Mitch Tests His Ontology
MutantsMichael — 8/13/24, 3:44 PM
Placeholder for Mitch Tarot
MutantsMichael — 8/14/24, 6:15 AM
@Dr. Cronk @Madness Dossier
[6:17 AM]
Jeff, any thoughts on the setting for this reading, whether a St.-Germain affiliated NPC will be there (Mary-Lynn, Dan, Hilton, Viv), and whether you're going to do a different/bigger spread than your usual three- or four-card ones? I'm stoked to go bigger if you are: https://biddytarot.com/blog/how-to-read-the-celtic-cross-tarot-spread/
Biddy Tarot
How to Read The Celtic Cross Tarot Spread
The Celtic Cross Tarot Spread is one of the most commonly used spreads by Tarot readers. But did you know it's also one of the hardest Tarot spreads to
Dr. Cronk — 8/14/24, 7:25 AM
I'm disinclined to go for one a them fancy fifteen-card tableaus, I'd rather do a few discrete four-card readings. There's plenty of in-game timespan available, right, so over a period of weeks Mitch could lay out multiple spreads
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MutantsMichael — 8/14/24, 7:26 AM
Yeah, I like it! You just set up the questions, parameters, what have you and I can make all the secret rolls and lay out the cards/intepretations for you.
Dr. Cronk — 8/14/24, 8:14 AM
Okay. Mitch's first-pass spread addresses a fairly abstract question. He flips through his deck and pulls The World, and places it in the first position ("what it is"), then shuffles and deals cards into the second, third, and fourth positions ("what it was," "what it will be," "what it means").
[8:14 AM]
Question on his mind is, how accurate is his latest model for understanding the universe?
[8:16 AM]
History as palimpsest, Ontoclysms all the way down, the Red Kings themselves the product of retrocreation. All history built to after-the-fact justify the Owls' reign.
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MutantsMichael — 8/14/24, 8:23 AM
(This definitely feels like the kind of reading Mitch might do alone, late at night. Very much a him-and-Matt situation.)
MutantsMichael — 8/14/24, 8:43 AM
After extracting The World and shuffling and dealing the "what it was" and "what it will be" cards, Mitch accidentally gets two cards sort of unaccountably stuck together for the fourth "what it means" card. Like many of the "misdeals" he's had to deal with in the past that have accidentally provided more ambiguity and uncertainty in his readings, it feels a little too on-the-nose and convenient, like Matt's kind of winking and nodding at him and adding a sense of uncertainty to what should be a straight-ahead set of die rolls. Wait, not die rolls, card draws, sorry. Frustrating. But never mind, here is quite literally the hand he's been dealt. (Also kind of weird that the cards seem sharper, at a seemingly higher visual resolution than they have in past readings, Mitch considers. ) (The Six of Wands came out of the deck first face-up, the Page of Cups was underneath it when Mitch "inadvertently" drew and flipped two cards stuck together. All cards came out upright by the way.) (edited)
Dr. Cronk — 8/14/24, 9:09 AM
Okay, cool. The world began with a bunch of guys in scrimmage, it's heading towards some kind of mystic alchemical wedding, and you can either stare smugly at your goblet or hop on your horse and join the fight, the future's coming either way. (edited)
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[9:09 AM]
Mitch didn't get the Fool showing up to inform him of the error of his ways so that's a win
@Dr. Cronk
Okay, cool. The world began with a bunch of guys in scrimmage, it's heading towards some kind of mystic alchemical wedding, and you can either stare smugly at your goblet or hop on your horse and join the fight, the future's coming either way. (edited)
MutantsMichael — 8/14/24, 9:12 AM
I honestly can't add much more in the way of internal monologue interpretation to this summary, it was pretty much perfect
Dr. Cronk — 8/14/24, 9:14 AM
All right. Mitch won't press his luck and try to do another spread the same night, but the cards are burning a little bit of a hole in his pocket now. Next day he's got a little stack of paperwork he's supposed to get through on account of he's technically the head of an accredited California school, right, anyway he's in his little office and he shuffles the cards eight or nine times thinking about
[9:14 AM]
Hoo, there's so much
[9:18 AM]
The Owls are, in Mitch's understanding, supremely confident in their position. They made the world like it is everything is like it is because of their they're the top dogs, they've made sure they have every advantage they could want, no doubt at all they've got soothsayers of their own and their only real enemy is confirmation bias. Such hubris doubtless makes them blind to their own soft point. But there's got to be an angle of attack on them, because otherwise this would be a nihlistic if not pointless story, so, what is it?
@Dr. Cronk
The Owls are, in Mitch's understanding, supremely confident in their position. They made the world like it is everything is like it is because of their they're the top dogs, they've made sure they have every advantage they could want, no doubt at all they've got soothsayers of their own and their only real enemy is confirmation bias. Such hubris doubtless makes them blind to their own soft point. But there's got to be an angle of attack on them, because otherwise this would be a nihlistic if not pointless story, so, what is it?
MutantsMichael — 8/14/24, 9:41 AM
Very cool. Spread on this one? Same four-card spread?
Dr. Cronk — 8/14/24, 9:56 AM
Yeah, same spread
[9:57 AM]
Not supplying a card for the first position prior to the deal
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MutantsMichael — 8/14/24, 10:28 AM
(Still pondering the right cards for this one.)
@Dr. Cronk
The Owls are, in Mitch's understanding, supremely confident in their position. They made the world like it is everything is like it is because of their they're the top dogs, they've made sure they have every advantage they could want, no doubt at all they've got soothsayers of their own and their only real enemy is confirmation bias. Such hubris doubtless makes them blind to their own soft point. But there's got to be an angle of attack on them, because otherwise this would be a nihlistic if not pointless story, so, what is it?
MutantsMichael — 8/14/24, 10:38 AM
Four more upright cards. That's seven in a row.
Dr. Cronk — 8/14/24, 10:45 AM
Well, fuck
MutantsMichael — 8/14/24, 10:50 AM
(I have one element of interpretation that I want to get across to Mitch but it's a couple of stones down the path, so if Mitch wants to opine out loud about what his immediate reaction is, I'll definitely find a place to hang it.)
Dr. Cronk — 8/14/24, 10:53 AM
It looks pretty grim for Team Not-the-Owls
[10:53 AM]
The monster that lurks over the world's slaves, born in strife, created through fencing in and binding our imaginations
[10:54 AM]
Their future is so bright they gotta wear shades, eyes on rainbows, children dancing, every day a parade
[10:54 AM]
Hence "well fuck"
MutantsMichael — 8/14/24, 11:01 AM
If I may
Dr. Cronk — 8/14/24, 11:09 AM
This is the downside to soothsaying, you lock yourself into bad outcomes
[11:09 AM]
Denethor and the palantir
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[11:10 AM]
Maybe -- this is a stretch but -- maybe that's the Owls' weak spot
[11:10 AM]
Their whole deal is about stacking positive modifier atop positive modifier
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MutantsMichael — 8/14/24, 11:11 AM
Mitch did ask specifically about the Owls' hubris, their soft point, their weak spot, the angle of attack with which to take the fight to them. And so looking at the reading in the context of that being the subject of the reading seems to indicate: Currently, their weak spot has to do directly with how they enslave the world (The Devil). In the past, the Owls' weak spot does seem to have something to do with the "hedging out" implicit in the Eight of Swords (which, granted, does also seem to have a theme having to do with keeping people blind, bound, endangered and under constant implicit threat). What their weak spot will be: the Ten of Cups. There's the culmination of the Cup suit's journey through feelings and emotion: a rainbow gazed upon lovingly, with children freely dancing. And The Sun as what it's all about: what is their weak spot? Sunlight. Freedom. Illumination. Did the person who said, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant" already say that? Mitch and his higher self wonders to himself. I'll check that out later on Wikipedia or Google or something. Mitch shakes off the weirdness of that last internal monologue and goes back to the Eight of Swords. Look at those waters trickling through, like Miss Blindfolded Patty Hearst Type just got washed ashore and ended up standing up amidst a field of swords. The Owls, when they washed ashore on this world, scrabbled for a method to maintain their power. And they found it in terrorizing people. Keeping them blind. Enslaving them, sure. Those kids in the last two cards, that means something, Mitch thinks. They're free there, in the future. They weren't before. (edited)
Dr. Cronk — 8/14/24, 12:28 PM
Mitch digs his bottle of Wild Turkey out from under the pile of newspapers and magazines that he got subscriptions to and never reads.
[12:29 PM]
Takes a swig, it's almost noon so that's not a problem.
[12:32 PM]
The weakness of the Owls being sunlight and Illumination, rainbows and lollipops, that seems of a piece with the Owlish self-image as the impregnable fortress-kings squatting atop the mountain of history, reveling in their power over the poor people who are all naked chained slash tied-up slash hedged in by swords
[12:33 PM]
If Mitch had the level of control that he's ascribing to the Owls -- if he could not just see the future but shape it directly, if the results of diviners attempting to scry his weakness was whatever he dictated it to be -- then maybe he'd want his enemies to get results like these, too. Even the most positive spin on this tableau is distressingly abstract.
Dr. Cronk — 8/14/24, 12:38 PM
The other day Mitch was wondering why the loa exist. They, and other, similar entities like the Underwater Panther, seem to be outside the elaborate self-reinforcing hierarchy that the Owls made for themselves. Sure, you want your lowborn slave-tribes to have their own crappy lowborn gods so they don't sully your nice cathedrals, but that doesn't require them to have any kind of actual power or influence. And Roger's cheval program indicates that even the Owls would have to admit there is 'actual power' there, 'actual influence.'
[12:39 PM]
His guess at the time was that the loa occupy a slot that needs something in it, and that slot exists because it enables something else, something the Owls value/want/chose-to-have-exist-in-their-perfect-self-perpetuating-kingdom
[12:41 PM]
Maybe that's the Owls utilizing some exotic magic or technology (or both) to exist as immortals. For the Owls to be spirits, the classification "spirit" must exist, and thus examples of spirits (with traits shared, in part, by the Owlish spirits) must also exist.
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[12:41 PM]
Maybe it's something totally different, maybe the Owls had to compromise in their creation of this world and were unable to totally excise some preexisting thing, and that thing was recreated as the loa.
[12:44 PM]
But regardless, they're something the Owls don't have locked down, despite all their power and iron vises.
[12:45 PM]
Mitch did not ask "what is the Owls' secret weakness?"
[12:45 PM]
Mitch asked "what, within the framework of things we understand and can refer to, is the Owls' secret weakness?"
Dr. Cronk — 8/14/24, 12:46 PM
And the answer that came back is "there is nothing within the framework of things we understand and can refer to, which is a secret weakness of the Owls."
[12:46 PM]
So the weapon for us to wield against them, it's going to have to come from outside.
[12:49 PM]
Mitch picks up his deck, shuffles it twice, starts to deal a new set.
[12:49 PM]
He stops at three cards, he would have stopped earlier if his reaction time wasn't slightly impaired by this point (he's finished off the Wild Turkey)
[12:49 PM]
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[12:50 PM]
Then he picks the cards up and puts them away.