The process of interpreting a Geomancy chart almost seems to split between two phases: 1. assessing the significators and their relationship (as discussed here) 2. interpreting the geomantic court. Some would even object to the order in which I give them, as, technically speaking, it’s the Judge that gives the answer.
The Geomantic Court is copmosed of the two Witnesses and the Judge. The two Witnesses represent the culmination of the process of development of the two sides of the Geomantic Shield (as discussed here)
The right and left Witnesses (the right one is Albus, the left one is Caput) are the last product of the right and left sides of the Shield respectively. The Judge represents the overcoming of this duality into a final unity that takes everything into consideration.
We can easily liken the two Witnesses to the two pans of a scale, where arguments in favor and against are weighed. The fact that, from a technical standpoint, the Judge can only be a figure with an even number of points speaks to the Judge’s consideration of both sides. Keep in mind that there’s a total of 65.536 possible shields when we allow for all possible permutations of the sixteen mothers. But only 8 Judge figures are possible. Obviously, the Judge’s sentence can only be a general bird-eye view of the situation from the throne of Heaven, as it were. This is very different from the concrete and specific interrelation of the geomantic figures on the Shield.
As for the two Witnesses, as said, they are the culmination of the process of discussion that is carried out on the two sides of the Shield, the right side belonging to the querent and the left side to the quesited, or, alternatively, the right side being what pleads for the querent and the left side what speaks against his or her success.
Peter de Abano, interestingly, likens the right Witness to the planet the Moon separates from in an astrology chart, and the left Witness to the planet she applies to. This is largely in keeping with the attempt of Medieval magi to reduce everything to astrology. If you follow this school of thought, since in traditional astrology the Moon represents the flow of the chart or the flow of action in the chart, then the right Witness is the past and the left Witness the future. Personally, I tend to see the two Witnesses as belonging to the same timeframe, of which they highlight the up and down sides.
Some rules have been passed down to us for assessing the relationship between the Witnesses and the Judge. For instance, it is said that if the Witnesses are positive and the Judge negative, it shows that the matter is easier at the beginning but doesn’t end well, and vice versa if the Witnesses are bad and the Judge good.
In general, if we accept that the Judge is nothing more than the sum of the two Witnesses, and that the two Witnesses are the ‘for’ and ‘against’, then in a way the Judge is nothing more than a recapitulation of the Witnesses’ discussion, seen from a higher, more general level.
If we take the example of the Geomantic court above, where Acquisitio is the Judge and it derives from Albus as the right Witness and Caput as the left Witness, and if we suppose the question is about a business deal, then the right Witness argues that the querent has good business sense or a good plan, while the left Witness adds that it’s going to be hard at the beginning, while the Judge surmises from the discussion that, in general, the deal is going to be profitable.
Alternatively, if we take the right Witness as a symbol of the querent and the left Witness as a symbol of the quesited, the querent is still shown as a competent businessperson, while the quesited, i.e., the deal, is shown as a promising new start, while the Judge still rules in favor of the deal being good.
In the next article I will talk about how to reconcile the Judge and court with the other aspects of the reading.
MQS
