SPREAD - Lunar cycle (collective conscious)

Callanish

Hosting an online digital tarot deck I thought it might be interesting to gather statistics of card appearances to see what cards were "trending" within a period of time.
I doubt this has been attempted before but it's something one can do with a shared digital tarot deck.

i wanted to see if the collective conscious of all the users of the tarot deck could produce a "trending spread".

At first I ran it over the course of a week, then 2 weeks when it occurred to me to try it over a lunar cycle.
It now runs from new moon to new moon.

The results have been fascinating and I've started publishing them.
There's definitely a correlation between the full moon and changes in the cards, also the 9's appear just before the full moon.

The deck is heavily used, the top trending card of the last lunar cycle had been drawn over 1600 times. It's a complete 78 card deck.

That's the background to this spread I created for the purpose of publishing the results.
However I think it's a good spread for a months forecasting for individual use.

I have divided the lunar cycle into 12 parts. (which reduces in numerology to 3, the most feminine of numbers i think so a suitable candidate).

-1-2-3-4-5-
------6-----
-7-8-9-10-11
-----12-----

1.Waxing crescent
2.Waxing crescent
3. 1st Quarter
4.Waxing gibbous
5.Waxing gibbous
6. Full Moon
7.Waning gibbous
8.Waning gibbous
3rd Quarter
10.Waning crescent
11.Waning crescent
12.New Moon

I often draw out cards for a day, week or month in which nothing much happens and the card seems superfluous.
So I'm now checking against the trending cards to see if what I'm drawing is in any way related to the trending cards and the collective conscious.
Trending card can be found here:
http://phuture.me/tarot/tarot-trends

Barleywine

Interesting idea. But I'm curious: why 12 divisions? In contemporary astrology there are 8 recognized lunar phases that would probably work just as well: New, Crescent, First Quarter, Gibbous, Full, Disseminating, Last Quarter and Balsamic. And in Vedic astrology there are 28 lunar mansions, though that would probably get way too cumbersome.

Callanish

Remember that the spread was created out of a desire to plot trending tarot cards over a time period.
I had thought of 16 and 8 but one was too granular and the other not granular enough.
(16 is heading in the direction of "way too cumbersome")
12 sat nicely in between and, as I view the moon as a feminine entity, the number reduces to a 3 which I believe is the number representing femininity (e.g. The Empress).

The significant cards are the new and full moons.
To observe significant changes between those points you need a sufficient number of divisions.

You could, if you wanted remove cards 2, 4, 8 & 10 and use an 8 card spread instead.

Barleywine said:
Interesting idea. But I'm curious: why 12 divisions? In contemporary astrology there are 8 recognized lunar phases that would probably work just as well: New, Crescent, First Quarter, Gibbous, Full, Disseminating, Last Quarter and Balsamic. And in Vedic astrology there are 28 lunar mansions, though that would probably get way too cumbersome.

Barleywine

Callanish said:
You could, if you wanted remove cards 2, 4, 8 & 10 and use an 8 card spread instead.

I think I will experiment with that. I like the idea that 8 divides the circle into 45 degree segments and 45 reduces numerologically to 9, which is the number of the Moon on the Tree of Life. But 3 is also related to the High Priestess as the third trump if the Fool is regarded as the first one, and it is therefore associated with the Moon as well. And, of course, 3 is the square root of 9.

Callanish

13 is also a good candidate as there are 13 moons in a year.

The Callanish Stone circle has 13 stones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callanish_Stones) and it was constructed over 4,500 years ago!

Barleywine said:
I think I will experiment with that. I like the idea that 8 divides the circle into 45 degree segments and 45 reduces numerologically to 9, which is the number of the Moon on the Tree of Life. But 3 is also related to the High Priestess as the third trump if the Fool is regarded as the first one, and it is therefore associated with the Moon as well. And, of course, 3 is the square root of 9.

Barleywine

Callanish said:
13 is also a good candidate as there are 13 moons in a year.

The Callanish Stone circle has 13 stones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callanish_Stones) and it was constructed over 4,500 years ago!

Thanks for that! I thought that, as a "lunar calendar" site, Callanish might have been mentioned in a book I just read, "A Magical Tour of the Night Sky;" it wasn't but one similar site with an "avenue" of standing stones was. I think I would use the 13-moon series in concert with my personal monthly lunar return as a way to "center" the timing of each card. I also note that 13 (reduced to 4) ties back to your mention of The Empress and its association with fertility.

Callanish

I think 13 would be a good number of cards for a "year ahead" spread based on the 13 lunar cycle of the upcoming year instead of 12 for each month.
I did a 12 card spread for this year and noticed it was slightly out of alignment (but then tarot never is good with timing is it?

)

I'm actually sitting just a few km's from the Callanish stone circle right now, which is probably why that thought popped into my head about 13.
A bit wild and windy to visit today, I'm going to stop by before I leave tomorrow.
I live in Edinburgh but our family home and croft are in the Callanish district and I'm currently there taking a summer break.

The really interesting thing about Callanish is that it's not just a circle but a Celtic Cross.
Even though it pre-dates both Christianity by over 2000 years and the Celts in Scotland by 3000.

The number 4 (13 reduces to 4) I think is the masculine number. (The Emperor)
I'd give any queen a value of 3 and a king a value of 4 for numerology purposes in tarot.

Barleywine said:
Thanks for that! I thought that, as a "lunar calendar" site, Callanish might have been mentioned in a book I just read, "A Magical Tour of the Night Sky;" it wasn't but one similar site with an "avenue" of standing stones was. I think I would use the 13-moon series in concert with my personal monthly lunar return as a way to "center" the timing of each card. I also note that 13 (reduced to 4) ties back to your mention of The Empress and its association with fertility.

Barleywine

Callanish said:
The number 4 I think is the masculine number. (The Emperor)
I'd give any queen a value of 3 and a king a value of 4 for numerology purposes in tarot.

Correct, but The Empress, although numbered 3, is the fourth trump in the series, and the value of the assigned Hebrew letter Daleth, is 4. However, the planetary assignment is Venus. One system of assigning the court cards to the Tree of Life is to give the third sephiroth to the Queens, as you note. But the Kings are placed in the second sephiroth, the sphere of Uranus, or the Father, in some systems
.
"Wheels within wheels," as the saying goes

.