CIRCLING WAYS IN GEOMANCY- Jonathan Lepien
I share this for two main reasons: First, this information was uncovered through the process of the derive / magical drift; Second, I know some of us work with planetary magic and this has great utility in that work as well. I think it should be fairly easy to convert this to operate with the Hexorian pantheon.
"In the relatively early days of my magical practice, I gathered and used a lot of things I found in the course of going on walks - bits of interestingly-shaped sticks, torn pages of books and newspapers, playing cards, scraps of fabric, that sort of thing. This seems a common enough phase for many magicians, learning to navigate their landscape and sense the subtle tides and shifts around them in those interactions. Walks around my neighbourhood, building my relationship with the spirits of place, or drifting through unfamiliar parts of town on extended augury expeditions; these rambles would lead me to find objects that seemed significant and magically useful. There was something so satisfying about finding meaning and use in things picked up off the ground; those discarded omens and overlooked materials of inner-city sorcery. For years I kept a stray white cue ball which I had found when on an extended Lunary wandering. Chalk-marked ivory globe uncannily out of place, plucked from the gutter of night, a delicate egg of veiled promise.
One of my most used magical tools found in this manner was a simple set of brown seed beads strung as a necklace. I came across it while ambling along meditating on geomancy, the earth, and delineations of sacred space. Mulling over old pantheism-and/or-animism distinctions and where divining with spirits in space fit in, I found the beads lying on the floor: they were spread like a square. This demarcation of space, this establishment of a matrix of divinatory coherence, this cauldron from which new answers could be cooked up, made a lot of sense. The shape of the idea itself looped me in. I began using the strung seeds as a field upon which to throw my coins, dice, or whatever other means I was using to generate my geomantic figures. This is not to suggest I invented anything - this is simply how something was shown to me. As we shall see shortly, such a technique is far from unique to my practice.
In the years since, that found cord has had a lot of play. A lot. Enough that, a month or so ago, I pulled it from its bag and saw it was - in exactly the way time’s shadow sneaks up on you - suddenly looking all too raggedy. I resolved to build some new gear. In fact I had already made short beaded “loops” - too short to be considered necklaces - dedicated to particular senior spirits in my practice, and generally adorning their statuary and icons. I would occasionally employ these to charge the divining space with their authority, especially at auspicious hours and days at which the power of these Chiefly spirits waxed crowned. I would set them out, squaring the circle - forming the four sides of the natural ‘elementated’ world from the celestial circle. These beaded circlets empowered the clarity and focus of my readings. I even found them useful for cohering the virtues of the figures I set for more sorcerous ends; combining the natural potencies of their gemstones with the operative spellcraft of displaying a figure inside them, as in the manner of image magic employing, say, Tarot cards. Rough chips of sanguine coral, the very blood of Medusa, as soldiers of scarlets and incarnadines surrounding a marked Puer in the eighth hour of Tuesday.
One of my most used magical tools found in this manner was a simple set of brown seed beads strung as a necklace. I came across it while ambling along meditating on geomancy, the earth, and delineations of sacred space. Mulling over old pantheism-and/or-animism distinctions and where divining with spirits in space fit in, I found the beads lying on the floor: they were spread like a square. This demarcation of space, this establishment of a matrix of divinatory coherence, this cauldron from which new answers could be cooked up, made a lot of sense. The shape of the idea itself looped me in. I began using the strung seeds as a field upon which to throw my coins, dice, or whatever other means I was using to generate my geomantic figures. This is not to suggest I invented anything - this is simply how something was shown to me. As we shall see shortly, such a technique is far from unique to my practice.
In the years since, that found cord has had a lot of play. A lot. Enough that, a month or so ago, I pulled it from its bag and saw it was - in exactly the way time’s shadow sneaks up on you - suddenly looking all too raggedy. I resolved to build some new gear. In fact I had already made short beaded “loops” - too short to be considered necklaces - dedicated to particular senior spirits in my practice, and generally adorning their statuary and icons. I would occasionally employ these to charge the divining space with their authority, especially at auspicious hours and days at which the power of these Chiefly spirits waxed crowned. I would set them out, squaring the circle - forming the four sides of the natural ‘elementated’ world from the celestial circle. These beaded circlets empowered the clarity and focus of my readings. I even found them useful for cohering the virtues of the figures I set for more sorcerous ends; combining the natural potencies of their gemstones with the operative spellcraft of displaying a figure inside them, as in the manner of image magic employing, say, Tarot cards. Rough chips of sanguine coral, the very blood of Medusa, as soldiers of scarlets and incarnadines surrounding a marked Puer in the eighth hour of Tuesday.
More broadly, this kind of altar-top circling has long been part of my practice, casting an orbit of materia magica around foci of influence and effect. The sprinkled rosemary around the purifying candle spell, the chalk around the spirit’s seal to trap or stabilize. Such circlets belt up firm foundation, spin loops to run perpetually, wind and bind. New cord and even knot magic utilities continue to reveal themselves. Even a rosary is but a garland of the threaded blooms of Love and Mystery, stirring in turns and spirals. Considering the Puck’s girdle about the world, however, I am especially interested in how spiritwork permeates these kinds of tools and techniques. So it was I decided to construct seven circlets, dedicated to the seven planetary Rulers so important to geomantic sorcery." (See article for further details if interested)
https://www.alexandercummins.com/blog/2017/8/9/circling-ways-in-geomancy
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