Time and again recently, I’ve had to flip through a variety of archives to find specific books on geomancy.  These aren’t my normal books, but some of the venerated (and pain-in-the-ass) source books that modern geomancers in the West tend to work from, whether directly from their own pages or indirectly through modern translators and teachers.  After amassing a bit of a list of my own, and being tired of digging through awful interfaces to find a few texts, I decided to go on and compile a fairly reasonable list of geomantic texts that are freely available online in some digitized format or another.  Most of these are from the 1500s through 1700s, with very few exceptions.  There are others available online, of course, but some of those aren’t really in the public domain and I’d really rather not get slammed for piracy so publicly.

The list of texts I largely go by are found in the bibliographies of Stephen Skinner’s books Terrestrial Astrology: Divination by Geomancy (1980) and Geomancy in Theory and Practice (2011).  Skinner has done, as usual, a fantastic job at cataloging and indexing so many texts, books, and manuscripts on geomancy, and it’s given me a good start with original sources to check from, in addition to modern resources such as academic papers, blogs, workshops, pamphlets, and the like.  Below are whatever resources, based on Skinner’s bibliographies, that I could find digitized and freely accessible online in a variety of langauges, focusing on those that were published and used in European and Western geomancy from the 1500s onward.

In Latin:

• Anonymous, Tabulae Geomanticae. 1693.  Alternate version available on Google Books.
• Robert Fludd,
  • Fasciculus Geomanticus, in quo varia variorum opera geomantica continentur.  1687, Verona.  Alternate version available on Google Books here, here, here.
    • There are lots of versions of this text available with many digitizations and republications.  However, this is one of the exceedingly few that has properly scanned some of the more difficult fold-out pages.
    • The Fasciculus Geomanticus also contained the “Geomantic Questions” of Al-Fakini ibn Abizarch the Arab, translated “from an ancient manuscript” by Plato of Tivoli and published in the year 1535.
  • Utriusque Cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica, atque technica historia (volume 1).  1617, Oppenheim.  Alternate version available on Google Books.
  • Utriusque Cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica, atque technica historia (volume 2).  1619, Oppenheim.  Alternate version available on Google Books.
• Henri de Pisis, Opus Geomantiae Completum in libros tres divisum.  1638, Lyons.
  • Note that this text, though available on its own, is also included as the second part of Fludd’s Fasciculus Geomanticus (given above).
• Johann Andreas Schmidt, Geomantia.  1695, Jena.
• Melchias Uken,
  • Stegonometrographia sive artificium novum & inauditum.  1751,  Frankfurt and Leipzig.
  • Geomantia metrica seu ars punctandi.  1759.

In French:

• Christopher Cattan, La Geomance du Seigneur Christofe de Cattan Gentilhomme Genevoys.  1558, Paris.  Alternate version available here.
• Jean de la Taille de Bondaroy,  La Géomance abregee de Iean de la Taille de Bondaroy, Gentil-homme de Beauce.  1574, Paris.  Alternate version available here.
• Le Sieur de Peruchio, La chiromance, la physionomie, et la geomance.  1657, Paris.
• Jean Belot, Les Œuvres de M. Jean Belot, cure de Mil Monts, professeur aux sciences divines & celestes.  1654, Lyon.
• Francesco Maria Pompeo Colonna, Le nouveau miroir de la fortune, ou, abregé de la geomance.  1726, Paris.
• Paul Tannery, Mémoires scientifiques (volume 4).  1920, Toulouse and Paris.
  • This is a collection of studies and essays on the development of mathematics and science; this volume, specifically, deals with the development of such in the near East, Greece, and medieval Latin periods of the Mediterranean.  Chapter 14 (pages 295—411) contains his section on geomancy, which also contains Greek and Latin transcriptions of older texts.

In Italian:

• Bartholomeo di Rocca (Cocles), La Geomantia di Bartholomeo Cocle, filosofo intergerrimo; nuovissimamente tradotta, et ancho data in luce.  1550, Venice.
• Pietro d’Abano,
  • Geomantia di Pietro d’Abano, nuovamente tradotta ta di latino in volgare per, il Tricasso Mantuano.   1542, Venice.
  • La Seconda Parte della Geomantia di Pietro d’Abano.  1550, Venice.
  • Comincia la Geomantia di Pietro d’Abano, tradotta di lattina lingua nel volgare idoma (volume 1).  1556, Venice.
  • Comincia la Geomantia di Pietro d’Abano, tradotta di lattina lingua nel volgare idoma (volume 2).  1552, Venice.

In German:

• Abu Hali ben Omar.  Vollenkommene Geomantia.  1704, Freistadt.
• Anonymous, Curieuse und ganz neue Art zu Punctiren.  1754, Leipzig.  Alternate version available here.

In English:

• Christopher Cattan, The Geomancie of Maister Christopher Cattan, Gentleman.  1591, London, in English, translated by John Wolfe.  Alternate version available here.
• John Heydon, Theomagia, or, the Temple of Wisdome, in three parts, spiritual, celestial, and elemental.  1663, London.
• Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim.  On Geomancy, part of Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy.  1678, London.  Alternate versions available here and here.
• John Case, The Angelical Guide shewing men and women their lott or chance in this elementary life, in four books.  1697, London.
  • I can’t seem to find an actual digitization of this text properly online in an easy-to-obtain format, but there are some text reproductions that omit the images (which aren’t always necessary).  I would recommend this source first, then using this source as an alternative version.
  • However, the excellent Dr. Alexander Cummins has informed me that he has a PDF scan of the text, along with a pure text transcription, available up on his other blog, Grimoires on Tape.  Download it when you can!  (Also, he’s so dreamy and noble.)
• Herman Kirchenhoffer, The Book of Fate, formerly in the possession of Napoleon, late Emperor of France.  1822, London.
• Franz Hartmann, The principles of astrological geomancy, the art of divining by punctuation.  1889, London.
• Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, Rambling Recollections.  1908, London.  Specifically, pages 298 through 320.

Of course, it should be made clear that this list is by no means comprehensive!  Between the manuscripts that cannot be read except with eyes trained in particular handwriting styles, books that have not yet been digitized or that have but not been made publicly available, and all the books that are still under copyright, and all the other books that are available but which are in Middle Eastern and Asian languages, there are dozens, hundreds of books that discuss geomancy that are not yet available like the ones above.  Still, this is a good start for many, and if you include resources that discuss Arabic or Islamic style geomancy under the name raml or ramal, you can turn up with even more works; alas, I don’t know Arabic, Persian, or Urdu, so I have not included those texts here, but they’re out there, too!

Hopefully, this list of texts can help further the research and study of geomancy and encourage those with the skills to translate whatever texts still remain in obscurity and bring old, buried knowledge to light once more.  If you, dear reader, have any other tips, clues, or links to other historical, Renaissance, or medieval resources that are digitized in some way or are in the public domain, please share in the comments!