You may have heard, dear reader, that one of my specialties lies in the ancient and occult art of divinatory geomancy.  I dunno where you might have heard that from, but now you know.  It’s an old art, that’s for sure, and is most likely around a thousand years old with origins in the Sahara desert.  Even though it spread throughout Africa (where it’s still practiced as ifa and sikidy), the Middle East (under the names of `ilm al-raml or khatt al-raml), and Europe (under the name…well, geomancy), and even though it enjoyed popularity second only to astrology back in the day, it’s fairly uncommon to see anymore.  It’s a pity, especially since it’s among the more useful and concrete divination systems out there.

My guess is that, towards the end of geomancy’s heyday, people started compiling lists and charts of likely answers instead of relying on contextual intuition; people thought that these charts were all that there were to geomancy, and kept simplifying it from there into parlor games.  When the Industrial Revolution and Enlightenment began, many occultists and alchemists of the time culled what they had down to a few essential arts with the rest locked up in ancient tomes or swept under the rug; geomancy was one that barely made the cut, and even then only as an oversimplified dumbed-down divination system.  The Golden Dawn made a nod to it in its introductory grades, but most people thought it was worthless.  It’s only recently that geomancy is being unearthed and retranslated from old works into new books, but it’s a slow process.

One geomancer, Les Cross of Astrogem Geomancy fame, is starting a popularization project called “the Sixteen Hundred”.  In order to make the art of geomancy a little more mainstream, he wants to give it a bit of showtime and visibility by having 1600 people take a picture of a reading they’ve done with a thumbs up in the pic.  Each person gives their initials, their location, and their pic to Les, who then sets it atop his page listing the people.  Each person gets to pick a slot under one of the 16 geomantic figures, one hundred people per figure.  Yours truly was fourth in line, and the first for the Coniunctio group.  Since I’m sure at least some of my readers are also geomancers, I encourage you guys to do the same.  This page on Les’ website documents the method and some of the people who have already submitted their photos; if you’re on Facebook, you might check out his group there.  No matter your style of geomancy, if you practice the art, you too could be part of the Sixteen Hundred!

Check out his potentially viral effort, and help give a bit of shine to this ancient gem of a divination system.