Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Geomantic Figures

Fortuna Major

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Origin 1100 to 1300

Fortuna Major (the Greater Fortune) is one of the sixteen geomantic figures, formed of double Fire, double Air, single Water, and single Earth. It is attributed to the element Fire, the planet the Sun, and the sign Leo. Its name means great good fortune, and specifically success won through one own inner strength and merit, like a strong man mounting a hill: power that endures because it is earned and rooted. Fortuna Major is one of the most favorable figures, promising lasting success, protection, and the achievement of aims through steady effort and personal authority. It counsels confidence, patience, and the exercise of one own solid resources, and its good fortune tends to be stable and enduring rather than sudden.

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
Fortuna Major 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)
Stable 2
Modern mainstream Stable/Mobile classification; exact page locator not confirmed against the primary text this pass.
Ruling Planet
Sun 1
Zodiac Sign
Leo 1
Figure Points
Fire double, Air double, Water single, Earth single 1
Identity
English Name
Greater Fortune 1
Element
Fire 1
Reading Keys
Keywords
Inner strength, lasting success 1
Partially Attested
Exaltation House (Attributed)
9th 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 Fortuna Major and Its Attributions

Fortuna Major, the Greater Fortune, 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 (two dots), Water (one dot), Earth (one dot). Geomantic figures are attributed to the elements, the planets and the signs of the zodiac; Fortuna Major is assigned to the element of Fire, to the Sun and the sign Leo. Its traditional divinatory sense is one of inner strength, lasting success.

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.

Fortuna Major: The Points, and What Flipping Them Gives

A geomantic figure is fully described by its four rows, each holding one point or two, and that description is independent of anything the tradition reads into it.

The pattern

Fortuna Major is double, double, single, single, reading Fire, Air, Water and Earth from the top down, for six points in total. The two heavy rows sit above the two light ones. In the common reading a single point marks its element active and a double marks it passive, so the figure has an active lower half under a passive upper half.

Flipping every row

Change each row from single to double and from double to single and Fortuna Major becomes Fortuna Minor. This is the one pair in the sixteen where the two partners already carry names that announce the relationship, greater and lesser fortune, and it is the clearest illustration of what the operation does.

What the pairing does and does not mean

The two figures are not read as good and bad. The traditional distinction is between a strength that comes from within and holds, and a strength that comes from outside and does not, which is a distinction the point pattern makes visible: the heavier rows are uppermost in one and lowermost in the other.

Beyond that, the pairing is arithmetic. Sixteen figures form eight such pairs because inverting every row maps the set onto itself. The atlas records the planet, sign and element for this figure separately; those came from the astrological tradition, differ between handbooks, and were never derived from the points.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Named For

Fortuna, Deities

The greater fortune figure carries her name.

Originates in Language

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 Fortuna Major 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 Fortuna MajorView the Source

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