Journal of Geomancy vol. 3 no. 1, October 1978
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Shandaiya Dorothy Lynne Cobb was born Sept. 5, 1958 CE, in Louisville, Kentucky. She transitioned in the waves of the Pacific, off the coast of Santa Cruz, Sept. 22, 1977 CE, less than four hours from the very point of the equinox. Her sun is in Virgo, Moon in Gemini, ascendant in Capricorn. Within the ancient Chinese (uncannily, she looked Chinese) system she loved so dearly, her year of birth occurred under the influence of the Dog, Earth and Hills. Indeed, she was one of Earth’s most gifted daughters and an intrepid defender of the environmental integrity of this planet. The name “Shandaiya” was conferred upon her by self-monitored mediumship, as a child, and in “Brnikallian” signifies “Energy-bearer”. This indicated to her service-orientated mind that perhaps her personality could function as a kind of catalyst to overcome stagnation and instigate psychic development in others. She was entirely correct! Wherever she journeyed, she devoted herself to helping others to help themselves. She was working toward degrees in Anthropology, Environmental Studies and Chinese at U.C. Santa Cruz. Because of her academic excellence, she had been chosen for six months of field work in China, and would have investigated the practices of feng-shui. She became an active member of IGR in 1976.
Among voluminous writings, Ms Cobb produced a fascinating visionary log of some other planetary system called Brnikall, and in association with this, an entire language theretofore unknown in this corner of our galaxy. Her work at the university included penetrating analyses of William Blake’s short prophecies, Little Girl Lost and Little Girl Found, in the light of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter; the parallels between organic evolution, ecosystem development and aesthetic process, under Dr Gregory Bateson; the nature and orientation of ancient Hellenic sanctuaries dedicated to Demeter and Korê under Dr Bonnie Kingsley; the location and interrelation of plant domestication areas in the world, after the pioneering surveys of Vavilov in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. One of these areas may have determined a route of the Tree Alphabet Calendar, suggested by Robert Graves in The White Goddess.
Shandaiya was an inspired contributor to Woman Spirit and Goddess Consciousness. She realized full well that landscape geometry was intimately connected with devotion to the Great Goddess in the Neolithic, as Michael Dames points out. Like the great Alfred Watkins, whose work she cherished, Shan received a sudden revelation of the power and majesty of the Ley. She witnessed a hawk soaring down the arrow-like swath of a ridge top. Suddenly she felt the flow of the great land line network, mightily coupling energies of Earth and Sky, generating Ourathonic fields in countless angular combinations for the guidance and catalypsis of all life forms. Flesh and soul were aflame. But in that magic moment, she could only manage a big ingenuous smile and exclaim, in the idiom of her people, “wow!”. Earth had opened her hidden doors, and the young pilgrim was entering halls of home.
Shandaiya had been exploring the spiritual disciplines of Kriya, Raja, Chakra and Kundalini Yogas, Acupressure, Do-In and Ritual Magic in their relation to the Earth Spirit. In Yosemite, 1976 CE, she became an ardent practitioner of the ancient Taoist Magic Circle Dance based on the nuclear trigrams of the I Ching, called Pa Qua. She immediately realized that this entrancing method of raising a column of ch’i (ki) at the center of an enveloping horizon, provided an ideal means for charging sacred enclosures or earth chakras, throughout a ley network.
If Pa Qua relates to the sacred centers, then geomantically, Hsin-I corresponds to ley-lines and Tai Chi Chuan to Underwood’s geodetic lines, or to Lung Mei.
We began to reevaluate the different steps and turnings of Pa Qua for ceremonial geomancy in the Western Esoteric Tradition. Her tall, lean, Olympian figure swathed in long waves of golden hair, slowly she would shape an axis of fusing energies of Earth and Sky. Then, with her pine-resin colored eyes and usually merry lips gravely set, she unwound the column of power along natural alignments of canyon boulders, crags and high-horned peaks. Thus, floating silently in Pa Qua, against some wild sweep of sea and sierra, she also shaped a certain paradigm of the splendid Aquarian Age Priestess, at once plunging roots deep into the Earth and spreading branches towards the Stars. Shandaiya had explored the geomantic and ourathonomic (sky–Earth interlock) patterns of the Santa Cruz area, the Yosemite, Santa Barbara (Chumash Indian landscape code of petroglyphic panels) and the south-eastern hills of the Los Angeles basin. I am still {26} sifting thru the thousands of pages of writing she generated in nineteen short years. Therefore résumés will take time. However, for her, one of the most talented daughters of the new Aquarian Dispensation, geomantic research was always a spiritual adventure, a romance of the soul’s contribution to Earth’s involvement in the mysterious Fiesta of the galaxy. If the overworked term ‘genius’ retains any meaning, it certainly characterizes the achievements of this exceptional young lady. Also, her powerful presence, veritably radiated that ineffable quality of genius.
Shandaiya was keenly aware of the need to apply projective geometry and topology to topography, in order to conceptualize the magical anatomy of living Topocosms (Theodore Gaster, Thespis), the angelic intelligence of land sky love bodies, which unfolded Psyche from sensuously precise celestial proportions of infolded and overfolded space. For instance, the ley is really not an Euclidean ruler-edge for at least three good reasons: the curvature of space (locally irrelevant); the curvature of the Earth; and the ridges and channels of the planetary crust. On a straight track, we can only aver the points are in a single, locally uncurved plane passing thru the center of the Earth. Hence, we have a cross-section which reveals a living profile of land contours. Now which, if any, of these melodious profiles, were preferred? How do landmarks on either side of the ley change and succeed each other, as an observer travels along it? Only a creative transcription of topography into topology, including projections among the complex angular planes of stellar transits, can finally provide some delicate discernment of the ourathonic hologram for which Shandaiya’s prodigious mind so eagerly and yes, impatiently, yearned.
Shandaiya was honored with two in-Nature memorials at Santa Cruz by fellow students; Christian rites by family and innumerable friends at Rose Hills, Los Angeles, where mortal form remains; geomantic and cosmic rites upon one of the mesas of Chilao, a place of power very dear to her heart, among the San Gabriel Mountains. The last mentioned were conducted by Feraferia, which fellowship was priveleged to count her an initiated sister. During this ceremony, the ley line Feraferia had previously extended and blessed from Punta Banda in Baja California, to Point Hobos in Alta California, which defines the geodetic angle of the Pacific coast for this segment of the Land of Queen Califia, was re-consecrated as the Shandaiya Track.
Trees were planted to shelter her venerable Ka. Mrs Janette Jackson of RILKO commented that it seemed to her many exceedingly gifted people are “passed over” early in life, perhaps because, during the critical overlap between precessional months, extremely important work must be completed on the “inner planes”. I am assured Shandaiya is still striving to revivify the arteries of Earth for planetary homecoming to the Queendom of the galaxy. In Australia and China, the sacred Earth lines are associated with powerful ancestral spirits. The many people who admired, loved and learned from Shandaiya during this lifetime, will always guide on her beacon, along those paths that thread the interstices of terrestrial solidity and celestial radiance, until we rejoin her in Elysium – Amenti.
Before that eternal moment of thundering majesty and joyous adventure tolls, Korê bless thee and keep thee Shandaiya!
FREDERICK McLAREN ADAMS