94stranger
[As there is a steady stream of people signing up to use the Rainring cards, I felt that it was time to give some additional support to people attempting to come to terms with the cards using only the information available on the web site. As this forum also has the ability to operate as a feedback channel, I hope this will provide a two-way communication resource which will benefit both myself as author and you as readers of Rainring.]
How we use Rainring
Before either reading Rainring or having it read for you, it is advisable to have some prior knowledge about how to get the best out of these cards. Rainring is not primarily intended for divination (finding out about the future), though it can be used to do this in certain ways. Also, its main focus is not on the external world, but on what is going on inside you.
We do not use Rainring cards to ask about financial matters. We do not use them in general to attempt to get answers to yes/no questions. ‘Will I get this job?’ Will my son pass his driving test?’ ‘Will he/she come back?’ Clairvoyants using other systems are able to do this, and should be consulted for this type of reading.
The main purpose of Rainring cards is learning about yourself and how to achieve two types of psychological balance: between the male and female elements of your psyche and again between the conscious and unconscious elements.
Why?
Male-female balance
During recorded history, we have seen a preponderance of male over female energy in every important society. Gradually, in the contemporary world-view, we are becoming aware of how damaging and limiting this is to the human race as a whole. It is high time we succeeded in creating societies where these two energies are in balance. This does not simply mean half of a country’s MPs or company directors should be women. There are male-sided women and female-sided men. It is the male and female energies in the psyche that need to come into balance. Unfortunately, this is not merely a question of political campaigns or writing books. This requires the ability to affect at a profound level the conditioning in place throughout the human race in regard to such things as the role of emotion in human well-being.
Rainring aims to stand on a foundation of male-female parity in the psyche. If you read the cards, or they are read for you, you are operating inside a structure, a cosmos which is designed to explore and develop both sides of your personality, to help you towards balance both in your inner life and in your interactions with the outside world.
Conscious-unconscious balance
The importance of conscious-unconscious balance is equal to that of male-female balance. Most, if not all of us human beings have an inner split, in which our conscious intentions and our unconscious impulses are in conflict. The result is that we tend to go through life shooting ourselves in the foot: for example, we start a project – getting fit, taking up a new hobby or learning another language perhaps – with great enthusiasm, only to discover, somewhat later, that we have given up, or switched to something else. Similarly, part of us spends years building up a strong marriage or financial position, then another part throws it all away in a fit of madness.
What we ’ought to be’ is often more important to us than what we are – whether or not we subscribe to any formal religion. As a result, we make conscious efforts to be the kind parent, stalwart friend, good citizen, laid-back character, life-and-soul of the party, or whatever our self-image tells us is who we aspire to be. But at the same time, another part of us, our unconscious, is trying to fight the corner of everything that we try to suppress in order to be who we consciously want to be. This unconscious part is responsible for the black depression of the clown, the high-stakes gambling of the dedicated family doctor, the afternoon prostitution of the ultra-respectable suburban banker’s wife – and so on.
Effects of balance
What exactly will this balancing do, if we can achieve it? Rainring cards are very concerned with what we call self. The extensions of this word – selfish, self-centred, self-obsessed, self-righteous… all indicate that self is usually a negative word in our Christian-influenced UK society. The church has made it clear that selfless devotion to others is its model of good living and, although few of us here any longer go to church, we continue to feel guilty about any focus on me, what I want, who I am, what I’m prepared / not prepared to put up with and so on.
Rainring doesn’t see it this way. For Rainring, Self is one of the building blocks of the psyche. The view of the cards is that psychological well-being must start from self-knowledge. First, I need to know who I am. Then I can attempt to fulfil myself – that is, to live as best suits my unique nature. The problem is that I am not myself – I am, in fact, the person that my parents moulded me into being. Even with the best intentions, the typical parent has their own agenda for their child: they want him/her to grow up to be a certain kind of person. Unfortunately, this means that virtually all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, have a self which is based on what our parents required us to be in order to get their love and approval. We do not have a self based on who we actually are.
Rainring aims to help us get in touch with our true nature, to help us be aware when we are being ourselves, and when we are dancing to a tune which is not our own.
Effects of using Rainring: the cards’ own verdict.
I asked the question: what will be the effect of the cards on moderate (i.e. not obsessive) users?
The spread used is the centred triangle with female side influence at lower left, male side at lower right, balance for these two at apex and overall result at centre
Not for the first time, the results are a surprise. In this case it is because of the emphasis on feelings, which involve both of the basic cards: Grief on the female side, Anger (reversed) on the male side. The balancer for these two is Crossing, and the final result (centre) is Control.
Grief: http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Grief/48.aspx
Anger: http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Anger/46.aspx (reversed)
Crossing: http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Crossing/81.aspx
Control: http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Control/2.aspx
My question implied that I was asking about the effect of using the cards on ordinary people who might come across them having had no special preparation or previous experience working on themselves. What I have written here has been aimed not at those who are already familiar with the issues raised, but those who are not.
It seems to me that the card Grief refers to the emotional response of such a person when they begin to open up to their feeling side, to feel how greatly the female side has been damaged in the psyche, how much pain it has endured, and still does.
The male side reaction is anger reversed. The two seem to be connected. Anger is undoubtedly the emotion most accessible to the male side. Gaining access to grief upsets that status quo, suggesting that as the masculine opens up to the feeling side, anger loses this dominant place in the spectrum of emotions.
This sense of a discontinuity, a shift leading to a new beginning, is supported by the apex card, Crossing. This card refers to the ‘dark night of the soul’, the sense of loss, disorientation and distress which accompanies those times of passage in life when a cycle has ended. Ultimately, there will be a new beginning, yet what is difficult is the sense that, before there can be renewal and new life, there must be the pain of losing the known and familiar landscape of one’s life. It is a widespread characteristic of the human psyche that even when life is full of pain, we would rather remain with what we know that face the fear of the unknown. Crossing is facing the unknown.
The last card, the result, is a surprise: Control. In Rainring, we usually think of Control as one of the unbalanced cards – Control and Abandon as the extremes, with Passion as the balance between the two. This is not the meaning here, however. We saw how use of the cards will affect emotions on both the male and female sides. These emotional effects will combine to produce an experience of death and rebirth on some level. The ultimate result will involve control of the emotions. This seeming paradox is resolved in this way: Rainring supports neither repression of emotion nor emotion running amok. Control as the result card implies that not only will working with the cards enable the reader to gain access to emotion (as in the cards Grief, Anger), but also to learn how to situate it correctly in one’s overall psyche.
Emotional control is a plague in the case of all those who have no access to their emotions - who are cold and insensitive. But to those who are in touch with their female, feeling side, control is a necessary virtue. The circumstances of life – not least in a male-dominated social context – require that emotional people be capable of handling their emotions, not letting themselves be constantly swept away by them, to the detriment of their ability to exercise calm judgement and make a measured response in circumstances where these are required.
The cards, I feel, might equally have pointed out that for this latter type, working with Rainring is going to help promote an ability to use the spirit side more effectively, to balance the rampant emotionality which makes it virtually impossible to function effectively, especially during the present conditions of life in society.
(I will post this for now, though it is unfinished and may also need some revision)
How we use Rainring
Before either reading Rainring or having it read for you, it is advisable to have some prior knowledge about how to get the best out of these cards. Rainring is not primarily intended for divination (finding out about the future), though it can be used to do this in certain ways. Also, its main focus is not on the external world, but on what is going on inside you.
We do not use Rainring cards to ask about financial matters. We do not use them in general to attempt to get answers to yes/no questions. ‘Will I get this job?’ Will my son pass his driving test?’ ‘Will he/she come back?’ Clairvoyants using other systems are able to do this, and should be consulted for this type of reading.
The main purpose of Rainring cards is learning about yourself and how to achieve two types of psychological balance: between the male and female elements of your psyche and again between the conscious and unconscious elements.
Why?
Male-female balance
During recorded history, we have seen a preponderance of male over female energy in every important society. Gradually, in the contemporary world-view, we are becoming aware of how damaging and limiting this is to the human race as a whole. It is high time we succeeded in creating societies where these two energies are in balance. This does not simply mean half of a country’s MPs or company directors should be women. There are male-sided women and female-sided men. It is the male and female energies in the psyche that need to come into balance. Unfortunately, this is not merely a question of political campaigns or writing books. This requires the ability to affect at a profound level the conditioning in place throughout the human race in regard to such things as the role of emotion in human well-being.
Rainring aims to stand on a foundation of male-female parity in the psyche. If you read the cards, or they are read for you, you are operating inside a structure, a cosmos which is designed to explore and develop both sides of your personality, to help you towards balance both in your inner life and in your interactions with the outside world.
Conscious-unconscious balance
The importance of conscious-unconscious balance is equal to that of male-female balance. Most, if not all of us human beings have an inner split, in which our conscious intentions and our unconscious impulses are in conflict. The result is that we tend to go through life shooting ourselves in the foot: for example, we start a project – getting fit, taking up a new hobby or learning another language perhaps – with great enthusiasm, only to discover, somewhat later, that we have given up, or switched to something else. Similarly, part of us spends years building up a strong marriage or financial position, then another part throws it all away in a fit of madness.
What we ’ought to be’ is often more important to us than what we are – whether or not we subscribe to any formal religion. As a result, we make conscious efforts to be the kind parent, stalwart friend, good citizen, laid-back character, life-and-soul of the party, or whatever our self-image tells us is who we aspire to be. But at the same time, another part of us, our unconscious, is trying to fight the corner of everything that we try to suppress in order to be who we consciously want to be. This unconscious part is responsible for the black depression of the clown, the high-stakes gambling of the dedicated family doctor, the afternoon prostitution of the ultra-respectable suburban banker’s wife – and so on.
Effects of balance
What exactly will this balancing do, if we can achieve it? Rainring cards are very concerned with what we call self. The extensions of this word – selfish, self-centred, self-obsessed, self-righteous… all indicate that self is usually a negative word in our Christian-influenced UK society. The church has made it clear that selfless devotion to others is its model of good living and, although few of us here any longer go to church, we continue to feel guilty about any focus on me, what I want, who I am, what I’m prepared / not prepared to put up with and so on.
Rainring doesn’t see it this way. For Rainring, Self is one of the building blocks of the psyche. The view of the cards is that psychological well-being must start from self-knowledge. First, I need to know who I am. Then I can attempt to fulfil myself – that is, to live as best suits my unique nature. The problem is that I am not myself – I am, in fact, the person that my parents moulded me into being. Even with the best intentions, the typical parent has their own agenda for their child: they want him/her to grow up to be a certain kind of person. Unfortunately, this means that virtually all of us, to a greater or lesser degree, have a self which is based on what our parents required us to be in order to get their love and approval. We do not have a self based on who we actually are.
Rainring aims to help us get in touch with our true nature, to help us be aware when we are being ourselves, and when we are dancing to a tune which is not our own.
Effects of using Rainring: the cards’ own verdict.
I asked the question: what will be the effect of the cards on moderate (i.e. not obsessive) users?
The spread used is the centred triangle with female side influence at lower left, male side at lower right, balance for these two at apex and overall result at centre
Not for the first time, the results are a surprise. In this case it is because of the emphasis on feelings, which involve both of the basic cards: Grief on the female side, Anger (reversed) on the male side. The balancer for these two is Crossing, and the final result (centre) is Control.
Grief: http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Grief/48.aspx
Anger: http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Anger/46.aspx (reversed)
Crossing: http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Crossing/81.aspx
Control: http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Control/2.aspx
My question implied that I was asking about the effect of using the cards on ordinary people who might come across them having had no special preparation or previous experience working on themselves. What I have written here has been aimed not at those who are already familiar with the issues raised, but those who are not.
It seems to me that the card Grief refers to the emotional response of such a person when they begin to open up to their feeling side, to feel how greatly the female side has been damaged in the psyche, how much pain it has endured, and still does.
The male side reaction is anger reversed. The two seem to be connected. Anger is undoubtedly the emotion most accessible to the male side. Gaining access to grief upsets that status quo, suggesting that as the masculine opens up to the feeling side, anger loses this dominant place in the spectrum of emotions.
This sense of a discontinuity, a shift leading to a new beginning, is supported by the apex card, Crossing. This card refers to the ‘dark night of the soul’, the sense of loss, disorientation and distress which accompanies those times of passage in life when a cycle has ended. Ultimately, there will be a new beginning, yet what is difficult is the sense that, before there can be renewal and new life, there must be the pain of losing the known and familiar landscape of one’s life. It is a widespread characteristic of the human psyche that even when life is full of pain, we would rather remain with what we know that face the fear of the unknown. Crossing is facing the unknown.
The last card, the result, is a surprise: Control. In Rainring, we usually think of Control as one of the unbalanced cards – Control and Abandon as the extremes, with Passion as the balance between the two. This is not the meaning here, however. We saw how use of the cards will affect emotions on both the male and female sides. These emotional effects will combine to produce an experience of death and rebirth on some level. The ultimate result will involve control of the emotions. This seeming paradox is resolved in this way: Rainring supports neither repression of emotion nor emotion running amok. Control as the result card implies that not only will working with the cards enable the reader to gain access to emotion (as in the cards Grief, Anger), but also to learn how to situate it correctly in one’s overall psyche.
Emotional control is a plague in the case of all those who have no access to their emotions - who are cold and insensitive. But to those who are in touch with their female, feeling side, control is a necessary virtue. The circumstances of life – not least in a male-dominated social context – require that emotional people be capable of handling their emotions, not letting themselves be constantly swept away by them, to the detriment of their ability to exercise calm judgement and make a measured response in circumstances where these are required.
The cards, I feel, might equally have pointed out that for this latter type, working with Rainring is going to help promote an ability to use the spirit side more effectively, to balance the rampant emotionality which makes it virtually impossible to function effectively, especially during the present conditions of life in society.
(I will post this for now, though it is unfinished and may also need some revision)
