Patreon Topic 94: On the Cosmology of Divination Systems

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From Maleck comes this topic:

“There’s a thing I’ve noticed, noticed is the wrong word but will suffice, and I’m wondering if you’ve also noticed and could dig into it. Divination systems. So animisticly speaking, each system will have its own spirit or spirits, whether a kind of “master spirit” the spirits of the individual cards, chits, etc or both. And each system seems to have a kind of…inherent Cosmology almost. A way of looking at the world that colors the reading, what kinds of questions it’s good with, the kinds of information it gives, etc.”

This something I have experienced throughout my time as a diviner.

I have been a professional diviner for most of the 20 years that I have been a Pagan. I did not really have the words for it when I began. However, in retrospect, I experienced, and still experience that Tarot decks are like members of a family. For instance, those Tarot decks fashioned after the Rider-Waite-Colman Smith (RWS) style, no matter how divergent the art style(s) and interpretations, belong to the same family -that is, Rider-Waite-Smith. Each individual deck is its own vaettr, its own spirit. Each Arcana, each suit, each individual card has something to communicate from that vaettr to us, and through it, and developing that relationship, we can better communicate with and through the medium of that deck. That family tends to have a set perspective, whether that is the interpretations, imagery, systems, or reading styles, etc that They hold in commonality.

If you read Tarot that comes from or draws directly from the Rider-Waite-Colman Smith style, it has definite common perspectives, interpretations, and use of imagery even when they sometimes diverge, not unlike members of a family. I tend to analogize the “master spirit(s)” of Tarot decks as that of Elders, Grandparents, or Mikilvaettr (Old Norse neologism I made to mean Big/Powerful spirits) who set the family up and guide their descendants. The cosmology of the RWS style tends to evoke a combination of medieval Christian, Hermetic, Qabbalic, and alchemical symbolism. The imagery tends to follow these motifs, such as with the Judgment and Wheel of Fortune cards. Unless the artist is intentionally diverging a great deal from the ‘family’, working with the Rider-Waite-Colman family as a backdrop or starting point, these influences still show up in the deck and their vaettir.

I see this divergence of relationship most clearly in the contrast between the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot, which is the deck I started reading with in 2004, and the Wildwood Tarot, which is the deck I use for my daily draws and other divination now. I will use 3 cards to illustrate this:

2 -The High Priestess and 2 -The Seer, 10 -The Wheel of Fortune and 10 -The Wheel, and finally, 20 -Judgment and 20 -The Great Bear.

2 -The High Priestess from the Rider-Waite-Smith Deck. Note the prominence of the two pillars representing Boaz and Jachin, which were said to be in King Solomon’s Temple. They are sometimes referred to the Pillars of Mercy and Severity in occult writings, such as this Rosicrucian presentation. 

The figure of the High Priestess herself is Goddess and Marian in presentation, with the Moon at her feet, and the Tree of Life behind her, with the scroll in her hand bearing the word Torah. 

“According to A. E. Waite‘s 1910 book The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, the High Priestess card is associated with:

Secrets, mystery, the future as yet unrevealed; the woman who interests the Querent, if male; the Querent herself, if female; silence, tenacity; mystery, wisdom, science. Reversed: Passion, moral or physical ardor, conceit, surface knowledge.”

Image: Wikimedia Commons

2 -The Seer from the Wildwood Tarot Deck. While the placement in the numbering and symbolism of a powerful female figure is here, its meaning entirely drops the medieval Christian, alchemical, and appropriation of Jewish symbols for what is typical of the Wildwood Tarot: a mix of neolithic, Celtic, and to my eye Norse-influenced art. I find The Seer to be reminscent of the spakona Thorgerd Litilvolva in Eiriks saga rauda.

The basic elemental associations are here, with The Seer symbolizing the accumulation of wisdom and power in a female spiritual specialist, a great tree behind here and scrying pool in front of her.

Image: Screenshot from the app.

10 – The Wheel of Fortune from the Rider-Waite-Smith Deck. The representation of the four Evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, symbolized by an angel, eagle, lion, and bull are prominent in the four corners, with the Devil beneath the wheel and the sphinx atop it. The elemental associations, one of the Hebrew names for G-d, and Rota, meaning wheel, are here.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

10 – The Wheel from the Wildwood Tarot Deck. The Sun and the Moon flank a loom on which a wagon wheel is the centerpiece of a tunic. While the imagery of the Wheel is central, gone are all the Christian, Hermetic, and Qabalic references, instead showing the results of hard labor, craft, and art, with feathers trailing from the edges of the piece and three cranes prominent in the background in place of the Evangelists.

Whereas I usually understood The Wheel of Fortune as God’s favor, blessings, and the turning of time, given the loom creating the tunic-wheel shirt, I found The Wheel to be about the human creativity to work with the resources around us to achieve rather than simply being about divine favor, blessing, etc. Reading the description in the guidebook companion to the deck, many of the same basic ideas found in The Pictorial Key to Tarot referenced in this Wikipedia article are echoed in the Wildwood.

Screenshot from the app.

20 -Judgement from the Rider- Waite-Smith Deck. Of the three this card is the most Christian-influenced, depicting the rising of the dead in the book of Revelations in accordance with God’s Judgment over the faithful, that those who believe in Him have eternal life.

Wikimedia Commons

20 -The Great Bear from the Wildwood Tarot Deck. I chose the two number 20 cards because I found them the least like each other, and the least like  other cards in their respective decks. The description in the accompanying book for The Great Bear does reference the card it is in relation to, though it says:

“The traditional religious and political concepts of right and wrong, guilt and innocence, have no place here, for the judgement that takes place during the time of rebirth is both inward and mystical, and yet outward and universal, reaching far beyond the narrow confines of human civilization and conventions. The constellation of the Great Bear stands out in the sky, indicating the entrance to the otherworld to which the seeker proceeds.”

Screenshot from the app.

The images in each comparison have similarities to one another, with the Wildwood Tarot taking cues from each. With regard to 10 and 20, the text for each card in Wildwood’s text directly references the cards they are based on from the RWS. The focus of The Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot is the initiatory cycle of Hermetic magic, with alchemical, Christian, and Qabalistic imagery serving as the vessel for this, as well as providing divinatory information. Per its text, the focus of the Wildwood Tarot is about The Wheel of the Year, taking the archetypes, initation ideas, pathworking, and divinatory cues from its predecessor out of its Christian, medieval, Hermetic, and Jewish-appropriated symbols and ideas, and placing them into this artistic mould of neolithic, Celtic, and potentially Nordic pre-Christian imagery. While related to each other, these decks can show the amount of ‘drift’ one family in a divination system can have between its members.

While both decks can give a lot of information in a reading, both practical and esoteric, I find nowadays that I work better with the Wildwood Tarot. Partly, this is because I am not involved in ceremonial magic like I was when I first became a Pagan, partly because the imagery used in the RWS does not click as well for me anymore, and partly because of the more this-world grounded meaning found in its Major Arcana like 10 -The Wheel or 8 of Stones -Skill. I find The Wildwood Tarot communicates more readily to and with me as a divination system both with regards to more esoteric questions about initiation, lessons from Gods, and the like, and the more this-world practical questions like those oriented around physical resources and money.

Taking this out of the realm of Tarot and into that of the Runes, I find that cosmology tends to be not only inherent to how I work with the Runevaettir, it is utterly necessary to getting deeper information from Them in divination. This is part of why I really emphasize folks study not only the Rune Poems, but the contexts in which Runes are found, whether that is graffiti, message sticks, artifacts like the Kragehull Spear, or the various ways in the sagas and poems that Runes are used/worked with. Going beyond that, digging into how to relate to the various Elements through the Runes, what Runes are/may be involved with which, what numbers, directions, times of the year, etc one can relate to through the Runes is also necessary to building understanding, meaning, and ultimately, relationship with the Runevaettir.

Taking these relationships out of what is printed in books and into lived, experiential relationship is also necessary for us to share this world with Them. What does Ísa mean when you live in a place where ice does not accumulate like it did in the North Sea, or in Iceland? What does it mean to experience Nauðiz, need? What of your life experiences inform your understanding of it, relation to it, with it? I more readily connect with Naudiz in regards to being a Fire Rune through flint and steel, though I recognize it shape looks also like a firebow drill. This lived experience of having initiated with Eldrvaettir as a Heathen, and the associations that informs with Nauðiz, are both personal for me, and profound.

Experiences, including personal interactions, initiations, and ongoing work among them, inform and define our relations with Them as surely as the cosmology in which we encounter Them is. The cosmology defines the boundaries of how we understand Them, relate to Them, and introduce to Them. The cosmology may even define pathways of knowledge we can gain with Them, and develop ourselves and our communities. The key to a cosmological worldview is that it is lived. I find this is as true of the various Tarot decks as it is the Runes, likewise the Odu of Santeria (in what little I understand Them) as it is something as potentially less defined and amorphous as scrying with fire or water. The cosmology, which serves as both the foundation and means of making relationships with ourselves and the Worlds around us, determines what is alive, what souls are and how we relate to them, what is right action, right thought, and the development of right relationship. All these thing flow from one another and to one another, from understanding the cosmology to experiencing it, becoming our lived experience of that cosmology that then informs us of our understanding of that cosmology.

This gets increasingly more interesting and complicated depending on how the cosmology unfolds. In my understanding, for instance, which is polytheist and animist, the Runes are vaettir that inhabit the matter/medium They are within, whether that is an app on the phone, painted or printed onto paper, or carved into metal. They are vaettir living with/in/on other vaettir in this understanding. That is, the information encoded in carving a Rune carries the full range of relationships not only in the Runes carved, it also carries those relationship in the material as well. I talk about this a bit in my Encountering the Runes workshop, where I go over the kind of material most folks choose needing to be something they can relate well with.

For myself, I find my Iron Runes tend to communicate in divination across a wide spectrum of subjects. My clay Runes tend to be excellent mostly for questions to do with practical matters, including job, home, and finances, and will do so in a no-nonsense and straightforward way. My Iron Runes can and have spoken well to these more down-to-earth matters, though They tend to be both more cutting or incisive, incoporating answers from a variety of wells beyond the this-world actions and responses. My clay Runes may talk about how to invest or what kinds of ways you may want to set up a portfolio, while the Iron Runes may talk more broadly about developing a relationship with moneyvaettir while digging into what stock options are best for your long-term goals. If I drew Fehu, Gebo, and Ansuz, the basic meaning from the Rune Poems, my understanding, and experiences with each Rune are still going to be relevant to the reading here. However, the factor of the medium the Runes are being read in/through then get Their say as well.

Are the Runes separate from the medium being read in? In the sense that Runes are vaettir Themselves, culture concepts, sounds, letters, and magic, yes. However, the Runes are shaping and shaped by those that carve Them, and the medium They are carved in or take. It’s not a true either/or to me, even if the only medium I am ‘seeing’ the Runes in is my own mind’s eye. I am giving shape to the Runes through my souls through my cosmology of the Sálættr. The Runes, in turn, are shaping my souls. I am initiated to Them, through Them, with Them. That impacts how I read, what depths or heights I may hit with Them, and the kinds of information I can retrieve with Them. As twenty-four spiritual allies, the Runevaettir can be understood as containing and being contained within the Heathen cosmology. They make little sense to me beyond mere surface-readings without the cosmology.

Getting to more amorphous and (potentially!) less defined reading forms such as smoke, fire, or water scrying, there are still cosmological inputs that are quite relevant. In many Pagan cosmologies, Elements such as Fire or a Fire-associated World has some kind of direction it is associated with. What direction does fire sit in? How does it relate to other elements? Through what myths does fire become, or has it always existed? What direction does a given World sit in, and how may the movements of flame, smoke, or shapes in water be relevant to that? Does Fire vs Water vs smoke lend itself to certain questions, or is this a question of what clicks best with the diviner? Does what clicks with the diviner matter, or is it more important that a certain divination system be followed? Is the answer both? Are Fires for divination required to be made a certain way, and if so, how? What vaettr or vaettir determine this? Do bigger questions need a bigger Fire, or can it be done with a smaller source of fire such as a tea light, LED, or votive? Does the time of year matter for best times to do these? These kinds of questions, which may or may not be directly answered through the cosmology, are relevant to ideas such as needing bigger/particular sources of Water, or smoke to work with, or engaging with Them only after/in certain rituals, times of the year, etc.

The more we understand and relate to the Beings we engage with in divination, the more we are understood by and through Them. I understand all Fires as connected through/to the Eldest Ancestor Fire Itself. This Fire I understand at times as Surtr, and at other times as the Eldest Ancestor that gave rise to Him and Muspelheim. I am unsure if I will ever know for absolute sure if there is a separation here at all, or if I will ever know for absolute sure They are the same. It is enough that I honor Them at the same time, sometimes as the same Being and sometimes not. This understanding informs how I approach fires generally, even merely social ones, and how I conduct myself around a fire may be more ‘stiff’ now than I treated them in the past. That relationship has shaped me, and I respond accordingly. 

Divination systems are the means through which we communicate with the spiritual worlds, inside and out. They are shaped by and shape cosmologies becase they are methods of and mediums of communication, and, in my understanding, are vaettir Themselves. Through these relationships They can have profound impact on how we understand ourselves, the worlds around us and in us, one another, and all those we hold relationships with. This extends to ideas of what colors we associate with ideas like power, death, loss, gain, wealth, war, hope, healing, and divination. This extends to the understandings we hold of what a spirit is, how we exist in relationship with and to Them, and what our divination systems may say about us, our cosmologies, and relationships within them, and the ways in which divination may affect these in kind. What is a good question, what is a good form of divination to take for what kinds of questions, and so on, all are affectedby and live within the cosmology we approach them in. If the divination system is ill-fitting or incongruous, it makes the approach, and any communication we would hope to have, that much harder.

A good example of a stark contrast here between a well-fitting and ill-fitting divination system, for me, is that of Ogham. Where the Runes and I communicate readily and well, I have never been able to read the Ogham, or get much from them. This is not for lack of trying or respect on my part! Sometimes communications just do not work. Sometimes you have a single perspective or set of experiences that ‘tune’ you into particular systems and their respective vaettir, and sometimes you just do not click with a divination system no matter how much you study and try. Sometimes you are wired better, such as in some soul way, which may just be a result of how we come into this life, or through spiritual rewiring, such as through initiation. When it comes to the Ogham it could just be the way I think, so my Hugr would likely be the main soul to note here, though given the initiations I have done, by now it is more than likely on other souls in addition to Hugr. On a cosmological level I do not feel much connection with the Ogham no matter how close many of the tree meanings They carry may be to various Runes. Initations that bring you close to certain vaettir may provide deeper relationships with some vaettir while precluding a deeper relationship with others.

Another contrast for me is that of the many, many divination systems my partner Emily streakingfate has. She has a wall’s worth of various Tarot decks and oracles, and only a handful of them allow me to touch them, let alone look at them. This is the case even with regards to Tarot deck styles I have worked with before, such as RWS and Wildwood Tarot. While I work well with these divination systems, I do not work with her decks.

Experiences like these, and the ‘do not touch us’ feeling from others’ Runes, also brings to mind that, like the Eldest Ancestor Fire Itself relating to all Fires, that while each of the Runevaettir may relate to all the Runes carved, printed, stained, or digitally displayed, not every set is going to hold a relationship with us. Not every Rune set will work with us or want contact. Some mediums may repulse us, or only work with us in certain contexts, while some folks may get along with every Rune set that they come across. Some Rune sets may be stained in a person’s blood and therefore only want to work with that person. Developing a divinatory relationship with Fire may mean that we no longer engage with fire in more casual ways, or only in certain ways or contexts may we light a given style of fire.

If we have enough room to understand that a vaettr may be cosmologically big and signficant then we may also understand that it may carry a multitude of relationships, some of which we may not have access to, or even understanding of. Animistically speaking we can have little to no direct relationship with a great many vaettir, while we may carry incredibly broad-based relationships with some vaettir, and a few we may grow close with. The cosmological contexts that those relationships are couched in, such as Fire and Ice in the Creation Story or Odin taking up the Runes, or and personally, such as my relationship to understanding The Wheel in the Wildwood Tarot or understanding the Rune Nauðiz through flint and steel, has a great impact on how we understand ourselves, the relationships themselves, and the vaettir we share them with. When it comes to the systems of divination we partner with, work with, and develop with, these relationships unfold and envelop, illuminate and restrict. Doing divination well in an animist context means understanding and living well within the cosmology we exist with Them in,developing good communication and relationships with and through the vaettir of the system, any ‘master spirits’, Elders, Grandparents, Mikilvaettr, etc, and understanding that cosmology and divination system(s) as well as we possibly can. Whether through study, personal work, ritual, and/or conduct, developing and maintaining relationships with the vaettir of the divination systems means putting in the work to developing and keeping our relationships well.