Figures from the Earth

Geomancy (ilm al-raml, the science of the sand) is a divinatory art in which sixteen figures, each made of four rows of one or two dots, are generated from marks made rapidly and without counting, then combined and read according to their meanings and astrological associations. It arose in the medieval Islamic world, where it was a sophisticated and widely practised system, and passed into Latin Europe through translation from the twelfth century, becoming one of the standard divinatory arts of the medieval and Renaissance West.

The technique produces four initial figures from the random marks, from which further figures are derived by combination and arranged in a chart resembling an astrological one. Scholars such as Emilie Savage-Smith have studied both its Arabic origins and the instruments made for it, and it was later absorbed, in altered form, into the ceremonial magic of the Golden Dawn.