The Initial Data Set

[degringolade]

 
Gray Rocks and Pink Flower

 

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I have been working on the different auguries for the world around me.  Not because I have any intention of trying to effect a change, but because I am working on establishing a confidence level for the inputs that might give me a chance to get out of the way of the train.  As I keep reiterating, I am not a true believer, but I do want to take a look to see if there is anything to the supposed relationship between astrology and reality.  I really doubt if I can come up with anything definitive, but I am trying to keep an open mind.  An experiment when you are trying to achieve a certain result isn’t really an experiment. 

So today I am going to be discussing the Tarot card spread that I laid out for my recherches surrounding the Saturn-Neptune conjunction that has the astrology world all atwitter (well, it does bring up some decidedly strange YouTube videos and podcasts, hell even the Illuminati are mentioned).  As I asked in a magic monday question, I use an odd way of dealing out the tarot cards that I cribbed from a very fun trashy novel written by John Michael Greer.  Thankfully Irmgard gave me a reference from a German book on the tarot that at least gave the method a semblance of rigor (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?).  While I was going to keep using the “Greer” method anyway, this at least gave me a thin lifeline to as much respectability to the true believers as I could hope for.

I drew the cards while thinking about the entity I was attempting to understand (the good old USofA in the period between 2-18-2026 and 2-19-2027), as an aid I hand-drew a crude map of the US along with a written description of what I was trying to see on a piece of paper and concentrated on those concept while I did the following draw.

First three cards (the past):

• Warrior of Coins

• Ace of Swords

• Queen of Coins

Second three cards (the present):

• Four of Swords

• Three of Swords

• Warrior of Coins

Third three cards (the future):

• Queen of Wands

• Ace of Coins

• Ten of Wands

Fourth three cards (nature of the road ahead):

• (5) Le Pape

• (0) Le Fou

• (7) Le Chariot

Fifth three cards (road hazards):

• (16) Le feu de ciel

• (4) L’empereur

• (13) La mort

Anyway:  the structure of the spread was odd (at least to me).  The draw worked as follows:  shuffle, pick three cards randomly from throughout the deck (without looking obviously) and put them in a stack on the table.  Reshuffle the deck, pick three cards randomly, put them in a stack to the right of the initial stack and repeat the process, shuffling between each three card draw until you have five stacks with stack one on the left and stack five on the right.

For this post, I am just going to report the actual cards in the draw.  I make no pretense of being one of those who can just look at the cards and come to some kind of epiphany and insight into the meaning.  If you are expecting that sort of twaddle, go to a “professional” who will be glad to tell you what you want to hear for a fee, but I don’t want to have to come up with a half-assed prediction because I am in a hurry.  It will take me a while, a couple of pots of coffee, a couple of days of pondering and I’ll get back to you.

What immediately caught my attention was the first three stacks were exclusively the minor arcana and the second three stacks were exclusively major arcana.  This seems quite odd.

(note:  I use the Knapp-Hall deck because they work best in my almost arthritic hands and I think that they 1.) look cool, and 2.) are much easier to shuffle than those damned oversize cards.)