One of the things newcomers to Geomancy learn first is the distinction between shield chart and astrological chart. This distinction has been popularized by Greer in his two books on Geomancy, but it doesn’t originate with him, though he is, to my limited knowledge, the first to insinuate that the shield chart is a beginner’s tool and the astrological chart a more advanced one (his attitude changes in his Golden Dawn writings, where he tries to purge astrology from geomancy and render the shield chart autonomous).

Agrippa (followed centuries later by the Golden Dawn) clearly has the astrological chart in mind, since he advocates putting the four Mothers in the four angles, the four Daughters in the four succedent houses and the four Nieces in the four cadent houses. This idea can only come to mind to someone who primarily uses the astrological square chart, or at least pictures the geomantic reading in those terms.

There are other authors, however, like Cattan, Abano and Alfakini (note that some attribute Alfakini’s work, found in the Fasciculus Geomanticus, to Gerard of Cremona) who clearly think of geomantic practice in terms of the shield chart alone. Not because they are unaware of the possible correspondence with the astrological houses, which all employ, nor because they never attempt to draw the square astrological chart (Christopher Cattan does it in the first part of his book), but because it is clear to them that the twelve astrological houses are meant as a technique to be used to draw meaning out of the shield chart and not as a new or different way of doing geomancy.

This can be seen from the fact that both Abano and Alfakini (and possibly also Cattan, but I have to study his text more closely) clearly consider the twelfth house NOT to be contiguous to the first, as it would be in the square chart. On the other hand, both consider the ninth house, which in an astrological square chart would have no relation to the first, to be contiguous to the first, just because in a shield chart it belongs to the same triplicity as the first and is close to it (see below)

In this chart, Puer in the first is close to Cauda in the ninth, but not to Puella in the twelfth.

This new way of looking at the chart is also making me reevaluate the doctrine of the company of houses, which I have somewhat disparaged in a previous article, and it might even shed light on the strange doctrine of the triplicities, which Greer makes much of but which is barely present in the old texts except in an apparently purely decorative sense. I will need to read the texts more closely and experiment.

What seems clear to me though is that there was never meant to be an astrological square chart, for many authors of the Medieval tradition, but rather merely an astrological lens in looking at the shield chart.

MQS