&"The Royal Game of Human Life&" - Card Play
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THE ROYAL GAME OF HUMAN LIFE or CELESTIAL SNAKES AND LADDERS
Having a bunch of qabalistically inclined friends over for Halloween? Here's an idea what to do
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Fun.
I was intrigued by the title, because I have a 'game' that I call "Tarot Snakes & Ladders" that is the basis of how, back in the late '70s, I finally "cracked the code" of the Minor Arcana. (I don't mean I uniquely cracked the code. It was long cracked. I mean, rather, that it's how I finally integrated the core principles and they made sense.)
Lay out the minors in four rows, 10 to Ace left to right. Wands on the top row, then Cups, then Swords, then Disks.
The cards represent the 10 s'fiyroth in the 4 Worlds. You always start at 10 of Disks (Malkuth in Assiyah). The goal is 1 of Wands (Kether in Atziylooth).
At each stop you can either go up or down one world in the same s'fiyrah or go forward or backward one s'fiyrah in the same world. For example, from the 10 of Disks (Malkuth in Assiyah) you have two choices: 9 of Disks (go from Malkuth to Y'sod in the same world) or 10 of Swords (go from Assiyah to Y'tziyrah in the same sphere). - You can move "right" from an Ace of one world to the 10 of the next higher world, and "left" from a 10 of one world to the Ace of the next lower world.
The path you trace tells a story. The game is to tell the story aloud.
One of the most useful ways to do it is to trace out your life. Everyone is born in the Wealth of Malkuth of Assiyah. What happened next? Did you emerge into a basically fertile, supportive, bountiful life situation (9 of Disks) or into hardship, struggle, fragmentation of resources, domestic violence? That determines which route you took. At each step, after telling what that step was, the question is, "And what happened next?"
Sometimes you go backwards, sometimes in a loop, etc. Each step has to be grounded in the next stage of life events.
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@Aion said
"Like start with a card for Strife and work your way out...? Or to your desired end?
Like how would you work your way from the Five of Wands to the Three of Cups?"
Well, you'd have to make choices
It might go something like this:
If you are truly in Strife, you are in a very high level of conflict. As the 5 of Wands, you are working at Geburah in Atziluth and the situation is essentially conflict of will, severity on the issue of will that requires strength and perseverance to move through. One would want to determine that it was truly this sort of situation, and not a 10 of Swords situation, for example. Let's assume you've dug into yourself and determined this is the case, and you're dealing with the very high level Geburah of Atziluth issue and don't know how to move forward.
You have three paths of approach.
You could step down to Tifereth of Atziluth to recenter, to reequilibrate on the matter of will.
Or you could move directly forward into Chesed of Atziluth, which would require an actual act of initiation, an exceedingly high step that essentially means that you have to resolve the conflict of will within yourself as part of the alchemy that moves you forward to the 4 of Wands. This is very deep and entirely beyond this short post.
But a quite workable level for many would be to descend a plane to Geburah of Briah and accept the severity of the heart - broken-heartedness at a deep level (not to be confused with the reactive emotional level of, say, the 9 of Swords). Speaking to you, I might phrase it that you accept the wounds of Christ, find a way to make your heart big enough to feel the consequences of the disequilibrium of will. Those who can't handle this would be driven down further, to the 5 of Swords - Geburah in Yetzirah - and even to the place where their mind shuts down and they only take the consequences in their physical bodies; but let's say you, who have worked somehow up to the level of Geburah in Atziluth, are able to do this, and to fully experience the 5 of Cups level.
From there, you can continue in Briah, transitioning to the 4 of Cups, Chesed in Briah, and find its profound peace, its soul-sating serenity. (It's the ordeal of Gethsemane.) Having been brought to stillness by the Severity of the Heart, you then sit still and abide.
From this place, you may well be able to take the step that opens directly to Binah in Briah, the 3 of Cups that was your stated goal.
Or something like that.
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@Aion said
"Thanks for that, Jim. I feel like I've been given a whole new thing that tarot does."
You're welcome. - Tarot, at root, is a mapping of the Tree of Life, and therefore a structural mapping of how we believe consciousness is structured. It always made sense to me, therefore, to use it as a navigation tool.
Danica, sorry, I didn't mean to hijack your thread and draw all the attention away from your game. Maybe I can nudge people back to your original post at the top. (Have a lovely, gracious holiday.)
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Does this help? (Wow, at 17% original size, it's still too large.)
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@Jim Eshelman said
"
Danica, sorry, I didn't mean to hijack your thread and draw all the attention away from your game. Maybe I can nudge people back to your original post at the top. (Have a lovely, gracious holiday.)"
It's quite all-right - I don't see it as hijacking. Very useful exchange of information thus far.
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@Jim Eshelman said
"Speaking to you, I might phrase it that you accept the wounds of Christ, find a way to make your heart big enough to feel the consequences of the disequilibrium of will. "
I've been working on speaking both languages for a while. How would you say it to someone without such a Christian background?
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Open yourself to the whole of the experience, without resistance, willing to be slain/born at every step.
