Arabic Geomancy

This calculator does not cast a chart the way a geomancer would. In ʿilm al-raml, which took shape in the medieval Arabic-speaking world and later travelled to West Africa and medieval Europe, the opening figures came from quick, uncounted marks in sand. Here nothing is random. The page takes only your birth date and turns it into four starting figures with fixed arithmetic, so the same date always gives the same chart.

It first adds every digit of the day, month and year. The remainder of that total after dividing by 16, from 0 to 15, picks one of the sixteen four-row patterns of single and double dots. The plain total gives the first Mother, also shown as your Birth Figure. The other three Mothers use the total multiplied by 3, 7 and 13, plus the day, the month and the last two digits of the year respectively. After that the classical construction takes over. The Daughters are read across the Mothers, top rows first. Each Niece adds two neighbouring figures row by row: two odd rows or two even rows make two dots, a mixed pair makes one. The Witnesses add pairs of Nieces, the Judge adds the Witnesses, and the Reconciler adds the Judge to the first Mother, sixteen figures in all.

Take 14 March 1990. The digits sum to 27, which leaves 11, so Clean Cheek (Naqi al-Khadd, the Latin Puella) becomes both Birth Figure and first Mother. The other Mothers are Way (Tariq), Gathering (Jama'a) and Bond (ʿUqla). The Daughters are Bearded, Red, Outer Help and Bearded again; the Nieces Red, Bond, Bond and Reversal. Bearded and Joy stand as Witnesses, producing a Judge of Inner Seizure (Acquisitio) and a Reconciler of Outer Threshold. The Judge's dots always total an even number, a property geomancers have traditionally used to check their working.

Treat the chart as a set of prompts. Look at the Birth Figure's element, planet and sign, and notice which parts ring true. Compare the Mothers with the Daughters: the same material seen down the columns, then across the rows. A repeated figure, like the doubled Bond above, marks a theme worth a second look. The Witnesses offer two sides of a matter, the Judge sums them, and the Reconciler sets that summary beside where you began. Favourable and unfavourable labels describe a figure's traditional tone, nothing more. The figure names follow the classical Arabic table; planets and signs follow the modern Western scheme, and older manuals assign some signs differently.

At its best the chart is a structured way to reflect on temperament and choices; it cannot tell you what will happen, and its date-based start is a modern stand-in for the hand-cast figures of the original art.