Journal of Geomancy vol. 4 no. 3, April 1980

{2}

FRAGMENTS OF A UNIVERSAL TRADITION

by Nigel Pennick

One of the techniques of information-gathering is the comparison of material from seemingly disparate sources.  During the last century, this was brought to a fine art by the anthropologists, who compared traditions and customs from all over the world.  At that time, it was noticed that many of the myths and legends recounted by storytellers had common features, and not merely those accountable by contact between cultures.  From this observation, all manner of fine theories of ‘diffusion’ of culture were set up.  In the tradition of the belief in a master race, it was held that each and every idea had originated in one place at a specific time, from whence it had been transmitted throughout the world by intrepid or foolhardy sailors.  From this, all the voyages of Thor Heyerdahl and all the extraterrestrial escapades of Raymond Drake et al. originate. 

This theory of course was reinforced by relatively recent history.  The colonization of much of the world by European superpowers like Britain and Holland, following in the Catholic Empires of Spain and Portugal, had brought ideas and artifacts to the ‘natives’ unthought of before the apparition of the White Man.  The technological superiority of the whites rapidly suppressed all resistance of the ‘natives’, who rapidly succumbed to the bullet and the bible.  Whilst the Christian missionaries, backed up by squaddies, stormed about the countries smashing shrines, burning ‘idols’ of the ‘heathens’, scholars documented as quaint relics of a decaying culture the lore and ways of the people.  So, when in an era of almost total ‘westernization’ we find some survival of ancient lore, regrettably, it may all too often be in a library, mouldering in a dust-infested volume a century old. 

Despite this great gathering of information and documentation of destroyed cultures and races, it is only recently that the overall pattern of such things has begun to emerge.  The hyper-materialists of the Darwinian–Marxist school reject all that is not of that school as ‘superstition’, whilst the Christian/Liberal school look upon it as archaic quaintness fit only for performance before the Queen on her Imperial Progresses through the erstwhile Empire called Commonwealth.  Neither viewpoint realizes that here we are in the presence of a universal tradition.  But just what is the tradition?  What is its significance in the age of Plutonium and Olympic Boycotts? 

I began with the technique of information-gathering.  To bring together reinforcing pieces of evidence which by themselves are almost meaningless is the stuff of which the great detective novels are made.  In present-day geomantic research, this very process is taking place.  Amongst the research now in progress in England is the detection of subtle energies; the detection of physical energies; the stellar, lunar and solar orientation of sites; the unravelling of esoteric geometry; the interpretation of arcane symbolism; the collating of material which has never been looked at in that light before.  And this latter observation is the object of this article. 

In many books on ancient technology, a laughable event in Baghdad several years ago is recounted.  Some jars in the museum, labelled something non-committal, were examined by an engineer who pronounced that they were actually ancient electric batteries.  Nobody had thought that the early Islamic founders of Baghdad could have independently discovered and used electricity centuries before the Europeans famed in history books.  After this happened, various wild claims for the extraterrestrial origins of objects began – a sure sign of a belief in the infallibility of modern knowledge, and the automatic ignorance of those who lived centuries ago.  Both beliefs are merely part of the faith which is insidiously instilled into children from an early age – the blind belief in unbroken progress from savagery to the empyrean heights of the modern world we know and love. 

When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Mexico, they were amazed to see that there was a cult there which worshipped the Cross.  Naturally, they saw it as a ruse by the Devil to thwart their Christian objectives, and butchered all the {3} devotees.  Many events such as this have shown that common features occurred in all religious and technological systems throughout the world, and in this century the psychologists have dubbed such patterns and events the result of archetypal patterns in the human psyche. 

Unfortunately, the modern approach to almost every aspect of human being we call geomancy is to pigeonhole it into one of several categories, depending on the philosophical stance of the observer.  But all of these categories are non-operative.  To suggest to a materialist that a feng-shui mirror could deflect harmful energies would be to cast seed on stony ground and invite derision or abuse.  Yet, because we cannot understand the mechanism of something, that is no reason to believe it does not exist or serve a function.  That is the ultimate human arrogance – a belief in omniscience, a belief often quoted to discredit the very person who uttered it.  Examples are rife of scientists a century ago declaring that there is nothing new to learn in Physics, so it is a shame that modern materialist scientists do not learn by such mistakes.  But they do not, and that is human nature. 

The investigation of seemingly disconnected pieces of knowledge have led to some useful discoveries.  In geomantic research, we have various problems to solve.  Recent work has taken us some way towards the solutions, but much more work is needed.  Here are a few possibilities for further study, or rejection.  There is no such thing as a failed experiment. 

Some of my researches into the omphalos concept – that of the centre of the world – were published in my book The Ancient Science of Geomancy (Thames & Hudson, 1979).  Unfortunately, space did not permit the full expression of the ideas about the directions, something fundamental to the understanding of the placement of buildings for the human good. 

In most cultures, we find that the directions are divided into multiples of four plus up and down.  Thus the North American native wisemen recognize, six directions in all, North, East, South, West, Up and Down.  Only in modern European practice are the zenith and nadir ignored.  In most cultures, each planar direction is assigned a colour, and sometimes these colours are applied to a whole system of correspondences. 

Thus we see the directions in various cultures:

The list is obviously incomplete, yet a spread of results is available.  We can see that although the concepts of colour in relation to the directions is universal, the actual colours used are not, their order being virtually random.  This is not to say that there is no good reason for them; indeed they are related to the nature of the directions and the seasons associated with them in the different countries. 

If we delve further into the matter, we can see that correspondences with direction have no little importance, being microcosmic representations of society.  Thus the Zuni tribe have

{4}
In the Manasara Shilpa Shastra, an ancient Indian geomantic text, the rule for the layout of towns is expounded.  They were divided into the traditional 4 quarters by the main streets, which were oriented to the cardinal directions.  The east–west street was known as the RAJAPATHA or Royal Street, and the north–south the MAHAKULAPATHA or Broad Street.  Each quarter was occupied by one of the 4 castes, thus encapsulating the division of society in geomantic terms (rather like the ghettoes of Europe, the black townships of South Africa or the either sides of the wall in Berlin today). 

The colour of the north was white, reserved for the priestly Brahmin caste.  East was red, reserved for the Kshatriyas, soldiers.  South was yellow, for the Vaishyas, tradesmen.  West was black, for the lowest caste, the Shudras or labourers. 

Thus geomantic divisions rigidly enforced the hierarchical structure of society, which in turn was justified by their belief in an unchanging cosmology.  Such remnants exist today in the surviving monarchies of Europe and Asia.  In early Hindu cosmology, the world stretches to infinity from the central mountain, and the four quarters are allocated precise roles. 

It is not only in archaic lore that we find echoes of the importance of direction.  The orientation of churches and even the shopping centre at Milton Keynes (see JOG 4/1) built in 1979, are well known.  The various continuances of sites’ uses may account for some, but not all of these phenomena.  We have the possibility that the round churches of England and Scotland may occupy the sites of stone circles formerly used by the Pagan faithful.  This possibility is strengthened by the appellation of the Orkney example at Orphir (see also IGR Occasional Paper No. 6 by Ian Worden).  This round church, now ruined, was known as the Girth House.  Now Girth or Garth is the name applied in old Orkney dialect to a place of judgement, or a stone circle, so the workings of symbolism of the round church as microcosmic representation of the world is also accounted for by this as Garth is also cognate with the word Yarth or Earth.  Be this as it may, the orientations of such buildings, if the theory is correct, must echo the ancient alignments of the former stone circles.  And there is further evidence from other round churches.  The Cambridge example, the Holy Sepulchre in Bridge Street, is the origin-point of the Seven-Church Ley, which passes slapbang through the centre of the rotunda (see JOG 3/2).  There is also the chapel at Drüggelte, Germany, a paper on which appears elsewhere in this issue.  The colour-correspondences in round churches are not known.  Centuries of neglect, reformation and changed aesthetics have erased any possibility of determining different pigmentation of walls etc, and we await evidence from other sources.  But our directional possibilities are not at an end. There is solid literary evidence from a bizarre source – the plays of the Restoration playwright Ben Jonson.  In The Alchemist, act 1 scene 3, the tobacco-man Abel Drugger comes to consult Subtle, and, on being asked his business, replies:

“I am a young beginner, and am building
Of a new shop, an’t like your worship, just,
At corner of a street.  (Here’s the plot on’t).
And I would know, by art, sir, of your worship,
Which way I should make my dore, by necromancie,
And where my shelves.
And which should be for boxes,
And which for pots.  I would be glad to thrive, sir.
And, I was wish’d to your worship, by a gentleman.
One Captain Face, that say’s you know men’s planets
And their good angels and their bad. 

Subtle replies:

Make me your dore then, south; your broad side, west;
And on the east side of your shop, aloft,
Write Mathlai, Tarmiel, and Baraborat;
Upon the north-part, Rael, Velel, Thiel;
They are the names of those Mercurial spirits {5}
That doe fright flyes from boxes … And
Beneath your threshold, bury me a load-stone
To draw in gallants, that wearre spures …

This passage attests to the practice of geomancy in seventeenth-century England as complex and developed as that known in China.  That it was referred to as ‘necromancie’ has been a confusing element in geomantic historical research in the west; it has led to pedantic arguments over whether the etymological origin of the word geomancy refers to its use only in counting clods of earth or modifying buildings.  This obscurantism is helped not at all by the word ‘necromancie’, but, when it is considered that in the Western tradition of ritual magic the geomantic orientation of buildings is seen in the light of battles within and against the Daemonic Empire, ‘necromancie’ is a reasonable description,

Although Jonson was obviously poking fun at what he considered the superstitions of his contemporaries, he has preserved for us a useful vignette of geomantic practice in England at his time.  But again we come up against the misconceived sceptic.  Such a person is superstitious because he or she believes that such things a geomancy cannot work.  In fact, she knows that it cannot work, because her world-picture tells her so.  Thus, all evidence to the contrary is manufactured, false, or misunderstood.  To call the subject geomancy or necromancie or geocryptology or earth mysteries is to automatically condemn it in the eyes of the faith-materialist.  But that shouldn’t deter us,

If we observe the common threads in all the geomantic practices of the world, we will learn something.  Either we will see (as the materialists would have it) a common thread of folly and superstitious misunderstanding of ‘man’s place in Nature’, or we will see the remnants of a once-universal system of magical technology.  I would plump for the latter.  The allegorical language of alchemy did not mean that genuine chemical reactions were occurring in the alembics, jordanes, urinalls and other quaintly-named vessels.  Modern chemists prefer to forget their debt to their bespectacled forebears in dingy laboratories, just as the alchemical studies of Isaac Newton are glossed over by physicists.  Allegorical language does not mean idiocy or charlatanry.  Modern physicists talk of quarks and pi-mesons, charm and colour, but they know what they are talking about.  The jargon of computer programmers is incomprehensible to the uninitiated, yet it is full of precise meaning.  We have been conditioned to think that ‘software’ or ‘interface’ are meaningful whilst ‘veins of the earth’ or ‘wind and water’ are drivel.  It is about time that all concepts, whether ostensibly commonsense or not, were studied for themselves and not for ulterior motives and personal advancement in the world of Academe. 

The IGR was set up in order to unravel the core of useful geomantic practice from the overwhelming corpus of material on the subject.  We are slowly moving towards some sort of underlying scheme which was applied at all times, and this is related direly to the energy system of the planet.  It has always been the intention of reclaiming a functional tradition from this material in the universal tradition, and bringing this back to use in the modern era, for our rulers are sorely abusing our planet in the name of progress and profit, and it cannot continue indefinitely without an ecotastrophe ensuing.  Our towns, constructed solely on cost-effective planning (except for Milton Keynes shopping centre!) have an undefined psychological reaction upon their inmates, perhaps reflected in events like the Neasden tube station riot and the phenomena of Punk, Skinhead and Bovver.  The desacralization of the cosmos has been well documented, yet its actual effect on the physical and psychological well-being of mankind is still to be evaluated.  The break-down of society by the Industrial Revolution and the consequent rise of totalitarian creeds has gone hand-in-hand with the extirpation of geomancy.  Geomancy was once a living force, part of the underlying fabric of society and national life.  For the greater part of human history, it was the orthodox way of ordering human habitation and life.  Can a new synthesis be developed from the workable parts of the old?  We must strive to create one.