(no subject)

[degringolade]

 

Early Ferns

 

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I have never, ever thought that the good times would last forever.  But the other side of that story is I was reasonably certain that I would find a way to manage the crap and keep everything moving, even if it was in the wrong direction with a seriously degraded set of expectations.  I’ve been fairly well off and I have had to scramble.  I can’t say that either condition was that terrible.

So I am wondering to myself why I have been a little bit concerned lately about the short to medium term future.  The news is the same drivel, perhaps more pronounced than usual, so it probably isn’t that.  The weather has been improving and when I wake up now, the view is no longer dark and the sun has been coming out.  The family is in pretty good shape with no world ending dramas in sight.  But for some reason my discomfiture is well up into the “am I just getting unnecessarily worried for nothing?” zone which is the zone just before the “going to hell in a handbasket” zone.

I suppose what makes this thing worse is that my set of beliefs that I use for ordering the world around me has a place for systems that can give a hint about the future.  I think that most folks would be talking about putting me out to pasture for having such archaic thoughts, but in my experience those thoughts have been correct slightly more than they have been incorrect.  I cannot give you hard numbers to support this theory, but that is the best that I can come up with.

But I never asked it stupid shit.  Pretty much what I tried for is to get a hint of the mood of the world I lived in.  I didn’t ask how to make money, I didn’t inquire as to whether or not I would get laid, I just wanted to ask if there was anything out there that I should watch out for and a hint about potential severity.

I suppose that my use of “mystical” means of trying to get a peek into what is coming at me that I am not seeing puts me into the realm of what my former peers would refer to as a “crank”.  For years, casting an I Ching was a daily ritual.  I think that it helped more than it led me to bad places.  I can’t say for a moment that it didn’t steer me wrong sometimes, but overall, I give it a around 65%+ grade.  

About five years ago, I began looking into tarot cards (mixed with the kabbalah). These also yield good results, but for some reason I never really liked the system all that much.  It wasn’t until I read JMG’s excellent trashy tentacle fiction series (Weird of Hali) that I stumbled onto the layout system that seems to work for me.  Imagine my chagrin when I asked directly for a source for this preferred layout when I got this as a reply: 

 It can be used with any divination deck that has a decent number of cards. As for the origins, though, I made it up. I needed those five things to be brought up for the sake of the plot, and that's what my imagination came up with. If anybody gives you trouble, tell them I created it, and just don't mention the circumstances!

I really do like the system, it makes sense and it is kinda linear, but I suppose that an accomplished practitioner of the traditional system would sneer at it, but it seems to work for me so I am sticking with it.  It gives about the same percentage of good calls, but the results do differ and there are times where both systems give completely incorrect answers.

Finally, I just started looking into astrology.  This is almost a case of me being contrary for no apparent reason.  I had just listened to a rant from an old friend about how stupid people must be to believe in that kind of nonsense as science had disproven everything about it.  I did manage to ask where he got his information concerning this and after weathering a rant, he admitted he actually knew nothing about the practice, but it was obviously wrong so he didn’t need to.

Where this is all going is that I am not at all certain that any of these systems provide the necessary granularity to allow them to be used to address personal problems.  It is my belief, and you can rant and rave all you wish, that the use of these things can be best used when looking at large scale human processes and perhaps allow you a way to adapt to events well out of your control.

Comments

Maybe close but no cigar

[emily07]

I have a movie-memory (but not sure which movie, mayb Constatin, maybe the Shadow, maybe something else entirely) where a lot of Oracel cards were used to foretell something (maybe the image was that of just a prop for atmosphere). Anyways I looked at Hajo Banzhaf "Das Tarot-Handbuch" 1986 4. Auflage on page 289 it has a "Zigeunerspiel mit 21 Karten" that uses 3 cards for 7 different sets of ...queries?... (like the condition of the soul, the home, current wishes/hopes, what he hopes to get in that situation, what is a surprise etc.) and maybe that is a kind of root for the one JMG pulled out of his unconscious-connected-min-hat.