How to Determine the Right Place and Time for Construction: The Various Aspects of Tibetan Geomancy (sache)
Online
25 março 2025 · 17h00
Esta sessão do Seminário de Formação Avançada em Jardins, Paisagens e Ambiente será apresentada por Petra Maurer (Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, LMU Munich), How to Determine the Right Place and Time for Construction: The Various Aspects of Tibetan Geomancy (sache).
Abstract
How to Determine the Right Place and Time for Construction: The Various Aspects of Tibetan Geomancy (sache) Tibetan geomancy is a field of knowledge that has played a significant role in Tibetan cultural life. Geomantic principles guide the selection of locations for constructing sacred buildings, such as monasteries, stūpas, or hermitages, as well as for dwellings and burial sites.
Tibetan geomancy requires expertise in landscape analysis, including the interpretation of mountain shapes, rock formations, the growth of trees, and the flow of rivers. It also involves knowledge of how to position buildings and arrange their interiors. Once a suitable site is identified, the diviner or astrologer (tsipa) calculates the time-related factors such as the zodiac signs, the five elemental phases (water, fire, earth, wood, and metal), and the trigrams (spar kha), and “nine palaces” called mewa (sme ba) to determine the most auspicious date for construction. These time-related factors also play a crucial role in identifying suitable construction sites. In the 17th century, the chancellor of the Fifth Dalai Lama, the scholar Desi Sanggye Gyatso, compiled the White Beryl (Vaidurya dkar po), one of the major sources of divination. Chapter 32 of this treatise deals with geomancy.
The talk introduces both geomantic aspects: determining the right location by examining the land’s shapes and calculating the timing for construction. It draws on three illuminated manuscripts on Tibetan geomancy housed in the Bavarian State Library in Munich which are based on the White Beryl.
Biography (resume)
Petra Maurer is a Tibetan and Buddhist Studies professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where she completed her habilitation in 2006. At the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, she compiles the “Wörterbuch der tibetischen Schriftsprache”. Previously, she was a research fellow in the Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Fate, Freedom, and Prognostication” at Erlangen University and lectured at Bonn University, where she received her PhD in 1999. Her scholarly interests range from Tibetan language and religion to traditional sciences such as equine medicine and geomancy.