Oracles and divinatory collections, the pantheon of mysteries, could be brought up to date with our times by recognition of several fundamental factors. The world has multiplied. The instructive designs of the I Ching, Tarot, Runes, and other ancient media were couched in a conspectus of archetypes from pre-industrial – but highly organized – societies that relied on vertical orders, social structures, and power dynamics that the people have outgrown.
We’re not ready to abandon their teachings without consideration, but those sets of symbols, picking out points in an outdated cycle punctuated by mysteries and gods and thinly-veiled arbitrary forces, no longer help us navigate. There are more players; there are more layers. Individuals see themselves with more choices, more power over their own choices. Individuals form their own groups. Individuals and groups empower each other to realize a multiplicity of goals. And maybe they feel less obligation to “society” – a construct which is all-but-lost in the police state of global imperialism, migration, and displacement; in the population explosion; in the commodification of lands and beings and waters: in the seizure of public or even monarchic governance structures by invisible business hands of gold and diamond and ruby red blood. Now we are set the task of redistributing power, and so we require discretion; contemplation; communication. We are mobilized by cynicism born of experience and by revolutions fought and won, and still being fought, and lost, by those of us who broke from imposed ranks and arbitrary stations once confined by race, breeding, gender, age, wealth…
People face the unfinished scaffolding, the contested roofs, the open diggings of a revolution in progress. These cards deal out 84 snapshot analyses of critical moments of change, recommending consideration, reflection and reevaluation, and action.
