94stranger
Rainring masterclass 4 (1)
THE BI-POLAR OCTAGON IN USE
Introduction: Paula and her question
I have known Paula (not her real name) slightly for several years, but am not familiar with any of her personal circumstances. This is therefore close to the typical reading which one might do for a stranger, of whose personal life one knows nothing.
She asked what I think is one of the natural or obvious questions for someone with no familiarity with the cards: ‘Where am I at at the moment?’ In fact, after fifteen years or so with Rainring, I still feel the need, once in a while, to ask the exact same question.
Here is the resulting spread for Paula:
One clarification is advisable at once: the subject of this spread is not Paula’s basic nature. It is not a reading about who she is fundamentally, but about where she is at right now in her life.
(paula-reading attached - see foot of post)
My 3-part presentation of the reading
I am going to present this reading in three parts. First, I will describe the constituent elements, both technical and human, of this reading situation, together with some more general reflections. Second, I will comment on the general meaning of each card in the reading, including some reference to the position in which it occurs in the spread. Third, I will present Paula’s own personal comments on each card. NOTE. This post will contain part 1 and half of part 2. The remainder of the reading will be in Rainring Masterclass 4 (2)
As a prelude to this presentation, however, I think I should make clear what happens during a Rainring reading; to sketch the scene for you and describe the process by which we arrive at some understanding of the spread of cards.
To make this reading accessible to those of you who have access to the web but have not yet purchased a pack of cards, we have done the reading online, using only the facilities available there.
1: the mechanical details
We began, therefore, with Paula at the keyboard, enabling tips and reversals, then typing in her question. She then clicked on ‘next’ to go to the play screen, dragged and dropped the nine cards needed to complete the spread, activated the reversal facility for one of them, and again clicked on ‘next’. This took her to the screen corresponding to the document to which the link is provided above – the viewing screen. We studied the spread on the screen At the end, we used the print screen system on the keyboard to produce a colour copy for her to take home as a reference.
2: the tools of interpretation
The web site reference for the layout of this spread can be found at this page:
http://www.rainringcards.com/VisualDirectory/Spreads.aspx
This can be accessed during play, enabling the user to go back and forth from the cards to the spread map. For another presentation of the same information in a different context, we could also have accessed another page: http://www.rainringcards.com/VisualDirectory/Groups.aspx
Either or both of these pages could also be printed. We in fact, for added convenience, used the instruction manual which accompanies the hard copy of the pack. The second facility which Paula made use of was that of being able to hover over each card in the viewing screen during the reading, so bringing up the full-sized image together with the meaning:
(image 002 attached - see foot of post)
[In order to capture a print-screen to illustrate this facility, I had to do an actual reading, so you have a reading within a reading here! This shows one of the constituent cards – Action – over which the mouse has been hovered. Alternatively, if one wants to contemplate the card Action, or any other, with no distractions, its own page can be accessed via the visual directory link. Then you get this:
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Action/22.aspx ]
3: the human interaction
The style of this is really led by the querant, not by the reader. In this case, Paula had a quick look at the relevant information on the meaning of each aspect before she started. Once she had gone into the interactive module and made her selection, on the viewing screen she read over the meaning of each card as she hovered on them one by one. She often asked me to explain something: either to add to something in the basic meanings given, or to make something more immediate.
Usually, there is an interaction in approximately this sequence: the reader proposes an interpretation; the querant responds by acknowledging it, amplifying it, challenging it or simply being unable to relate to it at all. The reader responds accordingly. If the querant challenges an interpretation, she will hopefully be able to offer a counter-insight. The reader can then confirm whether this revised view can be supported by the card being studied. As the reading develops, it should be possible to see certain broad themes emerging – the very idea of a bigger reading is to enable this cross-referencing to take place.
In order, when developing the web site, to keep the technical IT side within manageable limits, we did not attempt to introduce the facility for a supplementary card into the online interactive format. If, however, you are reading online, are stuck with a given card and want a supplementary, just open up another window, go back into the play module, do another four-card spread (the quickest), but instead of asking a question, merely designate one card in your new spread as the clarifier (supplementary) – the Unconscious will respond to such an instruction with no problem – and ignore all the others.
Finally, when reading, there is always a fall-back position: there are occasions when neither the querant nor the reader knows what a given card, even with a supplementary, refers to. In this case, it is necessary to accept that one must leave it for time to sort things out – it is fascinating how one can be completely foxed by a card in a reading – and not just one concerning the future – only to find that many months later, one suddenly has a light-bulb moment: yes! That’s what the meaning of that card was! Enough of generalities, let’s get into the nitty-gritty!
The reading: A - my initial interpretations
Interpreting Raindance.
Spread position: North Aspect: Unconscious Card: Raindance
Grid position: group: Question (9 grey/brown); set: fundamental archetypes (5)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Raindance/45.aspx
The image on Raindance is that of the Lamplighter being brought a gift of fresh bread by a small boy, as he goes about his dawn duties in the rain, extinguishing the lamps. A young girl swings around the lamppost and a cat, indifferent to the proceedings, washes itself. a rainbow appears on the ground in the foreground.
Raindance is the card which represents the centre (in terms of the Rainring octagon) of the spectrum for the fundamental archetypes set. This, like each set, reprises the theme of the group to which it corresponds. This is the fifth set from the top of the grid, set 5, and it corresponds to the indigo group 5, the Unconscious group. The set 5 cards, the fundamental archetypes, thus represent the underpinning energies of the Unconscious psyche. Just as white light is the source of the spectrum colours, so Raindance, at the centre of the set, represents the source of the Unconscious. In the same way that the lamplighter is the bringer of light, Raindance is the source of consciousness. It represents the sum total of the unconscious psyche, which is the repository of everything that can ever come into conscious existence. It is therefore a very powerful card in the Unconscious position in this spread, suggesting that the querant has potential access to the whole spectrum – that is, the entire range of constituents of psyche. The Unconscious represents unrealised resources which await development, so the card implies that Paula has at present the potential to develop into a very balanced and complete person. On the other side of the coin, the very scope of Raindance implies the possibility, especially in the unconscious position, of getting lost in the vastness. This card can suggest disorientation, problems of assimilating unconscious contents.
Interpreting inhibition
Spread position: South
Aspect: consciousness, daily life, practical matters
Card: Inhibition (reversed)
Grid position: group: Communication (7, Blue); set: introvert imbalance (1)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Inhibition/7.aspx The image of Inhibition features a young man and woman at a country fair. In the complementary card Exhibition, the youth is playing his guitar and the young woman is dancing with abandon. In this card, however, they stand still, their body language suggesting self-protection. The spotlight is on them, the spectators have gathered, but they seem unable to perform.
Inhibition, like all the imbalance cards of sets (1) and (2), can be understood in two ways: it has an imbalanced and a balanced version. In the four-mention version (hard copy), these are distinguished. In the web version, we have to intuit. The imbalanced version refers to a difficulty in communication, as a result of timidity. The inhibited individual has a need to express themselves at a particular moment, but is too fearful of the response which they imagine they might get from others. It should be emphasised that in the imbalanced case, this is a neurotic response – the fear is not a response to actual danger, such as the probable outcome if I insult a boy soldier armed to the teeth at a roadblock when he demands a few banknotes to help ‘him feed his old mother’.
The balanced form, appropriate inhibition, refers either to a situation such as that just described, or refers more generally to the benefits which will be derived in certain cases from keeping one’s own counsel. Suppose I am a reporter interviewing a difficult subject who has shown great reluctance in allowing themself to be drawn out. At the point where they actually begin to unburden themself, the last thing I need is to start intruding with a personal anecdote of my own. Still further, I might choose to speak very little in a certain context in my life – during a whole period for instance, or whenever I am in certain company. Or I might be a professional actor playing the role of a taciturn character. In every case, if the inhibition is appropriate and voluntary i.e. chosen, it is not neurotic.
The reading here is inhibition reversed. Generally, we understand reversal in three ways: as the opposite of the psychific element on the card; as a strategic withdrawal – because the timing is not right; or as a form of the element which involves a complete U turn: going in the opposite direction. For example, thought reversed might be 1)not thinking about anything; 2) deciding to leave until later something that I can’t figure out right now; 3) thinking about an issue in a radically different way to that in which I have thought about it until now.
In a complex case like this, it would be most unwise for the reader to attempt to impose an interpretation without asking for feedback from the querant. However, the presence of pain as the central card suggests that inhibition reversed here, in Form aspect, therefore relating to practical daily life issues, might have some negative connotations. my first impression would be of a shy person who at the moment is being obliged – by the demands of her professional situation, those of an intimate relationship, or both, to come out of her shell under circumstances where she feels less than comfortable.
Interpreting Form
Spread position: West
Aspect: Will - female pole: emotion
Card: Form
Grid position: group: Form (4 orange); set: fundamental archetypes (5)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Form/40.aspx
The Image on Form is that of a camel train moving across the desert. The sun is sinking below the horizon behind the caravan, so that both animals and humans cast long shadows across the sand towards the viewer. Like all the fundamental archetypes, the dominant motif of Form is the circle, though it is not geometrically exact.
The card Form gives its name to the fourth (orange) group. Rainring is based on the notion that psyche comes before soma, so it is only with the arrival of the fourth archetype that we enter what we call the material world. It is true that the group representing the Unconscious, 5, comes after Form (see grid)
The Unconscious group has been allocated the central position in the grid because it cannot be correctly placed anywhere in the chronology of the psyche – it is beginning, middle and end.
Form is the archetype representing manifestation: diversity, multiplicity, proliferation; also time and linear thinking. But how are we to translate these grand notions into a straightforward meaning? Form refers to order, proportion, practicality, groundedness, efficiency. With Form, things are in their right places – we are as far from chaos as we could be, and chaos is one of the meanings of Form reversed.
The west is the position of the emotional, feeling aspect, so we have Form in feelings. This suggests someone who is able to handle their feelings in such a way that they do not impede her functioning in the workaday world. Although Form is a highly positive card, I have a degree of discomfort at finding it in the feeling position (aspect). For me, there is a whiff somewhere there of managing ones feelings, making sure that they take their proper place in one’s life. This management creates tension, and this in turn may be a contributor to the pain at the centre. This card does not, however, imply suppression of feelings, so I as the reader would at this point look for clarification from the querant as to how she relates to these findings.
Interpreting Creation
Spread position: East
Aspect: Spirit - male pole: reason, discernment, perception etc
Card: Creation
Grid position: group: Heart – (3 green); set: fundamental archetypes (5)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Creation/39.aspx
The image on Creation is that of the early world. Perhaps it is the quasi-roundness of the image which gives it an oddly goldfish-bowl appearance, as though the tree were a bonsai, and creatures and landscape were miniatures, even the great whale. It feels, in short, like a God’s-eye view of Creation. (Non-believers may object that Creation is a loaded word. There may be some justice in this, but it hardly does away with the fact that life and the world as we know it have certainly come out of – what? At Rainring we are studying the psyche. The ability to create, the existence of both creation and The Creation are part of that; the theology we leave to others.)
The card in fact, like all the others, uses Form to present the energy of Creation in a form accessible to sense perception – sight in this case. Creation itself represents a harmony and fusion of the two elemental forces – the first two fundamental archetypes, conception and desire. Creation contains, like all Heart group cards, elements of balancing. Creation takes place when a sufficient degree of harmony has been achieved between the two polarities of Spirit and Will, exactly in the same way as a human child can be conceived when an appropriate level of contact between male and female has been established. You can’t make children across cyberspace!
In this reading, Creation appears in Spirit position. This is an unusual reading in having a fundamental archetype at three of the four cardinal points. Creation in spirit is simpler to interpret than any of the other cards so far. It refers to Paula, at this time in her life, using her mental abilities in a creative manner in her life. The expectation would be either that this would refer to her career, or just possibly it might refer to a major hobby or interest outside of work. However, as it is the card chosen by the pack to represent her spirit aspect, it indicates the dominant activity in this area of her psyche, not some secondary preoccupation or interest.
THE BI-POLAR OCTAGON IN USE
Introduction: Paula and her question
I have known Paula (not her real name) slightly for several years, but am not familiar with any of her personal circumstances. This is therefore close to the typical reading which one might do for a stranger, of whose personal life one knows nothing.
She asked what I think is one of the natural or obvious questions for someone with no familiarity with the cards: ‘Where am I at at the moment?’ In fact, after fifteen years or so with Rainring, I still feel the need, once in a while, to ask the exact same question.
Here is the resulting spread for Paula:
One clarification is advisable at once: the subject of this spread is not Paula’s basic nature. It is not a reading about who she is fundamentally, but about where she is at right now in her life.
(paula-reading attached - see foot of post)
My 3-part presentation of the reading
I am going to present this reading in three parts. First, I will describe the constituent elements, both technical and human, of this reading situation, together with some more general reflections. Second, I will comment on the general meaning of each card in the reading, including some reference to the position in which it occurs in the spread. Third, I will present Paula’s own personal comments on each card. NOTE. This post will contain part 1 and half of part 2. The remainder of the reading will be in Rainring Masterclass 4 (2)
As a prelude to this presentation, however, I think I should make clear what happens during a Rainring reading; to sketch the scene for you and describe the process by which we arrive at some understanding of the spread of cards.
To make this reading accessible to those of you who have access to the web but have not yet purchased a pack of cards, we have done the reading online, using only the facilities available there.
1: the mechanical details
We began, therefore, with Paula at the keyboard, enabling tips and reversals, then typing in her question. She then clicked on ‘next’ to go to the play screen, dragged and dropped the nine cards needed to complete the spread, activated the reversal facility for one of them, and again clicked on ‘next’. This took her to the screen corresponding to the document to which the link is provided above – the viewing screen. We studied the spread on the screen At the end, we used the print screen system on the keyboard to produce a colour copy for her to take home as a reference.
2: the tools of interpretation
The web site reference for the layout of this spread can be found at this page:
http://www.rainringcards.com/VisualDirectory/Spreads.aspx
This can be accessed during play, enabling the user to go back and forth from the cards to the spread map. For another presentation of the same information in a different context, we could also have accessed another page: http://www.rainringcards.com/VisualDirectory/Groups.aspx
Either or both of these pages could also be printed. We in fact, for added convenience, used the instruction manual which accompanies the hard copy of the pack. The second facility which Paula made use of was that of being able to hover over each card in the viewing screen during the reading, so bringing up the full-sized image together with the meaning:
(image 002 attached - see foot of post)
[In order to capture a print-screen to illustrate this facility, I had to do an actual reading, so you have a reading within a reading here! This shows one of the constituent cards – Action – over which the mouse has been hovered. Alternatively, if one wants to contemplate the card Action, or any other, with no distractions, its own page can be accessed via the visual directory link. Then you get this:
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Action/22.aspx ]
3: the human interaction
The style of this is really led by the querant, not by the reader. In this case, Paula had a quick look at the relevant information on the meaning of each aspect before she started. Once she had gone into the interactive module and made her selection, on the viewing screen she read over the meaning of each card as she hovered on them one by one. She often asked me to explain something: either to add to something in the basic meanings given, or to make something more immediate.
Usually, there is an interaction in approximately this sequence: the reader proposes an interpretation; the querant responds by acknowledging it, amplifying it, challenging it or simply being unable to relate to it at all. The reader responds accordingly. If the querant challenges an interpretation, she will hopefully be able to offer a counter-insight. The reader can then confirm whether this revised view can be supported by the card being studied. As the reading develops, it should be possible to see certain broad themes emerging – the very idea of a bigger reading is to enable this cross-referencing to take place.
In order, when developing the web site, to keep the technical IT side within manageable limits, we did not attempt to introduce the facility for a supplementary card into the online interactive format. If, however, you are reading online, are stuck with a given card and want a supplementary, just open up another window, go back into the play module, do another four-card spread (the quickest), but instead of asking a question, merely designate one card in your new spread as the clarifier (supplementary) – the Unconscious will respond to such an instruction with no problem – and ignore all the others.
Finally, when reading, there is always a fall-back position: there are occasions when neither the querant nor the reader knows what a given card, even with a supplementary, refers to. In this case, it is necessary to accept that one must leave it for time to sort things out – it is fascinating how one can be completely foxed by a card in a reading – and not just one concerning the future – only to find that many months later, one suddenly has a light-bulb moment: yes! That’s what the meaning of that card was! Enough of generalities, let’s get into the nitty-gritty!
The reading: A - my initial interpretations
Interpreting Raindance.
Spread position: North Aspect: Unconscious Card: Raindance
Grid position: group: Question (9 grey/brown); set: fundamental archetypes (5)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Raindance/45.aspx
The image on Raindance is that of the Lamplighter being brought a gift of fresh bread by a small boy, as he goes about his dawn duties in the rain, extinguishing the lamps. A young girl swings around the lamppost and a cat, indifferent to the proceedings, washes itself. a rainbow appears on the ground in the foreground.
Raindance is the card which represents the centre (in terms of the Rainring octagon) of the spectrum for the fundamental archetypes set. This, like each set, reprises the theme of the group to which it corresponds. This is the fifth set from the top of the grid, set 5, and it corresponds to the indigo group 5, the Unconscious group. The set 5 cards, the fundamental archetypes, thus represent the underpinning energies of the Unconscious psyche. Just as white light is the source of the spectrum colours, so Raindance, at the centre of the set, represents the source of the Unconscious. In the same way that the lamplighter is the bringer of light, Raindance is the source of consciousness. It represents the sum total of the unconscious psyche, which is the repository of everything that can ever come into conscious existence. It is therefore a very powerful card in the Unconscious position in this spread, suggesting that the querant has potential access to the whole spectrum – that is, the entire range of constituents of psyche. The Unconscious represents unrealised resources which await development, so the card implies that Paula has at present the potential to develop into a very balanced and complete person. On the other side of the coin, the very scope of Raindance implies the possibility, especially in the unconscious position, of getting lost in the vastness. This card can suggest disorientation, problems of assimilating unconscious contents.
Interpreting inhibition
Spread position: South
Aspect: consciousness, daily life, practical matters
Card: Inhibition (reversed)
Grid position: group: Communication (7, Blue); set: introvert imbalance (1)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Inhibition/7.aspx The image of Inhibition features a young man and woman at a country fair. In the complementary card Exhibition, the youth is playing his guitar and the young woman is dancing with abandon. In this card, however, they stand still, their body language suggesting self-protection. The spotlight is on them, the spectators have gathered, but they seem unable to perform.
Inhibition, like all the imbalance cards of sets (1) and (2), can be understood in two ways: it has an imbalanced and a balanced version. In the four-mention version (hard copy), these are distinguished. In the web version, we have to intuit. The imbalanced version refers to a difficulty in communication, as a result of timidity. The inhibited individual has a need to express themselves at a particular moment, but is too fearful of the response which they imagine they might get from others. It should be emphasised that in the imbalanced case, this is a neurotic response – the fear is not a response to actual danger, such as the probable outcome if I insult a boy soldier armed to the teeth at a roadblock when he demands a few banknotes to help ‘him feed his old mother’.
The balanced form, appropriate inhibition, refers either to a situation such as that just described, or refers more generally to the benefits which will be derived in certain cases from keeping one’s own counsel. Suppose I am a reporter interviewing a difficult subject who has shown great reluctance in allowing themself to be drawn out. At the point where they actually begin to unburden themself, the last thing I need is to start intruding with a personal anecdote of my own. Still further, I might choose to speak very little in a certain context in my life – during a whole period for instance, or whenever I am in certain company. Or I might be a professional actor playing the role of a taciturn character. In every case, if the inhibition is appropriate and voluntary i.e. chosen, it is not neurotic.
The reading here is inhibition reversed. Generally, we understand reversal in three ways: as the opposite of the psychific element on the card; as a strategic withdrawal – because the timing is not right; or as a form of the element which involves a complete U turn: going in the opposite direction. For example, thought reversed might be 1)not thinking about anything; 2) deciding to leave until later something that I can’t figure out right now; 3) thinking about an issue in a radically different way to that in which I have thought about it until now.
In a complex case like this, it would be most unwise for the reader to attempt to impose an interpretation without asking for feedback from the querant. However, the presence of pain as the central card suggests that inhibition reversed here, in Form aspect, therefore relating to practical daily life issues, might have some negative connotations. my first impression would be of a shy person who at the moment is being obliged – by the demands of her professional situation, those of an intimate relationship, or both, to come out of her shell under circumstances where she feels less than comfortable.
Interpreting Form
Spread position: West
Aspect: Will - female pole: emotion
Card: Form
Grid position: group: Form (4 orange); set: fundamental archetypes (5)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Form/40.aspx
The Image on Form is that of a camel train moving across the desert. The sun is sinking below the horizon behind the caravan, so that both animals and humans cast long shadows across the sand towards the viewer. Like all the fundamental archetypes, the dominant motif of Form is the circle, though it is not geometrically exact.
The card Form gives its name to the fourth (orange) group. Rainring is based on the notion that psyche comes before soma, so it is only with the arrival of the fourth archetype that we enter what we call the material world. It is true that the group representing the Unconscious, 5, comes after Form (see grid)
The Unconscious group has been allocated the central position in the grid because it cannot be correctly placed anywhere in the chronology of the psyche – it is beginning, middle and end.
Form is the archetype representing manifestation: diversity, multiplicity, proliferation; also time and linear thinking. But how are we to translate these grand notions into a straightforward meaning? Form refers to order, proportion, practicality, groundedness, efficiency. With Form, things are in their right places – we are as far from chaos as we could be, and chaos is one of the meanings of Form reversed.
The west is the position of the emotional, feeling aspect, so we have Form in feelings. This suggests someone who is able to handle their feelings in such a way that they do not impede her functioning in the workaday world. Although Form is a highly positive card, I have a degree of discomfort at finding it in the feeling position (aspect). For me, there is a whiff somewhere there of managing ones feelings, making sure that they take their proper place in one’s life. This management creates tension, and this in turn may be a contributor to the pain at the centre. This card does not, however, imply suppression of feelings, so I as the reader would at this point look for clarification from the querant as to how she relates to these findings.
Interpreting Creation
Spread position: East
Aspect: Spirit - male pole: reason, discernment, perception etc
Card: Creation
Grid position: group: Heart – (3 green); set: fundamental archetypes (5)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Creation/39.aspx
The image on Creation is that of the early world. Perhaps it is the quasi-roundness of the image which gives it an oddly goldfish-bowl appearance, as though the tree were a bonsai, and creatures and landscape were miniatures, even the great whale. It feels, in short, like a God’s-eye view of Creation. (Non-believers may object that Creation is a loaded word. There may be some justice in this, but it hardly does away with the fact that life and the world as we know it have certainly come out of – what? At Rainring we are studying the psyche. The ability to create, the existence of both creation and The Creation are part of that; the theology we leave to others.)
The card in fact, like all the others, uses Form to present the energy of Creation in a form accessible to sense perception – sight in this case. Creation itself represents a harmony and fusion of the two elemental forces – the first two fundamental archetypes, conception and desire. Creation contains, like all Heart group cards, elements of balancing. Creation takes place when a sufficient degree of harmony has been achieved between the two polarities of Spirit and Will, exactly in the same way as a human child can be conceived when an appropriate level of contact between male and female has been established. You can’t make children across cyberspace!
In this reading, Creation appears in Spirit position. This is an unusual reading in having a fundamental archetype at three of the four cardinal points. Creation in spirit is simpler to interpret than any of the other cards so far. It refers to Paula, at this time in her life, using her mental abilities in a creative manner in her life. The expectation would be either that this would refer to her career, or just possibly it might refer to a major hobby or interest outside of work. However, as it is the card chosen by the pack to represent her spirit aspect, it indicates the dominant activity in this area of her psyche, not some secondary preoccupation or interest.
