What is
Geomancy ?
- an inquiry into the
realm of relationship...
Written
by Patrick MacManaway
In its' narrowest definition and its' most
literal sense, the term geomancy means
"divination of the earth".
One might expand this by saying that it is to
enquire into or attempt to perceive the subtle
or spiritual nature behind the physical
appearance and presence of our surroundings and
environment.
For many, such a definition might arouse casual
interest, seeming perhaps a little exotic, a
little mystical, somewhat new-age, rather
abstract.
Those whose interest was sufficiently
stimulated might go so far as to read some
books or take some classes, perhaps discuss the
ideas with skeptical friends.
Even amongst practitioners, many hold their
study of geomancy as something of philosophical
interest, something which adds a rich layer of
meaning to a world which otherwise seems sadly
and barrenly devoid of magic or dialogue with
creative forces. A thing which gives a sense of
links to ancient history and primal cultures,
to the notion of a more wholistic and
wholehearted lifestyle. Perhaps a technology
that can open doorways to an otherwise remote
or absent sense of divinity.
Very few would consider geomancy in terms of
the daily and inevitable meeting of immanent
and essential survival needs.
I would assert that geomancy is not only a core
part of our daily survival both individually
and culturally, but that it is also the single
most fundamental defining factor in the psyche
of the culture as a whole.
The late twentieth century sees western culture
emerging - perhaps painfully slowly but
nevertheless in a steady and progressive
fashion - from the bondage that it has
experienced to the materialistic world view of
Newtonian science.
Unfair perhaps, given that he is know to have
been a member of a Druid order and may
reasonably be supposed to have inhabited or at
least been familiar with and friendly toward
Druidical philosophy, to attach Newton's name
to the disregard of spirit and psyche which
became inherent in the increasingly zealous
study of isolated physical forces apparently
acting on isolated material substance.
Nevertheless, the separation through cultural,
political and economic forces of the
philosopher / priest / priestess archetype and
the rationalist, materialist scientist is
increasingly being seen and understood to be
not only a phenomenological error as
demonstrated by Heisenberg and elucidated in
his Uncertainty Principle, but also as a source
of disintegration and disease of health in the
human individual.
The acknowledgement of the reality and the
inevitability of the body-mind-spirit
connection and our reclaiming the awareness and
the tools to address human health by working
with the subtle energy fields that inform and
determine the embodiment of matter, is
stimulating the emergence and proliferation of
philosophies and practitioners of holistic
healing.
To understand the nature and role of geomancy
is simply to extend this philosophy outward
from the relationship that we have with ourself
and the way in which we create and mould our
emotional and physical experiences through the
weavings of spirit and mind, into the realm of
the interaction between our energy field and
the larger energy field of place.
By their nature and their form, energy fields
create and define a field of potential and
opportunity.
The vast majority of people spend the vast
majority of their time reacting to external
forces of circumstance. These may be perceived
as absolute imperatives, but are a consequence
of the interaction between the individual human
energy field, the energy field of the cultural
psyche, and the energy field of place.
For the African Bushmen and the Australian
Aboriginal, the knowledge of the energy field
of place and the material embodiments of that
potential is the very thing which allows their
survival, placing them in available and
sustainable proximity to their needs of food,
water and shelter. Interacting directly and
intuitively with the energy field of the place
itself allows the meeting of material needs,
and their mythology encodes for them the manner
in which material form follows psychic
perception.
What we might retrospectively define as
geomancy is so central and inevitable to such
people that it would be hard for them to
perceive it as a thing apart from the rest of
their cosmology.
Geomancy as a separate, definable entity only
occurs when a culture moves from a nomadic
lifestyle to a settled agrarian one.
It is at this point that geomantic technologies
become necessary, and the manipulation of the
energy field of place to create the possibility
of sedentary occupation is sanctioned and can
begin.
Interestingly, this shift appears to be one of
philosophy rather than one of expedience or
necessity in the first instance.
As a culture becomes increasingly established
and the nature of the Genius Loci more
intimately known and increasingly taken for
granted, the role of geomancer first emerges as
being of central importance and then
progressively declines as the footprint of the
culture becomes firmly established and taken
for granted.
Only when economic, political or cultural
forces change to a significant extent can the
role re-emerge, as the relationship between
culture and place is once again called into
question and re-explored.
This is happening in our culture and in our
time.
I assert that the energy field of place is
typically much larger and holds much greater
inertia and psychic mass than that of an
individual human.
If the person is primarily living in reaction
to external forces, their lives will be largely
dictated by the energy field of place.
The realm of the Geomancer is to explore the
consequences and ethics of this interaction,
and to make this visible to the culture in an
empowering and relevant fashion.
The contemporary expedience for this to occur
is daily visible in the destructive dysfunction
that presently exists between our culture and
its landscape, and it is of wonderful paradox
that this very destruction
liberates the psychic energy now available for
the art and science of geomancy to re-emerge.
Whole Earth
Geomancy
Dr. Patrick MacManaway
4076 Shelburne Rd., Suite 6
Shelburne, VT 05482-6676
802-985-2266
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