Fin de Siècle Kipper ->

 

I've been seeing commentary online for awhile now stating that directions in Ciro Marchetti's wonderful Fin de Siècle Kipper are "not easily discerned." Must people be spoon fed at every step? Has anyone tried looking at the cards? O ye generation of vipers, how long must I bear with thee? Sheesh. 😂

Directions in the Fin de Siècle are as easily seen as they are in the Originals.

1. Main Male: Yes, he's looking straight at you. But he stands facing left. Therefore, the card can be read as facing left.
2. Main Female: Right.
3. Marriage: No clear direction. (But the same can be said of this card in the Original, as the man and woman are facing each other.
4. Courtship: Again, no clear direction.
5. Mature Man: He faces left. Be aware, though, that he glances to the right, and his finger points to the card below him. All of this can be useful in a reading.
6. Mature Female: Inclines her head to the left.
7. Message: Both the drawer and the envelope open to the right.
8. False Person: Right.
9. Change: The car faces right.
10. Journey: The train moves to the left. The man in the foreground also faces left.
11. Sudden Wealth: The coins spill down to the card below.
12. Privileged Lady: Left. But again, watch her eyes.
13. Wealthy Man: He's inclined to the left.
14. Message of Concern: Right.
15. Lovers: Like 3 and 4, no direction.
16. Thoughts: Left.
17. Gift: Left.
18. Child: Right. Pay attention to the card above, as well.
19. Coffin: Opens to the right, the rose in the glass faces right, the near corner points right.
20. House: No direction.
21. Family Room: The portraits on the wall face right.
22. Official Person: Left.
23. Court House: Right.
24: Thief: Two out of the three people depicted on this card face left. Majority rules.
25. High Honor: Right.
26. Great Fortune: Left. But the card below stands to benefit most.
27. Unexpected Income: Queen Victoria faces left.
28. Expectation: Left.
29: Imprisonment: Right.
30. Judication: Right. Look at the Judge.
31. Bad Health: Right. Depending on context, you can also read this from the patient's POV, i.e., left.
32. Despair: Right.
33. Concern: Left.
34. Occupation: Right.
35. Pathway: The path curves and meanders, with no set left or right.
36. Distant Horizons: Both the gull and the ship are clearly moving to the right.
37. Poverty: No direction, though you could read the cat and rat as right if needed.
38. Toil & Labour: Right.
39: Community: Not really directional. The people face various directions. 

So you see the directions are no less clear than those in the Originals. This deck is perfectly fine for beginners, as well as more experienced readers. Just don't let facing directions shove you around the board, or fall into the trap of relying solely on english language sources. German websites are generally best for Kipper, and we do have Google Translate at our fingertips. Also highly recommended: Hildegard Leiding's Leiding Wahrsagekarten, Buch 1 & Buch 2.

The Sibilla and Combover Caligula

 

I wanted to know how much more "mourning" Trump will be allowed before they re-schedule his deposition (that was postponed on 7/15 "in consideration.") What's happened so far:

7/14 Ivana dies
7/20 Ivana's funeral
7/22 Rally in Arizona
7/23 TPUSA in Florida
7/28 Pro-Am Golf Tournament NJ
7/29-7/31 Saudi LIV Golf Extravaganza NJ

I used a Vera Sibilla - no reversals as I'm a bit rusty with it. (This is a practice read.) The spread is basically a French Cross, except I didn't add the cards to arrive at a synthesis for card 5, I just laid a card. (Sibilla, as you guys know, has no Majors and isn't numbered straight through like Lenormand.)

The Sibilla, as always, lived up to its reputation for chattiness and gave me more than I asked for, lol. The first thing I noticed is that there are three diamonds, indicating an element of risk. There's certainly risk involved on all sides. Diamonds are also concerned with money. (This is "just" the financial fraud and not the sedition - its all about money.)

Card 1 is the 10 of Spades, Militare. I think the New York Attorney General's office is strong, they mean business. The soldier is determined, tenacious, and has every intention of going over the mountains.

Card 2 is the Queen of Diamonds, Donna Maritata. Cards in this position can help or hinder the situation. This card is positive, as it indicates a caring woman who is also practical. It might be Leticia James herself, even if she is unmarried. A person can be equally committed to their career. I think she very much wants to see him finally get some consequences.

Card 3 is the 5 of Diamonds, Malinconia. It might refer to Ivana's death - he had no real regard for her. He had her buried at his golf course so he wouldn't have to pay taxes on it. Unlike the Widower card, the grave on this card belongs to an animal. Losing a pet can be devastating, but I don't think Trump is devastated. The card seems to be saying it's really not important to him, he doesn't see her as a person. Many even suspect that he had her "Epsteined." The AG's office might be letting a "proper" period of time pass, for appearances sake. (Who knows, they might be gathering even more evidence while this is going on.) He IS depressed - it hangs over his head - but I suspect that's due to things like this, the Jan. 6 hearings, and the RNC's threats to stop covering his legal bills once he announces his candidacy for president..

Card 4 contains the answer, and it's the Queen of Clubs, Giovine Fanciulla. It's not Ivanka, though she's also in hot water - she's 40, and this card stands for someone unmarried and under 30. The card doesn't always refer to a literal person. She points to Militare, indicating that the NY AG's office holds the solution. If QC is a person, she's an up-and-comer working at the AG's office who is key somehow. He steps on her, disrespects her. This may be someone he's insulted or offended in the past.

Card 5 is the synthesis and it's 10 of Diamonds, Il Ladro. Definitely Trump and his financial fraud. Look at the horizontal line: see how he stalks Ms. James, but the AG's office is on his tail with a bayonet, lol. The "synthesis" of all this is quite simple: Trump is a thief. We knew that, but there will finally be something done about it. We end on a red card, a positive outcome. It's just going to take longer than we would like. How long? Card 5 is summer, so that gives it up to 8 weeks to play out. If not, the answer card is a Club and indicates winter. Let's hope it's not that long! I think they'll be requiring his deposition by the end of summer, but after that things could drag on with a final decision this winter.

All in all, better than expected.

 

 

On Excess and Bad Signal

With a few notable exceptions, I recommend books on card reading published prior to 1970 or so. There are reasons for this, read on:

This is a meme that's been going around my dog groups. As you can see, all of these "breeds" are pitbull mixes. It reflects something that's really going on with the mixed breed population: pitbulls are so overbred that you'd be hard pressed to find a mixed breed dog that doesn't have a degree of pitbull ancestry. 

Pitbulls and pitbull mixes are not for everybody. No dog is, but especially not a dog developed for tenacious animal aggression. These dogs require responsible, knowledgeable owners. In the wrong hands, things can and do go horribly wrong. But that hasn't stopped the irresponsible owners from letting their intact dogs run at large and flood the gene pool.

The same thing can happen with ideas. Let's look at "jumpers."

Once in a great while, a card might "jump" from the deck while shuffling. Some readers attach special significance to it, others just stick it back in the deck. It's something that's probably been done for as long as people have been reading cards...but then the internet happened. There was the inevitable bad signal, and now we have people doing it intentionally, even doing something called "fallout shuffling" where they just drop cards all over the place. So now we have people asking what to do if they get more "jumpers" (but they aren't really jumpers if you drop them on purpose) than there are positions in the spread, how to read a card that falls at such-and-such angle, and all manner of irrelevant bullshit that has fuck-all to do with reading cards.

It's the same with the idea that you need to learn numerous dedicated spreads for different kinds of questions, that spreads without named positions are "not spreads", that "third party" readings are verboten, that cards "don't tell the future," etc., etc., ad nauseum. These ideas are spread like viruses in contemporary books and on websites.

If you want to read cards, study the cards and the older sources, not how to do 1000 spreads while playing 32/36/52/78 Pickup and only asking about yourself in the present. And stay away from the new age and wellness stuff. It's absurd.

Unpopular Fact #3: Right- & Left-Brain Theory Is Utter Crap

 

 

 

 

For awhile, it was thought that the left side of the brain was analytical and the right side was creative and intuitive, and that one side or the other "dominates." But that's been completely debunked:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/08/130814190513.htm

 

Then some people got the ill-conceived idea that if they just ignored left brained things, let all of that atrophy, they'd be amazingly psychic. But the thing is, even if right and left brain theory were true (which it isn't) we need to use our whole brain - even for reading cards. Analysis, logic and critical thinking skills are as necessary as intuition and creativity. Often even moreso.

 

It's not just aspiring card readers who do this. We've come to a point in time where the willfully ignorant think that facts and logic pose an actual threat. Rejection of science and embracing quack cures in the face of a pandemic, for instance, is hastening our descent into Dark Ages v2. So is racism - science itself tells us that race is a construct.  

I could go on, but you get the picture. The decision to close off from facts and stay stupid is, well, stupid.

Unpopular Fact #2: Decks Don't Call People

 We've all seen it: the aspiring reader asks "What deck should I get?" or "Can someone suggest a good beginner deck?" and without fail, people will pipe up and say "Get the deck that calls to you."

Never mind that pasteboard is obviously inanimate, so "the deck that calls to you" gets interpreted as "Do whatever you want", which is no advice at all. It's saying it doesn't matter. Get the one you think is pretty, or the one in the bargain bin, or whatever. But some decks are idiosyncratic. Others are just bad. Nobody can help this person if their deck is nonsensical. And the available reference material for wonky decks is often the LWB/companion book and nothing else.

I'm not saying that new readers should be treated like children. There's no reason not to start with the Thoth, or something similarly complex, if they're reasonably intelligent and that's what they want. But FFS, put some thought into this. Somebody asked for help, so help them. Or get out of the way. Don't just parrot things.

Really.

Stop being a parrot.

Unpopular Fact #1: This Is A Spread

 

A line of three cards with no named positions is a spread. So is a line of five, seven, or nine. Cards laid in squares, pyramids, and tableaus with no named positions are spreads. The cards are spread on the table (or on any available surface, like the boots above.)

A spread is simply an array. It's something spread out. When you invite people for a big dinner, the available food on the table is referred to as a spread. Nobody says the potatoes are the near future or the meat is advice. A ranch is referred to as a spread, because the land is spread out. The items on a newspaper or magazine page, taken together, are also referred to as a spread. The cover for a bed is called a spread as well, because you spread it on top.

I'm not sure how it started, but I've seen people referring to "reading cards without a spread" on multiple occasions in recent years. Stop. It's ignorant not to use a simple word like "spread" according to the definition.

On wellness, privilege, and cards

                                                                        Il Meneghello's Sibilla 1850 features numerous "people cards."

I think I've talked about the wellness model here before. It's essentially the marketing of pricey quack cures to the kind of people who can spend $60+ on a Gwyneth Paltrow yoni egg just to see if it works. There's a more in depth article about it here.

In recent decades, it's been gradually creeping into Tarot. Reading has become progressively more solipsistic. Articles have been cropping up in major publications saying that "Tarot doesn't predict the future", but rather, "it's a tool for self-reflection." Me, me, me. Even the New York Times has jumped on the bandwagon:

 

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/01/style/self-care/tarot-guide-for-beginners.html

 

Do those questions remind you of anything?

 

 

They're all self-centered, other than "Why is my mother like that?" which amounts to armchair psychological analysis. They're vague, too. Ask vague questions, get nebulous answers.

 

The privilege is problematic. For all their "self-awareness",  the wellness crowd doesn't seem to mind doing things like continuing to sell and burn sage knowing the negative impact it has on Native Americans. They support a massive market for crystals, knowing the environmental impact and the working conditions of the people who mine them. Life is an endless gold rush to them. Lay things to waste, profit, and move on. I'm not saying that owning a few pretty rocks makes you a jerk. A lot of perfectly nice people have been sucked into wellness. But it's time to stop buying, or at least slow down considerably.

I'm just not seeing any real self-reflection.

And I'm all for skepticism. But my experience with cards has shown me that they really do seem to predict things. I don't know how or why it works. That's what makes it interesting. That's what makes going to a fortuneteller fun for people, that little mystery.

Tarot was not always nonpredictive and self centered. Until the 70's or so, it fell into two broad categories: traditional fortunetelling, something that mainly deals with the future and other people, and occult Tarot, which was often meditation, study and contemplation, but could also be used for predictive reading. Here is a wonderful bit about incorporating the Sephiroth and paths:
https://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=4312387&postcount=17

 

And then we started seeing "codes of ethics" with items like this: 

"Questions relating to third parties e.g., partners, family members, colleagues, will either be re-phrased or declined."

I read cards in the traditional way, and while others are of course free to do what they think is right, I resent the implication that readers like myself are somehow less "ethical" because we read cards the way people have for the last few hundred years. I won't disrespect a client by changing their question, and I do read about other people. We don't live in a vacuum, our lives are impacted by others. But no matter, you do you. Just don't try to push it on me.

 

Wellness marketing has a LOT of money behind it, so they've been more successful than I would like in marginalizing us. (Note how the example questions in the NYT article cited above are allegedly from "the experts." I doubt these "experts" could read their way out of a wet paper sack.) I'm fully aware of their intentions toward us, but their efforts are doomed to fail. The old books, the good books, and the better online content are proof enough that we've existed for a long time, they haven't erased us, we're still here. And we're good.

Luckily, the wellness model so far seems limited to Tarot and "oracle"/affirmation decks, at least as far as cards go. I haven't seen it applied to Lenormand, Kippers, Sibilla, playing cards, etc. And while I'm knocking wood that it never happens, it would be very difficult to force these decks into a wellness mold. These decks and methods center on our interactions with others, and how they impact our lives. Here is a Kipper spread - note the people cards:

These systems don't lend themselves well to the modern, non-cartomantic methods that have been shoehorned into Tarot. Which brings me to the point:

If you subscribe to the wellness model, I can't help you with Lenormand, Kippers, etc. I don't see how any traditional reader can. And if we are talking in an online venue where the rules state that the things people normally ask about have to be "rephrased" and "third party readings" are forbidden, I'm effectively gagged. It's not that I'm taking my ball and going home, I really can't help you. It's not workable.