Geomancy & Geomythics

The term "Geomancy" is derived from the Latin "geomantia," which in turn is derived from the Greek “divination by earth.” Technically, the term geomancy refers to the ancient art of earth divination in which, basically handfuls of soil or other materials, were scattered on the ground, or markings made to make patterns in the sand or soil. In its original form, a geomantic figure was then created by making lines of random numbers of dots in the sand, which would then be "read" by the geomancer (seer). Geomancy is also termed the mother of Astrology as most astrological symbols and houses actually came from the older craft of Geomancy.
Geomancy as a means of divination persists as an occult practice.

Following John Michell’s massively influential work The View Over Atlantis (1969), the term Geomancy has come to be understood as the art of enchanting the landscape so that man is in harmony with his surroundings. Sometimes described as Sacred Engineering, it is something the ancients were particularly skilled at, evidence of which can be seen in the siting of megalithic structures and terrestrial workings around the world. To this day we still do not fully understand how they achieved this massive task, or why, but this megalithic network provides evidence that the earth was surveyed at an early pre-historic date.

Anthony Roberts took this a stage further and introduced the term Geomythics, meaning the myth in the landscape - the “geomyth.”

Geomythics has been described as the interaction of mythology and landscape; the living spirit of the earth communicating fluently through the language of geomythics.

The relationship between geomancy and geomythics is best described by Anthony Roberts as he explains in his book Sowers of Thunder:

Geomancy

Until recently this word represented part of the general magical canon that was applied to the complex disciplines of terrestrial divination This augury was based on physical, mainly organic, oracles (earth, wood, stones, sand, etc.) and was usually employed foretell and explain events of a decidedly earthly nature.

However, with the growing knowledge of prehistoric culture geomancy is rapidly gaining credence as a shorthand for the ancient art of landscape engineering. This universal land sculpture is representative of a schematic, sacred pattern which balances the cosmic and telluric forces that move the engines of creation through an energizing fusion of alchemical subtlety. Geomancy is really a study of mystical science, expressed through visionary recognition of a magically orientated landscape. Only a really advanced culture is capable of perceiving its all pervasive mean and it is this book's contention a culture once existed at the remotest of periods.

The art of geomancy is made up of numerous esoteric and esoteric disciplines, resulting in a systematic interpretation of the interrelation of matter and energy in a balanced, proportional ratio It is based upon a form of spiritual magic, a divination of those centres of natural energy upon the earth's surface that Seasonally fuse with the fertilizing cross currents of extraterrestrial forces. The sublime monuments of prehistoric society, such as standing stones, earthworks, terrestrial zodiacs, mazes, stone circles and shaped hills, formed definite, coherent patterns across the face of the planet, all significantly sited according to the laws of practical geomancy. This argues a common knowledge some where within the depths of time that linked living (human) beings with the planet's eco system through a topographical perspective of spiritual engineering.

The whole terrain was once laid out in perfect proportion to the forces and properties that interacted within it and around it. To put it more simply, geomancy consisted of modifying certain features of the landscape to blend with the mystical energies emanating from the area's natural shaping and distribution of telluric forces. At the roots of geomancy lies geometry, and the geometrical relationships between all phenomena make up the determining patterns that assert geomantic reality in an intellectually definable form.

Geomancy is integral to the modern interpretation of giant and fairy myths because of the intimate association such beings have always had with the oldest magical sites of prehistory.

Geomythics

The intellectual exactitude involved in weaving together such subjects as myth, folklore, architecture, religion, anthropology and geophysics has made it necessary to coin a new word that attempts to sum them all up. The author has created the portmanteau word 'geomythics', meaning earth myths or myths in relation to the earth's metaphysical situation topographically, historically and in cosmic time and space. Religious, sociological and historical manifestations are all translated through physical place into physical presence, where they are interpreted by Homo sapiens and fused into a functioning rationale for coherent existence.

Geomythics gives that rationale a new meaning as an organic integration because it embraces the central, fertilizing power of magic in a context of mythical reality and works through physical emanations allied to topographical location. The geomythic is really a blending of the physical and the symbolic, a necessary combination when studying the supernatural patterns of the past.

It is hoped that this new discipline will eventually take its place among the rapidly advancing 'natural sciences' of the future (geomancy, radiesthesia, paraphysics, etc.) where it’s synthesizing effects will help give a general perspective and understanding.

Geomythics provides the linking key to all 'interface phenomena' through a structurally accurate interpretation of the all embracing vision. It mythically encapsulates precise historical data and analysis (subjective and objective) showing it in its eternally triadic context of physical form, cyclic periodicity and direct morphological emphasis.

Sowers of Thunder: Giants in Myth and History
Anthony Roberts, 1978, pp xiv - xvi


* * *

The Bermuda Triangle

Over 1700 ships and planes have allegedly disappeared without trace or lost their crews in the area of the Atlantic Ocean known as the Bermuda Triangle. Although most of these disappearances have been accounted for, others await a satisfactory explanation.

December 5, 1945

A training flight from Naval Air Station (NAS) Fort Lauderdale, Florida of 5 TBM Avenger torpedo bombers went missing on December 5, 1945 while over the Atlantic. The incident has become known as Flight 19, lost with 14 crewmen.

As it became obvious that Flight 19 was indeed lost, several air bases, aircraft and merchant ships were alerted. A Catalina sea plane left after 18:00 to search for the Flight and guide them back if they could be located. Two PBM-5 Mariner flying boats were despatched later that day on a rescue mission for Flight 19. PBM-5 BuNo 59225 took off at 19:27 from Banana River NAS which called in a routine radio message at 19:30 and was never heard from again

At 19:50 the tanker SS Gaines Mills reported seeing a mid-air explosion, then flames leaping 120 feet (37 m) high and burning on the sea for 10 minutes. Captain Shonna Stanley, reported searching an oily sea for survivors, but found none. The escort carrier USS Solomons also reported losing radar contact with an aircraft in the same position and time.

The impression is given that the Flight 19 encountered unusual phenomena and anomalous compass readings, and that the flight took place on a calm day under the supervision of an experienced pilot, Lt. Charles Carroll Taylor. Adding to the intrigue is that the Navy's report of the accident was ascribed to "causes or reasons unknown." [1]

The Search for Flight 19
In the 1960’s while searching for the "Atocha” Treasure hunter Mel Fisher and his crew found what seemed to be one of the missing Avenger planes, on the ocean bed about 20 miles west of Key West, Florida. One of Fisher’s crew is reported as saying that it looked like it had “gotten lost and run out of fuel”. Navy records have revealed that the Avenger found by Fisher was not one of the planes from Flight 19. Apparently this plane had been reported lost from Key West some three months before Flight 19 disappeared. [2]

In 1986, the wreckage of an Avenger was found off the Florida coast during the search for the wreckage of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Aviation archaeologist Jon Myer raised this wreck from the ocean floor in 1990. He was convinced it was one of the missing planes, but positive identification could not be made. In 1991, the wreckage of five Avengers was discovered off the coast of Florida, but engine serial numbers revealed they were not Flight 19. They had crashed on five different days "all within a mile and a half of each other." Records showed training accidents between 1942 and 1946 accounted for the loss of 94 aviation personnel from NAS Fort Lauderdale (including Flight 19.)

In 1992, another expedition located scattered debris on the ocean floor, but nothing could be identified. In the last decade, searchers have been expanding their area to include farther east, into the Atlantic Ocean. It has been determined through Navy records that the various discovered aircraft, including the group of five, were declared either beyond repair or obsolete, and simply disposed of at sea; over the side. The search for Flight 19 goes on.

A Navy report on the incident concluded that Flight 19 became disoriented and ditched in rough seas when the aircraft ran out of fuel, while the PBM was a victim of mechanical failure.
The Navy's official version of events of the disappearance of Flight 19 is still questioned by conspiracy theorists.

A fictionalized version of Flight 19 is featured in the 1977 science fiction film Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Vincent Gaddis coined the term The Bermuda Triangle in Argosy's February 1964 issue, said disappearances occur "in and about this area” on the Atlantic coast of Florida, Puerto Rico and the mid-Atlantic island of Bermuda; most incidents concentrated along the southern boundary around the Bahamas and the Florida Straits. A year later, Gaddis produced a book about sea mysteries called Invisible Horizons, he included his article as a chapter called The Triangle of Death.

Occurrences have been recorded in this area long before the Flight 19 incident with the loss of aircraft and crew in the area dating from the 1940’s through the century to relatively recently in 2003, when Piper PA-32-300 N8224C disappeared over the Exumas, Bahamas. To date no satisfactory explanation has been provided.

Christopher Columbus is reportedly the first person to document bizarre phenomena in the area of the Bermuda Triangle, he and his crew observed "strange dancing lights on the horizon", flames in the sky, and at another point he wrote in his log about erratic compass bearings in the area:

"The land was first seen by a sailor (Rodrigo de Triana), although the Admiral at ten o'clock that evening standing on the quarter-deck saw a light, but so small a body that he could not affirm it to be land; calling to Pero Gutiérrez, groom of the King's wardrobe, he told him he saw a light, and bid him look that way, which he did and saw it; he did the same to Rodrigo Sánchez of Segovia, whom the King and Queen had sent with the squadron as comptroller, but he was unable to see it from his situation. The Admiral again perceived it once or twice, appearing like the light of a wax candle moving up and down, which some thought an indication of land. But the Admiral held it for certain that land was near..." [3]

Occurrences of disappearances of ships in the area has been frequently reported, the earliest being the disappearance of Thomas Lynch, Jr. and his wife while sailing to West Indies in 1779. The trend continued through the 19th Century culminating in 1918 when the USS Cyclops (left) went missing without a trace with a crew of 309 sometime after March 4, 1918, after departing from the island of Barbados. The incident is the single largest non-combat loss of life in the history of the US Navy.

It would appear that even being on land does not guarantee safe passage; in August 1969 the two keepers of the Great Isaac Lighthouse in Bimini (Bahamas) was discovered abandoned, the two men disappeared without trace never to be seen again.

Explanations for the mysterious disappearances range from human or compass errors, hurricanes and freak weather conditions, vortices's from unknown worlds, UFO’s, remnants from the Atlantis civilisation, and some explain the Legend of the Bermuda Triangle as a manufactured mystery, being an area of no more incidents than any other.

Disappearances in the area continue into modern times when it seems inconceivable in our technological age that something could vanish off the face of the earth without trace.

* * *

Ghosts of the SS Watertown
Another unexplained sea tale from the Gulf of Mexico which is seen by some as definitive proof of ghosts.

December 4, 1924

Tragedy struck the oil tanker S.S. Watertown, when crew members James Courtney and Michael Meehan were cleaning a cargo tank as it sailed toward the Panama Canal from New York City in December of 1924. Through a freak accident, the two men were overcome by gas fumes and killed. The two men were buried at sea off the Mexican coast on December 4, as was the marine custom of the time.

But this was not the last the remaining crew members were to see of their unfortunate shipmates. The next day, before dusk, the first mate reported seeing the faces of the two men in the waves off the port side of the ship. They remained in the water for 10 seconds, and then faded. For several days thereafter, the phantom-like faces of the sailors were clearly seen by other members of the crew in the water following the ship. On arrival in New Orleans, the ship's captain, Keith Tracy, reported the strange events to his employers, the Cities Service Company, who suggested he try to photograph the eerie faces. Captain Tracy purchased a camera for the continuing voyage.

The SS Watertown departed and continued its scheduled voyage to New York City. When the faces again appeared in the water, Captain Tracy took six photos, and then locked the camera and film in the ship's safe. When the film was processed in New York, five of the exposures showed nothing but sea foam. The sixth one showed the ghostly faces of the doomed seamen. The negative was
checked for fakery by the Burns Detective Agency, which found no sign of tampering. After
a third voyage, the ship's crew was changed and there were no further reports of any sightings. [4]

Notes:

1. The Mamoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries – Colin Wilson & Damon Wilson, Robinson 2000, p.59.
2. Charles Berlitz’s World of Strange Phenomena Omnibus Edition, 1995, p.485.
3. Christopher Columbus log dated October 11, 1492
4. Charles Berlitz Ibid. p.85

Further reading:

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE
Charles Berlitz

The classic account of the Bermuda Triangle. Other books, debunk, but this is the classic book that started it all.

First published in 1975, an investigation into mysterious and paranormal occurrences in the Bermuda Triangle, which discusses various theories for the area's notorious record of disappearing ships, such as UFOs, electromagnetic impulses, and even space time-warps.



WITHOUT A TRACE by CHARLES BERLITZ
This book, subtitled More evidence form the Bermuda Triangle, is filled with startling stories of strange occurrences with the Bermuda Triangle: peculiarities of sea and weather; the appearance of "ghost ships" and a catalogue of vessels which have disappeared from 1800 through to 1976; clouds that seem to chase the capture ships and planes; time warps; and the possibility of a doorway in the area leading to another dimension, or even to outer space. The result is a book filled with an abundance of evidence and information to support some startling theories and explanations concerning events that continue to haunt the Bermuda Triangle

* * *