Mantics: Terra Cognita (Maelinhon)

It’s time. Recently, interviews and the conversation format in general have become very popular on the Archaic Heart site. And this immediately puts quite a big load on the brain and mailboxes, because people want to take part in the conversation and learn something. And what do people want to know during a war? Well, of course, when the hell will it end! I understand, I don’t judge, but this question literally flew to all our guests, and about 4,876 more times – in private messages, for promotional free layouts, and generally all over the place.

Looks like someone knows the answer to this and other questions, but deliberately hides it from us all! Why do they do this?! And what about the option that the exact future simply does not exist? It depends entirely on our own actions and even Enarey himself will not tell you exactly when and what will happen, because you decide. Yes, you personally.

If you think about the essence of the question, it turns out that people generally do not understand what mantics is and how it works. These phrases – “what awaits us?”, “when will it end” and “look, maybe THERE somewhere you can accidentally see …”. The common questions. There – where? A deck of cards or a bag of runes is not a telescope, where all sorts of random things float in a dark lens. And you can see your grandmother’s liver, or your private life for 20 years ahead or Johnny Depp’s biography, and if you’re lucky, they will show you your bonuses at work for a year and a half. It doesn’t work like that. Tarot, Lenormand, Runes, any fortune telling – this is a Google search line, not a telescope. Simply put, you need an exact request, without it any answers are a muddy jelly mixed with psychology, and not mantics. Yes, the gypsy genre of “I will tell you your fortune and what brings peace to the heart” also has its fans, but this is psychology and performance, not fortune telling. Mantics is a relatively exact science, you see, if you actually SEE what you are doing, and not look at the book, licking your finger on each arcana.

Let’s talk about mantic systems and their differences today. Let’s talk thoughtfully, in detail, and arrange the mechanics of fortune telling systems in orderly pigeonholes. How is Lenormand different from Tarot, and both of them – from runes? Is it possible to see the future on Tarot? Spoiler: no. How clear are the answers given by each mantic system, how to use it? What are probability lines? And where is, for example, astrology here? Are an astrologer and a tarot reader looking into the same hole, or not? Spoiler2: into different ones. And most importantly: why do I personally consider the Tarot system to be extremely overrated, hyped up and filled with info garbage by a little more than half? Yes, yes, I have been working with tarot for over 18 years and I think that this is one of the worst systems for fortune-telling.

But let’s start from the very beginning.

Fortune telling, Causal plane and Elements

Fortune telling, or correctly — mantics (from the Greek mantike “I prophesy”) is a large and very ancient practice that allows you to glimpse reality ahead. People only pretend to hate spoilers; give them the opportunity, and they’ll peek into future possibilities more often than they drink coffee. It’s understandable because living, in general, is frightening. People have been divining about everything that can yield answers since ancient times. We have geomancy (divination using sand and stones), necromancy (divination using bones and entrails), and various folk practices like throwing a boot, a knife, or interpreting coffee grounds, among others. There are also structured symbolic systems (tarot, oracles). They are all united by two divinatory principles:

— There must be a random selection of elements, which connects us to the element of Chaos and the causality. This can be shuffling, mixing, a random throw, a computer-generated random number, etc.

— A predefined set of symbols that approximately correlates with the question.

That’s it, that is divination. By the way, this is also why online divination works; it has symbols and randomness. The rest is subtle perception and the skills to interpret what has been seen, so one could even spit against a wall and interpret the speed of the spit’s descent.

Mantic systems have just simplified this to static symbols in a convenient form.

The reality we live in consists of 13 elements that structure the universe the same way as particles do in physics. Some elements create objects, others establish “axes” for them, and yet others produce vibrations that put these objects into their places. Space is one big sphere filled with particles; there are no objects outside of the elements. Your “shell” separates you from other people, non-humans, and whales in the sea, but only very conditionally.

Among the elements, we are most interested in Time, Chaos, and Void, as these are the ones that Tarot and mantics, in general, work with.

What is causality?
To understand how event reality is formed, we need to know what causality is. Imagine an infinite and complex multi-line highway where all humans and non-humans drive from the point of Birth to the point of Morgue. The combination of turns on all the routes equals Life. This is roughly what the causal plane of reality looks like, which is much more interesting and important than the hyped astral. Because it is in causal plane that the events of your life and mine are created.

Karma is deeply connected to the element of Time, because karma determines the characteristics of your vehicle and the starting point where you travel from. You might be driving a sneezing Chevrolet Spark with a near-empty tank (not having earned a better one), or cruising in a smoothly purring Mercedes with massage seats and a gas attendant. Beyond the starting point, karma has less influence because a savvy driver can sort out fuel and even a bit of cognac along the way.

WHERE you are going is essentially your Dao; it is the purpose of your life, and it is you only who knows where and why this journey is taking you. However, no matter where you go, each little vehicle travels down the highway without stopping. It has no brakes; it only has steering, fuel, a body, and an endless road beneath its wheels. You cannot go backward in life, but you have the right to turn wherever you wish.

The element of Time only allows you to move forward.

There are stretches of highway that have no turns: you can only go straight, there’s simply no choice. And then there are stretches where turns happen in every 50 meters, in all directions, confusing you, because random turns can finish in a dead end and death. Such a road is called the Line of Probability, and that’s what Tarot and other forms of mantics look at. It works on the element of Chaos, which provides the scatter of cars and the surrounding reality.

You can read more about lines in detail in the first article of the series about the I-Ching and Horary Astrology:

Книга Перемен: Хорар для бедных (Maelinhon)

Astrology, Ba-Zi, and other metaphysics, however, are the landscapes and the weather outside your car window. We don’t know where you’ll turn (and you don’t know either), but we know for sure when there will be black ice, sunshine, potholes, and other realities of the road. In some stretches of highway, money and candy fall from the sky, and that’s visible in advance too. And each car encounters these realities in its own road, in its own reality. One person is caught in a barely-breathing jalopy without a heater, while another doesn’t even notice it, because they have a good, warm car, even though they’re bothered by the potholes. To put it simply, a metaphysician isn’t aware of what will happen to you or where you’ll turn, they tell you (normally) what the weather will be like and where road work will be happening. With that information, it’s easier to choose turns, but no one will choose them for you, and no one knows them in advance.

And so, billions of cars constantly drive forward, having free choice of turns and temporary periods of good and bad weather. There are large highways and very small country roads. They have something in common: if many cars decide to turn and drive in the same lane at the same time, the lane expands and becomes the main Causality line. Such a road is called the Main Line of Probability, or simply the Main Line. That’s a major, fundamental line that most people and non-people drive on. Main lines form events in the World, while smaller lines form your own events.

If you consistently turn according to the signs on your way towards your goal, then you’ll likely reach it. If there’s no goal (and most cars are like that), then your car will just chaotically switch turns and dead ends and finally stall out when it runs out of gas. The majority of cars drives “where everyone else goes.”

Did you imagine this picture? Now let’s set it down:

— The car, its type and fuel balance is karma.
— Feng Shui, Ba-Zi, psychotherapy — these are car services and gas stations on the road.
— The combination of roads are lines of probability, that is, lines of events. If you imagine any situation from beginning to end, you’ll get such a line.
— Weather conditions and road quality — that’s what we see in astrology, metaphysics, Ba-Zi, and generally, in forecasting.
— Turns on the way — that’s your Dao and your goal, that’s your free will. No one has the right to tell you where to turn, but your turn can change a lot on the overall map. Sometimes, even one person changes the whole picture of the world.
— The more people turn the same way (or at least in the same direction), the bigger that line becomes. In fact, the whole world drives on a certain Main line, and to change it to another, millions and billions of persons must turn at the same time. Such multitudes are mostly steered by Uranus in metaphysics.

Reality Options and Tarot Arcana
After watching all sorts of movie junk like Doctor Strange, people somehow think there are many parallel realities at once. Like, you’re one way in one, another way in another, and in a third, you were killed with a pot back in the first season. Both yes and no. Reality is the sum of all decisions, of all people in all cars for a given period of time. But reality is one, and it turns on when you make a turn, it doesn’t work before that. In short, there’s no parallel reality, but you can switch it on.

Where there are turns (especially a lot of them), there’s always the possibility of dying, as well as possibilities to change the world.

Accordingly, we ourselves create what happens around us. And no one, except for ourselves, knows what will happen next, because we often make turns impulsively and based on fear, emotions, spontaneity, and not logic and common sense. And if many, many people miss turns or consistently drive to the left only, for example, then reality starts to shift towards their decisions. The more people drive on the highway, the more stable the reality, and the easier it is to see it ahead. The element of Time also has global cycles (about 150 years each cycle), and at the end of each cycle causality is reset and starts to grow anew. We’re currently at the transition point.

Therefore, the first and most important thing I want to tell you is that mantics doesn’t foresee the future. Mantics doesn’t answer the question of what will happen, because no one knows for sure what will happen. Mantics (any kind) looks at the probabilities of collective turns and their percentages. That is, there’s an 85% probability that everyone will turn left, 10% that they’ll turn right, and 5% that they won’t turn at all. And that’s for every question.

The same goes for your life: reading this article was brought about by the result of your decisions before it. And you were brought into the world as the result of your parents’ decisions. Every time you make a decision in your life, you make a turn. Decided to change jobs—that’s a turn. Decided to start a relationship—that’s a turn. Decided to have a child—that’s a turn. Decided not to have children—that’s also a turn. And that’s how Causality is built. From the smallest movements (you decided to go get beer) and objects — to the highways of the entire universe (someone decided to destroy the world).

However, reality is still a collection of possibilities and free will, which means any line of probability can change tomorrow. A reckless fatalist will come racing along the line and drag millions of cars with him to where no one went yesterday. Could that happen? Sure, it can and has happened many times in history.

Any divination system looks at the lines around you and shows you the PERCENTAGE, nothing more. But in life, sometimes that 1% that no one expected happens. So, there are no 100% certain events. And a good tarot reader will a) never tell you what will happen for sure, but will give you percentages and options, and b) never look at events 20 years ahead. That’s the Gypsy-style and golden teeth otherwise.

Mantics looks at events for a year or two, beyond that, the space of possibilities becomes too wide and unpredictable. Because even in 3 years, a huge number of people can turn in a different direction, enter the wrong door (crossed out), change their minds, and even move to live into the forest. So, metaphysics will give you the weather outside for 500 years ahead, but those are the realities of the road, not the turns. Because the realities of the weather on the road are set by the planets, and you just happen to find yourself in those periods with your current problems.

In short, you can’t predict “when the war will end,” because it depends on the decisions of billions of people at once. Not one person, not two people, etc. Tomorrow, 1-2 or all can be hunted down by a pitchfork-wielding mob if the mob decided to turn toward the “pitchfork” option. Some trigger has stirred them up, their vision has gone dark, and that’s it, they’re off down those bumpy roads of yesterday’s 2% probability. Just as it’s impossible to completely predict what a person will decide or do. They don’t know themselves what they’ll do. They’ll wake up in the morning, drink coffee, slam their fist on the table, and say “Oh, whatever, screw it, I’m going!” even though they didn’t plan on it yesterday. How can you predict that? How can you predict that 10 years in advance?!

Similarly, you can’t predict the date of death. There are a ton of factors: how the person lived, how he cared for his health, whether he drove carefully, whether he paid attention to the road, etc. You can die any day when the fuel drops to zero due to age or body damage.

And when you pick up your first Tarot deck, you should start with this.

So, it’s about WHERE, what plane of reality your question is in. Events are the Causal plane, Emotions are the Astral plane, Information is the Mental plane. Any mantics looks at these planes depending on your request, although you can look at all three without cards, lines can be read in different ways.

Does that make more sense?

If we lay out all the Major Arcana Tarot cards in a row, we’ll get an average line of probability from the beginning of events to their end. The Arcana will show us the turns and peak points of events. Not “Oh, I got the High Priestess, what does that mean?” Well, basically nothing, if you don’t look at the lines and don’t relate the mantics crutch to the causal.

Tarot, Lenormand, Oracles, and Runes
It’s all so delicious :3 But what’s the difference between Tarot cards and Lenormand?

This is very simple. Lenormand, Runes, and Oracles look at Main Roads and larger lines. With broad strokes, from a greater distance. I personally consider the Lenormand system to be almost perfect because, unlike Tarot, it was specifically designed for divination and comprehensively answers questions without any unnecessary clutter. The fewer objects in a divination system (fewer cards, pebbles, runes, etc.), the “bigger” the optics and the less water in the answers. If you see an oracle with 200 cards, it will be describing the atomic level for you.

The more units, the more detailed and granular the analysis of the line. That’s why Tarot, with almost 80 cards, practically doesn’t see the Main Road, it looks at event lines and details of what’s happening on them. Tarot looks at cars, turns, who’s in the car, what pants they’re wearing, what they’re thinking, what they want, what cars are around… In short, details and specifics. But Lenormand looks at the entire branch as a whole, without the details. Runes are similar, very large, non-detailed segments, which are often more convenient to interpret.

It’s important to note that Tarot sees about 9-12 lines of probability, so looking at geopolitics, war, and other big things through it is like reading a book under a microscope. It wasn’t designed for that. Because there are hundreds of probabilities in the main road.

Tarot Cards and the Problem of Court Cards

The Tarot system is such a Frankenstein that sometimes you want to cry over its fate. Once upon a time, back in Ancient Egypt, priests came up with pictures for meditation and associative magic. They poured energy into the image and thus elevate the realization of events through the elements. There were 6 elements, and that was that. For example, they would take the Devil card, mentally imagine whoever they needed in place of the characters, and feed the chains in the picture with energy.

Then these pictures wandered around the East for a long time, ending up with the Arabs and Persians, who loved card games and collected all sorts of this staff. The well-known playing cards were also hanging out there, presumably arriving from Asia. So, in the 12th century, caravans from the East brought to Italy and Spain something similar to a deck of cards where they combined playing cards (Minor Arcana), cards of their own composition, and “Egyptian pictures” (Major Arcana). And they taught Europeans all sorts of games with this hodgepodge.

Europeans liked the hodgepodge, the Italians polished it up with a jigsaw, and got the Tarot deck, which they initially only played with. Then the local gypsies, seeing familiar patterns, also started to use it for divination, which the local alchemists liked, and everything took off… You can enjoy the visual style of that time in the Marseille Tarot. All subsequent decks are clearly divided into two categories: classic decks adhere to “Egyptian” symbolism, artistic decks interpret it into a picture. Formally, it’s easier for beginners to use the second type, because classic decks are overloaded with archaic symbolism. But for associations (yes, it works), it’s better to use classics.

In general, this system is a mixture of playing cards, meditative “posters” with symbols, and who knows what else. It wasn’t intended for divination neither by the Egyptians, Arabs, nor even Europeans, and it has an excessive amount of garbage such as Court Cards. If you’re not a psychologist who uses Socionics every day, you don’t really need Court Cards in tarot for anything. Although, if you are a psychologist, you don’t really need them either. There are not that many people in events; for the main characters, the Emperor and Empress and other “face” Arcana are enough. And if you remove all this garbage of Queens, Kings, and Pages from the deck (then you’ll get Lenormand, haha :D), the system becomes more adequate. They just get in the way of viewing and basically mean nothing.

Some, of course, try to put a square peg in a round hole and assign certain options to the court cards, like “this is not the Queen, but greed; this is not the Page, but a love affair” but come on… These are just people, let’s be honest. People drawn for games. They have nothing common with mantics, just beat out of reason.

But humans are generally inclined to complicate their lives as much as possible, and then bravely dig themselves out of it. Oh, let’s interpret the court cards as events and parameters, oh, let’s add reversed arcana too, as if our lives aren’t already unbearable! Or maybe let’s keep it simpler, shall we?

And it turns out like this:
— Will I get a bonus this month?
Lenormand: 80% yes.
Runes: Yes.
Tarot: This Page story began in the King of a distant galaxy 15,000 years ago and…

Lenormand Cards
Napoleon’s favorite fortune-teller, the Frenchwoman Marie Lenormand, seeing all this madness, decided to do something about it. We owe her a big thanks; practitioners around the world bow their heads in recognition of her achievement. She thought: since the system is not for divination but for games, and we are just attributing characteristics to it that aren’t there… why not just create cards with these characteristics right away, huh?! Like, write directly on the card “There will be trouble, beware” or “The sun is shining, you can start”, conditionally of course. Simple, universally understandable symbols—clouds, sun, clover, little boat… She was a brilliant woman, no joke. She simply took the divinatory meanings of playing cards (and thus, to some extent, Tarot) and created her own deck. No fluff, no unnecessary cards, no garbage, no headaches, and no painful shuffling.

The system immediately began to look at Main highways because it is small and light. In some ways, it is very similar to runic divination — the same structure, the same logic of answers, a similar number of drawn elements. There are two versions: Lenormand 36 and the expanded Lenormand 54, where parameters of time, constellations, colors, and other fashionable symbolism of the 18th century have been added.

Both are good, although the second one is somewhat overloaded with visuals.

Yes, Lenormand doesn’t go into fine details or descriptions of the color of the pants or the mole on the heroes’ behinds in the spread, but it answers all questions clearly and succinctly. It provides a complete, structured picture for any inquiry and clearly answers Yes or No. What more do you need? Lenormand is, in some sense, more complex than Tarot because its interpretation is not only flow-based but also follows a logical table. However, the effort is worth it. And yes, there are only two faces (sometimes four): a boy and a girl; the other cards are dedicated to your question rather than endlessly sifting through rows of Pages and Kings.

Oracles and Runes

Madame Lenormand’s legacy still stirs the minds of diviners, artists, and eccentrics, so in the footsteps of the famous Frenchwoman, many have decided to create oracles named after themselves. There’s nothing wrong with that; on the contrary, mantics is evolving, and that’s wonderful! You can find a tool that suits your preferences; the market is bursting with offers: whether you want flowers, artworks by artists, or even stones or symbols… Whatever you like best.

Another player in this market is the Celtic Ogham system. This is a runic system that reflects a more global system from the subtle plane, where signs denote the basic properties of plants. In other words, the runes describe how a plant lives and acts, whether it’s poisonous, expansive, its energy frequency, etc. The specific feature of this system is that it views causality through the lens of Jupiter, which means it provides a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT perspective on the spread. Sometimes it even sees what neither the practitioner’s eyes nor other systems can see.

Many still attribute various eye stones and pendulums to mantics, but alas, this is not mantics. The eye stones, the stones, and the glass piece from spirit board are simply lenses that provide a view of something through the lens of Saturn, thus distorting optics. As for the pendulum, it is essentially a translator and microphone for communicating with someone from the subtle plane if you are completely struggling with vision.

Tips and Life Hacks for learners and masters

— Choose the tool according to your question. If you’re looking into relationships, psychology, feelings, or small everyday plans, reconstructing events and you need details, then you can use Tarot. If you need a precise answer without fluff or you are looking at global events, the economy, politics, job changes, or some major transformations, then it’s better to use Lenormand. If you have a complex question that requires a fresh perspective and advice, then go for Ogham. You can combine systems and spreads, experiment, remove and add cards; this will only improve your skills.

— Always ask a precise question. If the assignment is hazy, then the result may be crazy, this applies to mantics as well.

— A lot of questions rotate around “how”. To understand, see, do, interpret… There is one important aspect that tends to be spared everywhere. A deck is a living entity. Yes, it’s unique, but it’s alive. You need to build a relationship with it, openly telling it how you prefer to work and what doesn’t work for you. For example, you can ask the deck to ignore your emotions if you suspect they are skewing the readings. Or you can request it to respond in a specific way (“if yes, provide an even number”). In other words, you should tune the tool to suit your personal needs, as it doesn’t matter to the deck how to respond to you.

— The deck communicates in two streams: the first is symbolic, and the second is its own commentary on those symbols. Normally, the deck indicates how many cards to draw, what their positions are, what the connections between them are, etc. And all “how” questions in 9 out of 10 cases are the matter of vision/hearing.

It is talking to you. Do you hear the flow? If yes, the deck will tell you what to do and how to do it. If you don’t hear it or if you hear it distorted, then better focus on developing your senses rather than reading books. Improve your vision and hearing, and take care to remove any blockages (monotheistic seals) if you have them. Trust yourself and your intuition more. And just chat with the cards more often; ask how they’re doing, ask what you should know that you currently don’t, etc.

— Sight and hearing are the foundation of working with cards and runes. Not books, webinars, nor other courses. A book tells you how others see things on average, or even what the author personally sees. There’s no guarantee that you have the same type of vision or associative series. So ALWAYS rely on yourself, your sensations, feelings, and the flow. If in this combination you see a certain answer, then that is what it is, because the deck is oriented towards you.

— Tarot decks can be universal or specialized by spheres. For example, the Sun&Moon deck only sees emotions and feelings, describing what is in the soul but does not see events. The Halloween deck only sees events, describing in detail who did what, with whom, when, and how. Then there is a wide range of universal decks that examine a little bit of everything.

If you are a beginner, choose universal decks like Deviant Moon, Magical Forest, or Tarot of the Enchanted Forest and other artistic ones. Look at the images; their appeal should be nice and the story they tell should be understandable. Don’t start with any of the Waite decks; it’s harder to start learning with classics. Lenormand has no specific characteristics; there is a single set rendered in different designs, so chose the pictures you like best.

— It’s better not to do readings for the same question more often than once every few weeks. The less frequently, the better—causal connections can be destroyed by frequent readings, as you pump extra Qi into the line through your attention, and it may falter from overheating.

— You can do no more than 7-10 readings per day; any more leads to overload and confusion.

— Dismiss all the mythology and “traditions” from your mind; that’s just a cargo cult. For example, you shouldn’t read on Mondays, you shouldn’t read for yourself, you should shift something with a certain hand, you shouldn’t read about trivial matters, and so on. It’s utter nonsense. Someone did it this way once, probably for reasons known to himself only, but that’s not certain. If you personally have no reasons to follow these rules, then you don’t need them. Read the way that is comfortable for you and on anything you want. I once did a layout right in the supermarket on two packs of cookies because I didn’t know which one to choose.

— Once you step into esoteric sphere, you automatically allow yourself more than others do. So what limitations can there be on themes and interpretations?…

— Never use the spreads with positions from books. You know, like the chart where card 1 means the future, card 2 is the recipe for soup, and so on. Just forget that; that doesn’t exist in our reality. The deck is smart enough to tell you a proper story. Just let it speak as much as it wants! Don’t give it only 1 card to answer a hard frame question; otherwise, the accuracy of this act will tend towards zero.

Instead of conclusion

Mantics is a complex science because it functions like an iceberg. At the top, we see a somewhat languish and aesthetic wrapping in the form of cards, runes, various mats, and a ton of fluff from movies and troubled minds. But beneath all that is a vast, little-studied base, where there are elements, lines of probability, event creation, and the subtle world. The tools are secondary and a matter of taste there.

The essence of mantics is that you connect to the flows of Chaos and use some tool to look into the lines. There’s really no mysticism in it, it’s like a weather forecast. Look, the satellite is up there, recording the wind direction, clouds, it is going to rain… You look through the peephole and analyze what you see, and the tool shows you where to look and what it means.

That’s it. There’s no need to bring in anything extra, especially for no good reason.

I can talk for hours about mantics, Lenormand, and Tarot. Just as much about planes of reality. Just cover me up with a blanket at the right moment, so I think it’s night and stop talking.

But speaking about planes of reality, causal, lines… I sincerely admire those who built such a system. In some ways it is brilliant, because each of us creates our own reality. And at the same time, we all create the reality of each other and the whole world.

The system itself has no external control, the flow of lines changes depending on each one’s decisions, but still leaves the widest field for views and lines, and events and everything you want.

Mylene Maelinhon (c) Material of the Marginal Metaphysics project

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