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Geomancy · Figure 3 of 16

Coniunctio, Union: the crossing of two roads

Coniunctio, Union, is the geomantic figure with single points in its two middle lines and double ones above and below: a crossing of roads. The 1655 Of Geomancy makes it the better of Mercury's two figures, and the tradition reads it as meeting and joining.

The figure Coniunctio drawn large: Fire at the head, two points; Air at the neck, one point; Water at the body, one point; Earth at the feet, two points. Below, the sixteen figures small in a row, the 3rd marked. Coniunctio · Union Fire, the head two Air, the neck one Water, the body one Earth, the feet two
Coniunctio, figure 3 of 16: its points head to feet, with the element and part of each line. Below, the sixteen in our order, the eight that can be Judge first.

Facts

Number
Figure 3 of 16; the eight that can be Judge come first
Points, head to feet
2 · 1 · 1 · 2: one point in the Air and Water lines
Total
6 points, even, so it can be the Judge
Planet (1655)
Mercury, the more fortunate of his two figures
Sign (Gerard's scheme)
Virgo, in the Astronomical Geomancy attributed to Gerard of Cremona (1655 English)
Cattan's English (1591)
“coniunction”
Agrippa's glosses (1651)
“Conjunction”, “An Assembling”
Turned over
Upside down: the same figure. Every point swapped: Carcer

Meaning

Coniunctio is a joining: people meeting, things coming together, a lost thing finding its way back. It has no fortune of its own. Cattan counts it among his "meane" figures, good with good figures and ill with ill; Hartmann calls it "rather good than bad"; the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn's handbook says "good with good, and evil with evil", and adds the recovery of things lost. The 1655 Of Geomancy counts both of Mercury's figures as good, and Coniunctio as the more fortunate. Read it with its neighbours, since it brings together whatever they stand for. In our own words, it favours agreements and reconciliations, and goes against the asker only where a meeting is the last thing wanted.

In the shield

With six points, Coniunctio is even and can be Judge, for one casting in eight. Its shape is the same upside down, and with every point swapped it becomes Carcer, the Prison: a crossing set against an enclosure. Its partner under Mercury is Albus. Its head line is double, so when Coniunctio is the Judge there is no Way of the Point under the single-point rule we use, though Cattan's older rule would still follow its double point.

Names and signs

Cattan's English of 1591 calls it "coniunction", and Agrippa's of 1651 glosses it "Conjunction" and "An Assembling". We keep the Latin spelling Coniunctio, as our chart does; most modern books write Conjunctio. Its sign is one of the few the sources agree on: Virgo, in Gerard's scheme, in Agrippa, in Cattan's own table and under Gerard's name on his page 63, and in the Golden Dawn's. Cattan's table of the planets makes it Mercury retrograde, and Albus Mercury direct.

Correspondences

Each item with how it stands: “sourced” is in the work cited, “our construction” is EsoTerrier’s own, and “disputed” means the sources disagree.

Planet
Mercury, in every source checked (Cattan, Agrippa, the 1655 text, Hartmann, Crowley, Fludd) sourced
Direct or retrograde (Cattan, p. 54)
Mercury retrograde sourced
Sign, Gerard's scheme (ours)
Virgo sourced
Sign, other schemes
Virgo in all of them: Agrippa (1651), Cattan's table (p. 56), his “Gerard Cremon” (p. 63) and the Golden Dawn (1909) sourced
Quality (Cattan's rule)
“meane”: neither good nor bad, taking its quality from its company (pp. 62, 215) sourced
Lines
Single, active: Air (neck) and Water (body); double, passive: Fire (head) and Earth (feet) sourced
Our keywords
Meeting, joining, crossroads our construction

How the schools read it

Cattan (1591)
Calls it “coniunction”; “meane”: neither good nor bad, taking its quality from its company (pp. 62, 215).
Agrippa (1651)
Glosses it “Conjunction”, “An Assembling”.
*Of Geomancy* (1655)
Mercury, the more fortunate of his two figures (Coniunctio and Albus are both good, Coniunctio the more fortunate).
Hartmann (1889)
“Conjunctio, union or coming together, is rather good than bad.”
The Golden Dawn (Crowley, 1909)
“Good with good, and evil with evil. Recovery of things lost”
Modern practice (Greer, as reported)
Calls it mobile, giving a direction even to a figure the old rule calls “meane”.
EsoTerrier
Meeting, joining, crossroads (our one-line reading in the chart).

Claims about it

  • Coniunctio is a figure a person is born under, worked out from a name and a birth date.

    false

    What the record shows: No source makes a geomantic figure from birth data; every casting is for a question. Our own app did this until October 2026, and the method was retired.

  • Coniunctio has one zodiac sign.

    disputed

    What the record shows: Every scheme we read gives it Virgo, a rare agreement; elsewhere at least six schemes disagree, so we still say whose sign we show.

  • Coniunctio has an element of its own.

    disputed

    What the record shows: The sources give the figures at least six different sets of elements. We show only the four line elements, never an element for the whole figure.

Elsewhere on EsoTerrier

Sources

Primary texts (6)
  1. Christopher Cattan, The Geomancie of Maister Christopher Cattan Gentleman, translated by Francis Sparry. London: John Wolfe, 1591 (French original, Paris, 1558). wellcomecollection.org/works/gk8r8xpn
  2. Of Geomancy (attributed to Agrippa) and Astronomical Geomancy (attributed to Gerard of Cremona), in Henry Cornelius Agrippa his Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy, translated by Robert Turner. London, 1655. github.com/textcreationpartnership/A26563
  3. Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, translated by J. F. London, 1651; Book II, chapter 48. github.com/textcreationpartnership/A26565
  4. Franz Hartmann, The Principles of Astrological Geomancy. London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1889. archive.org/details/b24884145
  5. [Aleister Crowley], “A Handbook of Geomancy”, The Equinox I(2), 1909, pp. 137 to 161. keepsilence.org/the-equinox/1.2/a-handbook-of-geomancy_low.pdf
  6. Robert Fludd, De naturae simia, second edition. Frankfurt, 1624; De geomantia II.1, pp. 724 to 725. archive.org/details/bub_gb_zINwyYhcsp8C
Studies and other sources (2)
  1. Sam Block, The Digital Ambler, posts on the shield, the Way of the Point, perfection, the elements and the signs, 2012 to 2020. digitalambler.com/2020/05/08/how-to-construct-the-shield-chart-of-geomancy
  2. John Michael Greer, The Art and Practice of Geomancy. San Francisco: Weiser, 2009. Facts only, known through reports.
Our own research (2)
  1. EsoTerrier, geomancy research and validation, 11 to 14 October 2026.
  2. EsoTerrier calculation engine, the geomancy service, its texts and documentation.
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By EsoTerrier. Written with AI assistance from our research and checked against its sources; last revised 19 October 2026. How we write these pages.

First published ; last revised . Corrections: support@esoterrier.com.