Nearly a month ago, Josie and I did a couple of divinations to orient ourselves and reflect on our situation.  Now, I don’t do divinations to “tell the future,” just like I don’t do magick to shape or change reality.  I see both as simple psychological tools to access creative and insightful dimensions of self.  The same can be said for dream analysis or meditation.  These techniques happen to be very effective for me.

We did both a Tarot reading and a casting of the I Ching.  I like to use the Tarot every few months because the spread I’ve always used (the first one I learned) has ten cards in ten positions, which allows for a lot of interpretive variety.  The analysis tends to be holistic.  I find myself able to draw out multiple themes upon reflection and see how they intersect.  Doing this too often would be superfluous.

We performed the divination on July 5th, 2009, and it ended up looking like this:

Queen of Pentacles as the Significator
Four of Pentacles as the Crossing Card
Five of Pentacles as the Fruit of the Tree
King of Pentacles as the Root of the Tree
Eight of Pentacles as the Receding Influence
Ten of Wands as the Approaching Influence
Judgement as the Self-Perception
Queen of Swords as the Other-Perception
The Chariot as the Hopes and Fears
Knight of Wands as the Final Outcome

Interpretation of the cards is artistry.  It’s like seeing shapes in the clouds, or like a randomized Rorschach test made from 78 pieces of mythological art.  We performed the divination as we were beginning the home-buying process, and still wondering whether we were making the right decision.  We immediately saw the strong emphasis on Pentacles (half the cards).  The suit of Pentacles represents material and physical concerns, money, health, and shelter.  There were also a lot of powerful cards (Court cards and Major Arcana) which is an indicator of how “intense” the situation was.

Although it would take excessively long to describe the many creative connections we made, a couple stand out as interesting.  The associations between the Fruit and the Root were particularly potent: the Five of Pentacles stands for great financial loss, which we recognized as taking on $130,000 in mortgaged debt.  The Fruit of the Tree is the product of an underlying situation (the Root), which in this case was the King of Pentacles.  The King reflects acts of material and financial mastery.  We felt that this relationship was interesting, because the huge amount of debt we’re choosing to carry is actually a major investment.

Another interesting relationship was between the Receding and Approaching Influences.  The Receding Influence was the Eight of Pentacles, which represents concentrating on development of new skills.  The Approaching Influence was the Ten of Wands, which signifies a feeling of oppression or burden from taking on too much.  This dynamic perfectly represents my experience as a researcher in the NSF-REU program.  The first portion of the program was an intense knowledge and skill-building period, but as the situation developed alongside the house-buying and Josie’s recent illness, that feeling of oppression loomed over me as I struggled to manage my business and still generate research products.

A final interesting point of note, appropriately, is the Final Outcome.  In this case it was the Knight of Wands, which is an adventurous, dynamic card.  The meaning of the Knight reminds me of my mentor’s favorite axiom: “Err on the side of fuck it.”  The card’s symbolism most interesting to us was that of moving or a change of residence.  That pretty much sealed our decision to get the home-buying process started.

This was about three weeks ago.  Last week, our offer was accepted for the house at 1560 Chivalry Ln.  Looks like the Knight was working in our favor.