In this short paragraph, Abano introduces several technical terms.
This is an example of a simple mutation, about the question whether one shall be with his girlfriend.1
Geomancy shield by Peter of Abano
The first figure is Conjunctio, the second Puer, the third Puella, the fourth Conjunctio. Look how the first moves to the fourth and the seventh is the same as the third, and thus it means being with her, especially since the first is in the fifth house of fun.2 Moreover, the first is found in both Witnesses.3 Also, this is an example of translation, because the first moves next to the house of the quesited,4 that is, in the eighth, which is associated to the seventh. Moreover it is an example of conjunction, because the first is conjunct to the ninth, and the eleventh with the fifth,5 and the thirteenth with the ninth, and the fourteenth with the eleventh.6
MQS
Footnotes
“Se uno havera la sua amica”, literally, “if one shall have his (female) friend”. This passage warrants its own chapter as it is relatively strange when confronted with the modern doctrine, and it seems to contain odd mistakes, at least prima facie. ↩︎
“Casa di gaudio della cosa quesita”, literally “the house of joy of the quesited”. It could be that Abano means the Fifth house is the joy of the question itself, because it signifies fun, and the question is about fun. ↩︎
It is not clear whether this is good because the figure is Conjunctio or because it is found in the houses of the Witnesses, or both. ↩︎
Abano seems to be using the word ‘translation’ in lieu of ‘conjunction’ here. There is a translation in the modern sense here, but this is effected by Puer, who is both in the Second and in the Sixth. ↩︎
The Eleventh does not seem connected in any way with the Fifth, unless we take the Fifth to be moving to the Fourteenth (the Left Witness) or we count the translation effectuated by Puer ↩︎
This is rather obscure, unless, again, we take the Thirteenth and Fourteenth as regular houses that can come into contact with the others. This would open up the Geomantic Shield to a whole different kind of interpretation. ↩︎
Some days ago I was talking to a fellow occult student and we were comparing notes on how we go about the process of divination. When I told her that I tend to say a little prayer before divination she was surprised, so I thought it would make for a nice topic.
First off, I do not think that praying before divination is mandatory, nor do I think that it’s the prayer that makes divination work. It doesn’t matter if it’s synchronicity, as Jung said, or if it’s the spirits that live inside the cards, as my first teacher told me, or if it’s the Soul of the World, as the Platonists believe, or if symbols are living beings, as I believe: the point is that the cards always rearrange themselves in a meaningful pattern, the planets always find themselves in the right aspects, the right geomantic figures always emerge, the right I Ching Hexagram always forms.
As such, in a way, divination is a natural activity, so much so that it’s probably one of the earliest activities humans have undertaken. The reading of symbols came much sooner than the reading of characters, because symbols occur naturally to the mind whenever we realize that X means Y. The moment the first men drew any kind or conclusion from any kind of observation, divination was born.
And yet, I believe that divination is also essentially extraordinary. In a way, divining is as normal as cleaning your cat’s litter box, but in another sense it is also very different. In divining we read a part of the whole (the divination system) to derive conclusions on the whole (life itself). Indeed most divination systems are universal languages that mirror the complexity of the Macrocosm.
As such, divination cannot be decoupled from a global understanding of life, and this global plane is where philosophy, spirituality and occultism unfurl their wings.
In my own view, occultism is divided into three branches: devotion, divination and magic. But these three aspects are not discretely separated. For instance, theurgy brings together magic and devotion. Divination and magic are often coupled together, such as in electing the right time to make a talisman or in asking if a magical action is warranted or advisable or effective.
Praying before divination brings together devotion and divination. It is a way of recognizing the extraordinary import of the action I’m about to take, despite this action being, in another sense, perfectly ordinary.
It helps me more than it helps the divination system itself. Nor does it have to be prayer. I know of some people who wash their hands before divining. In Imperial China official diviners had to cleanse themselves before attempting divination, and this is true all over the world.
No one divines willy-nilly. No one *should* divine willy-nilly. This has nothing to do with respect (unless you are receiving information from a particular spirit), it has nothing to do with asking deep questions (divination should always be practical) and it has nothing to do with not having a sense of humor (you can have a sense of humor, in spite of how bland and vapid many of us are). It does have to do with knowing what place divination has in the scheme of things and reaching that place. I do it through prayer, others may do it by just taking a second to clear their mind, but everyone does it one way or another.
I’m always on the look-out for opportunities to deepen my knowledge of esoteric topics. Since the esoteric world is filled to the brim with junk covering a couple of pearls on the bottom (but don’t worry, things don’t get much better outside of lalaland) it is very useful to know some forms of divination to supplement my bullshitometer.
I recently came across a certain course on traditional Italian witchcraft which passed all my preliminary tests (no mention of Wicca or neopaganism, relating anecdotes on practices I’m already familiar with and know are valid, etc.)
Still something was off, though I couldn’t put my finger on it. On thing was probably the reference to authors, like Raven Grimassi, who have been largely debunked. I asked the heavens for a sign, and then pulled some cards. Let’s start with the cards. They were:
4♣ – 2♠ – K♦ – 2♣ – 6♦
Right off the bat, I don’t like the teacher being represented by a King of Diamonds. The King of Diamonds is the merchant, the banker, the one whose end goal is money. If he had been the King of Hearts or even the King of Spades I would have been reassured. You may argue that obviously a course is offered to earn money, to which I respond that there is a difference between earning through your passion and earning through other people’s passion.
I am unsure about the preceding combination of Four of Clubs and Two of Spades, but it likely represents contradictory (2♠, arguments, going apart) doctrines (4♣, that which is told). The Two of Clubs and Six of Diamonds traditionally represent limping (insecure steps). The King of Diamonds is not secure enough in his knowledge. Limping is still better than being bed-ridden, so there is something good to the course, but probably not enough to offset the negatives.
Horary Astrology Reading
Let’s look at the horary chart:
Is the course good for me?
The Moon is the Lady of the Ascendant and thus represents me. Magic is higher knowledge, so it’s Ninth House. This is Jupiter. The two malefics Mars and Jupiter are present in the Ninth house, and are both peregrine, so they afflict the house.
The Moon is in her sign, but she’s also tucked away in the very malefic Twelfth house. Interestingly, the Twlefth house represents witchcraft, but only in the sense of something done behind the querent’s back to hurt him, not magic in general (which, again, is higher knowledge). So while I’d be capable of learning (Moon in own sign) my position is not good. There’s something iffy.
Jupiter is mildly dignified by term and in the succedent Eleventh house. The Moon is in sextile with Jupiter, which is technically good, but it is separating from it, indicating growing divergence. The Moon’s next aspect is a square of the Sun, which is negative. The Sun rules the second house, the house of money. So proceeding would put a strain on my finances. This isn’t necessarily to say that it costs too much in absolute terms, but it costs too much compared to its quality. Interestingly, Jupiter is disposited by Venus, which is in detriment and moving toward the Sun, which hurts her, so Venus has a rather excessive love of my money compared to the necessary love of knowledge.
All in all, based on both readings, I would say that the course would probably contain some valuable information, but would not be a great investment in my education.
In one of my recent posts I discussed how playing cards can detect curses (of course, it’s not just playing cards that can do it). Today I wanted to add to this subject by discussing the esoteric use of Playing Cards to check if a spell (in this case, a talisman) is a good idea or has been successfully created and is working.
I should perhaps first explain that there is a modicum of belief in magic involved in all this. The modern worldview tends to react to the idea of magic in two ways: the skeptical way (“it’s not really true”) and the new age way (“it’s not really true, but I would really love for it to be true, so I’ll play make belief and tailor everything to my preconceptions”)
Either way, magic is reduced to the acceptable role of cathartic theater or psychological tool (unfortunately, even great minds within the occult scene, like William Gray, have partly fallen for this approach, or at least considered it viable). From here it has even found its way even into the corporate sphere (a friend of mine working for Google told me she was forced to attend a “magical” day with a psychic who talked to them about tarot and Wicca). You know something is crap when pandering megacorporations appropriate it.
At least since Aleister Crowley (but there are predecessors) magic has been understood as the way of the will. Granted, Crowley’s understanding of the word “Will” is not the same as how we understand it in our everyday life, which would rather be “whim“. His view resembles more closely Nietzsche’s view of the will, so it does have some nobility.
But this doesn’t detract from the fact that most people whose view of magic has been colored by Crowley’s (and that’s almost everyone today, whether they know it or not) don’t REALLY believe in magic. Instead, they tend to see it as, again, little more than a placebo. It’s true if you believe in it. It’s true if you want it to be true.
Still, it’s my experience that belief in magic is not really required for magic to work. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find any trace of the concept of the magician’s will in the traditional Western approach to magic (or in the Eastern approach, for that matter).
Because just believing in it was usually not considered a prerequisite for success, the use of divination to check the efficacy of magical workings has been advocated a long time. Besides, if belief is not enough, other, more objective factors must be checked. *
The Arab mages of old, for instance, invited people to do a horary reading to see if the use of planetary magic was warranted. Agrippa probably used geomancy for the same purpose. We don’t know about Abano, but it is not a stretch to think he would have consulted a geomantic shield to check how his spellwork was doing.
In general, all forms of divination take the reality of magic for granted within the worldview that informs their language. After all, why would divination work, but not magic? ** This is true for playing cards as well. Here is an example.
Last year while the Sun was in Leo I was working on a Sun talisman. I’m not going to disclose the aim of the talisman. It was nothing untoward, but I’d rather keep it to myself. After the creation of the talisman I set out to consecrate it. The number of days varies.
On the first day, after the first consecration, I got the following spread:
A♠ – 6♣ – 5♠
Definitely a bad start. And I wouldn’t have expected anything less. The majority is Spades, which is bad for anything but black magic.
6♣ – 8♣ – 10♣
Second day of consecration. A mash of clubs is not positive. It shows difficulties and toil without success. Still, Spades have abandoned the spread, which is a positive.
6♣ – A♦ – 3♠
This is the third day. Close but no banana. It is still a negative spread. It has the Six of Clubs in common with the previous spread, and it closes with an unpromising Three of Spades, which bring Spades and large obstacles back into the equation. Note that this is the third day in a row I get the Six of Clubs. But the Ace of Diamonds has appeared, which indicates success, talismans and even the Sun.
A♦ – 9♦ – 10♦
Fourth day. This is the sign I was waiting for. The Ace of Diamonds is back. This time it is well-placed. The Nine of Diamonds and Ten of Diamonds together just mean “it works”, whether we are talking about an object, a business plan or a spell.
MQS
* This is not to say that the old magi wanted you to do your homeworks half-heartedly. Marsilio Ficino talks about the importance putting your heart in your spellwork.
** this would lead us off into an interesting discussion of all those that practice divination without believing it to actually work (“it’s just a brainstorming method” being the most common rationalization)
Most systems of divination can also be used to explore esoteric topics. For instance, I have answered the question “have I been hexed?” way more than I would like. The answer is no 95% of the times. Only two times in my life have I sent someone straight to see a priest because something supernatural was objectively at play. Most of the times, people use dark magic as a scapegoat to rationalize natural periods of bad luck.
Of the the two times I did detect a curse I can only find records of one (my notes tend to be rather messy). The girl in question asked me if she’d received the evil eye (malocchio). This was the spread:
10♠ – 5♠ – 5♥ – J♠ – Q♠
I added two cards to the queen, and I got the Q♦ and the 2♥. The reading is quite obvious: a woman cursed her (the Queen of Spades with the Jack) on behalf of a relative (the Queen of Diamonds and Two of Hearts) though probably not a blood relative. The Ten and Five of Spades, when read together with the other spades, indicate the use of negative occult powers, probably at night.
The Five of Hearts in the center of the spread probably showed the sector of the querent’s life that was impacted by the curse: the ‘abundance’ sector. The young woman had lost a ton of weight in a short timeframe, she looked wasted, had started losing her hair and her beauty, had started developing money problems (in that she couldn’t retain any money she made). Her significator is absent, meaning she was completely passive to the hex.
It seems her mother-in-law had gone to see a country witch to try to harm her. This is far more troublesome than the evil eye, which sometimes can even be cast inadvertently without a ritual. The hex was broken by a priest, or rather, thanks to a priest who put her in contact with a monk specializing in this kind of stuff.
I’m bringing up the topic because I was recently asked the same question by a friend of mine who is going through a rough patch (lost her job, broke up with her boyfriend, argued with her sister, etc), which she believed was due to some ‘bad vibes’ or the malocchio. The spread was:
3♠ – 6♣ – Q♣ – 7♠ – 5♦
This time we have the querent in the middle of the spread. This, coupled with the fact that there are no combinations of curse, is encouraging: the querent has not been displaced from the center stage of her life.
The cards are negative, but they don’t reference supernatural phenomena: the Three of Spades could indicate curses or evil eye in combinations, but here there is no such combo, so it just indicates problems, things that don’t go smoothly. The querent is surrounded by the Six of Clubs and the Seven of Spades, the latter showing unfortunate events, the former reiterating the idea of difficulties. The Seven of Spades connects to the Five of Diamonds to indicate a period of misfortune, that is, of natural bad luck, which will pass (there will be change, it won’t stay that way forever).
I’m currently studying horary astrology under Chris Warnock’s supervision. He puts a great deal of emphasis on studying old sources, which is perfect for a guy like me who breaks out in hives when occultism is boiled down to “just wear a deep knowing expression, drink herbal tea and let the ascended masters guide your intuition.”
Geomancy is similar to horary astrology in that it allows you to answer questions, though it is less dependent on the time the question is asked. It is also similar in that you need to go back to really old books in order to study it seriously.
When reading premodern sources we always run a couple of risks:
Unless they’ve been edited and discussed by a modern, they are probably written in a language that is not our own, or, even if it is, it’s an old version of it. This makes room for misunderstanding.
More subtly, the world in which the author lived and wrote is not our world: it has different cultural, political and spiritual reference points.
The source is written by someone who is just as fallible as we moderns (or rather postmoderns) are.
If one thing that grinds my gears is when people just turn occultism into their little escape from reality (“I wanna believe the world is magical but I’m too special for Christianity”), the other thing that equally grinds my gears is when people desperately seek a doctrine to follow blindly just because it happens to run against the Zeitgeist.
An occultist (and divination is a branch of occultism, though we often forget it) must be capable of being equally distant from intellectual lassitude and fanaticism, from scientism and religion. It takes a particular temperament that most people don’t possess, and I say this in a neutral sense: most people simply don’t have the temperament for most things, which is why only few people in any generation do any one thing.
Point three on the list is what I’m referring to here. The few on the occult path who have what it takes to move beyond the sanitized, advertiser-friendly version of occultism that gets tarot readers invited to corporate meetings often run the contrary risk: that of believing “if something says the opposite of what we hear everyday in our decadent world, it must be true and I must worship at its altar.”
When reading old sources (and I’m talking about geomancy, but it could refer to any other branch) this can turn us into fanatics if we don’t constantly remind ourselves that a book, even in the old days, could be written for a variety of reasons:
to pass on important knowledge (but still from the author’s limited perspective)
to record your experience
to help others
as a publicity stunt
to impress others
to confuse others
a mix of all the above
Furthermore, old authors are just as capable as modern ones of believing crap. As such, while it is vital to question our own worldview, it is also just as vital to question all others. The moment you are asked (or you feel like you ought) to stop questioning is exactly the point where prejudice has crystallized, be it yours or someone else’s. It is also the point where you can break new ground if you proceed cautiously and with intelligence.
All this is to say, old books are treasure troves of information that we can study, learn from, adapt sensibly to our current needs, and much more. But if you are looking for a new Bible, you’re better off sticking to the old one.
One of my favorite things in life is when idiots in the online spiritual community are outed for the entitled, narcissistic, exploitative asses that they are.
I don’t know if you are aware of this story, but a TikTok psychic literally accused an innocent person of being the mastermind behind a series of murders, and she had other leg to stand on except that she’d done a reading.
I have honestly no idea if this psychic was just doing it to drive traffic to her profile or if she is seriously that deluded. The fact that, whenever a celebrity dies, swathes of psychics get their 15 minutes by “channeling their spirit” on youtube would argue in favor of the woman being just another tacky, phony con artist. However, the fact that she apparently chose to represent herself in court does lend the possibility of her being delusional some credibility.
Either way, she’s royally screwed herself up, though the damage she’s done both to the innocent person she’s accused and to the families of the murder victims can hardly be repaid.
I feel one day a study should be made on the incredible mix of ignorance, entitlement and sheer delusion that pervades the community, especially the online one. (I am aware of studies done on the new age community, but I believe the modern, online community should be studied critically)
(To be clear, I also do readings on current events as case studies for myself. I never publish nor talk about them for the obvious reason that exploiting personal tragedies is not my idea of a good time. )
