Fifth Exercise, second part...
Satori, et all,
You are doing great. The first thing I feel like pointing out is how, now that we are working with three cards, the act of seeing something in one card gets easier. You are all getting sharper!
‘Silly’ is OK. In any case, you may want to try at rephrasing your sentences, so they describe things that could happen to real people.
Right now, as an exercise, stretching the images is OK. But in practice we will have to deliver these sentences to a real client, and she might get lost if we start talking about monkeys.
Or not... In regard of this issue, there is a quote from Anselm Kiefer I would like to share with you all:
"Everything we say is fiction. "It is a nice day" is already a fiction. That is why we must avoid constructing dogma with language. The idea that plants are directly connected with the starts is very pretty. Its an explanation that works with me dasein. It's a consolation. Having said that, irony is indispensable. These are words pronounced by human beings, they can only be used ironically because they are always incomplete. What we say is always a bit ridiculous. People who use words without irony are fanatics, not full human beings. One should always be ready to laugh, because everything is ridiculous. I distrust belief, all dogma. They are nothing but ways of gaining power, of exciting chauvinism."
I would like that all of you meditate on this quote, so we can move towards the second part of the exercise.
When I look at the cards, for a client, I will see things like the ones you are seeing:
"I spin a wheel, seeking momentum, and hit the jackpot."
The thing is that, just as Kiefer is saying in that quote, I have to keep my dogmatism in check. I can’t just forcefully state: “You are going to win the lottery!” “You will see! You are going to win!” I have seen readers who are like that. You can even tell them “But... I never play the lottery” and they will keep insisting: “It doesn‘t matter. Here it is, very clear: You are going to win the lottery!” So, when I see a message like that in the cards, I will go for it, but I will do so by understanding that the message operates at two different levels: a literal level, and a metaphorical level.
"You spin a wheel, seeking momentum, and hit the jackpot" is a great message for a reading. In fact, all of the messages you wrote are. I would deliver it just like that. As Satori pointed out, it is possible that this person will actually win the lottery. But it is more likely to think that this message describes an energetic imprint at a metaphorical level. Most of the times, an intelligent client will see trough the literal statement and apprehend the metaphor. They will understand because, as I pointed out at the beginning of this threads, the cards are an image wanted to be turned into a metaphor by our client. By our client, not necessarily by us! In a few cases, people may laugh at you and say “That would be nice!” and you may feel inclined to explain that your statement has an additional depth. Only in the very specific case of your client asking “Will I win the lottery?” you can be certain that the message’s main emphasis is literal.
What happens in the rest of the cases?
Well, as I said before, we assume the message is a metaphor for something. In this case, it is a metaphor for “the time is right to set thing in motion”. As I said before, most intelligent clients will understand this, yet you need to be prepared to see the metaphor in the message, just in case they need a little push. The trick here is that we can’t think metaphors without seeing the cards literally. I am going to repeat that: we can’t think metaphors without seeing the cards literally. We need our literal statements to elicit a metaphor in our mind, or in the mind of a person, because metaphors cannot be paraphrased, nor explained. They can only be understood by imaging.
In Basho’s poem:
roadside rose
of sharon: devoured
by my horse
We can experience the contrast between the solid mass of a muscular horse and the tenderness of a rose. I can see the soft lips of the horse touching gently the rose bulb, and I can almost hear its strong jaws crushing the whole rose without difficulties. All these experiences are suggested by the poem, but at a deeper level, the poem is a metaphor for the impermanence of life. We can envision a red rose at a roadside, standing proud and perfect. A rose is eternal... until it decays. But the sight of a rose is eternal in itself, unless of course, a huge horse comes and bites it off! The unexpected, fate, chance, luck... call it in any way you want, is always chasing our sense of permanence.
To rephrase all that: we look at the cards as we have been looking so far, searching for a literal statement like: “An angel pours matured foundations leading chained slaves”, “With knitting needles and yarn a purse was made”, etc. We may deliver that statement to the person as it is. But we do so knowing that in most cases the statement doesn’t describes a literal event but a metaphorical one.
- An angel pours matured foundations leading chained slaves: “You will get help to move out”.
- With knitting needles and yarn a purse was made: “Follow all the steps. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
That will be the second part of this exercise. Please, do three more examples, and after you have stated literally what you are seeing, answer this question: what is this metaphor for?
Any questions, let me know.
Best,
EE
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