haptalaon | The Vision and the Veil

One thing I've put within my Sanctuary is a longdreamedof oracle deck. It draws from the gallery as a kind of 'found oracle', presenting three images for the viewer to interpret as they will. I've been interested to note the impact of the internet here: I frequently find the central card is the most important, flanked by two others, perhaps because on the computer the eye is drawn to the center more readily than on a table.

I find it tricky to read. It's reminding me a LOT of the thoth Crowley-Harris deck, which was my first and my beloved and I've never been able to use it. It's always talking of higher things. I can't get it to solve my relationship troubles, I use my Smith-Waite for that.

As often as not, this oracle deck will give me a kind of cosmic 'weather report', peering into how the tides and spirits are swirling in and out of one another. This may indeed be its purpose, but I think I don't quite yet know how to pilot it

Some tools I'm using:

Consider the topic of question: what domains describe it?
Are these cards on the same theme, or different ones?
Is any of the imagery doubling/amplifying or in contrast with one another?
Is the focal point the center? Is there a sense of journey?
What domains are present in the spread? Is one dominant? How do they link together - in a coherent line, or do they contrast or zig-zag?
Do the domains you associate your question with appear? If so, it's a good omen. Do opposing domains appear? Likely bad. Do the domains that appear aspect your topic, in which case the tone is critical - something to do, or not do, or to consider, or avoid.
As a simple rule of thumb: Is there a lot of Solar imagery? This tends to be beneficial. A lot of Lunar-Stellar imagery? Prepare for despair. Solar Lunar is active, activity, work and purpose; Solar Stellar lassitude, enjoyment and embodiment; the Stellar is outer, greater things; Lunar meanings vary.
Is this a 'pure' example of the archetype on the card, or is it an aspect/a rising or falling variant?
What is the 'lesson' of this aspect or location?
Is this advice or criticism? What would happen if you were MORE like this person? What would happen if you were LESS?
If two places appear, what is the nature of the path between them? If two people appear, what is their relationship?

As the deck also just displays spirits and pathways within the Fen, it can also be used in a very easy way to ask: who is watching over me today? who should I light a candle to today? what kind of work should I practice today? Used in this way, the deck can be very obvious, as it can say to you directly - spend less time on twitter, more time dancing in the woods and speaking with the Horned God.

You can also determine the meanings of the three positions before you start, as in any three-card-spread you are familiar with

At present, there are over 1000 cards in the deck, and they rotate in and out as I finesse the galleries. I'm so proud of them. It's a new thing to have the skill to even pluck out and use the gallery images in this way. As my next step, I really want to learn how to work with the gallery database, and then hopefully I can display credits for images on the oracle page itself (which I can't do right now, I'm literally just plucking out a list of urls and doing some find-replace trickery on)

These little snatches of physicality - like the oracle deck, like the morning papers, like my radio station (almost ready to broadcast!) - are bringing me so much pleasure. I suppose it's that physicality thing again. I need to make my faith tangible within the world for it to be real, not exactly because I need external validation, but because I am of the world and so the things that matter are of the world also. I have discovered the word for my interior desgin taste is 'grandmillennial' - how mortifying to discover that one is a Type! - and i think that desire for permanence is extremely intense for me, wanting my space to feel like a grandparent's house, like a life that has already happened and is now still.

There's also a practical element, where I do still feel that 'internet slot machine' urge in a lot of my daily moments, so it is extremely fun and useful to be able to redirect that urge onto looking at my own webpages, which have been pre-prepared to avert harm, but still provide the delicious pleasure of random images or quotations, that delight of interactivity and the unexpected. Alas, I dream in fire and work in clay.