Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
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The Figure via and Its Attributions

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The Figure via and Its Attributions

Via is one of the two extremes of the geomantic set. Every one of its four rows holds a single point, which makes it the lightest figure in the system at four points in total, and the only one whose rows are all alike apart from Populus.

Reading the four rows

The rows are read from the top down as Fire, Air, Water and Earth. In the common reading a single point marks that element as active in the figure and a double point marks it as passive. Authors differ on the wording, but not on which rows are single, so Via reads as all four elements active at once.

What flipping it produces

Turn every row of Via from single to double and you get Populus, its opposite in the set. The two figures are the poles between which the other fourteen sit, and no third figure has rows that are all alike. Sources use different terms for this operation, so the atlas describes the operation rather than adopting one author's vocabulary.

The attributions

This atlas records Via under the Moon, the sign Cancer and the element Water. Those attributions came to the figure from the astrological tradition rather than out of the point structure, and the handbooks do not agree with one another in every case. The point pattern can be checked by anyone who counts; the planetary and zodiacal assignments are a tradition with variants, and this atlas records the common set without claiming it is the only one.

The Latin name means the road or the way, and the figure has been read since the Latin handbooks as movement, travel and a situation that will not stay still.

Cross-Tradition Connections

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