64274134 Astrological Origin of Islamic Geomancy

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World? This opens up a veritable Pandora s box. We are dealing here with one
of the most powerful symbols that Man has developed. Its antiquity is suggested
not only by its ubiquity,70 but also by the way in which the earth appears as a
69
Papyrus Berlin 8320 (Koptische Texte), as quoted in: de Jong, K.H.E., 1921, De magie bij de
Grieken en Romeinen, Haarlem: Bohn, pp. 238f; further brief reference to this text in: Meyer, M., &
Smith, R., 1994, Ancient Christian magic: Coptic texts of ritual power, San Francisco: Harper Collins,
p. 367, n. 75, l. 18, cf. p. 161; also cf. Isaiah 14: 13-14; Ezekiel 28: 2.
70
E.g. it is a major aspect of religions throughout Africa (cf. Schoffeleers, J.M., 1979, ed.,
Guardians of the Land: Essays on African territorial cults, Gwelo: Mambo Press) and around the
Mediterranean (van Binsbergen, W.M.J., forthcoming (a), Religion and social organisation in north-
Wim van Binsbergen: The astrological origin of geomancy (1996) p. 30
fundamental, independent moral category in myths, oaths and rituals from
Mesopotamia, Greek and Roman Antiquity, West and East Africa, while even
the pacifist marabouts of North West Africa, administrators of collective oaths
by saints associated with local shrines, may also be considered land priests in
Islamic garb.71 Many layers of reference are piled up here, making for a multi-
referential coding whose co-ordinates in space and time are typically complex
and confused, but together elucidating the implied symbolism and the possible
original inspiration of geomancy in particular, and more implicitly of board-
games. There is the maternal (and psychoanalytically oedipal), nurturative,
agriculture-related symbolism of unfathomable and ungraspable earth as the
source of life. But there is also the symbolism of fragmented and tangible earth,
dust, mud, dirt, pebbles, as the lowly (psychoanalytically anal) origins of man
and of life in general. There is the combination of these two themes in the black
and red , the fertile alluvial soil (symbolised by Osiris) as against the barren
desert (symbolised by Set), which was how Ancient Egyptians conceptualised
their country and an inspiration (besides the moon s phases and the
hemerology of lucky and unlucky days) for the binary symbolism underlying
e.g. geomancy. There is earth with its four cardinal directions (essentially
derived from the specific symmetry structure of the human body: left and right,
back and front, which makes for square representations (reproduced in many
square game-boards), rectangular grids as subdivisions, and in general a
preponderance of the figure 4 or higher powers of 2.72 There is earth as the time-
less repository of the dead, as the underworld or the gate to the underworld,
hence the alternative source of power, knowledge, legitimacy of political and
ritual office...
western Tunisia, Volume I:Kinship, spatiality, and segmentation, Volume II: Cults of the land, and
Islam; and references cited there.
71
Cf. Gellner, E.A., 1969, Saints of the Atlas, London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson.; van Binsbergen
& Wiggermann, 2000; Fontenrose, J., 1980, Python: A study of Delphic myth and its origins,
Berkeley etc.: University of California Press; paperback edition, reprint of the 1959 first edition;
Fortes, M., 1945, The Dynamics of Clanship among the Tallensi, London: Oxford University Press for
International African Institute; Fortes, M., 1949, The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi, London:
Oxford University Press for International African Institute; Simonse, S., 1992, Kings of disaster:
Dualism, centralism and the scapegoat king in southeastern Sudan, Leiden etc.: Brill.; van Binsbergen,
W.M.J., forthcoming (a).
72
Pennick, N., 1992, Secret games of the gods: Ancient ritual systems in board-games, York Beach
(Maine): Weiser, reprint of the 1989 ed; first published London: Century, 1988; this is an utterly
unscholarly text which yet makes many good points.
Wim van Binsbergen: The astrological origin of geomancy (1996) p. 31
Was all this merely New Age, Coca Cola-ized scholarship, the flotsam of avid
but amateur reading, or did it contain shimmerings of true insight? What could
be the context where so many, apparently similar and converging, themes could
be absorbed, digested, mediated? In the process, how could I be sure that I was
making any progress, or even, that I was comparing the comparable? Was it
enough to have somewhere in a Near Eastern or Mediterranean cosmology or
religion some disconnected geomantic traits, such as a fundamental dichotomy
and a foursome, to jump to historical conclusions, or was it necessary that the
milieu displaying such features had used them specifically for the construction
of, specifically, a divination system? In the absence of a rich corpus of transitory
and preparatory forms of geomancy, such ideas (and the predictable alternatives, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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