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 of the Greek γη, terra, "earth;" and μαντεία, "divination;" it being the ancient custom to cast little pebbles on the ground, and thence to form geomancy, their conjectures: instead of the points afterwards made use of.

Polydore Virgil defines geomancy a kind of divination performed by means of clefts or chinks made in the ground; and takes the Persian Magi to have been the inventors thereof.