Divining context

A little while back, I was asked a question regarding reading the cards, why I read and what I’m doing as I read. This is something I don’t give much thought to when I pick up the cards, but it was interesting to have to put into words where my perspective sits with these questions. My response I find is closely tied to my whole view of life, of living and being and moving in the world. Closely tied to what began some years ago as the blog was still in its nascent stage, and it is my approach to living in the moment, in the present, in awareness. It began as a learning, an adjustment, to slip into the moment, to keep myself present, not extending my thoughts and whatever emotions born out of them beyond my present. Now as some years have passed this is still my engagement with being and living. Embodying my self within the land, within the landscape my body inhabits, and keeping my focus and attention in place, and aware.

When I read the cards, I read them with all this bundled in the reading. I or the querent has a question, I shuffle the cards, cut, lay a handful on the table, and put into words what I see with my eyes the cards are articulating about the question. The question itself is a thing of the moment, containing the context of place and time. Hence it is a matter of slipping within and amidst a particular landscape. The cards disclose relations, the flux and flow of connections, and tensions. This is the foundation of my approach, and why a question is vital. A question establishes the place, the tone, the context. Secondly, I choose to shed idealizations of symbolic, subjective conjectures around semiotics. Simply put, I look and speak, weaving together where the dynamics of the laid out cards and the question meet, in answer.

Reading the cards, or divining, is for me a way of clarifying the lay of the land. Elucidating the often veiled landscape where the question (and by extension, not necessarily always covered in a reading, the querent) is situated, hence trapping the answer.

When I began writing my auguries a couple years back, there were several motives in play. I wanted a space for exploring the decks I own consistently, getting to know the language of each, while also playing with words, sight, and the cards themselves, stitching all these together to form omens. My auguries might bend toward the lyrical because my inclination is for poetry.

If you’ve stopped by here before or do so once in a while, and liked what my monthly auguries bring to the table, I’m indulging in this bit of conversation for you, wanting to share what I do with the cards and why. There are extensions or rather more involved dynamics that come into play during a reading one on one with a querent. These dynamics complex-ify what begins with a slipping into the lay of the land, covering more terrain as the conversation develops with the cards and the questions (often preoccupations) the querent brings to me as the reader.

What I do with my auguries is a slight slippage within the lay of the land, peeking into whatever changes loom ahead. It is not meant to be precise, it is meant to set a tone to the month ahead, a tone that the reader then harmonizes with other subjective tones in their own lives.

This month there was no augury, as I found myself still adjusting after my time traveling and away from home. And now I’m gearing to move, which is daunting as it will be during the holiday season. Despite feeling all manner of fluctuations at the moment, with changes afoot and preparations underway, I foresee getting back to monthly auguries for December to usher in the new year. Before I close, I’d like to share an exciting project taking shape.

The Cult of Tarot Form is running a collaborative tarot project, a tarot deck created by different members of the community. It is currently midway in its kickstarter campaign, and as a contributor to the deck and member of the forum myself (my cards for the deck are The Star and The Hermit), I would like to share the project here: Button Soup Tarot.