Chapter 2C: A matter of belief
Geomancy provides us with access to a weird world in which the boundaries between real and imaginary, inside and outside, become somewhat blurred - and in that things have not only to be seen to be believed, but sometimes have to be believed to be seen.
- perhaps the hardest aspect of working with geomancy is learning to identify the boundary between reality – however weird it may be – and mere wishful thinking: and belief plays an important part in this
- as with all forms of divination, geomancy can sometimes succeed simply because people believe or hope that it will: this can lead to the mistaken assumption that geomancy is only about belief, which it certainly isn’t
- everything we deal with in geomancy is real: the difficulty is that the boundary between ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ is rarely what it seems at first sight, because belief itself is part of what defines reality – with the result that sometimes have not only to be seen to be believed, but also have to be believed to be seen
Chapter 2D: A matter of skill
For working in the real world, pre-packaged systems and methods of geomancy will never be enough: to learn the skills involved in managing 'the ten thousand things', we need to understand the mechanics of each problem - basic principles of geomancy such as safety and security, energy and flow, pattern and relationship, time and space - and become aware of our own approaches to the issues.
- geomancy is a skill – but what exactly is meant by ‘skill’?
- in practice, every skill appears as a system of methods for working on the world – but the methods themselves arise from the way we approach the underlying principles, with our own judgement, our own awareness, our own experience, and (where relevant) our own dexterity
- since every context is different, and every person is different, the ‘correct’ solution for any context depends on a skilled interpretation of who, what, when, where and why; predefined and prepackaged ‘systems’ are useful, but can never provide more than basic guidelines