frac_ture
Hi, BlackMoon! Glad to be partnered with you for what I believe will be a very exciting and educational round of Rune Exchanging! Please let me know if you have a specific area of focus you'd like me to concentrate on; for myself, a general reading about new beginnings would be great! Here are the guidelines again for this month's Exchange:
So this doesn't devolve into a total free-for-all, I felt it would be nice to have at least a suggested Theme to sort of unite the readings (emphasis on "suggested" -- if you have some other burning question that won't fit neatly under the following umbrella, you won't be flogged for not sticking with this suggestion...). But my reasoning was that this is April, the first month of a new season, and we're also under the sign of Aries at the moment, which is a sign of new beginnings and fresh, vibrant energy (among other things). With all this in mind, I figured we could try to focus on the concept of New Beginnings. What in your life right now are you beginning? What new beginnings might receive extra support from the universe were you to give them a go? What areas in your life might benefit from a fresh start?
Here are the two choices for reading about such questions (and please consider this overall series of Exchanges to be a work in progress, so your feedback as we go will be read, valued, and taken into serious consideration as we do more of these):
A) The Spread
In setting up the spread choice, I'm struck by the fact that we just did a two-Rune spread last month, so I think beefing up the minimum number of Runes might be beneficial here, and also people doing the cast will have to put in some significant work in detailing their results, so I'd rather the two methods don't differ too greatly in the amounts of effort being required. With that in mind, this month's suggested spread will be a four-Rune array, built (roughly...) in the shape of the ram's horn symbol of Aries:
1-----2
---3---
---4---
1 = The area of your life in which you might benefit most from a new beginning
2 = The energies you have at your disposal to support a new beginning
3 = The current most probable outcome of a new beginning
4 = What you can focus on/work on to yield an even more positive new beginning outcome
B) The Cast
The recommended Theme here is still that of New Beginnings, but instead of forcing positional meanings upon the Runes as we sort of do in spreads, here the Runes will just get to tell us what they have to say. In other words, we don't dictate what their positions mean -- they do. If you do like the theme, though, the idea is that your cast is about gathering information for your partner about the concept of them making any new beginnings in their life at this time.
Obviously when casting, there are no fixed positions as there are in a spread. It seems that all of us who spoke out about casting are interested but inexperienced for the most part, so rather than enforce rigid guidelines, I'd like to encourage experimentation so we can all start to learn what works best for us as individuals. This means, I'm kind of subdividing this choice into two sub-choices: either (without looking) randomly select four Runes to cast, or (also without looking) select as many as seem to want to present themselves to you for this cast regardless of number, as long as you end up with at least four Runes in total when all is said and done...then however many you've selected, shake them up in your hands, and then cast them. Use of a casting cloth is recommended, but not at all required (it might save your furniture some wear and tear, though...).
For this first foray into casting, I don't want to impose any additional rules regarding other factors. This means that if you want to remove any Runes that landed face-down, you can...provided you still have at least four Runes to write about for your partner. If you want to include face-down Runes, you can do that, too. You can also take into consideration factors such as the rotations of the Runes (are they perfectly rightside-up or upside-down, or somewhere between those two positions?), whether some have clumped together, how and how far they've dispersed from each other and from the center of the cast, whether any are touching each other, etc. You can feel free to discover what seems important to you with respect to all of this, but please do capture some of this in your reading write-ups -- this will help you to grow as a Rune-caster and -reader, it will be of value to your partner, and it should also be great learning fodder for anyone following along.
Finally, photos of your spreads and casts are very, very seriously recommended. If you really have no way of providing pictures, please let me know, but otherwise, the visual aid will be immensely helpful, especially with respect to anyone doing any casting.
So this doesn't devolve into a total free-for-all, I felt it would be nice to have at least a suggested Theme to sort of unite the readings (emphasis on "suggested" -- if you have some other burning question that won't fit neatly under the following umbrella, you won't be flogged for not sticking with this suggestion...). But my reasoning was that this is April, the first month of a new season, and we're also under the sign of Aries at the moment, which is a sign of new beginnings and fresh, vibrant energy (among other things). With all this in mind, I figured we could try to focus on the concept of New Beginnings. What in your life right now are you beginning? What new beginnings might receive extra support from the universe were you to give them a go? What areas in your life might benefit from a fresh start?
Here are the two choices for reading about such questions (and please consider this overall series of Exchanges to be a work in progress, so your feedback as we go will be read, valued, and taken into serious consideration as we do more of these):
A) The Spread
In setting up the spread choice, I'm struck by the fact that we just did a two-Rune spread last month, so I think beefing up the minimum number of Runes might be beneficial here, and also people doing the cast will have to put in some significant work in detailing their results, so I'd rather the two methods don't differ too greatly in the amounts of effort being required. With that in mind, this month's suggested spread will be a four-Rune array, built (roughly...) in the shape of the ram's horn symbol of Aries:
1-----2
---3---
---4---
1 = The area of your life in which you might benefit most from a new beginning
2 = The energies you have at your disposal to support a new beginning
3 = The current most probable outcome of a new beginning
4 = What you can focus on/work on to yield an even more positive new beginning outcome
B) The Cast
The recommended Theme here is still that of New Beginnings, but instead of forcing positional meanings upon the Runes as we sort of do in spreads, here the Runes will just get to tell us what they have to say. In other words, we don't dictate what their positions mean -- they do. If you do like the theme, though, the idea is that your cast is about gathering information for your partner about the concept of them making any new beginnings in their life at this time.
Obviously when casting, there are no fixed positions as there are in a spread. It seems that all of us who spoke out about casting are interested but inexperienced for the most part, so rather than enforce rigid guidelines, I'd like to encourage experimentation so we can all start to learn what works best for us as individuals. This means, I'm kind of subdividing this choice into two sub-choices: either (without looking) randomly select four Runes to cast, or (also without looking) select as many as seem to want to present themselves to you for this cast regardless of number, as long as you end up with at least four Runes in total when all is said and done...then however many you've selected, shake them up in your hands, and then cast them. Use of a casting cloth is recommended, but not at all required (it might save your furniture some wear and tear, though...).
For this first foray into casting, I don't want to impose any additional rules regarding other factors. This means that if you want to remove any Runes that landed face-down, you can...provided you still have at least four Runes to write about for your partner. If you want to include face-down Runes, you can do that, too. You can also take into consideration factors such as the rotations of the Runes (are they perfectly rightside-up or upside-down, or somewhere between those two positions?), whether some have clumped together, how and how far they've dispersed from each other and from the center of the cast, whether any are touching each other, etc. You can feel free to discover what seems important to you with respect to all of this, but please do capture some of this in your reading write-ups -- this will help you to grow as a Rune-caster and -reader, it will be of value to your partner, and it should also be great learning fodder for anyone following along.
Finally, photos of your spreads and casts are very, very seriously recommended. If you really have no way of providing pictures, please let me know, but otherwise, the visual aid will be immensely helpful, especially with respect to anyone doing any casting.
