Why does a divination system still work when you haven't memorized it's figures?

Well, not even memorized but even not having read through a description of each figure. I don’t know all the iChing hexagrams but it still works for me, the system from Elemental Divination: A Dice Oracle works for me despite not knowing the figures. Geomancy worked for me when I started and didn’t know the figures and parts of the structure. Why is it like this? Clearly later on you can change aspects of the system and it will fit to your new perception.

I think it is because the system is mainly a tool to help you interpret your own powers. I dont know a lot about Geomancy, but as you go on more and more to divination you’ll see things become more apparent and intuitive. I think divination systems are there to help guide us to that apparent intuition we had all along.

Practitioners that have more experience in divination than I will probably have greater insight into this xD

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Hmm the difference here though is that Geomancy is far less intuition based than any of the other divination systems I’ve seen. An objective approach to the figures still yields an accurate answer, the intuition just shows some of the details behind the answer. And it’s similiar with Cartomancy I’ve seen, because you can get a certain card, and your intuition may be wrong in the end but the card still accurately gave the answer.

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That is really interesting. Ill have to look into Geomancy when I finish the other projects I have started.

I still think its because, you, the practitioner hold the power to draw the right cards/symbols to read into the situation. You are actively trying to get a read on a situation, things will order themselves to give you an idea of what you are looking at. idk. That is the best I got right now on my path xD

I don’t do a lot of divination haha I am mostly into energy work, but have dabbled in it :stuck_out_tongue:

I am sure there is a more satisfying answer out there somewhere. Someone will chime in ^.^ and be like Ryce, this is how it is, and we will both learn something.

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Definitely reccomend it. In fact, it’s not even based off of intuition at all… the structure is very mechanical and intuition only plays a role for getting more information out of the chart. Had a thread on here recently where I gave out free Geomancy readings.

Hmm I can definitely roll with that. Although I still think it’s strange that it works despite you not knowing the figures… wouldn’t that mean it’s actually also at least somewhat outside your own power?

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I don’t know xD

I think its kind of like saying that its strange that Tarot still works even though the practitioner doesn’t know all the meanings of the cards, the elements in play within them, etc. I think the point that they don’t know what the cards or figures mean is even more evidence pointing to the strong power of the subconscious that humans possess. Though, like I said above, idk xD

Then again comparing two different systems blindly like that could be disastrous as a point here. I have a bit of experience with the Tarot, but none with Geomancy.

Hopefully a more experienced practitioner in Divination can help further this discussion and give some of their insight and thoughts on the rather interesting and provoking questions asked! I really do like how your mind thinks Dankquanicus, its really cool that you question like you do and are not afraid to point out your POV.

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interesting question indeed. i used I Ching when I was 15 and had to look up every formation everytime. and yet according to my friends my readings were correct, even predictively correct.

i have no idea how that works

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Yes I’ve noticed the same here, with multiple divination systems, including one that is much lesser known. Only with Cartomancy have I memorized the cards before using it seriously, and that was inspired by reading EA’s Become A Living God book where he explains using Tarot without having the meanings of the cards is essentially useless (I suppose that makes sense since Tarot is way more intuition based). Never really done Tarot personally but I have a friend that does, he hasn’t memorized the meanings but he seems go get pretty accurate results. And using those online Tarot sites have also been pretty accurate for me.

So this makes me think it really is something outside of the diviner. And with the idea of the Subconscious mind this shouldn’t really be possible… although I remain a bit skeptical of the idea of a subconscious mind, or at least as it was portrayed earlier in the 20th century. A lot of Chaos Magick books were written in that era and are based on a very outdated idea of the Subconscious, but even with classic Chaos Magick theory this fact about divination is quite strange and doesn’t seem like it would fit…

The traditional idea of the Geomancers in the Renaissance was that these answers come from the Anima Mundi, and so achieving a state of a relatively “empty mind” is essential before proceeding. They believed this state connects them to the Anima Mundi so that they can be revealed the future. The Taoists seem to have a similar idea with the iChing as far as I’ve seen, that the answers are from the Divine Spirit so meditating in that way connects oneself to the Divine Spirit and allows the answers to be revealed. I think this may be closer to the truth than what many modern diviners believe. I’ve also found that “connecting with the energy” of a Querent like modern Tarot readers like to do isn’t necessary and doesn’t really affect accuracy as far as I’ve seen. Nor does energy in the tools of divination.

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Another thing - I thought perhaps the brain may be able to recall the information of the figures, since once you’ve given a good reading of something, that is actually commited to memory and is essentially “taking up space” in your brain, whether you’re able to recall it or not. But this is also not the case because with iChing and the Dice oracle I have not read through the figures yet I still have accurate answers from both. The source here, may not be of the brain in that sense.