GEOMANCY, GEOMANTIA, a kind of divination, performed by means of a number of little points or dots, made on paper at random, and considering the various lines and figures which those points present, and thence forming a pretended judgment of futurity, and deciding
any question proposed. The word is formed from the Greek γεια, or γη, terra, earth, and μανια, divination; the ancient custom being to cast little pebbles on the ground, and thence to form conjectures, instead of the points afterwards made use of. Polydore Virgil defines geomancy to be a kind of divination performed by means of clefts or chinks made in the ground, and of which he conceives the Persian Magi to have been the inventors.