Journal of Geomancy vol. 1 no. 3, April 1977

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Miscellany

That well-known bastion of academic establishment orthodoxy, “Antiquity”, in one of its periodic attacks upon the geomantic fraternity, turned its attention to the I.G.R.  The following appeared:

“But what goes on in the scholarly purlieus of the ancient University of Cambridge?  As we go to press we have received an extraordinary leaflet from the Institute of Geomantic Research, Address, Bar Hill, Cambridge.  We print the first paragraph of its leaflet: …”

then follows the first paragraph of a publicity leaflet.  The second paragraph, appealing to individuals and bodies as follows: “It is hoped that academic bodies and individual researchers will respond to the Institute in the spirit in which it was founded”, was not reproduced.  Antiquity then continues:

“The lunatic fringes of archaeology are becoming too large.  Why is this?  And what is geomancy, anyhow?  The OED (Oxford English Dictionary) says it is ‘the art of divination by means of lines and figures, formed originally by throwing earth on some surface, and later by jotting down on paper dots at random’.  Dots at random?  It seems to us that the geomants are dotties at random”. 

It must be remembered that the writer of this piece is a University Professor at Cambridge.  In the same University, another Professor, Joseph Needham, has been producing over the last 20 years his monumental work on ancient science and technology in China.  If the former read the latter’s work, he would know the meaning of geomancy, a word which has been used in the I.G.R.’s context for many years.  ‘The Golden Bough’, scarcely a new work, refers to geomancy in China, and the editor of “Antiquity” must surely know of S.D. Feuchtwang’s “An anthropological analysis of geomancy”, which was published in Vientiane in 1974.  No, we cannot accept that “Antiquity” does not know the meaning of the word.  It is the way of bigots, who sneer at that which they feel threatens their received opinions.  Furthermore, “Antiquity” and its reviewers had only seen the I.G.R.’s publicity leaflet, and none of its published work, when they dismissed the ‘geomants’ as ‘dotties at random’, scarcely the reasoned and impartial appraisal one would, indeed should, expect from those who claim to represent learning and enquiry. 

Nigel Pennick