Divination as play: Two approaches to Lego Tarot
The Oxford dictionary describes divination as “the practice of seeking knowledge of the future or the unknown by supernatural means,” while a Wikipedia entry on the subject defined divination as “being inspired by a god”.
A little philosophical froth for preamble… Many people do not believe in the supernatural, or any god at all. I have discussed this in another article and am not trying to convince anything of anything they don’t already believe. That is not my job, nor anyone’s. Just as there is no compulsion supposedly in religion (though try telling the evangelicals — I guess they’re just sharing a good thing as they see it) there is certainly no pressure for you to believe in the ability to intuit knowledge of the future by reading tarot cards, runes, yarrow or anyting else. Some people believe life is just random, whatever that means. In my opinion that is a basic misunderstanding of cause and effect, though the causes are so complex and the effects so dispirate that render life apparently chaotic in the colloquial use of the word (read arbitrary or the awfully misused term ‘random’) as well as the sense used in physics which again according to Wikipedia (my referencing is lazy, sorry — there’s a Frank Capra book in the kitchen but I’m not leafing through it to find an impressive quote when this will do) “Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary theory stating that, within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnectedness, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization.” This interconnectedness, stated here as characteristic of complex systems must exist too, as it appears to, in our human world, and is the realm of synchronicity, the intellectually elusive but intuitively felt by anyone experiencing a conincidence, not mere, but in fact a synchornous causal event. We’ve all had them and become accostomed to explaining them away or making too much of them, when in fact it just appears a mysterious but everyday part of life, that coins fall, and cards are drawn according to a higher order of pattern not definable, visible, or discernable perhaps but ever present and evident. But we all have different opinions and truth is reletavistic. So whether you are a professional clairvoyant or a hardened materialist or anything imbetween you can enjoy mucking about with cards and making stories. Anyway, on to Lego Tarot…
Divinitation is serious play, and is best done in my opinion with respectful whimsy. It is not the realm of cold hard fact, neither is it a parlour game. It is a playful enquiry into the hidden realms, that whilst some consider it meaningless, others are afraid of the risks of dabbling in the occult as they call it. So perhaps it is strange that I have seeked to combine a children’s card collection with the devil’s tools, as some call them. I have no justification or explanation for this, I just think it’s good fun. Ok?
A couple of years ago I managed with the help of my friends and family to collect an entire set of lego cards which were at the time given away at a popular supermarket, with almost another entire set in swaps. What was I to do with said surplus cards? I was cutting the pack randomly and vaguely thinking as one does sometimes about the symbolism and significance of different cards when I started to see parallels between different cards and what I knew of the tarot. I paired them up quite consciously, which is a good game in itself and is version one of the advertised approaches:
Approach one:
you need:
one full pack of lego cards
one tarot deck (preferably a cheap one you don’t mind adapting)
step one: lay out lego cards in sequence
step two: shuffle tarot cards
step three: pair cards by placing tarot cards face down on lego cards in order, or ‘randomly’
step four: either glue the lego cards onto your tarot cards or label the lego cards with a marker according to the associated tarot card as you have decded by random chance or decision, photograph/scan them one at a time to make a new hybridised pack to use for divination as you choose
Approach two: (less time consuming/doesn’t destroy your cards)
step one: shuffle the tarot and lay out as you wish (eg in a cross(+))
step two: shuffle and lay lego cards on top face down, then reveal one at a time
step three: simply examine the synchronous relationship between the cheerful and odd lego people and the cosmic archetypes depicted on said tarot card.
step four: have fun and be good
