An Introduction to Medieval Geomancy (1999) | Hacker News Reader

An Introduction to Medieval Geomancy (1999)

princeton.edu

45 pointsbrudgers26 comments

I'm not sure what to make of this. This is new to me. I have some familiarity with both tarot and astrology.

I tend to think of tarot and similar systems as being akin to a Rorschach test: What you see in the cards is sort of a projection from your subconscious. That doesn't mean it's useless or meaningless. It just means it's not "magic." It's more like a psychological trick to help you figure out what you think is going on.

Astrology likely began as observations about a relationship between events in the sky and events on earth at a time when people were much more exposed to the elements and there was less light pollution. You looked up to the sky and saw the phases of the moon and pattern matched to tides, wind patterns and other things on earth that modern science has affirmed really are influenced by the sun and moon. You began keeping records and talking about observed associations.

And then at some point it kind of jumped the shark and now people imagine they can predict when you will metaphorically "win the lottery" (often without even buying a ticket) instead of something more akin to predicting the weather.

At first glance, this appears to likely fall in the "Rorschach test" camp.

Yes, like Tarot, I think the benefit of these systems is just to spend time thinking about your problem.

Or maybe it's like when you're trying to decide where to go to dinner and you flip a coin, as soon as you react to the result, you know which one you really wanted all along.

I've been having similar thoughts about I Ching. I even recently changed jobs because of I Ching. I was unsure, and then the interpretation of the hexagram I cast helped me think through the issues for and against. It occurred to me that if I had to explain this to someone, it's like a self-administered Rorschach test.

The binary construction of the forms on the step-by-step page [1] is very intriguing, almost reminds me of the kind of bit-shifting you see in hashing algorithms. Sometimes I think there must be a better way to represent random numbers like git hashes and public keys, just because they're hard to remember or distinguish. Maybe representing 60 bits of entropy as one of these hierarchies rich with star-and-body associations would make it easier to remember what a particular hash refers to.

http://www.princeton.edu/~ezb/geomancy/geostep.html

In a sense, it's a complex manual expansion step -- 16 bits of entropy are used to generate 15 figures, for a total of 60 bits of output.

I'm curious what structures this imposes on the results. The description mentions an obvious one -- the Judge figure will always contain an even number of points. There are probably some other less obvious ones, especially in terms of combinations of figures which can never appear together.

> Note: this is a large file with several graphics, totalling about 100KB.

This is so cute :-)

I'm sorry if this goes against etiquette, but I would like to discuss with you a topic from one of your other comments here. My email is username at protonmail. Thank you and apologies for the disturbance.

PS: this is my second attempt at getting your attention, apologies if you saw my earlier message already

Hi. I've emailed you from an address following the same pattern.

It's an ideal oracle as you don't need cards, sticks, coins or dice. Just a stick and sand. On the other hand, i like the 2 dice for casting the tibetan mo.

The geomancy figutes remind me of bagchen and domino configurations, i wonder if there is a relationship

From a quick google it looks like Domino was at least invented around the same century so I think you're probably right.

Aloixa Sinclaire has a YouTube video describing at least some of the derivation [0].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDQoehS4uP4

Looks like this is where J. K. Rowling got the names "Albus" and "Rubeus" from.

Anyone moved the rules to a DSL or a model? It would be interesting to feed it future events and measure its success. Microsoft Geomancer coming to replace the Wizard in 2021 and it came from the 7th house so you know it is true.

In present day Canada, tax payer and corporate dollars go to geomancers in exchange for their services.

>In 1990, Tai emigrated to Canada and started working as a professional geomancer...

>Among some of his commercial clients are banks, shopping malls, office buildings and real estate consortiums groups, who seek his advice in the areas of feng shui, to ensure that their business environments are in harmony. Tai is the exclusive feng shui master hired by HSBC in Canada, continental America and Europe. He was the first Chinese geomancer hired by the Richmond City Hall who employed his services in feng shiu analysis in connection with their official building in B.C. Canada.

He was also paid for work done a 2010 olympic building.

http://www.shermantai.com/eng/author.php

http://www.shermantai.com/ch/pdf/2006_02_14_Globe%20Mail%20(...

http://www.shermantai.com/eng/pdf/2006_04_Business%20Magazin...

This isn't about the westernized version of Feng Shui. It's about a method of divination more akin to the I Ching:

In its original form, the geomantic figure was created by making lines of random numbers of dots in the sand, hence the name. - the beginning of the "Geomancy Step-By-Step" link

Why is this distinction important?

It’s like conflating palm reading with astrology.

Irrespective of whether you believe the methods have any value, we should at least make sure we’re talking about the same thing.

For the same reason Wikipedia has a ton of disambiguation pages for dealing with multiple concepts that have the same name: so you know which particular thing you're talking about, instead of just going "oh I heard that word once" and going off on a lengthy tear about what turns out to be a totally different thing with the same name.

Wikipedia is a general purpose store of knowledge. Comments exist in a context. In this case, discussion of geomancy.

More precisely I would say that the context is "discussion of a site about geomancy-the-divination-method", not "discussion of geomancy-the-landscape-related-magic-system" or "discussion of anything called geomancy".

Wow, and I thought having no 13th floor, or floors with 4 in them, was nonsense.

In Singapore, rent in buildings known to have "bad feng shui" are measurably cheaper than in buildings with "good feng shui". So even though the belief itself may be irrational, if you're a property developer or a banker catering to clients who do believe, it's still rational to invest in a geomancer.

And politicians who pander irrational beliefs are known to get as many votes as those that pander to rational beliefs.

I'm only vaguely familiar with the Chinese system. Regardless, there is a substantial relationship between subsurface geology and surface-expressed biology, topography, even in some cases microclimate and audio. This was known to traditional societies but is becoming lost in our time as we disconnect from the biomes we are destroying and concrete-pouring. Anyone who has substantial knowledge of native plants can and will verify the same. I believe you could place many pre-modern humans in a random location within their domain and, blindfolded, after a minute they could likely tell you which plants and animals were nearby, what they thrived on, the nearby soil types and hydrology, the time of day, and the season.

> Regardless, there is a substantial relationship between subsurface geology and surface-expressed biology...

Medieval geomancy, as discussed at the link, has nothing to do with geology or plants -- it's a form of divination practiced by making a series of dots in sand.

Oh, that would explain why it seemed to be complete bollocks then. Perhaps a not dissimilar modern equivalent would be infinite scroll content? Smiles from right next to Macau. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com