On Astrological and Geomantic Houses

[sdi]

Geomancy borrows houses from astrology, but I think there's an interesting and important difference between them. Astrology is, in some sense, objective: the stars are the same for everyone, and there is one (and presumably only one) correct way to read them. Consequently, it is essential to understand and apply houses in an objective way. Geomancy, by contrast, is subjective: it isn't about understanding the cosmos, it is about communication with another being. Anything goes, as long as you and they agree on it.

So I think it is okay to have an idiosyncratic understanding of the geomantic houses, as long as you and your geomantic spirit share that idiosyncratic understanding. Before I do any geomantic reading, I always negotiate my house assignments with my geomantic spirit in prayer: perhaps three-quarters of the time, they accept my proposal; but the rest of the time they recommend I use a different house, and I think my readings are the stronger for it.

Comments

[violetcabra]

If I may, first of all I really dig your blog! Second, spirits messing with communications is a very well-documented phenomenon. Yeats in _A Vision_ writes about Frustraters who would feed him deceit and the teaching spirits that worked with him would only reveal the deceit if he caught on to it. His theory is that the Frustrater spirits are of discarnate humans who are attempting to avoid be reincarnated as humans.

Personally I find consistently that I can only get reliably clear answers with geomancy when I can relate the question to something within the ambit of some sort of immediate relevance to my own experiences, or the experiences of someone asking a question. Questions involving larger systems, I don't tend to get as accurate responses to.

[sdi]

Thank you! I appreciate the reference, I've been unable to find useful material on the topic.

What you describe matches my experience as well: divination accuracy is generally very high for very personal matters, but drops dramatically as the scope of the divination increases. In fact, at the scope of the USA, I find my accuracy to be no better than chance. This is perhaps an argument explaining the perennial popularity of astrology, as it's far easier to mess with the position of my hand or mind while I cast a chart than it is to mess with the position (or, presumably, the mind) of a planet!

[violetcabra]

You're most welcome! That makes a lot of sense regarding astrology: certainly folks seem to get reliable results with Horary charts and Mundane astrology even when they don't have any skin in the game.