Geomancy

The mantic arts employ diverse mediums for purposes of divination. Geomancy (geo- for “Earth,” -mancy for “divination”) is the mantic art that divines earthy, terrestrial, or telluric mediums to discover hidden knowledge and/or predict the future. Geomancy literature and its applications constitute the oldest continually practiced scholarly geographic tradition in the world. East Asian variants of geomantic applied arts have had major impacts in shaping some of the world's most populated cultural landscapes during ancient and medieval times.

The two major exemplars of geomancy in human history are the “African” (or Western) “science of sand” and the “Chinese” (or East Asian) “wind-and-water” variant, popularly known as feng shui (various spellings). Geomantic configurations divined in both systems relate to celestial phenomena. The Islamic variation of African geomancy, which interprets geometric designs formed by casting pebbles, diffused through the Byzantine and Latin worlds across Europe and into England, to gain popularity during the medieval and Renaissance periods. The telluric medium divined in East Asian feng shui geomancy is terrain itself. Due to its preoccupation with landform divination, feng shui is known alternatively in English as topomancy and terrestrial astrology. Esoteric ideas related to correspondences and reciprocities between Earth and heaven as human habitat are highly symbolized and deeply embedded in feng shui theories and applications. Feng shui surveying in the field involves skill, intuition, instrumentation (principally its complex astrobiological model and compass), and cartographic skills.

Feng shui geomancy, aptly described a century ago by Herbert Chatley, is the art of adapting the residences of the living and the dead so as to cooperate and harmonize with the local currents of the cosmic breath. Motivating the effort are expectations of propitious outcomes for nature and humanity. Where feng shui surveys are diagnostic and remedial, skilled surveyors are perceived to be “Earth doctors.” Two distinct traditional schools of feng shui—“landscape” and “compass”—are discernable, but their skills seem complementary and overlapping. The mass popularity of Chinese geomancy reached its pinnacle under the Qing dynasty (AD 1644–1911) but then faded dramatically throughout East Asia wherever modernization and communism became entrenched. However, among the unforeseen impacts of economic liberalization and globalization over the past few decades is the unexpected [Page 1239]new demand throughout East Asia for traditional feng shui skills, services, and products.

Related to this resurgence, and even more remarkable, is the diffusion to and sudden growth and persistence of a popular wave of interest in Asian geomancy throughout the West, and especially in the United States. This trend has had some major economic impacts in high-end residential and commercial West Coast real estate markets, meanwhile generating a variety of geomancy-related “New Age” products and services in mass markets nationwide. Higher-education programs, including those in geography, planning, and Africana studies, have meanwhile increasingly incorporated the topic of geomancy into their curriculums.