Geomancy Readings

A unique style of Geomancy

By Lisa Drury

Article printed in Shine Your Lyght magazine July / Aug issue 2020

Hi all. I am really excited to share with you the Ancient Art that I practice. I am a Geomancer who uses my own unique style of geomancy to give readings that highlight a holistic view of life, which so many of my clients have found is so helpful for guidance.

The word Geomancy comes from Late Greek (2nd to 7th century AD), and translates as “foresight by earth”. It is a technique of divination that obtains knowledge of events through the use of small natural items of the Earth like soil, sand, seeds, sticks and stones.

These organic objects are usually kept in a small pouch and scattered onto a specially prepared cloth or the ground. The shapes and patterns that form organically are then “read” to provide knowledge of past, present or future events for the enquirer.

Geomancy is a truly ancient craft, and was one of the most popular methods of divination in Europe and Africa, particularly during the Dark Ages and Renaissance.

During the Renaissance, Geomancy was listed as one of the seven “Forbidden Arts”; along with Hydromancy (divination by water), Aeromancy (air/clouds), Pyromancy (fire), Scapulimancy (bones/cracks in bones), Chiromancy (palmistry) and Necromancy (talking to the dead/ghosts).

There are a few different styles of Geomancy described in ancient and modern texts:

The most common style of Geomancy, which is probably Arabic in origin, uses 16 randomly generated characters for divination according to standard meanings. The legend describes how the characters were gifted from God when the Angel Jibril drew figures in the sand for Idris after he requested enlightenment.

An old Kazakhstan Shamanic System, called kumalak or “Mirror of Destiny”, uses a 9 X 9 grid and numeric figures generated by randomly cast seeds or dried sheep dung.

A cast of 3 coins (heads or tails) is used to make the characters of I Ching, which is then read and related to the question being asked of them.

Feng Shui is known as Chinese Geomancy and reads the subtle energies of “country” to choose the best position to place houses and furniture to bring luck to the people and also the places that we humans inhabit. The solutions offered help Earth heal geomantic stressors and is an art-form all of its own.

These methods of Geomancy are unrelated to what I do, my system of Geomancy is totally unique and probably relates more closely to the ancient African method of scrying randomly thrown handfuls of stones or earth and interpreting the patterns that form.

My in-depth journey into Geomancy started in the late 1980’s when I picked a Viking Rune a day to learn who the runes were and what they meant. Once I was familiar with the Viking Runes, I wanted to expand my readings; so I developed a cloth and used a system of randomly picking 3 groups of 3 Viking Runes to answer my questions more thoroughly.

I knew the Runes were able to connect me more strongly with my higher self. I resonated with this system of glyphs – which were around in the far Northern Hemisphere before the written word existed. From this long use: I know the Viking runes have a wisdom and life of their own.

Over 3 decades ago; I felt that I needed to use the many crystals I had collected as a set of Runes. Instead of them gathering dust, I wanted my crystals to mean something; so I meditated on each individual crystal and they told me their purpose and name. I have been using the same crystals all this time – bar replacing the few lost in the many casts I have done – so I know my runes very well and the original meanings haven’t changed at all.

My own crystals were calling me to become part of the process. I really didn’t know how it would all work when I started doing readings for myself, friends and family – but my random casts showed me much to look out for in my life and inspired me to make radical choices in my life, from which I have never looked back.

I liken our journey through life as “belonging” to our Solar System or “making home” – so the first group of crystal runes named became the sun, moon and planets. The opportunity to know ourselves through the characteristics and wisdom of our cosmic neighbors is profound.

Put very simply, the crystals represent:

The Sun, which lets our colors shine through. It is our light and the external self that others see.

The Moon, which is the knowledge we are born with, our intuition. Being receptive and reflective of the Sun’s light, the Moon is feminine and is ruling women’s natural cycles.

Through the light shining; Mercury raises concepts and gives us speech. It belongs to the element of Air where the invisible is absolutely essential for life. Here I seek the trickster God Loki to see which element he plays in; this is where our words and focus is required.

Venus helps us sort these thoughts by means of our value system. “Do we like it or do we not”? She is also the Goddess of Love, sharing with us this joyful feeling of LOVE in all areas of life.

Earth gives us our hands, body, our work and a place to reside. It can be two sided; either very social or isolating, and as such, represents our abundance or lack of abundance and our ability to ground into our Earth Mother.

Mars is our Tribe, and lends us the muscle and passion to get things done in a positive sense. He is also the God of War: direct and forthright, protective and aggressive.

Jupiter is the largest planet by far, able to incorporate all the other planets within its bulk, so it is all about making things bigger and better. Jupiter likes the structure that helps humanity grow towards culture, so think religion, education, common laws and government.

Saturn can’t handle Jupiter’s cavalier attitude, needing to put up barriers and halt the need to grow ever bigger to match or exceed Jupiter – so it makes us think about constraint. Saturn is accepted as Society’s achievement. “Yea” they say “you made it to the wall”, but it really challenges the individual to move on past these obstructions and is thought of as our lessons in life; hopefully well-learnt.

Our wounded healer Chiron is an asteroid just outside the orbit of Saturn who bridges our path to the outer three planets. Faith is needed to the greater good & appreciation of all lessons learnt through our wounding in this lifetime; to take us towards the outer edge of our solar system.

Uranus is the first of the outer 3, and gives us a total change of perspective considering we have moved further out than we could imagine. This mental vision is the “Ah Ha” moment when the light is turned on and all we have experienced will never be considered in the same way ever again.

Neptune is our visionary feeling. We have to totally feel and 100% believe our new perspective or we can delude our self, and trip right back into the past “tapes” playing in our mind. Hello “Itty Bitty Shitty Committee” (thanks Jane Pike – Confident Rider!). When this becomes all encompassing – the negative aspect of Neptune can be drug or alcohol addictions among other things we use to divert our feelings from the truth of that which would help us grow.

So, not unscathed, we are out to the most distant planet from our Sun. A blank canvas to project an image of our heartfelt wishes is before us. Pluto is self-fulfilling prophesy – All or Nothing, it’s up to what we can believe in, what we will manifest. Done with love and free will, we do prevail.

Supplementary runes round out the other aspects of our life, our loves, or goals, significant others and the crystals themselves, bless them, lend their own properties to our enquiries.

Here are just a few examples.

I use clear quartz for direction (that’s easy to figure), petrified wood to represent the past, moss agate for the present and leopard skin jasper for the future (light and dark things to come). Spirit Guide is Rutile Quartz, with metallic strips inside to help conduct our choices purely and dear Pluto is picture jasper. It says to hold this stone (picture jasper) in your left hand and imagine it’s markings as a map of where you would like to travel to.

Mine is unambiguous – blank one side and has the symbol of infinity on the other – literally All or Nothing. Are you going to “go for it” my Pluto asks? How clear is the picture you will paint? And where is the potential – in the blank white canvas waiting for a masterpiece or does it lie within infinity itself? 

The crystal kingdom works well with us, and loves us as much as some of us love them. We are all stardust, born from the Earth and alike in our molecular buildup. I access information from my crystals through long term practice over decades and the love that I share with them. They know the heart of our Earth Mother and are themselves an eternal store of information. Being named has programmed the Crystals I work with and they love it and have never let me down.

I work in a trinity. The crystal runes and I work in collaboration with the Medicine Wheel Cloth that I embroidered so long ago for the Southern Hemisphere. It embodies the four directions of North, South, East and West as well as Spirit Tree, Father Sky, and Mother Earth.

The Air is of the East and is our thoughts and communications. Water in the West is our emotional body. The Earth in the South represents our home, body, health, work, finances and social life. Fire is Spirit and our connection to that greater than ourselves. 

The central portion of the cloth is Spirit Tree, the conceptual part and a major influencer. Father Sky is the middle third and is transitional in nature. Mother Earth is the mundane and practical outer edge of the cloth which holds time, season and elementals.

The Medicine Wheel Rune Cloth is full of knowledge and goes through a Year of Seasons and a Day. It also adds further dimension to my unique form of divination because I perceive the cloth in 3 dimensions as a pyramid.

In this way I interpret the relationships of the runes with each other. This is how the story begins. The inherent symbology within the cloth and the importance of orientating to the directions in our life helps us recognize what areas of our life are not in balance, or where attention is lacking and requires focus.

Orientating the compass in the center of the cloth to the correct direction also aligns our present moment to the forces of nature such as gravity and the rising and setting of the sun, moon and planets. This shows respect to the wisdom of our natural world; and the crystal patterns we form as we cast our runes are in perfect synchronicity as they land randomly on the rune cloth.

Spirals, circles, square base, straight lines and joining key stones are prominent patterns that I search for to express individual themes. They represent the energy flow of the enquirer’s life, giving great insight, knowledge and advice in a holistic manner – that is visual, tangible and real.

I really don’t know how the stones know where to go on the cloth and there are an infinite number of combinations possible. I have received the best feedback from my clients and through the channeling I receive from my crystal runes to share; I know the stories they tell relate to great spiritual truth for the individual.

I have worked with these multiple levels of understanding and knowledge for over 3 decades now, and I’m continually amazed and inspired by this system of divination. I feel so lucky to be able to share my Runes with others, share in their life story, look at the patterns that have formed and help them to see what their guides and angels and my crystals are expressing.

I am open for online readings and also booking into a few psychic fairs to offer insight and information from the cast of the runes.

Namaste