Rainring®: post-tarot psychological cards

Class 1: The structure of the grid

 1 The Grid

Here is the link to the grid – the grayscale version of the one available to purchase in colour via the Rainring website shop. 

 the-grid-upload-version.doc 

Unlike the tarot, all the 85 cards in the main Rainring pack are structurally interlinked. (The site features 81 of these, as does the colour grid on the above link, so here we will confine ourselves to these.) This means that in order to understand the full meaning or significance of each card, you need to know where it is positioned in relation to the whole pack. The grid gives this information. In this first class, I am going to introduce you to the basic divisions or building blocks of the grid, then illustrate how to apply this knowledge by seeing how this structure will be expressed through the example of one or two sample cards.  

2.The Groups

The grid is based on nine vertical divisions – by colour – and nine horizontal ones, by theme. Of these two forms of division, the fundamental one is by colour. if we think of the identity of any Rainring card, the first piece of information we want to have about it is: what colour is it? For this reason, each card on the website has a coloured border. To highlight its identity, the portrait page for each card presents it situated between two large bands of its relevant colour. Below, we give three links by way of example, taking the reader to, respectively, Interchange (blue), The Seer (indigo) and Balance (green)  

http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Interchange/25.aspx

http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/The_Seer/32.aspx 

http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Balance/75.aspx

The chart shows that each of these belongs to a group which has both a characteristic colour and also a name. Blue is the Communication group, indigo is the Unconscious group, green is the Heart group. If I now view the cards Creation and Rapport 

 http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Creation/39.aspx

http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Rapport/57.aspx

I can see that they, being also green, belong to the same group as Balance – the Heart group. In Rainring, this is the closest identity that different cards can have to one another, and is the strongest underlying theme forming the foundation of their identity. If I want to understand the card Balance, or Creation, or Rapport, I should start by an understanding of what the Heart group means – what is the collective identity of the green cards? In the same way, The Seer needs to be approached through an understanding of the significance of the indigo (Unconscious) group, Interchange through the blue (Communication) group and so on with each and every card.The directory section of the web site provides basic information on the meanings of the designation of each group – Communication, Unconscious, Heart etc

http://www.rainringcards.com/VisualDirectory/Groups.aspx

These meanings are linked to those of what we call the aspects, which are the subject of class 2. 

3. The Sets

The cards of the grid are not only linked vertically by their membership of a colour group, but also horizontally by their membership of a set. The nine members of a set are joined by their participation in a common theme or modality in the psyche. For example, all the cards of set 1: (from left to right – Deflation, Control, Withdrawal, Torpor… are cards containing the energies of introvert imbalance.   

http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Deflation/1.aspx

http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Control/2.aspx

http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Withdrawal/3.aspx

http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Torpor/4.aspx

The cards of set 8: Need, Attraction, Explosion… 

 http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Need/64.aspx

http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Attraction/65.aspx

http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Explosion/66.aspx 

are concerned with relations between male and female energies: either outwardly as man-woman relationships[1] or inwardly as issues of psychic balance between a person’s male and female characteristics or elements. This connection through membership of the same set is very important in understanding the meaning of any Rainring card, but it is the secondary issue, the primary one always being the group to which a card belongs. The simplified version of the cards presented on the web site does not refer directly to the sets, except insofar as the set connections can be determined from the grid shown on the site. A shorthand version of the set themes can also be found in the directory.  http://www.rainringcards.com/VisualDirectory/Sets.aspx

In fact, most, though not quite all the cards, carry a format mark as part of the illustration, which identifies the card visually as belonging to a particular set. These, however, are not there in every case, and not obvious in some cases where they are there. A look at the 4-mention section on the web site shows how the identification by set relies essentially on information present on the card outside, not within the illustration. In the web version, this has been removed. 

4. interpreting a card from its grid position.We can now put these two items of information together. Let’s take a card somewhere in the grid, such as Sensuality for example.  

http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Sensuality/67.aspx

There are two major pieces of information about this card which will form the foundation upon which our understanding of it will be built: first, it belongs to the Orange group, which is that of Form. This group is concerned with actuality, fact, the material, the world of sense perception and so on. Second, Sensuality is a member of the Love Ways set, concerned with male-female relations. Its primary (but NOT its only) meaning is therefore the expression of conjugal relations in physical terms. However, sensuality is also concerned more widely with the senses in general – the realm of sensing or sensation. This is typical of Rainring: we can derive a card’s basic or dominant meaning from its grid position in the manner described, but this is very far from exhausting all its possibilities. I understood it originally as having sexual connotations, until it turned up persistently in circumstances where it could not possibly mean any such thing – this is how ancillary or variant meanings develop.One further example of interpretation: Freedom (Vibration). 

 http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Freedom/51.aspx

The cards of set 6, of which this is one, have a special status, in that they display not one, but two very important pieces of information. This anomaly is reflected in the way they are treated in the web version of the cards. The name of this card is Vibration. However, it carries at west one of the nine – as we call them – feeling archetypes. These are defined as nine feelings which are regarded as having an importance or significance over and above that of other feelings such as Curious, Content, Exhilarated and so on. To mark this primacy, the feelings of the set 6 cards are illustrated. We made the decision, when preparing the simplified version for the web, that we would present these cards with the name of the feeling as illustrated, not with the name of the card itself, this latter appearing only in a secondary position. Freedom (Vibration) belongs to the yellow or Self group, corresponding to the solar plexus chakra. We take the yellow (or any other colour) vibration to have the same meaning outside the human body as inside it – hence yellow in the cosmos is identified with issues of individuality and self. In short, this card deals with the fundamental feeling associated with the self, the individual: i.e. freedom. Within the nature of the self is the urge to be free to grow and develop in such a way as to express one’s unique being, whether as oak tree, lion or human.     

5 Summary 

To sum-up: each Rainring card should be understood in terms of its position in the grid and its relations to other cards belonging to the same group or set.  In the next class, we shall look at the centred octagon spread – the most-used in Rainring, and the one most intimately connected with the structure of the pack. There are many tie-ins between this spread and the grid structure which we have been exploring in this first class