Geomancy
AKA Decorators, Bulldozers Note: Geomancy first appeared in Unknown Armies 2nd Edition, in the source book Break Today. All I have done is update it slightly for 3rd Edition. You feel the pulse of the world under the works of man. The dead earth lives only by virtue of the life-support system of civil engineering. Without man, there’s no power; without landscape, there’s no place to stand. You look on the works of the might, and bring despair- to your foes. Geomancy, strictly speaking, refers to a form of divination through scattering pebbles, seeds, clumps of dirt, or grains of sand on the earth and then interpreting their shape and position, much like the I Ching. Some of the underlying thoughts then synergized with Kabbalistic gematria and Pythagorean, Platonic, and Agrippan mystic math to form the basis of Sacred Geometry. Later, the term came to be associated with Chinese feng shui, where the locations and orientations of houses, businesses, and tombs were balanced to mystically “fit” the topography of the landscape. Even later, the “dragon current” of feng shui got wrapped up with ley lines via Dion Fortune and John Michell, transforming the prehistoric “trading routes” of Alfred Watkins into pseudo-magnetic lines of occult force. All the modern New Agey jibber-jabber is about bringing “heaven-luck” (fate, destiny, or karma) into balance and proportion with “earth-luck” (the energy of a place) and producing “man-luck” (magick). So close, yet so far. Geomancy is not about balancing the order of the cosmos to provide energy; geomancy is about imposing order on the cosmos and drawing energy out of the discordant “static” generated by the differences in state. Magick is created by the interactions between people and artificial structures. The Limit is what gives form to - and takes power away from - the Unlimited. That is the paradox of the school: to be free, one must be restricted. Geomancy is based on disruptions of the earth caused by civilization: roads and highways, excavations, monuments, graveyards, tunnels, public works, urban construction. Anything that changes or binds the landscape into a new form - physically, psychologically, or socially - is key. Here is where Alfred Watkins was closer to being right than his successors: the power of ley lines comes from the fact that they were created by humans, rather than some occult power of the landscape itself. Geomancers are useless in natural terrain. In altered terrain, they can garner charges, and the more profoundly disturbed the earth is - like the Hoover Dam, or the Chunnel, or the Paris Sewers - the more they can get. Especially if living human beings are moving along, inside, or through that altered terrain. There is a division in this school between those who focus on subterranean power (Deep Geomancers), and those who associate with summits and other elevated places (High Geomancers), but that’s just a matter of personal preference and internal politics. Cliomancers and urbanomancers tend to hate geomancers just as much as they despise each other. If a decorator charges up off a structure that’s a suitable cliomancy site (or is part of an urbanomancer’s turf), he’s rubbing the cobweb farmer’s (or rat’s) rhubarb. They look down on that sort of thing, sometimes over the sights of a gun. Want to know more about Geomancy? Read the entire adept school here.
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November 2018
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