Reversals - Random or not?

Barleywine

Krystophe said:
I'm glad someone brought this up, because it's something that I find interesting but have struggled to resolve to my own satisfaction.

I use a quintessence card sometimes...not routinely with every reading, but when I feel the need for more information to wrap up a spread that otherwise seems to lack a certain cohesion. I experimented briefly with subtracting the value of elementally conflicted cards (since I don't invert cards), and found that it did seem to add another layer of meaning to the reading.

But I eventually discarded the practice because it seemed to be a rather artificial idea imposed from the outside, so to speak, and not to have any basis in the numbering of the cards. Using reversed/ill-dignified cards to "drag" the quintessence back to a lower-numbered card would make sense to me if the lower-numbered cards were somehow weaker or more conflicted themselves than higher-numbered ones. As it stands, though, I just don't see a basis for this practice that's inherent to the cards themselves.

I'm the first to admit that I'm not as strong in numerology as I would like to be (or even basic math...I tend to break into a cold sweat when faced with the prospect of calculating the tip in a restaurant) so if I'm missing something blatantly obvious here -- or even something subtle and complex -- I would be very grateful if anyone could shed further light on this idea.

The main point in subtracting reversed values for the quint is that it lets me keep the Fool as "0" and not have to treat it as "22." If you just add and reduce positive numbers, the lowest value you can come up with is "1." You can also get a reversed (negative numbered) quint this way, which makes sense if you're already using reversals.

I also use the quint mostly for spreads that are inconclusive; I prefer them to clarifiers, base/shadow cards and other auxiliary cards because they are focused on the cards already on the table, no extra cards needed. For the same reason, I always include court cards as "11, 12, 13 and 14." If I'm doing a very small spread - 3 to 5 cards - I like to use the quint as a summary card.

Krystophe

Barleywine said:
The main point in subtracting reversed values for the quint is that it lets me keep the Fool as "0" and not have to treat it as "22." If you just add and reduce positive numbers, the lowest value you can come up with is "1." You can also get a reversed (negative numbered) quint this way, which makes sense if you're already using reversals.

I understand this, although somewhere along the way I encountered an argument against using the Fool as a quint at all and found it convincing enough. And since I don't use reversals anyway (although this thread is making me think more about that) the idea of a reversed quint doesn't really do anything useful for me. I should add that it's not the result of the process to which I take exception, it's more the process itself, which seems arbitrarily reductive to me. I also should mention that I'm not suggesting that either the process or the result are invalid; I just find myself uneasy about any "manipulation" of the cards for which I can't find a solid grounding in the structure of the system.

Barleywine said:
For the same reason, I always include court cards as "11, 12, 13 and 14."

I also include court cards. At various times I have numbered the King, Queen, Knight, and Page as 14, 13, 12, and 11 respectively, or assigned them numbers based on their positioning on the Tree of Life -- 2, 3, 6, and 10 respectively. Again, the latter method seems more reliably based on a solid foundation than the former. But either way, I think it's vital to include court cards in the calculation; you can't have a true summary of a spread if you ignore any cards in the spread (my opinion only, of course0.

Barleywine

Krystophe said:
I understand this, although somewhere along the way I encountered an argument against using the Fool as a quint at all and found it convincing enough. And since I don't use reversals anyway (although this thread is making me think more about that) the idea of a reversed quint doesn't really do anything useful for me. I should add that it's not the result of the process to which I take exception, it's more the process itself, which seems arbitrarily reductive to me. I also should mention that I'm not suggesting that either the process or the result are invalid; I just find myself uneasy about any "manipulation" of the cards for which I can't find a solid grounding in the structure of the system.

I tend to use any tool that proves to have some validity in my own experience, and as an analytical type and a fan of both the Golden Dawn's and Joseph Maxwell's numerological explorations, the "structure" appeals to me. I have no problem at all with the Fool as quint since it shows a "beginning" state of innocence. I see no reason why a beginning of some kind can't show up as a summary of what the entire spread is about, but I would expect this to be echoed in the spread cards as well, maybe by a few Aces.

Krystophe said:
I also include court cards. At various times I have numbered the King, Queen, Knight, and Page as 14, 13, 12, and 11 respectively, or assigned them numbers based on their positioning on the Tree of Life -- 2, 3, 6, and 10 respectively. Again, the latter method seems more reliably based on a solid foundation than the former. But either way, I think it's vital to include court cards in the calculation; you can't have a true summary of a spread if you ignore any cards in the spread (my opinion only, of course.

I also offer the Tree of Life correspondences 2, 3, 6 and 10 as an alternative in the paper I wrote on the quintessence. But I generally use 11, 12, 13 and 14 in practice since the results have been encouraging.

Krystophe

Barleywine said:
I tend to use any tool that proves to have some validity in my own experience, and as an analytical type and a fan of both the Golden Dawn's and Joseph Maxwell's numerological explorations, the "structure" appeals to me. I have no problem at all with the Fool as quint since it shows a "beginning" state of innocence. I see no reason why a beginning of some kind can't show up as a summary of what the entire spread is about, but I would expect this to be echoed in the spread cards as well, maybe by a few Aces.

There's a thread here somewhere about that, although I couldn't turn it up with a cursory search. I found it convincing at the time, although I'm always open to changing my mind about things.

Barleywine said:
I also offer the Tree of Life correspondences 2, 3, 6 and 10 as an alternative in the paper I wrote on the quintessence. But I generally use 11, 12, 13 and 14 in practice since the results have been encouraging.

I mostly use 11, 12, 13, and 14 as well, since this is more reflective of my current understanding of the court cards and their progression. But I've been looking more and more into the Tree of Life and find it rather compelling, hence my frequent attempts to get coherent results from 2, 3, 6, and 10.