Automated Geomantic Divination & Interpretation.
By: Afshin Mokhtari, July 2013, v2
Click here to check it out!
Today, when you hear the word geomancy most people relate it to Feng Shui, the art of placement. Historically though, it had an entirely different meaning.
Geomantic divination was for hundreds of years practiced by people from all social classes throughout Europe (especially prized by the ruling classes and the Church), Asia, and Africa. While most people have heard of its Chinese counterpart, the Yi Jing (I Ching), classical geomancy has largely escaped attention in the modern world.
This program automates the manual process of casting a reading, and also helps interpret the results; however, it is no substitute for a knowledgable practitioner - but should be fun to play with nontheless!
- As a practitioner, I wanted to automate castings & interpretation as much as possible.
- As a programmer, I wanted to build a SPA - a Single Page Application based on javascript
- Javascript, HTML, CSS
- Twitters bootstrap
- Misc little helper libraries (jquery, jquery UI, moment.js, howler.js)
- Geolocation to derive current 'planetary rulers'
- Localstorage for app presets
- Error and App event logging
- Misc UI goodies
- Take out JQuery UI - its so big!
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The most time consuming part about geomantic divination is doing the casting. Traditionally, you mark 16 lines of a random number of lines/dots to derive the 'letters' from which you get meaning. Historically these were lines drawn in the sand, but in the last couple of hundred years, pen and paper are also used, as well as variety of other methods. This program lets you either enter the already derived letters, or do a casting by tapping on the space-bar.
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The most difficult part is interpretation. There are many styles but there are also many commonalities in the various styles. I've tried to build in these commonalities.
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Some practitioners like to take into account the 'planetary rulers' for timing the castings. I've automated derivation of the current rulers based on time and your spot on the planet (via geolocation). You have to understand that sunrise to sunset (and vice-versa) is divided into 12 equal time segments (which of course vary depending on the particular day) in the traditional view... all this is taken into account, you can just hit the geolocation button and look on the chart to see which rulers rule what times on that day.
This is a work in progress, but its almost done, and very usable/useful at this point.
Comments and criticisms welcome.