Sorry the updates are still few and far between. I went to the Wyrd Astrology, Tarot and Divination meeting yesterday, which was great. An unfortunate side-effect of these meetups is that I always come away from them with a list of decks I want to purchase. This time, I bought Kaiser Playing Cards and Golden Deluxe Russian Playing Cards. I am still enthusiastic about becaming a master playing-card reader. It will happen… just takes time that I don’t have at the moment!

On a whim, I purchased Titania’s Oraqle yesterday. It’s a book that tells your fortune in this fashion:

1. You find the question on the front flap that most closely matches what you want to know. There are 100 listed, and they cover the gamut from “Am I right to be cautious of …?” to “What does my future husband look like?” Make note of the number of your question.
2. You place your hand over a wheel with 13 iconic symbols in it. Things like an eyeball, a shovel, a paper hat, etc. You close your eyes, and wait for your finger to be drawn to a specific area of the page. Remember which picture you selected.
3. On the back flap, is a table that tells you what page to read, based on your question number and selected symbol. That page has your answer.

Make sense? So, for instance… I want to know how our weekly tarot get-together will go. I look over the list of questions, and see a few relevant ones. Let’s select question 17, “Will I have a successful meeting?” Ok. I put my hand over the symbol wheel, and think of my question. I wait for my hand to be drawn to an area of the page with my eyes closed, and I select: the candle. I go to the back, and see that question 17 for the candle is on page 53. My answer is:

Not perfectly. Another party will be heavily preoccupied.

Pretty cool, huh? It is not the most deep or serious divination method, obviously, but everyone I show it to has fun with it.

I don’t normally go for things like this, honestly. But, I did two questions in the bookstore, and both times I was sent to page 88. I took that as a sign.

Sorry for the lack of updates… I work in the financial markets, and as you can imagine, I have my hands full!

This weekend I’m going to a dowsing conference, and I’m very excited! It will be good to have some fun. I may post some pics from my phone as I take them. [Edit: I took some pics, but most of them came out unfortunately blurry... oh well...]

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a cartouche reading, so I thought I’d send one your way. So many decks, so little time…

Anyway, here’s a 3-card draw for today:

That’s Air + Sirius + Anubis (Reversed). I am always impressed with how insightful this simple deck is. It’s currently the only deck I read with reversals, simply because there are only 25 cards in the first place… so I find it helps me flesh out the meanings.

So, today, it’s warning me that all of my hobbies and businesses (Air) are taking a lot of strength (Sirius), and that this is leaving me feeling vulnerable (Anubis Rev.). You can also read Sirius as foresight and grand plans, which fits nicely into my business activities as well. Air implies that there are a lot of things to juggle, and some inconstancy (“inconstancy” being the name of a card from the Tarot d’Eltynne that I pulled yesterday…) in terms of focus.

The last card, Anubis, is all about protection and diplomacy… so this stands as a warning that if I start to get stetched too thin, I may dispense with whatever tact I have. In other words, I could get touchy and snappy. Greeeeat…. thanks a lot, cartouche cards…

Ok, but honestly, I believe that. So, I’ve got some work that has to get done by 6:45 PM tonight, but after that I’m going to try to take it easy a bit. Chill with the cats. Stuff like that.

This was more practice with the Kapherus card meanings… I just pulled 3 cards with an eye toward learning something about my… (you guessed it!) work.

Here’s what I got:

Immediately my eyes fixated on the 8 of Spades over there on the right. That didn’t bode well! But, it would have to wait, as I’m trying to be methodical about these readings while I learn.

So, first off, the suits. We have an increase in power or money (clubs + diamonds) leading to some sort of blockage or problem (diamonds + spades). I see…

Now, I remembered from my last Kapherus reading that the Queen of Clubs often represents a business associate. So the increase in money sounds to me like the increase in subscribers that the woman I work with claims is coming in September. The activity in the financial markets is relatively dormant over the summer, but picks up steam again after the US Labor Day holiday.

All that’s great, so far, except now we get to the 8 of Spades… the card of disappointment! So, I think I will not be very impressed with the additional money coming my way. New subscribers to my service won’t magically come out of the woodwork, like my Queen of Clubs has been implying they would.

Ok, fair enough… I’ll just have to work harder!

Just a quick update. I did a quick geomancy reading on how the rest of the night’s work would go. I used the simple draw-dashes-on-paper-with-your-eyes-closed method I’ve been showing you in previous posts. Today I got:

… acquisitio, which you may recall is a favorable geomantic figure. It stands for gain, and things within my grasp. Very nice!

I hope you all are enjoying the geomancy stuff… this week’s posts will give more elaborate and interesting reading methods. But, you have to crawl before you can walk, and these single-figure readings are also fun, to me anyway!

One really interesting way to understand tarot card meanings is to investigate their relative positions on the tree of life. I’ll give you an example. Check out the three horizontal paths on the tree:

From the topmost (highest/purest energy) horizontal path, you have the Empress/Daleth. The middle path, just below the abyss, is Lust/Teth. Then the lowest path is The Tower/Pe. Given that the Empress is attributed to Venus and love, and an alternate name for The Tower is “War,” then you can see the way the purity of the concept degrades as you go down the tree:

Another example: The 2 and 3 of Cups are above the tree’s abyss, and Crowley calls them “Love” and “Abundance.” The 4 of Cups is the highest energy water card below the abyss, and it is called “Luxury.” Think about the statement being made, about the relative purity of love and abundance, versus luxury. Kinda neat. There are a lot of interesting relationships like that, encoded on the tree of life.

Ok, well, as I mentioned in my last post, the spirits instructed me to wait a while before trying to contact them again. So, I did, but I waited a bit too late. I was really tired, and had this weird conversation:

I decided I would try again in the morning when I wasn’t so tired… and hopefully the responses would be a bit less nonsensical.

Well, that was interesting! So, when I go to google maps on my phone, and search for ‘slano, michigan,’ I get a hit on an insurance company near Michigan (but not in it). When I search for ‘Slan Michigan,’ I get an insurance company on Slan St. in Toronto (near Michigan by some definitions of ‘near’). However, further web searching made me think it actually was ‘Solano, Michigan.’ Because, when I search for that, I see a Solano Dr. near a lake (the pond?) in actual Michigan.

Linda suggested that maybe the “insurance” isn’t a policy, but actually a dead body… like insurance in the form of blackmail or something. So my enthusiasm for dredging the lake has died down somewhat…

Anyway, I’m going to try to keep doing the pendulum seance exercise regularly, to improve my accuracy and effectiveness. If you go look at the last one I did, you’ll see that the spirit seemed to be asking for help, and today’s seemed to want something as well. Maybe at some point I’ll get accurate enough that I can actually lend a living hand…

Tonight, I once again got out my trusty pendulum, and my make-shift oija board. The first session was rather short:

Ok… So I’m waiting…

I thought since I’ve been making posts about geomancy, I’d better at least give you a basic run-down of the meanings of the 16 figures. I’m getting the majority of these meanings from John Greer’s book.

Here they are, grouped logically. Most of the figures come in pairs of opposites. I think it’s easiest to learn them this way, as the opposite figure usually has the opposite meaning:

 and 

• puer: Rashness, violence, energy. Generally unfavorable except in matters of love and war.
• puella: Harmony and happiness. A favorable figure for nearly all questions.

 and 

• amissio: Transcience and loss. Favorable for love but very unfavorable for material matters.
• acquisitio: Success, profit, and gain. Things within one’s grasp.

 and 

• albus: Peace, wisdom, purity. Favorable but weak.
• rubeus: Passion, power, fierceness, and vice. Crowley mentions in the Book of Thoth that this is one of the least favorable figures.

 and 

• fortuna major: Great good fortune, inner strength. Power and success.
• fortuna minor: Outward strength, help from others. Good for any matter in which a person wishes to proceed quickly.

 and 

• tristitia: Sorrow, suffering, illness, and pain. Unfavorable.
• laetitia: Happiness and health. Crowley says in the Book of Thoth that this is probably the most favorable of the geomantic figures.

 and 

• cauda draconis: A doorway leading out. Favorable for losses and endings, but generally unfavorable for other questions.
• caput draconis: A doorway leading in. Favorable for gains and beginnings, and generally neutral.

… and the final four are symmetric around their center, and as such, have no opposite figure:

 and   and   and 

• conjunctio: Combination of forces or people. Recovery of things that have been lost. Neither favorable nor unfavorable.
• carcer: Restriction, delay, limitation, inprisonment. Generally unfavorable.
• populus: Multitude, a gathering of likes (good with good, evil with evil). Neither favorable nor unfavorable.
• via: Change, movement, alteration of fortune. Favorable for journeys and voyages.