The sixteen figures

A geomantic figure is a tetragram: four stacked rows, each carrying one point or two. The first row answers to fire, the second to air, the third to water, the fourth to earth. A row with a single point says the element is active in the figure. A double row says it sleeps there. Four rows, two possible states, sixteen figures. The arithmetic has been closed since the first day and no one has ever added anything to it.

None of these sixteen is good or bad in itself. It is something quick introductions rarely repeat, and yet it governs the whole practice. A figure of loss in the house of enemies is excellent news. The most favourable in the set, placed on the house of trials, announces a solid and lasting trial. Meaning is born of the meeting between the figure, the house that receives it, and the question asked. Never of the figure alone.

The sixteen by element

Each figure belongs to an element, which determines its manner of acting far more than its mood. Click a name to go to its entry.

The entries

Each entry gives the pattern, the element, the mode, the planet and the sign attached to the figure, the meaning tradition grants it, its opposite figure and its complement. Opposite does not mean enemy. Two opposite figures answer one another, and their meeting in a single chart is often the most telling point of the reading.

What you cannot do with this page

A chart is not read by adding up sixteen entries. It is the most widespread mistake among beginners, and it produces readings that mean nothing. A figure takes its meaning from the house that receives it, from the accord or discord between their two elements, from its place in the tribunal, and from what you came to ask. The same figure, in the same place, does not say the same thing depending on whether the question is about a contract or about health.

These entries are a dictionary. A dictionary does not make a sentence.

To see how the sixteen combine, read the presentation of the method, the reference on the twelve houses.