Reading the Sixteen Figures

Geomancy is a divinatory system that reads sixteen figures, each made of four rows of one or two dots. The figures are generated by making marks at random, originally in earth or sand, later on paper, and counting whether each row comes out odd or even, building up the four-line figure from the result.

The sixteen figures have names (Via, Populus, Fortuna Major, Puer, Amissio and the rest), and each carries a character and a set of astrological and elemental associations. From an initial set of figures a full chart is derived by fixed rules and interpreted.