What a brilliant project. I am currently making a traditional tarot deck but I love the idea of a localised oracle. You've given me lots to think about!
I also really love that The Wizard of Wellington's Weatherproof Oracle already sounds like an incredible magical realist novel.
Thanks! The beauty of having to submit the idea for approval was a. Having to talk a good talk and make decisions ahead of time, and b. Coming up with a punchy title!
"It was as if those sticks, once they’d been shown the shape, willed themselves into a real fire."
This. The whole story was lovely, but this phrase caught in my mind like a hook: I feel like this notion is important. What - or who -- needs to be shown the shape they can hold?
goddamn, do i ever love this. (and thanks for the shout-out!) what a brilliant idea, and beautifully realized. i'm deeply envious.
if you have any suggestions for a narrow-band wayfinding divination system (mostly limited to "where should i go next?") i'd love to chat. been puzzling over how to use divination for psychogeography. currently considering the I Ching hexgrams mapped onto a location to start, letting it grow from there. but that might be unnecessarily complicated.
Hmmm do you mean when you're out walking for instance? Or at home looking at a map? My impulse is that you would want to weight the system in favour of moving forward, maybe it could be something like 'go towards (X)': say, 'the tallest thing'; 'water'; 'a voice'; 'sound' ... it could be a dice or set of dice, you could carry them in your pocket ... almost like 'amplification of whim'. But also you could have 'turn around and go home immediately'- maybe if you roll two blanks at once or something like that.
You could do it even more simply than that, colours, elements... it makes me think about when I was in London, how I would be following these kind of breadcrumb trails of signs. Whatever supposed quest I was on was just an excuse to start moving to somewhere new and see what I came across
at home, looking at a map, at least initially. (probably do some standard divination in situ once i narrow down the target area.) it's the opposite problem of London where i am: not enough space to do the standard psychogeography "drift" for random encounters, so i need a way to frontload uncertainty.
i plan to experiment with drawing a base map, creating an overlay of hexagrams, and then doing I Ching geomancy to pick a place for collecting synchronicities. (check out my Weirdsday Audio Diary for progress reports 🤘🏻)
I understand, my city is far less dense than London, and I tend to travel the same routes over and over... I'm trying to think how to call in other randomnesses. You could scatter birdseed on the map.
I love your stones idea - it's brilliant. I think I might get the writing group I'm in to make divination cards of some sort. Thanks for the inspiration and for your writing.
…really reallly really really cool…i love where the piece netted out but not going to lie, thought you might be making a blind unpainted all stone tarot, the pulls in the mind of the beholder i suppose, and was excited to see what might come of such magic…that said this was even cooler so…made me remember i don’t play with the earth enough…thank you…
That's exactly what Enrique said, the stones already have images in them. I said ‘You and I can see and read those stone-lines, but maybe other people need words and pictures!’
Divining with plain rocks or sticks is totally doable
I also said I had previously made a bunch of drawings seeing things in stones. I had included one in the piece but took it out, maybe I'll put it back in!
Rosie, I love this. I so want to meet on the street and have my/their (person/place) stone tarot read. That you make it local seems to invite a reflection not just of the person, but of the place to the person and person to the place… sends me thinking in mis en abyme. And the stones, how lovely to hold them and invite a tactile relation to tarot. Maybe it’s ok that the paint chips away, they may get so charged you can just hold them to receive the images.
I loved this. So much to appreciate. I have not really been drawn to tarot previously but after reading your post and watching the film about Enrique, I am hooked and want to delve deeper. Thank you.
I came across Ursula K. Le Guin's take on the Lord of the Rings films in an interview in the back of the book I just finished re-reading, her masterful late Young Adult trilogy, Gifts, Voices, and Powers. (Please do read these books if you can.)
She says (after praising the script as "in many ways quite marvellous"): "What I found unsatisfactory in the film was its increasing obsession with scenes of war and battle; and most of all, its failure to catch any hint of what I think may be the secret of Tolkien's narrative magic: the constant and powerful alternation of tension and relaxation, war and peace, the public and the domestic, fear and reassurance, light and dark... His book has the pace of a heartbeat; of a person walking; of day and night succeeding each other... That is why people reading it 'live in the book'— it has the rhythm of life. [Note, she has written about this pacing of Tolkien's in an essay too: I'm pretty sure it was in her book on writing-craft The Wave in the Mind.]— Film, of course, is a kind of drama, and must be more concentrated, faster in its pacing; but the film goes too far in that direction. It is all action, little thought; all Yang, no Yin. And therefore, though beautiful and entertaining, it is profoundly untrue to Tolkien's story."
I love the intensity and colour and persistence that now inheres in the stones.
But I am glad Shelley Bay was prevented from materialising - not just by Jackson, if others had not been struggling for years his money wouldn't have come into play. We have to stop believing that we are entitled to expand over the orchard lands and the sides of hills and the most beautiful coasts with the spread of buildings whenever and as much as we please. These are the commons. There are enough brownfield sites to house all who need homes. When my Dad arrived to live here in 2017 he made a map of the CBD with all the empty space marked in yellow. There is so much. When I lived in Lambeth Borough of London in the 1990s the idea of densification was taking hold and I discovered as they built that on my own street there was enough empty land for nearly 100 homes.
I passed the Laundry this morning. It is still empty maybe two years after they raised the rent and forced them to close.
Wow. This is amazing. Thank you so much for laying it all out there... I'm very glad I asked.
I find it beautiful on so many levels, with a lot of personal resonance. In particular there's something about the merging of many dimensions that gives it so much depth (stones from the in-between tidal shoreline being perfect vessels for that): the dimensions of space and place (not the same thing), the dimensions of personal relationship to city and to stone, the dimensions of mystery and chance, and of will and intention, of art, of colour and line... and that's before any querent's field starts to interact. But I think the key I find most powerful is how personal it seems, which instantly opens up bridges to very new ideas about the city - a place where as an ordinary inhabitant one normally has next to zero input into shape, look, use, and meaning.
It is very inspiring.
Have you read The Maze Game by Diana Reed Slattery? It's a stunning novel, one of my all-time favourites, and features an incredible oracle system/glyph language called Glide, which this reminds me of a little. Highly recommend
I thought about another layer about this project which really stimulates my imagination: the way it gives voice to the ancient, patient consciousness of stone, with all its wisdom and memory... I often think about all the memories the stones of the city hold. So with this it also feels like you're opening a way for the city to speak back to us, intimately, which is big magic indeed
Am always glad when I make the time to read your words Rosie.
Apologies that my comments are getting very repetitive; I loved this. haha.
And I love how Kev knew exactly where the stones you were looking for were.
I thought maybe asking people to close their eyes and hover their hands above the stones and then point, but I suppose they may actually end up touching and breaking some covid rule.
Well, luckily that was just a point in time, and adhering to external rules- in theory now people could touch freely. When I read Tarot I always prefer people to draw the cards themselves, otherwise it feels like I'm doing it for them.
Rose I love this. I LOVE THIS. This is wildly inspiring and also makes me want to cry; thinking about the beach time, the lantern of your attention over floating along the wave line…
What a brilliant project. I am currently making a traditional tarot deck but I love the idea of a localised oracle. You've given me lots to think about!
I also really love that The Wizard of Wellington's Weatherproof Oracle already sounds like an incredible magical realist novel.
Thanks! The beauty of having to submit the idea for approval was a. Having to talk a good talk and make decisions ahead of time, and b. Coming up with a punchy title!
I love it!
"It was as if those sticks, once they’d been shown the shape, willed themselves into a real fire."
This. The whole story was lovely, but this phrase caught in my mind like a hook: I feel like this notion is important. What - or who -- needs to be shown the shape they can hold?
WOW - thats fantastic :) Keep up the good work :)
goddamn, do i ever love this. (and thanks for the shout-out!) what a brilliant idea, and beautifully realized. i'm deeply envious.
if you have any suggestions for a narrow-band wayfinding divination system (mostly limited to "where should i go next?") i'd love to chat. been puzzling over how to use divination for psychogeography. currently considering the I Ching hexgrams mapped onto a location to start, letting it grow from there. but that might be unnecessarily complicated.
keep up the wonderful work.
Hmmm do you mean when you're out walking for instance? Or at home looking at a map? My impulse is that you would want to weight the system in favour of moving forward, maybe it could be something like 'go towards (X)': say, 'the tallest thing'; 'water'; 'a voice'; 'sound' ... it could be a dice or set of dice, you could carry them in your pocket ... almost like 'amplification of whim'. But also you could have 'turn around and go home immediately'- maybe if you roll two blanks at once or something like that.
You could do it even more simply than that, colours, elements... it makes me think about when I was in London, how I would be following these kind of breadcrumb trails of signs. Whatever supposed quest I was on was just an excuse to start moving to somewhere new and see what I came across
at home, looking at a map, at least initially. (probably do some standard divination in situ once i narrow down the target area.) it's the opposite problem of London where i am: not enough space to do the standard psychogeography "drift" for random encounters, so i need a way to frontload uncertainty.
i plan to experiment with drawing a base map, creating an overlay of hexagrams, and then doing I Ching geomancy to pick a place for collecting synchronicities. (check out my Weirdsday Audio Diary for progress reports 🤘🏻)
I understand, my city is far less dense than London, and I tend to travel the same routes over and over... I'm trying to think how to call in other randomnesses. You could scatter birdseed on the map.
I love your stones idea - it's brilliant. I think I might get the writing group I'm in to make divination cards of some sort. Thanks for the inspiration and for your writing.
…really reallly really really cool…i love where the piece netted out but not going to lie, thought you might be making a blind unpainted all stone tarot, the pulls in the mind of the beholder i suppose, and was excited to see what might come of such magic…that said this was even cooler so…made me remember i don’t play with the earth enough…thank you…
That's exactly what Enrique said, the stones already have images in them. I said ‘You and I can see and read those stone-lines, but maybe other people need words and pictures!’
Divining with plain rocks or sticks is totally doable
I also said I had previously made a bunch of drawings seeing things in stones. I had included one in the piece but took it out, maybe I'll put it back in!
I added my Stone Stories drawings back in, in the section about Stone-Gathering
Ugh. I love it so much. What a brilliant piece - the vision, the process, the result, and the reports. A complex piece of Enchanted Life. Wizardly. 🖤
Rosie, I love this. I so want to meet on the street and have my/their (person/place) stone tarot read. That you make it local seems to invite a reflection not just of the person, but of the place to the person and person to the place… sends me thinking in mis en abyme. And the stones, how lovely to hold them and invite a tactile relation to tarot. Maybe it’s ok that the paint chips away, they may get so charged you can just hold them to receive the images.
I loved this. So much to appreciate. I have not really been drawn to tarot previously but after reading your post and watching the film about Enrique, I am hooked and want to delve deeper. Thank you.
Tarot is a deep well indeed!
I came across Ursula K. Le Guin's take on the Lord of the Rings films in an interview in the back of the book I just finished re-reading, her masterful late Young Adult trilogy, Gifts, Voices, and Powers. (Please do read these books if you can.)
She says (after praising the script as "in many ways quite marvellous"): "What I found unsatisfactory in the film was its increasing obsession with scenes of war and battle; and most of all, its failure to catch any hint of what I think may be the secret of Tolkien's narrative magic: the constant and powerful alternation of tension and relaxation, war and peace, the public and the domestic, fear and reassurance, light and dark... His book has the pace of a heartbeat; of a person walking; of day and night succeeding each other... That is why people reading it 'live in the book'— it has the rhythm of life. [Note, she has written about this pacing of Tolkien's in an essay too: I'm pretty sure it was in her book on writing-craft The Wave in the Mind.]— Film, of course, is a kind of drama, and must be more concentrated, faster in its pacing; but the film goes too far in that direction. It is all action, little thought; all Yang, no Yin. And therefore, though beautiful and entertaining, it is profoundly untrue to Tolkien's story."
Curiouser and curiouser-- the Platform of the Damned offers this brutal takedown by Chris Hedges of P.J.'s war-porn film, that I posted six years ago today. https://www.truthdig.com/articles/peter-jacksons-cartoon-war/
I love the intensity and colour and persistence that now inheres in the stones.
But I am glad Shelley Bay was prevented from materialising - not just by Jackson, if others had not been struggling for years his money wouldn't have come into play. We have to stop believing that we are entitled to expand over the orchard lands and the sides of hills and the most beautiful coasts with the spread of buildings whenever and as much as we please. These are the commons. There are enough brownfield sites to house all who need homes. When my Dad arrived to live here in 2017 he made a map of the CBD with all the empty space marked in yellow. There is so much. When I lived in Lambeth Borough of London in the 1990s the idea of densification was taking hold and I discovered as they built that on my own street there was enough empty land for nearly 100 homes.
I passed the Laundry this morning. It is still empty maybe two years after they raised the rent and forced them to close.
Wow. This is amazing. Thank you so much for laying it all out there... I'm very glad I asked.
I find it beautiful on so many levels, with a lot of personal resonance. In particular there's something about the merging of many dimensions that gives it so much depth (stones from the in-between tidal shoreline being perfect vessels for that): the dimensions of space and place (not the same thing), the dimensions of personal relationship to city and to stone, the dimensions of mystery and chance, and of will and intention, of art, of colour and line... and that's before any querent's field starts to interact. But I think the key I find most powerful is how personal it seems, which instantly opens up bridges to very new ideas about the city - a place where as an ordinary inhabitant one normally has next to zero input into shape, look, use, and meaning.
It is very inspiring.
Have you read The Maze Game by Diana Reed Slattery? It's a stunning novel, one of my all-time favourites, and features an incredible oracle system/glyph language called Glide, which this reminds me of a little. Highly recommend
No I haven't! Thanks for the prompt, the beautiful feedback, and the recommendation!
I thought about another layer about this project which really stimulates my imagination: the way it gives voice to the ancient, patient consciousness of stone, with all its wisdom and memory... I often think about all the memories the stones of the city hold. So with this it also feels like you're opening a way for the city to speak back to us, intimately, which is big magic indeed
Yes, indeed. From our mammalian-time point of view, stone is pretty much immortal
Am always glad when I make the time to read your words Rosie.
Apologies that my comments are getting very repetitive; I loved this. haha.
And I love how Kev knew exactly where the stones you were looking for were.
I thought maybe asking people to close their eyes and hover their hands above the stones and then point, but I suppose they may actually end up touching and breaking some covid rule.
No worries! Encouragement is always welcome!
Well, luckily that was just a point in time, and adhering to external rules- in theory now people could touch freely. When I read Tarot I always prefer people to draw the cards themselves, otherwise it feels like I'm doing it for them.
Rose I love this. I LOVE THIS. This is wildly inspiring and also makes me want to cry; thinking about the beach time, the lantern of your attention over floating along the wave line…