Rainring Masterclass 5 set 4 part 2

94stranger

32. The Seer: Group – Unconscious (5 indigo)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/The_Seer/32.aspx
The image

The scene has an other-worldly quality. A light similar to bright moonlight seems to come from everywhere and nowhere. In the foreground sits the figure of an old Amerindian – a female who could easily be mistaken for a male. She wears a shapeless one-piece garment, sits on the ground and is throwing some small objects such as stones, held in her closed hand, onto the ground. Behind her we see a lake with a large flat rock next to it, upon which a stallion unicorn rears up towards the sky.

The portrait/meaning

As the type in touch with the Unconscious, the Seer carries the weight of untold secrets – of knowledge that cannot be shared with the man in the street. This type is in some ways far removed from the common man (or woman) and is likely to be solitary – often in an obvious external sense, but always in the inner dimension.


You have abilities of clairvoyance or clairaudience, various psychic gifts, or an acutely developed ‘sixth sense’. If you do not work as a clairvoyant or medium, you will do well in any situation where a keen intuition is an advantage. You could be a stock market investor, entrepreneur, gambler or detective. Whatever the case, you will succeed not by method but by flair – by backing your hunches. The hallmark of your type is the possession of power, or psychic force. You can make things happen because you have access to the resources of the Unconscious. This is dangerous territory – you have to guard not only against predators from out there, but also against bigotry, intolerance and even persecution by those who fear and envy your knowledge and powers. These abilities put you in a position to teach, just as you have learnt from others, both on this plane and beyond. How will you discharge this obligation to pass on what you know?


On the debit side, the serious nature of your practice means that you are likely to be heavy and lacking in the social graces. Given the awesome nature of the Unconscious, those who navigate it steer perilously close to obsession. Once tuned in, it may become problematic for you to tune out. How does a spy on mission go off duty? Perhaps your biggest difficulty as a Seer is the disjunction between the vastness of your vision and the limitations of your ability to communicate it. Your type is the introvert par excellence – you have great depth, can draw on huge inner resources, but you may struggle to make affectionate contact with others. If you teach, your success will depend above all on the compelling nature of the material you offer, rather than on the emotional bond that you create with your pupils.
The issue which will determine your level of fulfilment as a human being is that of grounding. It is of the utmost importance that you find a way – such as through a person close to you – to make a bridge between your world and the consensus reality, the place where people are deaf, blind and ignorant, but gifted in the enjoyment of simple pleasures! Finally, the rewards of power can seduce seers into potentially catastrophic failures in self-awareness, leading you ultimately to use your power not to heal, but to harm.


In conclusion, as a Seer, to develop the possibilities inherent in your nature is to leave yourself with no choice but that of struggling with particular obstacles to achieving a rounded personality.

Divinatory meanings

Seeing below the surface, not being taken in by appearances; being in touch with your dreams; intuitive awareness; trusting your inner voice; shedding light in areas of obscurity; communicating with the world beyond the consensus reality; secretiveness, paranoia, aloofness, haughtiness, lack of the common touch, isolation, obsessive introversion; absence of humour.




33. The Matriarch: Group – Self (6 yellow)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/The_Matriarch/33.aspx
The image

A blonde woman of imposing build sits on a lilac cloth under a tree in the midst of fields of grain. She cradles an infant with her right arm, while her left hand holds the one with which her baby reaches up to her. She wears a plain green dress and is barefoot. The whole tableau is composed of sweeping curves executed with great simplicity. The overall effect is that of tranquillity, stability and quiet strength.

The Portrait

Like the Patriarch, the Matriarch is also a type exercising a position of authority. She certainly governs the other females and the children of the family or larger group, and this authority may extend to the men, at least in the internal affairs of the community.


Your behaviour is typically based on mothering or taking care of people. You are a serious-minded person who readily accepts responsibility. In terms of temperament, you are steady, dependable, resourceful and strong-minded. For your type, fulfilment normally comes through children; if you do not have your own, then you need a situation in which you have the care of children in some other context, or of other vulnerable members of society. You are probably extravert, feeling best when there are people around – friends, neighbours, extended family. When you are fulfilled by your Matriarchal position, you are self-confident, warm, generous and open-hearted. You feel most at ease where there is a regular routine, a stable structure to your life. You are willing to sacrifice yourself for others, especially your children – to let the desires and needs of others come before your own. Women of your type play a fundamental role in social cohesion – without you, it would barely be possible. The freedoms enjoyed by the Seer, Wanton and Maid depend on Matriarch women to hold the social fabric together.


Not surprisingly, your great strength is also your weakness: without children to nurture, what identity do you have? In reality, inside every Matriarch lurks a Maid: a Mother is not some mysteriously different category of woman, merely a woman who is taking time out from living her own life in order to make room for others’ lives. Both you yourself and those around you need to avoid pinning you like a butterfly in a collection into the persona of The Mother. As The Matriarch, you have gifts of your own – you will probably be sensitive, artistic, efficient, thorough… in short, capable of success in socially interactive forms of business, in psychotherapy, the arts and so on. So, beyond your invaluable family and social role, you need to have a life of your own which provides you with opportunities for personal fulfilment just as all the other types need that. The danger which lurks for you is that of a hidden dependence on your children to give meaning to your life. If this happens, you are likely to end up manipulating, suffocating and warping your children’s lives, not setting them on the road to personal freedom and fulfilment. There is a great deal of unacknowledged suppression in the lives of mothers – held in place by guilt. There will be times, perhaps many, when you find yourself with a passionate longing to break free of the restrictions imposed on you both by your own feelings and by your public role, and plunge headlong into another life – that of The Wanton, for example.


One of the tasks of the new male-female balancing which needs to take place is to tap into more of the mother-energy, both of fathers and of other non-matriarch types of both sexes. Matriarch types, conversely, need the freedom to feel that they are not required to support everyone else to the detriment of their own personal development.

Divinatory meanings

Nurture, warmth, self-confidence, responsibility, community sense, taking care of others, support, education and training of the young, reliability, routine, stability, self-sacrifice, suppression of your own desires, exhaustion, guilt, depression, over-seriousness, lack of personal fulfilment, putting yourself down.




34. The Artist: Group – Communication (7 blue)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/The_Artist/34.aspx
The image

A middle-aged man with thick hair and a deeply-lined, sensitive face sits at a workbench. The tools and finished objects which surround him identify him as a sculptor in wood. He wears a blue artist’s smock and is absorbed in working with a fine chisel on his latest piece. Behind him on the wall hangs a picture of a lighthouse.

The portrait

Without a doubt, the artist is the most sensitive of the male types in Rainring, and the closest to his female side. For this reason, it is also the most likely male type to be incarnated in women. As an Artist, you can be extrovert or introvert, and this will also markedly affect your life-style outside your actual creative work.


At worst, you are the kind of artist who keeps your inner demons at bay by creative activity which brings you satisfaction, peace of mind and a sense of achievement, even if your work is not marketable or critically acclaimed. At best, your work reveals to the rest of us things which we always somehow knew, but could never express – for that is the function of art, in the sense of all creative endeavour. You are the most tolerant of men, for your need is to see, to hear, to sense what is, and he who judges blinds himself with what should be. You are a communicator, but of a special kind – your work consists in tapping into the Unconscious and from that source bringing into the light of day things which had thus far remained in the darkness. Compared to the Seer, you have the great advantage that your work, your oeuvre is what you care about – this is a valuable and usually effective shield from the dangers of contact with the Unconscious. However, ‘genius is akin to madness’ and only a fine line separates the high creative achievement from the disintegrated condition of the basket case – acute sensitivity is very difficult to manage.


You have the ingredients for self-sufficiency: as a true artist you have to satisfy not the public but yourself. Every dictatorial regime has had major problems with artists, for you belong to a genre which cherishes, indeed can only thrive given independence and freedom of expression. You are likely to be a person with very decided and idiosyncratic views on matters which concern you. You may be an excellent and effective propagandist for non-mainstream causes, if the spirit moves you. In a very real sense, the moral health of a society can be judged by the state of its artists – their silence spells big trouble; if they are visibly and audibly angry and disaffected, all is not rotten in the state of… whatever country it may be.


What of the shadow side? We have already indicated that the elephant in the room for the artist is mental health problems. As an artist, you feel most alive when you are gripped by inspiration. It is an intoxicating state. But he who inspires (breathes in) must also expire (breathe out). Your besetting sin is that of wanting to live permanently in that exalted condition, and being unwilling to recognise that the mundane and trivial are a necessary part of the rich tapestry of existence – someone has to cook, clean and do the accounts. In fact, your mental health requires you to be able not just to write, paint or compose, but to be able to stop. You and your requirements can often be very invasive – the world must cease to exist around you when the muse strikes. A great singer once said: ‘she who cannot do menial work cannot sing’. In former times, there was no cadre of individuals set apart as ‘artist’. Everyone participated in the life of the tribe, then at night around the fire, the gifted would entertain with their various arts: music, dance, drama, story-telling. The source of art is life: if you cease to have a life outside your art, that art will become a hollow shell.

Divinatory meanings

Creative work or ideas, free expression, sensitivity, a childlike wonder at, closeness to and appreciation of nature and animals; independence of mind; alternative views; eccentricity, dedication, single-mindedness, tolerance, awareness, exaggeration, excess in physical appetites, naivety, instability, vanity, invasiveness, childish ego-centricity, petulance, mood swings.



35. The Maid: Group - Conjugation (8 magenta)The image
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/The_Maid/35.aspx
A young woman wearing a pale lilac dress stands in the centre of a circle of foliage. She has a small basket on her right arm, whilst with her left hand she reaches up to pluck a lily flower. It Is not easy to categorise this young woman – her dress is clearly designed to present her attractive body to advantage, and her full lips are emphasised with red lipstick. Yet the sensitivity of her face, and the expression of her eyes convey a definite aura of spirituality. By placing her at the centre of a circular motif, the artist seems to be implying an almost archetypal sense of wholeness in her.

The Portrait

A major difficulty attaches to the description of the Maid: she belongs to the future, and represents a type which cannot yet be actualised except in an attenuated form. To characterise the Maid, therefore, is to intuit rather than to describe.


In the spectrum, you fill the gap between the poles of red and violet, female and male. Just as the Youth is the son of Spirit and Will, you are their daughter – in other words, you are the second balance for them, but a female-sided, not a male-sided balance. The Youth, with a green vibration, has a degree of distance from the poles, whereas you, with magenta, have them both in close proximity. You therefore have both the desire and passion of red and the spiritual vision and clarity of purple in your nature. The challenge of your life will be to allow both sides of yourself to flourish, with a minimum of denial. In practice, the temper of the times means that you are going to lean to the spirit side, because this is more acceptable at present. Like the Youth, you are young or young at heart and it is as a young, single girl that you will have the most difficulty, for the red component in your nature is going to push you hard sexually, whilst your spirit side will make it very difficult for you to accept any partner who does not have insight and intelligence, however much of a hunk they may be!


You are endowed with enormous resources. You are like an artist of being – whether or not you practice a specific art – because of your combination of the male and female side elements; the sensitivity and feeling of the female side with the ability to communicate of the male side. On the other hand, you have within yourself the red energy which the artist often seeks in others, as the source of his inspiration. You share with the Youth both the desire for balance and the ability to achieve it. Because you are female-sided, this is reflected in you in a more marked motivation to nurture – you might do important work in ecology, climate change and so on.


Once again, your strengths define your weaknesses. First, you will have difficulties with the passionate side of your nature. The red energy is still severely judged against in the contemporary world. From your spirit side, you will see very clearly the behaviours and attitudes which the world accepts; from your will side, you will find it very burdensome to conform to those restrictions, which your spirit sees as nothing more than prejudice born of fear, envy and denial. Your greatest problem, however, is likely to be simply the fact that, since you can potentially do so much, and have such resources at your disposal, you find it impossible not to put huge demands on yourself, exacerbated by the fact that you are probably wise before your years. Even if unarticulated, you have an inner drive to unite the two aspects of yourself, both within you and in the outside world, and this may well be with you throughout your life. It will be most acute as long as you are single. But whilst you will make a wonderful lover and companion, you will not find it easy to meet a man with both the breadth and depth necessary to enable you to fulfil yourself in marriage. In some cases, you may find it easier to be with men outside marriage than inside it. It may be also that success as a mother will depend on finding that high-calibre spouse to take a big share of the load!

Divinatory meanings

Energy, passion, sexuality, intensity, insight, intelligence, ‘religious’ sense, humour, fun-loving, volatility, having high moral purpose, wisdom beyond your years, enterprise, independence, vulnerability, overwork, self-criticism, making heavy demands on oneself.


36. The Stranger: group – Quest-ion? (9 grey/brown)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/The_Stranger/36.aspx

We have decided to withhold the detailed meanings for all the cards of group 9 until we can publish all this material commercially. We are really sorry for the inconvenience this may cause. See 9 Ebb (set 1) for details]