Caves with underwater entries Some caves are isolated by a waterway, resulting in the air inside to be isolated, always at the same temperature and, if the water does not move, perfectly still. For the air to not escape through other cracks, the geology of the cave needs to be in such a fashion that it has little to no cracks. If the waterway falls dry for some time of the year, then the air inside will move for that duration, but otherwise be perfectly still. (from a basic text search in browser: https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/246081/what-geographic-features-could-cause-a-stable-pocket-of-unmoving-air)
Let me tell you a story of an ageless youth. This is a love letter to my self in these times of great change, of groaning and wailing, of horrors and desperations. A portion of the cup bearer’s nectar, if I may, that trickles outward through the spaces of these uttered words. Of a boy who is not quite a man, but might be a girl. Of woman’s work and men’s work. Ganymede. Whose youthful beauty and strength captured the Jovian sight.
We begin with the thunderous King enraptured as eagle, descending to the green fields to pluck the beautiful youth from his sheep tending. Stolen to the court of the undying ones, Ganymede is handed his duty, a cup which ever-pours, to be cupbearer for the gods, displacing the goddess of youth, Hebe.
Ages pass, and in the doing of their office, Ganymede becomes immortal. The child of kings now immortal to watch from afar the affairs on earth. The strivings, joys, expansions and defeats, war and peace. The little things and the big. To watch but not to participate, to observe and think, but no longer to directly touch. Engaged in remembrance as Ganymede is beyond the mortal realm looking ahead, but also down. Let us say, that as the cup-bearer of the gods and watcher from afar, they put forward a request to the great craftsman Hephaestus for an aid in time-keeping. From this request a lustrous silvery-colored metallic fish is constructed, whose articulated scales can each be flipped over to reveal a contrasting color. In doing so, Ganymede can count the earthly days. Counting remembrances. A techne.
The wear, sorrow, and melancholia that steals over the lovely youth as witness to the cycles of time and the repetitions of human doings, the hubris and the failures, but also the joys and celebrations, dresses Ganymede in paradox, the wise youth, forever to remain in pre-pubescence outwardly, yet inwardly an old, aged seer. The time arrives when Jupiter releases the cup-bearer from the court to emplace them amidst the starry fields, and Aquarius the constellation is birthed to swim amidst the deep waters of the Via Lactea.
An equatorial constellation, hard to locate in the night skies, and none of it’s stars are particularly bright. These are just some of the points that stand out when doing a quick search on Aquarius the constellation.
Now I turn to Epimetheus by way of Prometheus, his brother. The two brothers, two sides of the same coin. Forethought and Afterthought in dynamic tension and relation.
Prometheus the name, is Greek, and anciently was interpreted etymologically as “forethinker, foreseer,” from promēthēs “thinking before,” from pro “before” (see pro-) + *mēthos, related to mathein “to learn” (from an enlargement of PIE root *men- (1) “to think”). In another view, Watkins suggests the second element is possibly from a base meaning “to steal,” also found in Sanskrit mathnati “he steals.” (From https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=prometheus)
Epimetheus against the advise of others entwined with Pandora, the first woman, formed of clay. She came to the marriage with a closed jar, a container. “Zeus gave Pandora a storage jar (pithos) as a wedding gift which she opened, releasing the swarm of evil spirits trapped within. These [evil spirits] would forever after plague mankind. Only Elpis (Hope) remained behind [inside the jar], a single blessing to ease mankind’s suffering.”
Contrary to Prometheus defying necessity and fate, calculating, thinking ahead and stealing fire to bring aid to mortals, knowledge, warmth, forward vision, progress; Epimetheus in entwining himself with Pandora unknowingly twined himself with the unknown, both the seen and unseen, the heaving, whirling and coiling rhizome of life. Foolishly disarmed, he comes to embracing the one remaining gift in the cavernous depth of the clay jar, Hope. Not Foresight, that at the peak of exuberance, in hubris provides the tools to construct Life as Idol. Life as idol to enthrone, banishing all the corners and recesses, the cracks, the inaccessible, the whispers, and the plethora unnamed, the dark.
Here Prometheus as fore-thinker becomes in eventuality, attaining arrogance, the fool. And here we are left with Epimetheus, the first fool, dancing with hope in the still air of the cavernous jar stirring the warp and weft, summoning more than can be named. Perhaps even, with Hope, engaged in imaginings, foolish imaginings that dares to weave dreams of different ways of being and living. A ceding of hubris, a ceding of control to allow for a dancing with all these beings, and Hope. It is an engaged surrender that requires an imagination of remembrance and of being with the unseen dead. Since in foolishness Epimetheus did not think first, he acted first, he was disarmed finding himself without recourse. And it is through these actions, these mistakes, that remembrance opens and populates the heart with Hope, Mercy, Humility, and dare I say Grace.
I hold up Epimetheus not as an idol to replace Prometheus and allow for late counsels or rash actions to dictate our current doings, the truth is we are already in the realm of late counsels. Instead I hold up Epimetheus as the bridge to dancing with Hope, the remaining gift. Exactly at the point of embracing this gift and beginning the dance, not with coordinated steps, but the dance of flow, of air that two begin to stir. A rhizomatic, feeling dance.
With these words I drop back into the story of Ganymede, twining iridescent strands between these two stories to unite them in a cohesion of paradoxes and opposites. Of currently unsung world-ings. One of the eternal youth, child of kings, stolen by the gods and taken to the place of gods, disarmed and caught in the volatile flights of the lofty. An aged-wise youth in relation to the foolish sage that brings us hope when all else has ossified inaccessibly or in irrelevance.
I propose alternate livings, by way of these re-woven iridescent strands, a living that arises between the cracks. A living that embodies Ganymede, the dancer at the edges, in the dark, behind the scenes, whose function is to pour and to watch and to inhabit the eternal. Engaged in a surrender that hopes, longs for, yearns, and watches, an Epimethean living.
In French Wikipedia I found a curious little quote, speaking about Ganymede from an alchemical perspective, noted by alchemist Michaël Maïer: “C’est le fixe amené par le volatil à la plus haute dignité.” (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ganym%C3%A8de)
An image here arises: a flowing imagination, interweaving seeing with, seeing into and in between. First, a still air, that in stillness pierces in between the opening cracks, quietly weaving light. A cavernous jar, the cave. The lengthening cracks of towers, foundations, of what is concrete. An agitation of clothe draped arms, shaking the quiet air, stirring upward, downward, around, a whirling. Whirl, whirl, whirl. Moving arms and limbs about these walls, dancing around the boundaries so that that which was still and unseen, stifling unmoving air, penetrates between the cracks. A break.
And so why do I share all this, or what does this have to do with anything related to I? Well, this is me thinking with technologies, and the idols we live with in conjunction with the sorrows that beset us in these dark times. What is ours to do, what shape is our response to all of this grand-scale unfolding around us? The whole machinery we “modern” humans have co-fabricated, what does it mean to respond in our small scale, day-by-day lives, our every-day living? Or what does this mean-ing, look like in metaphor that can be brought into one’s living. Bayo Akomolafe would say, “times are fast, let us slow down.”
I agree.
Let us also learn to dance in this cave, reaching out to hope, dancing with hope, filling our jar with the nectar of these cavernous waters, in order to pour it outward, not for the gods but in hope, as nurture for our surroundings, our localities, our landscapes, our hearts.
I invite you to peruse this list of links that helped inform, enrich, and articulate this essay.
Ivan Illich in Conversation: The Testament of Ivan Illich by David Cayley
It all starts in pieces, two or three sentences on endpapers of a night-table book. A smattering of brief voice notes. Spontaneous scratches and scribbles. Days pass, weeks, a month, three. I keep stewing the matter [in a container], gathering ingredients in the pot. Stirring, turning… It’s in this pot we begin. The cave, the clay jar. But given the nature of these thoughts it will likely spill out in a flood and make meandering sense.
Pandora, first woman, she who is endowed by all gods, the enticing gift for Epimetheus. She holds a jar and in this closed container are the swirling and seething secrets, evils. To speak about Epimetheus is to speak about Pandora, both woman and vessel, through whom the deluge spilled over unto all lands.
Here I am, Epimetheus, not that other, my brother, his liver eaten daily by an eagle. I am this one here with Pandora and her jar, inside Pandora and her jar. Inside, a flood.
Pandora, a gift, a coming together with Epimetheus, and the spilling that turns into a flood. A sequence that when typed up or written down seems almost facile, this one thing led to this other thing and then consequently, oops, the breaking of the container, many things spill forth, the watershed moment. Let’s talk about flooding for a moment, string together a couple notes here and there in between the fractures of the vessel.
When I went looking for information on flooding cycles, the Nile kept turning up as most prominent.
The flooding of the Nile occurred by way of the yearly monsoons in the Ethiopian Highlands. The phase of the event seen through the Egyptian calendar: Akhet (Inundation), Peret (Growth), and Shemu (Harvest), with Akhet covering the flood cycle.
The annual flooding was vital for agriculture in ancient Egypt, as it deposited nutrient-rich silt on the land, making it fertile for crop cultivation. The Egyptians celebrated this event as a gift from the Nile, marking it with festivals such as Wafaa El-Nil. This celebration honors the bounty provided by the river and reflects on its importance in sustaining life in an otherwise arid environment.
This is a flood cycle that forms part of the life rhythm of place; integrated into the dynamics of living. A flood cycle experienced by a people’s and a place that speaks of their relation to water and its waterways.
After this calendar lesson, I went hunting for more on what flooding is from the perspective of its beneficial aspects. I stumbled upon the word floodplains; a wide expanse of flat land next to a river or body of water that periodically experiences overflow, typically due to rains.
In this context, I see ecosystems that express interrelationships with water, land, and sky. A water dance.
Yet, there is complexity here, in its very nature a flooding is a moment of rupture, a crisis “event” when all spills out and intermixes, overwhelms, and clashes. All beings submerged. An influx of rushing water that subsumes it all. Flooding events arise from various causes including heavy rainfall, hurricanes, dam failures, and snowmelt. It is a coming together and over of waters. Boundaries are transgressed, there are no dividing lines in a flood.
In the month of September, heavy rains continually fell in Henan Province, specifically near the Yellow River in China. The persistence of the heavy rains led to the rising of waters of the Yellow River, which led to the breaking of the dikes [boundary lines/containers] that delimited the river’s reach. The flooding was so catastrophic, inundating the landscape, farmland, homes and settlements. Not only did many drown, but the destruction was beyond bounds.
The floodwaters quickly spread across Northern China, inundating around 50,000 square miles (130,000 km²) and affecting millions of people. The flood led to an estimated death toll ranging from 930,000 to 2 million people, making it the deadliest flood in Chinese history and one of the deadliest natural disasters globally.
This is a flooding event as a great sorrow, a crisis, a devastating erasure of bounds, a drowning event. Pandora’s vessel spilled forth all combinations of sorrows and devastation.
As metaphor, flooding also presents us with nuance, one could say this is also the overwhelm of cacophony during certain happenings or events, states of mind when thoughts lack cohesion, excess of information through media like a constant bombardment. Flood does not have to be subsumed to water (definitionally), a flood can encompass a flooding of words, flooding of horrors, flooding of media, flooding of thoughts, flooding of emotions. As metaphor, I can also see the swarms of evil spirits and dis-ease that would forever plague mankind spilling forth from Pandora’s jar.
I speak of floods which have no order, it is a rupture, an inundation of matter and quantity. All things everywhere all at once, but like in all occurrences there are varying perspectives to the flooded moment. There is the sorrow, the devastation, the destruction, the overflow that submerges and subsumes. Then there is the the slow boon of the cleansing, of removing barriers to re-nourish the soil. Shifting the ground, re-positioning. What does Epimetheus tell us about this moment, about flood? It wasn’t exactly water that overwhelmed him as Pandora cracked the vessel and the jar tipped over.
Moreover, what can be gathered, recuperated and salvaged in a flood? The evil spirits spilled out, all the horrors, Epimetheus couldn’t contain them, it was too much too quick. Perhaps these moments of rupture teach us the art of dancing or… swimming amidst the chaos of the flooding event.
In a narrative that has emulated the overarching grandeur of Prometheus, the linear progressivism of this titan, what does his counterpart Epimetheus, husband of Pandora, teach us in this scenario? I read omission as fertile ground for storying with Epimetheus. So I say, the urn flows ever on, outward the waters flow, as there are no details that describe exactly what Epimetheus does, hence, he just is amidst this flood. I see him as pacing himself, slowing down, breathing deeply through what has happened and what is, and from what is, then an articulation of what is his to do can take shape.
Do we let the waters carry us, do we swim through the inundation of waters, things, events, horrors, all the diverse aspects that encapsulate living? Or do we move toward the floodplain and learn to cultivate water gardens, salvaging along the way?
In the span of histories, both reaching back and forward to the present, events of flooding, both tangible and metaphorical, occur. Do we know how to recognize when we are amidst such events when they are happening at the metaphorical level? And what is ours to do amidst these moments in time? When all things inundate our awareness and our attention? Have we each cultivated a floodplain area in our lives to allow for the seeding of these waters to bring benefit as well?
Turning the fractal coin of the matter once more, I look at whole systems thinking. Which is thinking with things as interconnected webs of agencies and events, a dynamic thinking with…
My apprehension here is that Epimetheus is the teacher of whole systems thinking. Yes, I know he is afterthought… Perhaps more than this, he can be viewed as harbinger of thinking with all things as they happen at once. Pandora’s name is all-gifts. Not good gifts, nor bad gifts. All- Gifts. All things intermingled. LIFE. Epimetheus teaches that we must all get comfortable with a degree of uncertainty, and how to life amidst this uncertainty, how to swim in these flooded waters. I add a qualifier to the movement, that pacing is the key that Epimetheus hides in his teaching, which aids in seeing what needs salvaging and what can be let go.
Pacing, moving with the moment so as to allow one’s self to flow with the current, the waves, the great wave that overcomes. I imagine a submersion under the weight of the occurrence, or many leaves swirling in a wind gust, a spiral dance. I like to en-vision Epimetheus like this, the submerged dancer, an immersed swimmer. Through Pandora and the spillage we re-gather and salvage the gems of Epimethean wisdom.
Now I spiral back to Ganymede, the story of the Aquarian constellation. A linked story through meandering ways. The horror of the theft, taken hostage, given immortality before reaching adulthood, the jar, eternal-pouring. Constrained by a divine court to pour, dreaming of the depths, of unleashing the bounds, ever-pouring one. The vessel from which outpours the inky black waters of the starry heavens speckled with jewels, the marker of floods in calendrical systems. Ganymede as an expression of Epimethean embodiment.
In these threaded stories is formed a woven wisdom, of rupture, flood, sorrow, loss, cleansing, renewal; but far seeing and deep like the waters of the starry way. Something about cycles, what is inevitable, what breaks the bounds to reshape the landscapes, something about transformation.
~~~
Manilius, Book 4.272 (Astronomica, Loeb Classical Library, 1977).
Previously, I spoke about the suits in Cyprian’s deck, mapping their stories and context. Now I want to turn to the keys, well, what I mean to say, keywords. If you take a look at a Lenormand or Fortunetelling deck, each card typically has an inset playing card, an illustration, and a word that goes with the illustration. This is what I will be sharing here but specifically pertaining to Cyprian’s deck.
As a caveat, I will say, these keywords point to the illustration, but as we play with spreading the cards to answer a question, you will find these keywords play with their designations and meanings in relation. So a bouquet is a bouquet, until in a reading with other cards, it becomes good news or a proposal. Yes, this is a bare-bones example.
Cups
Batons
Coins
Swords
1
Frog
Wolf dog
Dragon
Hawk
2
Rings
Sun
Keys
Scissor
3
Gift
Moon
Pearls
Swords
4
Home
Coffin
Scales
Cross
5
Roses
Curdled Seas
(Seeing) Hand
Tower
6
Letter
Paths
Book
Cave
7
Feast
Shipwreck
Ship
Heart
As you will note when looking at the cards, the illustration often describes more than what the keyword indicates. For example, the 3 of swords with the illustration of two swords crossed, hilt up, points downward, stuck in the sand. These two swords have reached a standstill, they are not in an aggressive position. As always spreading the cards and reading them in conversation always entails a looking at what’s going on on the table while also aiming at responding to the question.
The Courts
Speaking of the courts, in this deck I envisioned and aimed for non-hierarchical and, perhaps, subtle distinctions within the courts. I wanted to focus on age and directionality, where each person is looking at or directed toward. So in each suit there are three people that make up the court, there is a youth, the lady, and the man. The youth is the person which embodies the youthfulness of the suit. The lady and man form the more mature aspects. Just because they carry their suit, whether it be batons, coins, cups or swords, does not mean they are family units necessarily.
The courts in their suit arranged from the youth on the left to the man on the right.
Youths are smoother in tone and unadorned. The ladies on the other hand have distinguishing adornments on the head, and as with the coins and batons, they hold something. The men likewise, something more accompanies their pose, whether a cigar, glasses for better sight, a proper suit or just the marks of age and sleepless nights. Other than these subtle notes, they are people, no self imposed hierarchies evident other than age.
And so the full deck is composed, from 1-7 and their courts. Simplicity was aimed. The desire of the deck will conform to its reader, and vice versa, perhaps a wandering traveler, or a hermit; numbers were eschewed in favor of pattern seeing, crowns removed in favor of tone and directionality. It is a deck for conversations, candlelight readings, and nocturnal preoccupations on daylight.
The last piece I have to say on the deck will be on the finicky area of temptation, which I will write in another post.
This year I had the blessing of having my 3-year creation, a hand drawn pack of cards, published by Hadean Press, Cyprian’s deck of cards. The shipping for the decks has begun, and I’ve been in conversation with several people about the same. Briefly, the deck comes in a tin case, for ease of portability, with a small little pamphlet I wrote inside, which includes an historiola.* I kept the pamphlet and descriptions for the cards minimal, because I wanted the reader to engage with the cards on their own terms, within their own context, that is the reader in their context with the cards and the world they paint. Yet. I’d like to expand a little on the cards. This piece here will serve as a complement to the cards in the deck.
As mentioned in the booklet: “The illustrated cards sit within a narrative of an imaginal landscape, which is both rural and vaguely urban.” This is to say that that the cards arise within a particular imagined terrain and together they tell a story. Namely, each suit paints a different part of this terrain, the climate, flora, fauna, peoples, the locality, and the aesthetics.
Starting from within, the suit of cups discloses and elaborates on that which is “within;” the home, the inner world within 4 walls, the hearth. Therefore it talks about matters close to the heart, blood, water, love, emotions. All the images contained in this suit occur within the home, the four cups.
In contrast, the suit of batons paints to world outside these four walls, outside our comforts, and stability. It is the outer world, the skies, the seas, the land, of phenomena that is on a grander scale to our individual human lives. It points toward matters that lie beyond our own individual human agency, of wedding plans dampened because a storm has hit the coast. Of unexpected encounters beyond the boundaries of comfort, and discovered cave treasures. There is variability in this suit. All the images in this suit display happenings in the outer world, what a person encounters outside their house.
It all starts to mesh, weave together, with the suits of coins and swords. Both these suits dance in two worlds, the world within the four walls, the home, and the world outside the comforts and security of home. As I say in the booklet, “The transactions, commitments, the gains and losses, the adventures and misadventures, risks, favors and disfavors.” These suits can be thought of as the mediators between the inner and outer, both in a material and a metaphorical sense. Here the images will be mixed, both occurring within the house and outside or around the house. We find matters of work, the daily doings, comings and goings. The illustrations are situated within both a small and a big. Objects that can be taken outside, places found outside the home, I guess one could consider these two suits as liminal.
As for scale, in keeping with the contrast of both inner and outer worlds, that which is found in the home is illustrated through smaller objects, which can be held close to the body. The fully outer dimension (batons) is beyond an individual’s grasp, it speaks of the living cosmos doing it’s living, where we find ourselves navigating different places. Comfort and security is not the focus here.
Lastly, I want to mention an obvious or perhaps not so obvious detail, numberings and keywords. It is my particular preference not to have numbers in cards, and yes that includes playing cards, that is when I’m using the deck for telling fortunes. At first instance, that is as soon as I lay down the cards, I prefer to look at shapes and patterns arising from the cards on the table when I read them to answer a question. If it happens that I need to know quantity I can always count the suits on the card/s. So I opted to keep the insets unnumbered. Same goes with keywords.
To begin tying the knot on this first part of talking about Cyprian’s deck, I will add a few more words. There are many ways of acquainting oneself with a card deck for fortunetelling, both a long and a short way. We can make our way about the cards, looking for patterns, and building from there a bigger picture, seeking to construct the greater meaning behind the deck itself.
When I look at the card meanings in the Cyprianic booklets, I find that what is cohesive, or patterned about them is that the fortuneteller constructs the meanings for each of the cards from their context out. That is, within whatever context they live in and how they engage with the tools presented in the deck, batons, spades, etc. The reader brings with them what these tools mean to their understanding of the cards. Meaning always arises out of context, so in a paradoxical way, card meanings are arbitrary. Yet they are also not arbitrary because these are the meanings that arose through engagement(relation) and this is the understanding the fortuneteller and the cards cohere around. Each fortuneteller brings their own experience, worldview, context, and landscape, the world they live in, to the table.
This is why when taken as a whole, the Cyprian booklets on cartomancy reveal a personal view of the cards meanings, ever-changing, with only a few recurring meanings through some of the suits. Since I am first a storyteller, I had a desire to conjure a deck with a cohesive inner story, one which would play out in 40 cards, the Spanish brisca. One that brings these tools into a more tangible narrative within a landscape, a place.
I will pause here for now while I think with the second part of this elaboration of Cyprian’s deck.
*A note on the historiola, this little story is important. In an intimate way, this deck is a work of time enchantment. Meaning, I sought to conjure a Cyprianic deck from the lost annals of time. To emplace a deck that maybe existed and bring it into contemporaneous hands. It was a work of creating a portal of time to conjure this deck and bring it to life anew. So the historiola is deeply linked with the deck, it’s intimate and hidden story. This deck is an act of treasure hunting and finding.
Natalia Lee 
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