Fragments of an Universal Tradition

Nigel Pennick

Source:​ Journal of Geomancy​ vol. 4 no. 3, April 1980, pp. 2-6.

One of the techniques of information-gathering is the comparison of

material from seemingly disparate sources. During the last century, this was
brought to a fine art by the anthropologists, who compared traditions and
customs from all over the world. At that time, it was noticed that many of
the myths and legends recounted by storytellers had common features, and
not merely those accountable by contact between cultures. From this
observation, all manner of fine theories of ‘diffusion’ of culture were set up.
In the tradition of the belief in a master race, it was held that each and every
idea had originated in one place at a specific time, from whence it had been
transmitted throughout the world by intrepid or foolhardy sailors. From
this, all the voyages of Thor Heyerdahl and all the extraterrestrial escapades
of Raymond Drake et al. originate.

This theory of course was reinforced by relatively recent history. The

colonization of much of the world by European superpowers like Britain and
Holland, following in the Catholic Empires of Spain and Portugal, had
brought ideas and artifacts to the ‘natives’ unthought of before the
apparition of the White Man. The technological superiority of the whites
rapidly suppressed all resistance of the ‘natives’, who rapidly succumbed to
the bullet and the bible. Whilst the Christian missionaries, backed up by
squaddies, stormed about the countries smashing shrines, burning ‘idols’ of
the ‘heathens’, scholars documented as quaint relics of a decaying culture
the lore and ways of the people. So, when in an era of almost total
‘westernization’ we find some survival of ancient lore, regrettably, it may all
too often be in a library, mouldering in a dust-infested volume a century old.

Despite this great gathering of information and documentation of destroyed

cultures and races, it is only recently that the overall pattern of such things
has begun to emerge. The hyper-materialists of the Darwinian–Marxist
school reject all that is not of that school as ‘superstition’, whilst the
Christian/Liberal school look upon it as archaic quaintness fit only for
performance before the Queen on her Imperial Progresses through the
erstwhile Empire called Commonwealth. Neither viewpoint realizes that
here we are in the presence of a universal tradition. But just what is the
tradition? What is its significance in the age of Plutonium and Olympic
Boycotts?

I began with the technique of information-gathering. To bring together

reinforcing pieces of evidence which by themselves are almost meaningless
is the stuff of which the great detective novels are made. In present-day
geomantic research, this very process is taking place. Amongst the research
now in progress in England is the detection of subtle energies; the detection
of physical energies; the stellar, lunar and solar orientation of sites; the
unravelling of esoteric geometry; the interpretation of arcane symbolism;
the collating of material which has never been looked at in that light before.
And this latter observation is the object of this article.

In many books on ancient technology, a laughable event in Baghdad several

years ago is recounted. Some jars in the museum, labelled something
non-committal, were examined by an engineer who pronounced that they
were actually ancient electric batteries. Nobody had thought that the early
Islamic founders of Baghdad could have independently discovered and used
electricity centuries before the Europeans famed in history books. After this
happened, various wild claims for the extraterrestrial origins of objects
began – a sure sign of a belief in the infallibility of modern knowledge, and
the automatic ignorance of those who lived centuries ago. Both beliefs are
merely part of the faith which is insidiously instilled into children from an
early age – the blind belief in unbroken progress from savagery to the
empyrean heights of the modern world we know and love.

When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in Mexico, they were amazed to see
that there was a cult there which worshipped the Cross. Naturally, they saw
it as a ruse by the Devil to thwart their Christian objectives, and butchered
all the​{3}​ devotees. Many events such as this have shown that common
features occurred in all religious and technological systems throughout the
world, and in this century the psychologists have dubbed such patterns and
events the result of archetypal patterns in the human psyche.

Unfortunately, the modern approach to almost every aspect of human being

we call geomancy is to pigeonhole it into one of several categories,
depending on the philosophical stance of the observer. But all of these
categories are non-operative. To suggest to a materialist that a feng-shui
mirror could deflect harmful energies would be to cast seed on stony ground
and invite derision or abuse. Yet, because we cannot understand the
mechanism of something, that is no reason to believe it does not exist or
serve a function. That is the ultimate human arrogance – a belief in
omniscience, a belief often quoted to discredit the very person who uttered
it. Examples are rife of scientists a century ago declaring that there is
nothing new to learn in Physics, so it is a shame that modern materialist
scientists do not learn by such mistakes. But they do not, and that is human
nature.

The investigation of seemingly disconnected pieces of knowledge have led to

some useful discoveries. In geomantic research, we have various problems
to solve. Recent work has taken us some way towards the solutions, but
much more work is needed. Here are a few possibilities for further study, or
rejection. There is no such thing as a failed experiment.

Some of my researches into the omphalos concept – that of the centre of the
world – were published in my book The Ancient Science of Geomancy
(Thames & Hudson, 1979). Unfortunately, space did not permit the full
expression of the ideas about the directions, something fundamental to the
understanding of the placement of buildings for the human good.

In most cultures, we find that the directions are divided into multiples of
four plus up and down. Thus the North American native wisemen recognize,
six directions in all, North, East, South, West, Up and Down. Only in
modern European practice are the zenith and nadir ignored. In most
cultures, each planar direction is assigned a colour, and sometimes these
colours are applied to a whole system of correspondences.
Thus we see the directions in various cultures:

Country East S W N
o es o
ut t rt
h h

Burma white gr re y
e d el
e lo
n w

India red y bl w
el a hi
lo c te
w k

Yucatan yellow re bl w
d a hi
c te
k

Tibet white bl re y
u d el
e lo
w

Egypt gold/g w bl re
reen hi a d
te c
k
 Ireland purple w d bl
hi u a
te n c
k

Sri white bl re y
Lanka u d el
e lo
w

Java white re y bl
d el a
lo c
w k

China green re w bl
d hi a
te c
k

Aztec yellow w bl re
Mexico hi u d
te e

Zuni (N. blue re w y

America) d hi el
te lo
w
The list is obviously incomplete, yet a spread of results is available. We can
see that although the concepts of colour in relation to the directions is
universal, the actual colours used are not, their order being virtually
random. This is not to say that there is no good reason for them; indeed
they are related to the nature of the directions and the seasons associated
with them in the different countries.

If we delve further into the matter, we can see that correspondences with
direction have no little importance, being microcosmic representations of
society. Thus the Zuni tribe have

NORTH = yellow – winter – wind – war

EAST = blue – autumn – earth – religion

SOUTH = red – summer – fire – medicine

WEST = white – spring – water – hunting

zenith – many hued like the light on the clouds

nadir – blackness
{4}

In the Manasara Shilpa Shastra, an ancient Indian geomantic text, the rule
for the layout of towns is expounded. They were divided into the traditional
4 quarters by the main streets, which were oriented to the cardinal
directions. The east–west street was known as the RAJAPATHA or Royal
Street, and the north–south the MAHAKULAPATHA or Broad Street. Each
quarter was occupied by one of the 4 castes, thus encapsulating the division
of society in geomantic terms (rather like the ghettoes of Europe, the black
townships of South Africa or the either sides of the wall in Berlin today).

The colour of the north was white, reserved for the priestly Brahmin caste.
East was red, reserved for the Kshatriyas, soldiers. South was yellow, for the
Vaishyas, tradesmen. West was black, for the lowest caste, the Shudras or
labourers.

Thus geomantic divisions rigidly enforced the hierarchical structure of

society, which in turn was justified by their belief in an unchanging
cosmology. Such remnants exist today in the surviving monarchies of
Europe and Asia. In early Hindu cosmology, the world stretches to infinity
from the central mountain, and the four quarters are allocated precise roles.

It is not only in archaic lore that we find echoes of the importance of

direction. The orientation of churches and even the ​shopping centre at
Milton Keynes​ (see JOG 4/1) built in 1979, are well known. The various
continuances of sites’ uses may account for some, but not all of these
phenomena. We have the possibility that the round churches of England
and Scotland may occupy the sites of stone circles formerly used by the
Pagan faithful. This possibility is strengthened by the appellation of the
Orkney example at Orphir (see also IGR Occasional Paper No. 6 by Ian
Worden). This round church, now ruined, was known as the Girth House.
Now Girth or Garth is the name applied in old Orkney dialect to a place of
judgement, or a stone circle, so the workings of symbolism of the round
church as microcosmic representation of the world is also accounted for by
this as Garth is also cognate with the word Yarth or Earth. Be this as it may,
the orientations of such buildings, if the theory is correct, must echo the
ancient alignments of the former stone circles. And there is further evidence
from other round churches. The Cambridge example, the Holy Sepulchre in
Bridge Street, is the origin-point of ​the Seven-Church Ley​, which passes
slapbang through the centre of the rotunda (see JOG 3/2). There is also the
chapel at Drüggelte​, Germany, a paper on which appears elsewhere in this
issue. The colour-correspondences in round churches are not known.
Centuries of neglect, reformation and changed aesthetics have erased any
possibility of determining different pigmentation of walls etc, and we await
evidence from other sources. But our directional possibilities are not at an
end. There is solid literary evidence from a bizarre source – the plays of the
Restoration playwright Ben Jonson. In The Alchemist, act 1 scene 3, the
tobacco-man Abel Drugger comes to consult Subtle, and, on being asked his
business, replies:

“I am a young beginner, and am building

Of a new shop, an’t like your worship, just,

At corner of a street. (Here’s the plot on’t).

 And I would know, by art, sir, of your worship,

Which way I should make my dore, by necromancie,

And where my shelves.

And which should be for boxes,

And which for pots. I would be glad to thrive, sir.

And, I was wish’d to your worship, by a gentleman.

One Captain Face, that say’s you know men’s planets

And their good angels and their bad.

Subtle replies:

Make me your dore then, south; your broad side, west;

And on the east side of your shop, aloft,

Write Mathlai, Tarmiel, and Baraborat;

Upon the north-part, Rael, Velel, Thiel;

They are the names of those Mercurial spirits ​{5}

That doe fright flyes from boxes … And

Beneath your threshold, bury me a load-stone

To draw in gallants, that wearre spures …

This passage attests to the practice of geomancy in seventeenth-century

England as complex and developed as that known in China. That it was
referred to as ‘necromancie’ has been a confusing element in geomantic
historical research in the west; it has led to pedantic arguments over
whether the etymological origin of the word geomancy refers to its use only
in counting clods of earth or modifying buildings. This obscurantism is
helped not at all by the word ‘necromancie’, but, when it is considered that
in the Western tradition of ritual magic the geomantic orientation of
buildings is seen in the light of battles within and against the Daemonic
Empire, ‘necromancie’ is a reasonable description,

Although Jonson was obviously poking fun at what he considered the

superstitions of his contemporaries, he has preserved for us a useful vignette
of geomantic practice in England at his time. But again we come up against
the misconceived sceptic. Such a person is superstitious because he or she
believes that such things a geomancy cannot work. In fact, she knows that it
cannot work, because her world-picture tells her so. Thus, all evidence to
the contrary is manufactured, false, or misunderstood. To call the subject
geomancy or necromancie or geocryptology or earth mysteries is to
automatically condemn it in the eyes of the faith-materialist. But that
shouldn’t deter us,

If we observe the common threads in all the geomantic practices of the

world, we will learn something. Either we will see (as the materialists would
have it) a common thread of folly and superstitious misunderstanding of
‘man’s place in Nature’, or we will see the remnants of a once-universal
system of magical technology. I would plump for the latter. The allegorical
language of alchemy did not mean that genuine chemical reactions were
occurring in the alembics, jordanes, urinalls and other quaintly-named
vessels. Modern chemists prefer to forget their debt to their bespectacled
forebears in dingy laboratories, just as the alchemical studies of Isaac
Newton are glossed over by physicists. Allegorical language does not mean
idiocy or charlatanry. Modern physicists talk of quarks and pi-mesons,
charm and colour, but they know what they are talking about. The jargon of
computer programmers is incomprehensible to the uninitiated, yet it is full
of precise meaning. We have been conditioned to think that ‘software’ or
‘interface’ are meaningful whilst ‘veins of the earth’ or ‘wind and water’ are
drivel. It is about time that all concepts, whether ostensibly commonsense
or not, were studied for themselves and not for ulterior motives and personal
advancement in the world of Academe.

The IGR was set up in order to unravel the core of useful geomantic practice
from the overwhelming corpus of material on the subject. We are slowly
moving towards some sort of underlying scheme which was applied at all
times, and this is related direly to the energy system of the planet. It has
always been the intention of reclaiming a functional tradition from this
material in the universal tradition, and bringing this back to use in the
modern era, for our rulers are sorely abusing our planet in the name of
progress and profit, and it cannot continue indefinitely without an
ecotastrophe ensuing. Our towns, constructed solely on cost-effective
planning (except for Milton Keynes shopping centre!) have an undefined
psychological reaction upon their inmates, perhaps reflected in events like
the Neasden tube station riot and the phenomena of Punk, Skinhead and
Bovver. The desacralization of the cosmos has been well documented, yet its
actual effect on the physical and psychological well-being of mankind is still
to be evaluated. The break-down of society by the Industrial Revolution and
the consequent rise of totalitarian creeds has gone hand-in-hand with the
extirpation of geomancy. Geomancy was once a living force, part of the
underlying fabric of society and national life. For the greater part of human
history, it was the orthodox way of ordering human habitation and life. Can
a new synthesis be developed from the workable parts of the old? We must
strive to create one.