Calculating the Points and Parts in Geomancy

“The ancients considered the extraction of parts a matter at once useful, fitting, and extremely opportune.”

(Bonatti, Liber astronomiae)

I’ve been meaning to write an article on The Way of the Points and the Parts in Geomancy. Truth be told you don’t need to search far and wide for a detailed description of these calculations in Geomancy (the Digital Ambler has a fantastic article discussing the Parts of Fortune and Spirit, for example). Due to the fact that I have little to add to the existing body of work in this area of Geomancy, I have put it off.

Until now.

What has changed? Well, I’m pulling together a few bits and pieces as a little book on Geomancy (the first, but hopefully not the last) and I’ve been diving into some of the French literature on Geomancy to see what lurks. Whilst researching I found a French book which had some interesting little bits about these calculations. Before we dive into what I found, let’s start with a quick primer on the Way of the Point and the Parts in Geomancy.

Via Puncti – The Way of the Points

The Way of the Point, or Via Puncti, is a technique to uncover the ‘roots’ or influences behind a question. The computational way that a geomancy chart is made [LINK] (through the generation of the daughters from the mothers, the nieces through addition and so on) mean that every chart shares certain things in common. One of which is that a judge always has an even amount of points. Another is that if a Judge has an active point (a single dot) in any row, that single dot was inherited by one of it’s ‘parents’ (i.e. the witnesses). Then, similarly, that single dot can be traced to that figure’s parents (nieces) and so on, until you find the origin of that active dot in the mothers or daughters.

For example, if you have Amissio as your judge you will find the same active fire point (head line) in one of the witnesses. You will be able to trace the active fire line in the witness back to a figure in the first row of the chart (mothers and daughters). I like to think of this like genealogy, where a trait of the judge can be found in it’s great grandparents.

Traditionally, this is only done with the fire line and only if it is an active point. As fire is the element associated with the ‘will’ or ‘intent’, then when you trace the point back to it’s origin or root that figure will tell you something about the underlying intent behind the question and the reading.

Modern geomancers have branched this technique out to cover the other four elements, with each element telling you something else about the question:

• • Via Puncti Ignis – Fire – the will or intent behind the question
  • Via Puncti Aeris – Air – the thoughts, thinking or idea behind the question
  • Via Puncti Aquae – Water – the underlying emotions of the question and issue
  • Via Puncti Terrae – Earth – Any conflicts and disagreements behind the question.

The Parts in Geomancy

To say that Geomancy is related to Astrology is an understatement. Geomancy has been known as Terrestrial Astrology (Fludd) and astrology’s little sister for many centuries, with many techniques in geomancy being very thinly veiled astrology in many cases. I’ve seen some writers imply that many of the astrological elements of geomancy are later, European additions – and indeed, some are – but Arabic geomancy is replete with astrological techniques and terms. That’s probably a long post for another day.

The Part of Fortune is a borrowed astrological technique, and appears early on in Western geomancy (at least in Cattan’s The Geomancie). The ‘Parts’ in astrology are mathematically calculated points in the chart derived from the locations of planets, fixed points (MC, Asc etc.) and angles. In Arabic astrology there are 97 basic parts, each providing information into a certain area of life. For instance, if two countries were at war then an astrologer could calculate and interpret at the Part of War which might tell them how the war may unfold, and who is likely to win.

In his work, the Digital Ambler [LINK] noticed that another calculation present in Western geomantic literature, called the Index by J.M. Greer, had a relationship with the Part of Fortune. He proved that both the Part of Fortune and Index were mathematically linked to each other, and noticed:

1. That the Part of Fortune and Index could only fall in even-numbered houses.
2. That the Part of Fortune and Index will always add up to 12 (2+10, 4+8 etc.).
3. That this relationship between the Part of Fortune and the Index was similar to the relationship between the Part of Fortune and the Part of Spirit in Arabic Astrology.

Due to the relationship between the Part of Fortune and the Index, and a similar relationship between the Part of Fortune and the Part of Spirit in Arabic astrology, the Digital Ambler has taken to calling the Index as ‘the Part of Spirit’. Many modern Western geomancers have done similar.

The Part of Fortune

The Part of Fortune is a calculation to discover the house in a chart from which the querent can, as John Michael Greer puts it, ‘expect good fortune to come in the situation’. In his Fasciculus Geomanticus, Robert Fludd states that the Part of Fortune is used to uncover the Hyleg. The Hyleg is a Persian-Arabic Astrological term referring to the planet with the greatest essential dignity (relative strength) in the chart.

To calculate, add all points in the first twelve houses in the chart (odd and even). Divide the total by 12, and the remainder denotes the house where the Part of Fortune dwells in the chart.

The Part of Spirit (or Index)

The Index is sometimes called the Point of Instruction or the ‘projection of points’.

To calculate this, count the number of individual (odd or active) points in the first 12 houses of the chart. Divide the total by twelve, and the remainder denotes the house where the Part of Spirit dwells in the chart. If you have ended up with no remainder (zero) then this denotes the 12^th house.

But what does this ‘part’ do? Well, John Michael Greer states that the Part of Spirit can ‘ferret out hidden factors’ at work in the situation.

Calculating the Points in French Geomancy

After that little sojourn to recap the basics, we can return to why I suddenly wanted to write a blog on these calculations at nearly midnight.

Whilst conducting some research for a book I’m compiling I found a little French book on geomancy. ‘La Géomancie Traditionnelle’ was published in 1947, and written by Sheikh Hadji Khamballah. The author is commented on as preparing other books on geomancy, but sadly it seems as if he never published them.

Whilst I’ve only read lightly through around half the book, most of the text seems your standard geomancy guide, though I noticed that the section on “calcul des points” had some interesting little bits in it around these calculations.

Part de Fortune

Firstly, the book uses ⨁ as a symbol for the part de fortune. This is the same symbol that Fludd uses. The major difference comes from how the Part de Fortune is calculated.

In Khamballah’s technique instead of using the figures in the chart to calculate this figure, you instead return to the 16 lines of dots you made to generate the mothers:

“On compte la totalité des points compris dans les seize lignes de points ayant donné naissance aux quatre mères, et l’on divise le nombre obtenu par douze. Le reste de la division désigne la maison où tombe la part de fortune, et l’on inscrit dans un angle de cette maison le symbole”

“We count the total number of points included in the sixteen lines of points that gave birth to the four mothers, and we divide the number obtained by twelve. The remainder of the division designates the house where the part of fortune falls, and we inscribe the symbol in an angle of this house.”

At first, I thought I might be reading it incorrectly – but there is an example that confirmed I was reading this correctly. When you created the first four figures of the chart by making 16 lines of random dots on the page, these are added up to create a total. You divide this total by 12, and the remainder is your ‘part de fortune’.

Note: The author mentions that adding all the marks made is unnecessary. Knowing that you have already paired the dots up to determine whether the row is odd or even to create the mother, you can easily ignore six pairs of dots (12), with the remainder per line being added to the total.

This means that, whilst the standard technique we use means the Part of Fortune only ends up in an even house, this French technique can result in any of the ‘foundational’ or astrological houses (one to twelve). It also breaks the relationship between the Part of Fortune and the Index (or Part of Spirit).

Point de l’intention

Point de l’intention, or Point of Intention, is the equivalent of the Index (Greer), or Part of Spirit (Digital Ambler). The name of this correlates most closely to Cattan’s ‘point of instruction’. The symbol assigned to it is the $.

This is calculated exactly the same as the Part of Spirit:

“On considère les douze maisons fondamentales, et l’on compte le nombre de points que contiennent les rangs impairs des figures occupant ces maisons. Le reste de la division de ce nombre par 12, désigne la maison où tom-be le point de l’intention, et l’on inscrit dans un angle de cette maison le symbole $”

“We consider the twelve fundamental houses, and we count the number of points that the odd ranks of the figures occupying these houses contain. The remainder of the division of this number by 12, designates the house where the point of intention falls, and we inscribe in an angle of this house the symbol $.”

Voie du point

This is our Via Puncti or Way of the Point. It is given a symbol of V and P joined together as a ligature. The voie du point is found in the exact same way as the standard method, except for a few differences:

1. The head of the judge is the only line considered for voie du point, i.e. only Via Puncti Ignis is considered.
2. Voie du Point will follow either an active or passive head line (single dot or double dot).

The first is not much of a surprise, as it’s quite rare in Western literature to look at any via puncti other than fire (note that I say Western literature, as I have seen roots of the figures used in Arabic techniques but not to discern the same information). The second difference is interesting.

A passive line in a chart can occur from a figure’s parents in two different ways; both have odd or active in the same row, or both have even or passive in the same row. Essentially both figures have to be the same in that row – and here we’re talking about the head row. If the two witness figures have an active element in that row, the judge’s passive row will not match to one of the parents. Khamballah says that in these cases “the path of the points does not pass”. But equally, both witnesses could have passive headlines and therefore the path of the points branches. As Khamballah says:

“La voie du point peut se ramifier au niveau des témoins ou des nièces et aboutir à deux ou, plus rarement, quatre mères ou filles. La voie du point est dite alors bicéphale, ou quadricéphale.”

“The path of the point can branch out at the level of witnesses or nieces and end up with two or, more rarely, four mothers or daughters. The path of the point is then called two-headed, or four-headed.”

Personally, I do not use passive lines for Via Puncti. To me a passive line is telling me that something is at rest, passive or not present – so searching for the root of something that doesn’t exist in the chart I find rather pointless. Not to mention the difficulty in interpreting the information from this.

I am aware that some geomancers use passive lines. The Digital Ambler refers to it in his post:

“The literature does say that, when the relevant line in the Judge is passive, the Via Puncti will branch off. The technique here changes in that we only follow passive points, i.e. when the parents of a figure have both lines passive instead of both active. For instance, in the above chart, the fire line of Acquisitio is passive. Both of the Witnesses have passive fire lines, too; however, the first two Nieces that make the Right Witness have their fire lines active, so the right branch of the Via Puncti stops at Rubeus. On the left, the Via Puncti reaches up to the third and fourth Nieces through the Left Witness, but doesn’t rise to any of the Daughters. In cases where the Via Puncti branches (or where there is no Via Puncti, if the Judge has a passive line and the Witnesses have active lines both), the chart could be said to either have no root cause or many root causes; I prefer the former interpretation in my geomancing.”

(Digital Ambler)

Other Calculations

Now so far, other than the very different technique that calculates the Part de Fortune there’s nothing too out-there. But the French author also makes note of two additional calculations taken from Fludd’s ‘De Geomantia’:

1. Add the points of all ‘head’ and ‘feet’ lines (Fire and Earth) of the first twelve houses. Divide by 12, and take the remainder to designate a house whose meaning and correspondences reveal the object for which the chart was erected.
2. Add up all the points that make up the odd figures (the figures with an odd number of points – such as Cauda Draconis, Rubeus etc.) in the first 12 houses. Once again, divide this number by 12 and take the remainder. The remainder designates a house and the figure occupying it which ‘condenses the answer to the question being asked’.

Admittedly, I have not worked my way through the whole of Fludd’s Fasciculus Geomanticus, but this is the first time I’ve read or heard of these two additional calculations. That said, I have seen a few bits and pieces similar in Arabic literature.

The first ‘head and feet’ calculation is similar to a technique for finding the ‘conscience’ of a chart. In Arabic and Persian geomancy it is common practice for a geomancer to tell you what question the querent has before they move onto reading the answer. My Persian step-mother informed me that this is the test of a ‘true’ geomancer, as Iran was replete with charlatans making a living by casting fraudulent charts and “reading” them. We see this a little in some of the Arabic origin stories of Geomancy, where the Angel Jibril asks Idris a question he already knows the answer to. Here we have a Western geomancy remnant of these techniques, along with a calculation to provide an answer summary.

These aren’t as elegant as some of the Arabic techniques I’ve seen used, but they were a delightful surprise as I work my way through this little French book.

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