A Note on Astrology, Divination, and Magic Of the numerous
practices employed in the medieval Islamic world to foretell
future events or discern hidden things, astrology was by far the
most popular. Its primary use was in the preparation of
horoscopes. These were intended to indicate the influences of
the stars and the planets on a person either at birth or at
other times in his or her life, though horoscopes were also
commonly used to determine the wisdom of undertaking a
particular course of action. The next most popular form of
divination was known in Arabic as ‘ilm al-raml ('the science of
the sand'), which came to be known as 'geomancy' in medieval
Europe. Unlike astrology, geomancy did not require astronomical
observations and calculations. Instead, divination was
accomplished by forming and then interpreting a design, called a
'geomantic tableau' consisting of 16 positions, each occupied by
a geomantic 'figure'. There are several manuscripts at NLM with
geomantic tableaux, as well as the generation lin