Not too long ago, I was at the local new age bookstore with some friends of mine, who themselves are friends with the shop owners and sometimes sell their own crafts and wares there.  I overheard them talking about divination and oracles, and since that’s been my speciality (even given all this ceremonial magic stuff, geomancy will always be my ars prima), I asked what they were talking about.  It turns out that a gentleman came in for a reading, but there weren’t any readers present that day that could take him.  My friend piped in a (hugely influential and highly praiseful) word and suggested I do the reading for him, so I did.  This pleased the shopowners, and since they needed someone to do readings on weekends, and since I could use the extra practice and pocket money, I agreed.

So, if you’re local to or passing through the northern Virginia or DC metro area, stop by from 2 to 6 p.m. on Sunday afternoons at Sticks and Stones in Fairfax and come see me!  It’s a store with excellent people serving the local new age, pagan, and occult community, with classes, sessions, readings, and wares galore. It’s geared towards earth-based or Goddess spirituality crowds, but real Divinity is accessible to all, so whatever.  Besides, Western Mystery Tradition magic and lore is part of the bedrock of a lot of things, so hopefully I can make a contribution in my own ways to the local community!  Also, the owners, Gwen and Bubbles, are hilarious and fantastic people, and for once, I’m not the only male reader in the crowd (psychic fairs are fairly female-dominated, not that there’s anything wrong with that).

As for me, I do three types of geomancy readings.

• Simple readings (two figures plus their resulting figure).  Good for simple questions about a situation, in either a you-versus-them view or a past-present-future perspective.
• Full readings (complete geomantic chart interpretation).  Applicable for any situation, in-depth and detailed.  The most common, too, since it actually helps flesh out a situation pretty well.
• Life readings (complete geomantic chart interpretation overlaid with astrological natal horoscope information).  Interprets a geomantic interpretation of one’s life combined with traditional astrological technique and information.  Comes with a full transcript and analysis.  Requires full birth date, time, and location, as well as contact information to send the transcript.

If you’re interested in geomancy in general, I suggest you take a look at the Yahoo! group Geomantic Campus, which has plenty of resources to get started with and where I’m involved in chart analysis and technique critiquing.  I’m not taking divination requests online right now, but if there’s enough of a demand, I might set up an online payment thingy for people interested in it.

Also, a quick word on my particular style of geomancy.  The technique of generating the geomantic charts relies on obtaining the four Mothers, four geomantic figures that form the “seed” of the rest of the chart.  How the Mothers are formed is up to the geomancer in question; as long as the method can produce a binary answer, it can produce a geomantic figure.  The traditional method is to make sixteen lines of dots in sand, dirt, or wax, then figure out whether each line has an odd or even number of dots, then group the odd/even result into groups of four lines, and boom, four geomantic figures.  I use this method when I have no supplies with me, since it takes nothing more than a pen and paper (or a stick and sand, if you’re being really old-school about it), but it takes a long time and it feels messy.  Dice also work well, especially since a lot of my friends are tabletop gamers, where I use a d4 (tetrahedron) to represent the Fire line of a geomantic figure, a d8 (octohedron) for Air, a d20 (isocahedron) for Water, and a d6 (cube) for Earth, using the proper Platonic solid for each elemental line of a geomantic figure.  However, I most prefer my deck of geomantic cards: a 64-card deck of cards I designed and printed, with four cards per geomantic figure (because it is possible that a geomantic figure can appear more than once in the Mothers).

Update: Come out and meet me for the official meet and greet on Sunday, 7/29, from 2 to 4 p.m.!