In the Prayer of the Gnomes, the patron power of the Earth elementals is addressed as “Thou who hidest beneath the Earth, in the Kingdom of Gems, the Seed of the Stars”. We may look to this appeal as an example of how geomancy – that worldly sister of Astrology – works at a crossroads of astral and chthonic craft.
In considering foundational astral transmissions and manifestations, we may understand that geomancers do not simply borrow astrological schema (such as the sympathies of the planets or the useful taxonomy of the Twelve Houses) but also engage in drawing knowledge of an astral origin back up from the earth, precisely insofar as that earth and its denizens of plant and mineral remember and collect every ray of starlight that ever graced or instantiated them.
The geomantic techniques of marking sand or dirt with the points of figures may here be apprehended as a way of reminding the earth’s embodied spirits that they too have an astral heritage, just as Agrippa speaks of ritual action as stirring and re-awakening the indwelling occult virtues of materia.
In this geomantic manner, the world – and its spirits of stone and soil – can be approached as a treasure-house of astral knowledge and sorcery.
Dr Alexander Cummins is a contemporary cunning-man and historian of magic. His magical specialities are the dead (folk necromancy), divination (geomancy) and the grimoires.
His published works include Nazarth: Pillars of Gladness (Hadean Press, 2022), An Excellent Booke of the Arte of Magicke (Scarlet Imprint, 2020) with Phil Legard, The Starry Rubric (Hadean Press, 2012), A Book of the Magi (Revelore Press, 2018) and several chapbooks as well as essays in collections by Three Hands Press, Hadean Press and academic publishers.
He is a frequent speaker on the international circuit, co-hosts the podcast Radio Free Golgotha, and is a founding editor of Revelore Press’ Folk Necromancy in Transmission series.