The Origin of Islamic Geomancy in Graeco-Roman Astrology
The astrological origin of Islamic geomancy Wim van Binsbergen1 © 1996-2004 Wim van Binsbergen 1. GEOMANCY AND ITS DISTRIBUTION IN TIME AND SPACE Perhaps the best way to introduce the geomantic family of divination systems, and their enormous cultural historical significance, is by pointing out that it, and it alone, provides the answer to that unfortunately overlooked, yet inspiring, question of modern scholarship: What do a nineteenth-century CE German farmer, a twentieth-century CE typing-girl from Botswana, and a late first- millennium CE Arabian sage have in common? First introduced into West European intellectual life in the 11th century CE, when numerous Arabic texts were translated, geomancy as a divination method became associated with the most prominent representatives of the occult sciences in medieval and Renaissance times, including Bernardus Silvestris, Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Cornelius Agrippa and Robert Fludd. As in the 1 This paper was read at The SSIPS/ SAGP 1996, 15th Annual Conference: ‘Global and Multicultural Dimensions of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy and Social Thought: Africana, Christian, Greek, Islamic, Jewish, Indigenous and Asian Traditions’, Binghamton University, Department of Philosophy/ Center for Medieval and Renaissance studies (CEMERS), October 1996. The anthropological field-work by which this paper was originally inspired, was conducted in 1988-1994 in Francistown (Botswana) and surrounding regions, occasionally extending into adjacent parts of Zimbabwe. I am indebted to my main teachers of
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