Well, most of what you do flies right over my head! :D Though I do recall tesseracts from A Wrinkle in Time. Heh.
Also, math is so NOT my strong suit that I just have to nod appreciatively when you say "a slope of tan(π/8)" and pretend I didn't actually get all the way to some form of college-level calculus. How I managed, that, I'll never really know and it seemed to have all been lost along the way since then.
I'm impressed with your "short version" - it sounds quite complicated, or at least very specialized! I'm embarrassed to admit that I wondered if there was a "plug-and-play" graphic image maker. The fact that much work went into making the image is the reason I'd give attribution/credit - though the result is public domain, getting to the result required your expertise, time, brainpower, etc...
Meanwhile...
Hmm, "an elemental symbolic system where there are sixteen symbols, each with some of the four elements (fire, air, water, and earth) are either present or not present." Now that's interesting!
I'm working with 25 combinations because Spirit is regarded as one "elemental" component in the modern Ogham tradition. The schematic I'm trying to discover or locate (if there is one) has to arise out of some of the pairings' specific qualities. This schematic might not be possible given what I know so far about the ways the elements combine, but that's essentially what I've been gnawing on for awhile now. Also trying to see links and disjunctures, transitions and relations between the 25.
I may end up needing to at least dip into the descriptive text on geomancy, just to see how elements and their combinations are conceived. While some of that is likely to be non-Druidical in nature (and thus different from my Ogham-derived system), there's probably some "genetic" similarity (both coming from Western occultism) that might be useful to explore.
I'm embarrassed to admit that I wondered if there was a "plug-and-play" graphic image maker.
😅 As you can see, my Mercury and Saturn are dignified and my Venus is a mess! So I'm afraid I do things the hard way, and don't know about such programs.
I'm working with 25 combinations because Spirit is regarded as one "elemental" component in the modern Ogham tradition.
That makes sense to me: 25 is the number of each pairing of 5 elements where order matters (that is, fire+water is different from water+fire). That reminds me of the I Ching (which has 8 "elements" and a similar ordering requirement). (This is a bit different than a geomancy-like system involving spirit, since it would include a total of 32 figures, and only the presence or absence of an element would matter and not the order.) Your project sounds really interesting, I'd love to hear more about it! I've never thought about "spirit" as an element, before, so I'm curious what it's associations would look like.
As far as geomancy goes, Greer's books (Earth Divination, Earth Magic and The Art and Practice of Geomancy, they're basically the same as far as this is concerned) are the best ones I've seen on the topic. Super briefly, the figures you want are:
I think the direction(s) I'm heading are definitely influenced by the I Ching - that was the divination method I had the most experience with prior to trying and failing to connect with Ogham. Early on in this in-the-works system I toyed with whether it revealed transitions (i.e. changes or yi/I of Yijing/I Ching), but that didn't "ping" too strongly.
Right now I mostly have a lot more questions than answers about what I'm doing, but maybe I'll start posting a bit about it so as to tickle the hive-mind and learn from all the experienced members of the wider ecosophia community.
Thanks for that list, by the way - I can see already where the elements have different connotations in the two systems, but too, there are similarities worth considering.
And yes, you're correct that fire+water (aka Fire of Water) is different from water+fire (Water of Fire).
Speaking of the I Ching, I find I'm really jealous of the beauty of the hexagram system - and the way you lay out the geomantic figures above reminded me of that. I don't have anything nearly so ... concise (AND evocative of meaning) for what I'm working on, but it's early days yet, so you never know. :)
As for beauty, I agree that the I Ching and geomancy both have a real mathematical purity and elegance to them, which I find enchanting. I bet the more you meditate on your system, the more I imagine it'll click into place... I often find I need complication to erect a structure that ends up simple once all the scaffolding is pulled away!
no subject
Date: 2020-10-11 08:35 pm (UTC)Well, most of what you do flies right over my head! :D Though I do recall tesseracts from A Wrinkle in Time. Heh.
Also, math is so NOT my strong suit that I just have to nod appreciatively when you say "a slope of tan(π/8)" and pretend I didn't actually get all the way to some form of college-level calculus. How I managed, that, I'll never really know and it seemed to have all been lost along the way since then.
I'm impressed with your "short version" - it sounds quite complicated, or at least very specialized! I'm embarrassed to admit that I wondered if there was a "plug-and-play" graphic image maker. The fact that much work went into making the image is the reason I'd give attribution/credit - though the result is public domain, getting to the result required your expertise, time, brainpower, etc...
Meanwhile...
Hmm, "an elemental symbolic system where there are sixteen symbols, each with some of the four elements (fire, air, water, and earth) are either present or not present." Now that's interesting!
I'm working with 25 combinations because Spirit is regarded as one "elemental" component in the modern Ogham tradition. The schematic I'm trying to discover or locate (if there is one) has to arise out of some of the pairings' specific qualities. This schematic might not be possible given what I know so far about the ways the elements combine, but that's essentially what I've been gnawing on for awhile now. Also trying to see links and disjunctures, transitions and relations between the 25.
I may end up needing to at least dip into the descriptive text on geomancy, just to see how elements and their combinations are conceived. While some of that is likely to be non-Druidical in nature (and thus different from my Ogham-derived system), there's probably some "genetic" similarity (both coming from Western occultism) that might be useful to explore.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-11 09:16 pm (UTC)😅 As you can see, my Mercury and Saturn are dignified and my Venus is a mess! So I'm afraid I do things the hard way, and don't know about such programs.
That makes sense to me: 25 is the number of each pairing of 5 elements where order matters (that is, fire+water is different from water+fire). That reminds me of the I Ching (which has 8 "elements" and a similar ordering requirement). (This is a bit different than a geomancy-like system involving spirit, since it would include a total of 32 figures, and only the presence or absence of an element would matter and not the order.) Your project sounds really interesting, I'd love to hear more about it! I've never thought about "spirit" as an element, before, so I'm curious what it's associations would look like.
As far as geomancy goes, Greer's books (Earth Divination, Earth Magic and The Art and Practice of Geomancy, they're basically the same as far as this is concerned) are the best ones I've seen on the topic. Super briefly, the figures you want are:
no subject
Date: 2020-10-13 04:15 am (UTC)Right now I mostly have a lot more questions than answers about what I'm doing, but maybe I'll start posting a bit about it so as to tickle the hive-mind and learn from all the experienced members of the wider ecosophia community.
Thanks for that list, by the way - I can see already where the elements have different connotations in the two systems, but too, there are similarities worth considering.
And yes, you're correct that fire+water (aka Fire of Water) is different from water+fire (Water of Fire).
Speaking of the I Ching, I find I'm really jealous of the beauty of the hexagram system - and the way you lay out the geomantic figures above reminded me of that. I don't have anything nearly so ... concise (AND evocative of meaning) for what I'm working on, but it's early days yet, so you never know. :)
no subject
Date: 2020-10-13 05:08 am (UTC)As for beauty, I agree that the I Ching and geomancy both have a real mathematical purity and elegance to them, which I find enchanting. I bet the more you meditate on your system, the more I imagine it'll click into place... I often find I need complication to erect a structure that ends up simple once all the scaffolding is pulled away!