Masterclass 6
Questions
Questions, answers, authority
In this final class, we will look at the asking of questions. The standard educational method in use in the world today is based upon requiring students to answer questions asked by teachers; the authority of the teacher then derives partly from being the one who devises the questions, partly from his or her knowledge of the ‘correct’ answers. In Fynn’s book ‘Mr God, this is Anna’, Fynn and Anna used to play a game consisting of: ‘What is the question to the answer……? That is, in direct opposition to the established method, they started with a given answer and then back-tracked in search of a valid question for that answer. In a similar way, key advances in the human spirit have their origin in the asking of original, unprecedented questions, or in the challenging of universally held axioms. For example, the founder of the Grameen Bank, Muhammad Yunus, asked the question: why do banks lend to people who already have money, rather than to those who do not? Until the Grameen Bank, it had been axiomatic that banks cannot lend to poor people, because such people will never pay back what is lent.
In general, those who exercise temporal authority on Earth aim, more or less consciously, to elicit the conformity of their citizens in order to maintain the status quo and with it their own position, power, influence and privileges. They promote forms of education where the direction and scope of the questions are fixed by the state, and where educational progress for the individual is achieved by producing the answers prefigured by the designers of the questions. This, in turn, creates in all who are subjected to it, (including the future designers of the next generation of questions), an attitude of mind which believes that understanding is obtained by, and only by, recourse to a suitable expert, an ‘authority’ in the subject. Google it! Never having been invited to question the validity of the exam questions to which our ‘education’ required us to provide answers, we spend the remainder of our lives in the groove of supposing that nothing which we ourselves think, see, intuit etc can have any validity when set against the pronouncements of experts.
What does this state of affairs imply for the user of Rainring? First, the questions and spreads published for the use of Rainring readers do not represent a set of rules and judgements which you must observe, on pain of being condemned as a heretic. You may find them to be a useful place to begin, but we will always encourage you to strike out on your own and try to formulate your own questions, create your own spreads. Second, questions are more important than answers. Your work with Rainring can take place on two levels: either you can use established questions and explore the answers, or you can move to a higher level and explore questions. The second, we have tried to show, is more powerful, since the moment you throw a new question at the psyche, you shed light in a new area, open a new field of possible answers.
One word of caution: I am not suggesting that you have nothing to learn from our own experience with the cards. I believe that, as a beginner with Rainring, you will get the most out of the cards by first taking on board what we have to say; second, taking account of it in your own practice; third, finding your own distinctive ‘voice’ as a Rainring practitioner. It seems to me that, in all but the rarest of rare cases, the place at which to throw elements of established Rainring theory, experience and practice overboard is stage three, not stage one.
I would now like to share some of the insights we have gained through our own work with the cards.
State of mind
If you are attempting to read for yourself, the first prerequisite for accurate work is to achieve a degree of detachment – a willingness to accept whatever verdict or outcome the cards announce. Anyone visiting a professional psychic or medium would, I take it, expect the person reading for them both to be able to achieve a calm and centred state, and to be free of any emotional investment in the querant/customer’s life. To be, in a word, unbiased. And this is what we must aim for if we are to read for ourselves. So if, at the moment of preparing to begin a reading, you find yourself tired, agitated, or emotionally overwrought, it is advisable to stop until you can find a degree of inner calm. If a vital issue is involved, where you have a heavy and unavoidable emotional investment, it is far better to get a neutral outsider to read for you. This is because your emotions can affect which cards show up, ‘contaminating’ the results with what you want, obscuring what is or will be. On top of that, you are going to have a strong desire to interpret the cards you get in a way which either favours the outcome you hope for, or in some cases even ‘predicts’ the outcome you fear.
The likelihood is that, if you have decided to do a reading for yourself, it is because of feelings you are having around the situation you want to explore. So it is quite likely to be not so easy to follow the recommendation to wait for calm to envelope you. Waiting may make you more, not less, emotional! For this reason, a warning is advisable at this point: you cannot ask the same question twice. You cannot go back the following day, when you have calmed down, and repeat the question. This is because submitting a question to the cards creates some kind of tension in the psyche, which is then released via the pronouncement-verdict from the Unconscious. The psyche then moves on, and you cannot return to the place where you were before. The best you can do, if you get caught in this situation, is to find a way to come at the problem from another angle.
Another reason for needing to be in a dispassionate state is that it is crucial to frame your question without it including unrecognised assumptions. Take the question: How will Lucy/Mike and I get on when we become a couple? If it turns out that she/he wants only to be ‘just good friends’, you will probably have set yourself up for a whole spurious daydream, because you have already pre-judged what the cards will say. I remember an occasion during my early days with Rainring where a querant was to submit herself to various tests and so on over a weekend, as part of the preparation for entering a training programme. She asked me to help her explore the issues she would have to deal with in order to acquit herself in the best possible manner. I duly made my pronouncements. However, the outcome of that weekend turned out to be one which, she had given me to understand, was not a possible option: she was refused the opportunity to enter the programme. I had failed to pick up this outcome from my reading of the cards because I had assumed that it was not possible. I tell this anecdote against myself in order to emphasise that the unwarranted assumption is the enemy of us all!
This leads on to a further reflection, that the past and the present are a lot safer territory than the future. This is why we recommend that the ideal method for getting a feeling for the ‘code’ in which Rainring cards transmit the Unconscious is to begin by reading things from the past, things which are already completed. A job or relationship which you have left, a home that you have moved out of, a person who influenced you but with whom you are no longer in contact, or who has died, a character in a film or novel you know: there are any amount of reading options which do not involve finding your way through the minefield of the future. Even more importantly, a hugely valuable teaching tool is to revisit your prediction readings after the events have taken place. There, with hindsight, you can see what the cards were trying to tell you, and which at the time you were attempting to make out through the misty veil of the future.
In our work with the cards, Hacina and I have largely avoided head-on confrontations with factual or material future events: ‘Will I get this job?’ ‘Will this friendship survive the recent bust-up?’ ‘Will I pass my exam?’ and so on. It has been our experience that Rainring comes into its own when we focus on inner situations, events and developments. The little I have had to do with the tarot has left me with the impression that each has its own advantage vis-à-vis the other. The tarot deals well with the material: money, love, conflict, business and so on. On the other hand, Rainring is capable of giving great insight into the psychological complexities of a person or situation, whereas I have always found the main thrust of the tarot to be tangential to such matters. But who knows where the future may take either or both of these?
Finally, suppose you want to ask a question such as: Where will my life be at in six months’ time? The counter-question is: where is your life at now? If you want to work with the future, I suggest that you always begin by asking yourself if you know the present and if necessary, by taking a look there. In the above case, create two identical spreads, one for your life now and one for six months from now. I want to mention, yet again, that Rainring was not designed primarily as a divination tool. It was intended as an aid to self-awareness and to a deeper understanding of the psyche. Therefore, although it can be used in divination, for me its emphasis will always be towards seeking to grasp more fully and more deeply the mysteries of the psyche and the psycho-cosmos.
Everything set out above witnesses to one common theme: the importance, when working with the cards, of keeping a cool head. Most of us have no doubt had the experience of visiting a clairvoyant and hearing something completely unexpected, perhaps even unbelievable, but (as it later turned out) true. I think it should be obvious that if we want to leave room in our readings of the cards for the unexpected, the unprecedented, the astonishing – then we must be able to set aside the inner ‘white noise’ which tells us what will be there in a reading even before we have turned the cards over. Of course, for some people – and I am one – it is very difficult to manifest that inner quiet. I am not implying that we have to perform miracles of Olympian detachment or achieve superlative feats of raja yoga in order to read the cards. Rather, we should try to put on our side whatever resources we possess, and resist the temptation to indulge ourselves in wallowing in the process of card-reading.
Rainring cards are designed to draw our attention to the whole range of human emotions in play within a life-circumstance. Yet, almost paradoxically, to get an accurate view of those emotions, as of all the other ingredients of a reading, we need to be able to set aside our feelings. And what, you may ask, of spirit-sided interference with clear seeing? This too exists, typically manifesting itself in judgemental attitudes, inflexible and dogmatic opinions and so on. In fact, as I wrote in ‘foundations’ on the Rainring interactive website, many spirit-sided people will not go near cards because of intellectual conviction that they are ‘unscientific’ and so on.
Rainring is about the virtues of balance, and it can hardly come as a surprise to hear that , to work with the Rainring cards most effectively, balance is the best state of being for the querant!
Questions and spreads
In the instruction booklet that accompanies the cards, on the interactive website, and in the second of the present Masterclass series we look in some detail at one spread or another. The purpose of the present section is, by contrast, to consider more general matters pertaining to spreads.
It may be helpful in this exploration to move from the particular to the general – to start with a specific question and then to generalise from what we find. For the present task, I will choose a very straightforward, standard question: what is the state of my relationship with my partner?
First, I can use the classic spread outlined in Masterclass 2 – the bi-polar octagon. In this way, I obtain a portrait of the relationship. Alternatively, I can use a shorthand version of this, the centred triangle, in which four cards only are involved. [Bottom left - F, right - M, apex -balance (third force), centre - result.]
In the octagon it is the combination of individuals which is the focal point. But what if I want to unpick the part which each is playing in the total result? The triangle above at least tells me the overall input of the male-side partner (right) and the female one (left).(1) But what if I want more detail?
WARNING I am using the nine-card square here in a way which is NOT mentioned on the Rainring interactive web site. The positions are not those of equals and plus or minus 1-4 as on the web, but the ones shown in the instruction booklet: the left-hand column is her, the right-hand is him, the centre is the combined effect of the two; the top row is positive contribution to the relationship, the bottom is negative, the centre is the average or typical situation. So, in this relationship, the average combined position is Swayesse reversed, ‘her’ negative contribution is explosion, ‘his’ positive one is the hero and so on. [Note, ‘her’ and ‘his’ do not tell us the gender of the two people, only the male/female sidedness. For example, in a couple where the woman ‘wears the trousers’, she would logically be placed to the right…
When I started off this section on spreads, I decided to create a new one, in order to explore the process in myself, so I am now going to introduce a new spread for the first time, still on the same topic.
Again, a warning that we have once more given special meanings to the cards displayed – IN ADVANCE of drawing them, of course. This new spread works like this. It concerns the agendas which each person has in a couple: what they seek to get out of the relationship, or put into it, or both. The five cards represent the female-sided partner on the left and the male-sided one on the right; their unconscious agendas at top and the conscious ones at bottom. The central card then corresponds to the difference, the gap if you like, between the conscious and unconscious agendas in this couple.
In order to allow readers to compare the different results, I used the new spread to analyse the same couple relationship at the same time period as the one which figured in the two previous spreads.
How did I create the new spread? First, in order to be able to illustrate it quickly and simply, I chose the one spread pattern from the web which had not yet featured in the present exploration. Of course, this made my task far easier than it would have been if I had started with no preconception of how many cards in what formation I would employ.
Second, I asked myself what I could do with that shape, and also what new type of information might be interesting and valuable in the exploration of a couple relationship. I eventually hit upon the idea of using the formation for a purpose which I had already pursued at other times using other spreads: investigating the difference between conscious and unconscious motivations. This quickly produced the values of the four corners; it remained to work out what the centre represented. Logically, since it was placed in the pattern of squares equidistant from both left and right and top and bottom, it must incorporate both people and both types of agenda, therefore, it had to be a statement of the gap, in this couple, between the conscious and unconscious motivations in play in this relationship.
The crucial element in the creation of a new spread like this is the asking of a new question, or to be precise in this case, of applying an existing question to a new context. The result is the possibility of gaining a new and valuable insight into this – or any other – relationship. We are of course likely to see well enough the conscious motivations in the relationships of our friends, though it may not necessarily be so of our partner, still less of ourselves. Where, however, this spread becomes really powerful for every couple or pair (friends, colleagues, subordinate and boss etc) is that it takes us down into the hidden area, the place where the unacknowledged, unrecognized, secret drivers of the relationship lie – into the participants’ unconscious.
Every spread devised for Rainring is based upon assumptions. For example, the form of the 9-card square used above contains these: 1) in every couple there is a male energy and a female energy; 2) in the two people making up the couple, these energies are polarised, giving one predominantly male-sided and one predominantly female-sided partner; 3) every relationship will have positive and negative aspects – that is, elements that tend to nurture or enhance it and others that tend to destroy it; 4) these positive and negative contributions will invariably come from BOTH the partners… and there may well be other assumptions. Certainly, there are others in the new spread.
For this reason, it is perfectly justified to claim that anyone using Rainring is being subjected to a kind of brainwashing. It is not just that you are reading ‘my’ philosophy in a book, you are in fact, for the length of time you consult the cards, living inside my way of seeing the world. This is why it is of great importance to be ready at any time to question what is going on in the world of Rainring, whether of its cards or spreads. If the above signifies a disadvantage in the use of Rainring there is, I hope, a corresponding advantage. The cards are meant as an aid to living. Yet if, as you use them, you come to feel that far from helping you, they are making your life worse, then surely you will put them aside. If, on the contrary, you feel that you derive benefit from them – for example, from the practice of looking at your relationships as ones where both partners are inevitably contributing to the difficulties of the relationship – then you may be led to feel that the assumptions upon which the cards are based are valid – at least for you.
What other insights can I draw from this process of creating a new spread? Perhaps it is worth mentioning that, in the creation and development of Rainring, the patterns of cards always, and their positions relative to the points of the compass often, have been of importance. Somehow, from the very earliest moments, I have drawn Rainring, rather than thinking it. If one day I write a full-length book on Rainring, I will show this process in action. This patterning, which seems such a fundamental need in human beings, has for me been accompanied by an unending oscillation between the attractions, respectively, of symmetry and asymmetry, and the tension to which this gives rise goes to the very core of Rainring. At all events, for me it has been the sine qua non of every spread which I have created that it should not only make sense, but look right.
So how are we to understand the relationship between spreads and questions, questions and spreads? Questions, undoubtedly, are the force by which advances in the psyche can take place, whilst spreads are the vehicle for the delivery of that force. The two are inextricably entwined. In the experiment performed above, I began my taking a spread pattern and allowing it to suggest a question. The reverse process, where a question seeks to actualize itself in the form of a spread, has equally been a feature of Rainring spreads’ development.
The emphasis of Rainring, I have written elsewhere, is overwhelmingly upon the individual in relationship and is totally opposed to the attempt of the ‘enlightenment’ pursuers to claim that fulfillment is possible without reference to, let alone intimacy with, others. This attitude of mine has a physical analogy in the way in which the individual Rainring card is almost invariably explored in terms of patterns of connection or relation to others, i.e. of spreads. When we read Rainring, we use both analysis and synthesis. Just as we bring together nine related psychic elements in a synthesis which will give us an overview of one single issue, so we begin with a single card and ‘amplify’ it by four, five, nine or however many cards, to analyse it in detail. Thus, we summarise the year in one card, but also divide it into 12 cards, one for each month. In short, we work with forms of interconnection.
Conclusion
I don’t feel that there is some kind of grand summing up needing to be undertaken in order to bring this series to a close. Suffice it to say that I am delighted you have accompanied me on this extraordinary journey that is Rainring and if, after absorbing all that this series has to offer, you wish to go still further, don’t hesitate to make contact. Good luck with your reading!
(1) Whenever I use these expressions, I feel that I need to repeat my mantra to the effect that same-sex couples are included: just work out who plays which role in your couple.