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Geomantic Figures

Coniunctio

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Origin 1100 to 1300

Coniunctio (Conjunction) is one of the sixteen geomantic figures, formed of double Fire, single Air, single Water, and double Earth. It is attributed to the element Earth, the planet Mercury, and the sign Virgo. Its name means joining or meeting, and it signifies union, combination, connection, and the coming together of persons or things; it is the figure of encounters, alliances, and the recovery of what was lost. Ruled by Mercury, Coniunctio is essentially neutral and takes much of its meaning from its company: joined to good figures it favors partnerships, agreements, and reunions, and joined to ill ones it can mean entanglement in trouble. It counsels attention to relationships and to what is being brought together.

Facts
Origins
Origin Period
1100 to 1300 3Tradition: Latin geomancy, translated from the Arabic
Origin PeriodSourced to the subject's own account
1533 4Tradition: Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy
Origin Period
800 to 1200 CE 1Tradition: Arabic ilm al-raml, the science of the sand
Origin PeriodSourced to the subject's own account
Coniunctio belongs to the sixteen figure system of geomantic divination whose figures took shape in the Arabic tradition of raml, attested there and in North Africa from the eighth to the twelfth century; the technique reached Latin Europe by the eleventh to thirteenth century, and Cornelius Agrippa set the figures into their now standard planetary and zodiacal correspondences in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy, published in 1533. 4
Place of Origin
North Africa and the wider Islamic world; carried into Latin Europe through the twelfth-century translation movement, chiefly in Spain. 1
Attributed Author / Compiler
No single author. The Latin geomantic corpus is anonymous and pseudonymous, circulating under the names of Hermes, Aristotle, Ptolemy and others, none of whom wrote any part of it. Having no author is itself the fact about this tradition worth recording. 3
Language
Classical Arabic 1
Language
Latin 3
Attributions
Mode (Stable / Mobile)
Mobile 2
Modern mainstream Stable/Mobile classification; exact page locator not confirmed against the primary text this pass.
Ruling Planet
Mercury 1
Zodiac Sign
Virgo 1
Figure Points
Fire double, Air single, Water single, Earth double 1
Identity
English Name
Conjunction 1
Element
Earth 1
Reading Keys
Keywords
Union, meeting 1
Partially Attested
Exaltation House (Attributed)
1st house (exaltation) 5
Sourced to the subject's own accountReported exaltation house, attributed to Pietro d'Abano, sourced only through a secondary blog summary. Not a ruling-house claim; see Via's note for the full caveat.
Learn More
The Figure Coniunctio and Its Attributions

Coniunctio, Conjunction, is one of the sixteen figures of Western geomancy, the divinatory art in which meaning is read from a figure of four rows, each row holding either one dot or two.

The figure and its reading

Its four rows are Fire (two dots), Air (one dot), Water (one dot), Earth (two dots). Geomantic figures are attributed to the elements, the planets and the signs of the zodiac; Coniunctio is assigned to the element of Earth, to Mercury and the sign Virgo. Its traditional divinatory sense is one of union, meeting.

These attributions are those of the mature Western tradition set out by writers such as Christopher Cattan (1558) and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (Book II of the Three Books of Occult Philosophy, 1533), and taken up in the modern revival by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn from 1888. The technique itself is older and reached Latin Europe through translations of the Arabic ilm al-raml, the science of the sand. The figure is described here as an element of that documented tradition.

Coniunctio: The Points, and What Flipping Them Gives

The four rows of a geomantic figure, each holding one point or two, are the whole of the figure. Sixteen such arrangements exist and no seventeenth is possible.

The pattern

Coniunctio is double, single, single, double, reading Fire, Air, Water and Earth from the top down, six points in all. Heavy rows sit at the top and the bottom with two light rows between them.

Flipping every row

Change each row from single to double and from double to single and Coniunctio becomes Carcer. The two are worth drawing side by side, because their shapes are complementary in the most literal sense available in this system: everywhere one has a single point the other has a double, and the pair between them accounts for every position twice.

Meeting and holding

Coniunctio is read as meeting, joining and the coming together of two things, and Carcer as confinement and a matter held in place. The tradition does not present these as opposites, and the atlas does not either. The relationship recorded above is between the point patterns; whether it means anything for a reading is a question the Latin handbooks answer differently and mostly do not answer at all.

The attributions

A planet, a sign and an element are recorded for Coniunctio elsewhere in the atlas. They come from the astrological tradition that was attached to the figures in Latin Europe, they differ between Agrippa, Cattan and the later English handbooks, and they were not derived from the rows.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Originates in Language

Classical Arabic, Languages
Source Islamic Geomancy and a Thirteenth-Century Divinatory DeviceEmilie Savage-Smith and Marion B. Smith
Latin, Languages
Source Recherches sur une technique divinatoire: la geomancie dans l'Occident medievalTherese Charmasson
Sources
1. Islamic Geomancy and a Thirteenth-Century Divinatory Device
Emilie Savage-Smith and Marion B. Smith, Undena Publications, 1980On ilm al-raml and the sixteen figures before their Latin transmission
2. John Michael Greer, The Art and Practice of Geomancy (2009)
John Michael Greer, 2009
3. Recherches sur une technique divinatoire: la geomancie dans l'Occident medieval
Therese Charmasson, Librairie Droz, 1980On the Latin figure names and the medieval tradition
4. Three Books of Occult Philosophy
Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Llewellyn, 1533Book II, on the geomantic figures and their planetary and zodiacal attributionsView the Source
5. Nick Farrell, "Geomancy Aspects, Dignity, Occupation, Conjunction, Mutation and Translation" (nickfarrell.it)
Nick Farrell
The Geomancie of Maister Christopher Cattan, Gentleman
Christopher Cattan, John Wolfe, 1591On the figure Coniunctio and its significations
Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy: Of Geomancy
Pseudo-Agrippa; Robert Turner (trans.), J. C. for John Harrison, 1655On the planetary and zodiacal attribution of ConiunctioView the Source

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