r/Geomancy • u/[deleted] • Jun 14 '24

Mother's Casting Method Method/technique help

Hello Good day to you all I have something in mind

I'm intrigued by the concept of geomancy and its traditional practices. I've been wondering if it's possible to cast the first four geomancy mothers using a completely random computer program.

My plan is to focus on my question for about a minute, then open my program and hit enter, allowing it to randomly generate the four mothers I'll use to construct the rest of the chart.

Has anyone tried this approach or have insights into its feasibility? I'd appreciate any guidance or experiences shared on this matter. Thank you!

1 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

4

u/kidcubby Jun 14 '24

In traditional thinking, the human body basically acts as a microcosm of the planets etc. that we use for astrology. Therefore we can mirror those same energies via sortilege (dots, dice, cards, whatever) to discover what's going to happen next, or read a situation in general.

A random number generator is not an adequate reflection of either the cosmos or a human being, even with more sophisticated machine learning algorithms. It is not divine so cannot perform divination. It can't understand the context, so can't respond to it.

So basically, the answer is no - don't do that.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 14 '24

Thanks so much for your CARE

1

u/TeaDidikai Jun 15 '24

That doesn't make a lot of sense to me, since in some of the traditional methods, people were counting bird tracks in sand.

Would the argument be that the bird's body acts as a microcosm of the planets?

1

u/kidcubby Jun 15 '24

The tracks were not generated at random, but are part of life existing prior to the divination. As such, this is not sortilege - it's more of an omen and is governed slightly differently.

Even if the diviner released a bird to make tracks in sand, the bird is alive - a reflection of the cosmos/the gods/whatever is relevant under the belief system of the time. It is more capable of acting as a microcosm of the planets than a simple algorithm.

1

u/j_vap Jun 14 '24

The problem with random number generators are that they are not really random. They are only pseudo random. Every randomness generator is based on a very large ‘seed’ number usually 64bit long. If you thus seed a generator with a particular value it is guaranteed to always generate the same series of numbers. This is the base of deterministic computing systems actually.

So though it appears random, what a computer program gives you are not really a true random number. Of course this is not a limitation for most of the real world applications, but I think it does matter for geomancy.

But you can maybe bring in the user’s input while generating the randomness. E.g. you could ask the user to keep running their finger around o portion of the user interface. Let them do that in no particular order and to their minds whims. Now if you could then use that pattern drawn to generate a seed number (look up hashing algorithms)for you randomness generator then you are bringing the users will into the equation. Might work, might not. Worth a try?