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There are two charts associated with geomancy. The first, known as the Shield chart, derives additional figures from the four generated by drawing the lines. The second, known as the House chart, uses houses similar to those in astrology and is filled in by the figures from the first chart.
The first step is usually called "casting" or "sowing" the points. The casting of the points is the critical process in geomancy; if the geomancer does not cast the points correctly, the tableau will be invalid. The traditional method is to take a stick and make marks in the dirt or sand. A geomancer would likely have made a small tray to hold sand so that his work could be done indoors. In this step, the "querent" (inquirer) or the geomancer draws sixteen lines of points, from right to left, while concentrating on the question he or she wants answered. Each row of holes is poked from right to left and the next row begins beneath it.
Modern geomancers tend not to use the earth in their back yards or their children's sandboxes. Instead, they make marks on paper with a pencil, toss a coin, cast a die or dice, or draw cards from a deck -- any system that will generate a series of sixteen random odd and even numbers. You can also paint four wooden coins, color-coded by element to determine the line, with one dot on one side and two dots on the other.
The sixteen lines of points are grouped in fours, and the points are then counted off two by two, from the right to the left, and connected in pairs, so that each line of points ends either with a pair or with a single point. These single or odd and paired or even points will be grouped to to generate the first four geomantic figures, known as the four mothers. Each figure contains four rows, each of one or two dots. If a line contained an odd number of marks, the geomantic figure would contain a single dot for that line. If the line contained an even number of marks, the figure would contain two dots for that line. The remaining eight geomantic figures used in divination are derived from these four mothers.
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