The Dream, The Awakening, and The Enchantment
I have been reading The Awakened Tarot By Amy Zerner & Monte Farber - it has an interesting concept: the dreams of man are symbolic - and may be interpreted to give flashes of insight into waking life - the book has all 78 tarot cards and three sections for each:
The Dream - which is composed of a series of descriptors or story elements discussing the imagery on the cards - putting a story into the visual.
The Awakening - A direct and concise reading of the card as it pertains to divination.
The Enchantment - A ritual to perform, a task, a meditation, an active thing to do that relates to the card at hand.
It is a good practice to carefully observe your cards - to consider the details - and to think about what they may symbolize.
Doing this will improve your ability to connect things - to make decisions, to consult your intuition considering what stands for what.
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| The Star |
The Dream: A woman kneels, weightless and distant - holding two jugs of water.
They are pouring out water - which she has positioned over two places, a body of water, and the shore of that body.
She is nude - and is positioned underneath eight stars - each with eight points - one star is directly above her - larger and yellow.
The ocean and rivers can be assumed to be what is being poured - there is life already flourishing around her - but she seems detached from this.
There is a mountain in the background - and a tree which has a bird perching atop it.
She is the same color as the mountain and the bird - she is grounded and earthly as a mountain - and also as weightless and flighty as the bird - above all the color of the biggest star and her hair are matching - she is not of the earth - she is celestial.
The Awakening: This card represents actions that have multiple outcomes - and you have been missing outcomes. You have taken actions or an action that you need to consider - and figure out what the unintended or ignored results of your action or actions may have caused.
You have been detached - unmoored - and this has caused you to arrive focused - and not using situational awareness.
The Enchantment: Take a marked care to furnish the players with a choice - or take a choice they made and follow it's chain of results. Think carefully about how hurting someone can be seen as helping their enemies - and vice versa - and consider how this is a constant and omnipresent factor. Make sure this is evident through gameplay - and demonstrate this in as fair a way as is possible.
If you want to take an action symbolic of this - consider your body and make a decision about it - but only through the lens of that part of your body's effects or impact on the world. Wear something you have not for a while - try to take care of your lips, your nails, the way you sit - and think about the effects this may have that you may not have considered - imagine the previous absence and consider its' effects.
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| The Hermit |
The Dream: A old man stands upon snowy crags - mourning or struggling to stay awake.
He holds a lantern - or a cage - containing a six-pointed star, which glows yellow.
He wears a long cloak, and wields a long staff.
The Awakening: This card represents and speaks about the effects of waiting. This is indicative of watching something unfold, waiting for news, a journey towards somewhere or something - but a journey where the factors of travel are out of your control.
It represents the mentality adopted by the ill, the embittered, the lonely, the apathetic, the nervous, the poor, the elderly, the child - it is all those who sit and watch factors delay, retard, or slow advancement.
The Enchantment: Have a option for the players - a stake out. This may be taken as a normal downtime choice - and here is a C10 table for it - it is representative of the players taking the time to just watch and wait for news - parked outside a house - languishing on the couch watching the cell phone - pacing nervously - or otherwise not taking any action save the passing of time till something occurs.
Stake Out
1 -1 Calm, this waiting is agonizing.
2
3
4 Nothing happens, but luckily, nothing happens.
5
6
7 You spot something, you get the call first, this waiting and watching means you were prepared.
8
9
10 The act of observation grounds you, keeping you in the now, +2 Calm - and the host will start the adventure back up with you at your location - something will have been observed.
If you want to take an action symbolic of this - go somewhere and people-watch. Go to the mall, a coffee shop, a supermarket - and watch people - trying to consider what they are doing - and think about how what you are doing is just waiting for others to do things.
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| Eight of Wands |
The Dream: Curving green hills - blues cloudless skies.
Upon a hilly landscape - there are small smattering of trees far off - and upon a hill there is a house, white and tiny - very far away.
In front of us are eight wands of wood - with sprigs of growth - three sprigs for every wand.
They all emerge from the left and point towards the right - down and away from the home - many different distances.
The Awakening: You have impulsively taken actions based on routine - leaving your home in haste. This card represents hasty letters of love - being late for appointments - misspelled messages - orphaned purses in restaurants, wallets left on bleachers.
The Enchantment: The players will have some need to return to their home - something they need will be there - some person they suddenly want to talk to - some forgotten thing that manifests.
You can have this happen as they spot something that reminds them - they reach for something they usually carry, a call or text from home - something that suddenly makes it crystal clear that they are not home and this distance should feel heartbreaking - even if it is not that far - it is not about the distance physically, but emotionally, mentally.
If you want to take an action symbolic of this - write out ten people you know - one by one, in the order they appear in your head.
Call, text, or visit the tenth person - and consider why they came to you tenth - think about what they mean to you and where they are.
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| Three of Wands |
The Dream : A man stands facing the horizon - with a great red cloak or cape - a draped olive part over one shoulder and a checkered sash doing a diagonal across his left side, our right.
The arm this diagonal stretches across is sleeved - his hand clutches a wand of wood with two living sprigs of leaves.
Behind him stands two more wands - with three springs each.
His boots are red - the rocks he stands on are patchy - and overlooking the sea.
In the faraway horizon there are mountains - grey and brown, holding down the yellow sky.
Closer to him, sailing the sea - are three ships - to the far left there is a ship with one sail, it is beyond the first wand. Between the clutched wand and the leftmost wand is a ship with two sails. To the far right is a ship with a single sail, it is beyond the third wand, the clutched one.
The man has a circlet of gold upon his brow.
The Awakening : This card represents passage, a movement between two spaces, a closing of one gap and the leaving open of another. It is the space between three, two openings. It represents this factor - the passing through of double doors, the back or front seat of a car - the walking through woods and choosing paths. It is a card of decisions, and clearly represents the framework of two decisions - which nearly always come down to three factors - two of which are polar and the third which is their midpoint.
The Enchantment : Give the players a few decisions in passing - ask them "you see that the door into the store is a double door - do you open the left or right door?"
Ask them to choose between two things that come up, but have zero consequence.
Later on - subtly alter or arrange things to come down to two choices - and carefully engineer them to coincide with previous choices - two guns but one is loaded - left or right?
If you want to take an action symbolic of this - go to somewhere there are double doors and look through the place for anything that could be seen as a binary choice - and consider the options - look at this choice and try and identify the two influencing extremes and the midpoint.
Make a decision between the two.
Another option is to find any grouping of at least three trees, poles, stones, doors - or other physical impositions - and carefully and intentionally pass through a gap between them. Later, upon returning the way you came - make sure to go back through the gap you did not pass the first time.
Think about how this feels - this intentional choice that has no impact on anything but your thinking.
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| Death: My usual significator card |
The Dream : A armored man rides a white pupil-less horse - it is bridled with rainiments decorated with skulls and crosses - it stands with one foot upraised.
The man wears armor - black and sturdy - his helmet has its' visor opened - and has a red tassel on the point of the head. His hands are skeletal, clutching a standard - a flag - which depicts a five pointed flower in white upon a black body. The man's face is a yellowed skull - impassive, toothless, and is gazing down at several figures upon the green and grassy land.
Dawn is rising - or dusk is setting - it is not clear which - and where the sun is proclaiming one or the other - a tower with one window is visible - stark in the horizon.
There is a religious figure seemingly pleading with the rider- garbed in yellow - with a mitre.
There is a child or young adult in the bottom corner with a wreathe of flowers upon her head - she is garbed in white, looking away from the rider and dropping from her outstretched hands a single pair of cherries.
In front of her kneels a small child garbed in green - looking up at the rider - their gaze appears to be connected - both looking at one another.
There lies, behind the rider and horse - a man - lying dead and cold - with red shoes, ermine about his shoulders - and a green blanket laid across him - like a blanket of the earth, bereaved by none but the soil.
The Awakening : This card is waking up - this card is shaking off shackles - this card is a scarred dog rolling in the grass - it is a victim freed.
This card is upheaval - this card is the changes, abrupt and strange - the unexpected alteration or removal of limitations or boundaries.
This card is death - the passing of one thing to another - the furnishings of life's living room rearranged - but never removed.
The Enchantment : When something pivotal, emotional, scary, tense, sad - or otherwise strong happens - rearrange the players. Have them get closer or further apart - have them swap spots - move from one table in the space to another.
If you want to take an action symbolic of this, rearrange a space where you live or work - move furniture or possessions - and consider the death of the space - and come to terms with that death.
Reconsider the life of the new space - which necessitated the death of the old.
Try to apply this to bigger and more complex changes that have affected you.
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