Puella. Wisdom in loss goes to love. External Judge = Carcer (from Albus + Puella).
Pathway is Loss-Acquisition. Loss will happen, possibly financial, but it will turn out for the best. Note that Amissio appears in the yellow path of the Phoenix Diamond, but not same position.

Red; Fortuna Minor-Amissio-Rubeus. Quick loss with treachery/passion. External Judge = Laetitia (from Fort Minor + Rubeus).
Pathway is Wisdom-Passion. Note that Rubeus appears on the Wisdom-Passion Path in the Phoenix Diamond, but not in the same position.

Phoenix Paths:
Grey: Amissio-Amissio-Acquisitio. Many losses, then a gain. External Judge = Via (from Amissio + Acquisitio).
Path is Change/Stability. Large losses go to gain in stability. Note that Rubeus is in the same path and placement as in the Phoenix Diamond.

Blue: Puer-Albus-Carcer. Boldness>Wisdom>Stability/Isolation. External Judge = Rubeus.
Path is Beginnings/Endings (Lifetime) , so Boldness is called for, but wisest to be in isolation. Carcer is on the blue path in the Phoenix Magic Diamond, but not in same position.

Green: Albus-Amissio-Laetitia. Wisdom in Loss goes to Joy. Note Wisdom and Loss parallel placement in the Yellow path. Note-Internal Judge.
Path is Isolation/Cooperation. With the Yellow path, Cooperation is the wisest way through loss.

Purple: Laetitia-Laetitia-Fortuna Major. Much joy goes to fortune. External Judge = Puella.
Path is Man/Woman (Relationship). Joy and gain in relationship.

Results:

Losses:
On the 15th I realized that my work hours have been cut back from 40 hours per week to 29 hours per week, due to COVID.
My head tech quit to go to a better-paying job with better benefits. That could be what the Brown path was about, but I knew it was likely before the reading.

Fire Paths;
These paths seem to tell about issues in the background that I already knew about.

Phoenix Paths;
These seem to be concerned with my personal life. Isolation the right choice for us, although it means lost income. Result is a better relationship with my spouse. We went shopping for a while that day, then stayed home. The home time was better.

2) Should I Study Geomantic Magic Diamonds?

Charts:

In advance of casting the reading, I began with the intent to read the answer from the Geomantic Diamond chart—This because it is better to choose what diagram you read from; reading from more than one diagram for the same casting often gives conflicting results.

That said, this unusual shield chart has daughters identical to the mothers. This means that the horizontal rows of dots adds up the same as the vertical figures. So in a way, the 4 mothers are a sort of 4X4 Magic Square in and of themselves.
Its not a standard interpretation, but Rubeus in Querent and Quesited confirms to me, in this case, not to look at the Shield Chart for this one. On to the Phoenix Diagram, shown with the Phoenix Magic Diamond 0105;

Fire Heart: Populus
Phoenix Heart: Acquisitio
Right Wing Node: Cauda Draconis
Left Wing Node: Conjunctio

These seem to say ‘Yes’ for the most part. Cauda Drac is possibly the exception.

Fire Paths:

Orange: Acquisitio-Populus-Acquisitio. Very great gain (together?). Internal Judge.
Path = Fortuna Minor/Major.

Brown: Rubeus-Populus-Puella. Hmmm, Drama/Intrigue, lots of it, ending in love(?) External Judge=Via complements Populus and matches Phoenix Diamond.
Path = Sorrow/Joy-- A lot of intense emotion on this path.

Yellow: Puella-Populus-Via. In love, many take the long road. External Judge = Rubeus.
Path = Loss/Acquisition.

Red: Via-Populus-Rubeus. Long way for many to/with drama/passion(?). External Judge = Puella. This path + external judges are very similar to Yellow
Path = Passion/Wisdom. Via and Rubeus occupy Red in the Phoenix Diamond, but in different positions.

Phoenix Paths:

Grey: Populus-Acquisitio-Conjunctio. Much gained working together. External Judge =Conjunctio. Conjunctio is on the Grey Path in Phoenix Diamond, but not same position.
Path = Change/Stability.

Blue: Acquisitio-Cauda Draconis-Carcer. Gain Ends in Prison? The end of gains is stability/isolation? External Judge=Fortuna Minor. Carcer and Cauda Drac are both in the same section in Phoenix Diamond, but positions switched.
Path = Beginnings/Endings (Lifetime). Looks like a bad ending…. This might not help me personally….

Green: Cauda Drac – Acquisitio – Conjunctio. Endings-Gain-Cooperation. External Judge=Laetitia. Conjunctio has same path and position as in Phoenix Diamond.
Path = Isolation/Cooperation. Time to stop working on this one all by myself…

Purple: Cauda Drac-Conjunctio-Carcer. Endings-Together-Prison? Ending cooperation leads to isolation? Conjunctio has same path and position as in Phoenix Diamond.
Path = Man/Woman (Relationship). Hmm, perhaps advising me/us to not end relationships? Uncertain meaning.

Overall Impression:

Looks like there is a lot to be gained by studying Geomantic Magic Diamonds—But best to do it in cooperation with others, not alone.

Other Observations:

The 8 pathways of the Phoenix Magic Diamond contains four (4) Internal Judges and four(4) External Judges. The Internal Judges are Via, Via, Carcer and Conjunctio. The External Judges are Via, Via, Carcer and Conjunctio—They are a matched set. Significance unknown, but there are two of each in the Fire, and two of each in the Phoenix. Could be that agreement (or lack of it) between the internal and external judges of a reading is significant in some way. Equal numbers, balance, and matching identities is the ground state of the Internal and External Judges in the Phoenix Geomantic Magic Diamond #0105. It feels significant to me, but I don’t know why.

Here are the External Judge paths from the Phoenix Magic Diamond;

Here are the Internal Judge paths;

Yin and Yang

There are six boxes to the left of the vertical row, and six boxes to the right. Five of the six boxes on the right are “negative”, and five of the six boxes on the left are “positive.” If we color them in, it forms a very crude Yin-Yang diagram. Red boxes correspond to the divider of the Yin/Yang Symbol, White and blue are the two colors. There may be other 4X4 diamonds in which the white dot is placed exactly opposite the black dot. Again, it feels significant to me, but the significance unknown.

In the 4X4 diamond there are seven horizontal rows—One box in the top row, two in the second, etc; 1-2-3-4-3-2-1. When you make them into diamonds, Many, but not all, of the other 4X4 Magic Squares exhibit perfect symmetry on all of their 7 rows if you express the numbers in the boxes as 4-digit binary numbers. Be sure to include the leading zeroes—So the number ‘one’ (0001) is symmetrical with the number ‘eight’ (1000) but only if you include the leading zeroes. Significance is unknown.

There are also seven columns in a 4X4 diamond (1-2-3-4-3-2-1). I haven’t even looked at them….

The Internal and External Judges are not a fully developed concept. I had the impression that there WERE Internal and External Judges (see above) but also that they would need to be examined along with some sort of string or line of geomantic figures, perhaps in a circle--but could not find anything on it.

A query on JM Greer’s ‘Magic Mondays’ for April 12th 2020 informed me that there were indeed other folks looking at Geomantic Magic Squares. Thanks, Anonymous, for the link to Digital Ambler--And Thanks to Digital Ambler, whose entire blog is now on my must-read list ;-) !
Following this string of links...

https://ecosophia.dreamwidth.org/85690.html#comments

https://digitalambler.com/2019/02/18/on-geomantic-figure-magic-squares/

https://digitalambler.com/2019/12/09/another-system-of-elemental-affinities-for-the-geomantic-figures/

….Eventually led me to this one:

https://digitalambler.com/2019/12/21/the-chaplet-of-eight-dragons-or-the-rosary-of-the-geomancers-of-allahabad/

The circular “Rosary of the Geomancers of Allahhabad” pictured here feels like the right tool to interpret the significance of the Internal and External Judges. I have no idea how just yet, but when you catch a glimpse of the thing while meditating on the Geo Magic Diamond, and a string of coincidences leads you to a picture from an out-of-print book in French from the 1940’s, well that’s probably the thing you want to look at...

Again, there are 880 different 4X4 Magic Squares. The Phoenix Magic Diamond examined here is only one of them. It could be that selecting the right Magic Diamond is an important part of the Geomantic Diamond reading. It could be that there is only one Diamond that is best for one person’s own use. I have no idea…

Limitations

I am not in any way an expert on Geomancy, Magic Squares, Astrology or generally Occult topics of any kind. If you see something glaringly obvious that I have completely neglected, chances are I just don’t know anything about that. I am pretty certain of the correct placement of the Mothers and Querent-Judge-Quesited-Reconciler groups on the Phoenix Diamond, but not so sure about the Daughters and Nieces.

If you got this far, thanks for reading!
Hopefully this topic was somewhat interesting and even useful. The information seems to be developing like a photograph in a darkroom chemical tray. As more details fill in, I will plan to write about them.

Cheers,

Emmanuel G

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emmanuelg

March 2025

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Urim and Thummim - Divination in the Bible
DUFOUS - Accidental Divination
Geomantic Magic Diamonds

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Entries tagged with divination

Urim and Thummim - Divination in the Bible

DUFOUS - Accidental Divination

Geomantic Magic Diamonds