The dream started with a deck of cards that were mine by possession but I couldn’t make sense of them as the formal instructions directed. So I gave them away to someone that claimed they could.
That someone laid out a whole deck spread following a very strict instruction and stumped themselves with it. They asked me to help them interpret it. Maybe it was my askew physical point of view, but the connections and understandings that I could not see before were now popping off the table in little enthusiastic bursts of gnosis.
”But that’s not what the book said! That’s not what that card means! You’re making it up!”
No, that wasn’t what the guidebook said. And that wasn’t the accepted definition of that card. But it was what the spread as a whole was saying to me. And the revealed history was matching the querent as it should be. Making it up? Maybe. Inaccurate because of being made up? Not likely.
The reader kept hammering on about the guidebook. If it wasn’t explicitly spelled out in the book it was wrong. Even though the book itself warned that it offered only a narrow range of interpretations to the reader, and that as the reader matured, they would develop understandings and connections that would contradict the book. (It was a very well written book. I just could not follow it.)
I told that reader what I saw in the spread, as requested, then wiped my hands of them in front of them. As I walked away, I felt a weight in my pocket. A copy of the deck I had given away has settled there. I accepted it as part of my toolkit.
A length of distance and/or time away (It’s a dream, so who knows.), I come across two folks with playing cards. The owner of the cards was very cross with the person trying to explain how to read them. Person A, Annie, called me over to settle things. Her deck was a themed playing card deck covered in images from various anime. Very pretty. She had made the mistake of showing Person B, Bob, the deck and mentioning that she divined with them.
Bob considers himself a professional cartomancer, and because of that, the final authority on how to read cards. Personally, I don’t think he could read Hot Pocket instructions, but I kept my tongue. He had somehow managed to take Annie’s deck and was laying down cards to teach her his method.
Bob was droning on about ‘high intuition’ and ‘revelation through meditation’ and how he (and he alone) knew the One True Way of reading playing cards. (The Baraja Española in my other pocket chuckled.) But I recognized ‘his’ method as word for word from Hutcheson’s book ”54 Devils”.
Bob was upset that Annie read her deck by the images on the cards instead of by the card value and suit. He called her a hack and a [yup, he went there] scammer. I slapped Bob on the back of the head and called him out for his arrogance.
I dared him to read Annie’s cards for me. No query given. Just what ever the cards tell him. Card after card hit the table but for each one he blanked out. He knew what ‘54 Devils’ would say about each card, but when he tried to apply it to me, no words came out of his mouth. Once he had dealt the entire deck, I scooped them up before he recovered himself.
I asked Annie permission to read with her deck and was granted as such. I was somewhat familiar with the anime, so as I dealt the cards back into Annie’s hands one by one, I told a story as hinted by the images. It was one of discovery, learning, and experience. It ended with a warning that those that learn deep truths are forever at odds with those that don’t, and that such conflict is unavoidable because those that wish to remain ignorant will fight to the death to remain so.
What I didn’t tell them was I had tried to apply ‘54 Devils’ to the deck as Bob dealt them, to the same end as Bob. I also had tried my Baraja Española 48 meanings, to the same futile end. It was only when I met the deck as Annie met it, was I able to make any headway.
Bob blustered that I was making things up as I went. I asked him if Hutcheson knew Bob was trying to pass off ‘54 Devils’ as his work. Bob paled and left the table rudely.
I left [Annie] to her cards, and moved on again passing distance and/or time. One can barely tell in dreams. I came to a table where my cartomancy decks were sitting neatly. A chair was waiting for me. I sat down, prepared myself, and smiled conspiratorially at the void beyond the table.
”Who wants to hear a story?”
The dream ends.