Directory: Introduction

Introduction

January 2010

The Directory of Meanings is the basic and fundamental document for the understanding and interpretation of Rainring Cards. Together with Tales from Rainring – at present being serialised on this site – it offers a complete insight into the vision actualised in Rainring.

At the present time, the Directory published here covers the cards as they are available in interactive form on the web at www.rainringcards.com . [1] The web version of the cards has 81 cards with one meaning each. This forms the basis for this Directory, as also for the double-sided 2 x A4 published laminate listing the divination summaries for these 81 cards in the web version.[2]

Some users of the cards may find this full version of the directory useful as a tool for reflection and discussion of the psychological and cosmological underpinning of the cards. The laminate summary, however, has been designed as the practical aid intended for the day-to-day reader of Rainring cards.

 

The origin of card meanings

 

Where do the meanings assigned to cards come from? My impression is that there are three possible sources: first, direct clairvoyance or intuition. In this case, there is a strong sense that such and such meaning should be applied, even if the reader cannot give a reasoned explanation why. Second, there is experience: over a long period of reading, patterns of association become apparent – certain situations, events, actions, behaviours and states of being are seen regularly to attract certain cards. The answer to: ‘Why this meaning?’ is then – ‘it seems to work in practice’. Third, we can use the cards to explain each other – this introduces an objective element into the affair, though we will have two obstacles to surmount: 1) badly-phrased questions; 2) decoding the answers.

The Directory and you

The meanings given here do not exhaust all the possibilities. This Directory is a beginning, not an end. It will help to focus your attention on specific relations and associations between a given card and your world of lived experience. But you should beware of turning it into a bible. Do not develop the mindset that whatever is written here is ‘legitimate’ and anything else is error. This Directory was absolutely not created in that frame of mind. It is an exploration, and where I have gone, others can not only explore also, but question my route, branch off into other paths of their own, or follow any of mine and extend them further. The beauty of cards with images is that there cannot be a final, definitive statement of their content and meaning.

 

Methodology

In this Directory, I am going to work across the grid, looking at all the cards of a given set, then going to the next set.

I shall begin at the top left of the grid, with set 1. In this way, I am following the order of entries in the directory in the centre of the instruction book provided with the hard copy of the cards. This sequence is also that of the ‘administrative’ numbers 1-81 on the web site. These have no significance from the point of view of Rainring, but I include them here for reference.

 

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[1]It does not yet extend to all the cards and meanings available through the 94 cards of the 4-mention (hard copy) version of the cards, which can be purchased online. Brief indications on all 94 are available in the booklet which accompanies the hard copy of the cards, but it is the expansion of these which the directory is designed to achieve – for the web version so far, and for the full version eventually