Rainring: post-tarot psychological cards

Directory of Meanings Set 4: The Personal Archetypes(Important caveat: these portraits are complex and difficult. They will undoubtedly undergo a number of modifications before reaching a form acceptable for permanent publication.) 

NOTES:

1)     The personal archetypes are simply a way to classify the different personality types which one can find. Astrology, numerology, tarot and other systems do the same thing. I think it would be best to treat the Rainring classification as an attempt to enrich this exploration by coming at the question from a novel point of view, rather than getting into fruitless arguments as to which of these methods should be declared the ‘true’ one.

2)     The set 4 cards are portraits of larger-than-life figures. If we take The Matriarch as an example, this card embodies all the qualities which can be associated with the mother figure. She thus becomes a mother of mythic proportions, rather in the same way that, in referring to ‘mother Earth’, we are not simply producing a matter-of-fact description, but introducing a powerful emotional, mythical element. Mythical does not mean untrue, so much as belonging to inner, subjective sensibility, rather than to experimentally demonstrable fact.

3)     You will not meet The Matriarch of myth on the street, but you will meet innumerable women who exemplify some of her qualities, or indeed many of them. Furthermore, there is mother-energy in all of us. For this reason any querant, male as well as female, is likely to have The Matriarch appearing in a spread at some point.

4)     Because of the way we have read Rainring so far, we have normally encountered the figures of set four as aspects of the querant’s inner psyche. No doubt if Rainring was read in the same way as the tarot, the personal archetypes would begin to appear in Rainring also as people in the querant’s life, affecting and influencing their destiny.

5)     Every personality has a shadow side: alongside the qualities there are defects, which must also be reflected in the portraits.

6)     The structure of the individual entryEach entry is divided into 3 sections: a description of the image on the card; a general portrait of the personality of the type; specific divinatory meanings when the card appears in a spread – positive ones, then negative. 

28. The Patriarch: Group – Spirit (1 violet/purple)

The image

A strongly-built man with red hair and beard stands in the foreground of a mountainous landscape rendered in evening colours. In his left hand he holds a long staff surmounted by the carving of a wolf’s head. In his right hand is an open bottle, perhaps of leather, with a strap attached to it. Close to his right side stands a wolf. From the calm demeanour of both man and beast, we surmise that it must be his companion. On the mountains in the far distance we discern two fires, one on each side of the man.

The portrait

The Patriarch is the man of spirit. To myself, I have identified the biblical Noah as the prototype. By his insight and leadership, he saved not just lives, but an entire way of life.

You are showing initiative and leadership, probably by using your mind – by insight, penetrating analysis, reflection, mental discipline. Professionally, you could well be a teacher of some kind, for you have the requisite qualities. Like the prophets of old, you are prepared to stand up and be counted, to use your moral authority to lead others. You are no shrinking violet. You are a force to be reckoned with, and those who admire, respect and trust you to lead will always be counter-pointed by those who envy, mistrust and denigrate you.

The natural authority which you both possess and use makes you a problematic spouse. It will need a forceful and self-confident partner to achieve a good marriage with you, and it will not be a peaceable one. More likely, you will choose a partner who accepts to be dominated, and neither of you will find fulfilment in marriage.

Your inspirational side is counterbalanced by your relentlessness. Typically, you will be someone who has a powerful work ethic – your ‘mission’, whatever it is, will not easily give way to the lighter, even frivolous side of life. In addition, you are someone who tends, in moral and intellectual terms, to be ahead of the game. Your far-sightedness and commitment to your destiny means that you may prove a difficult companion. You lack the common touch. You may easily fall into superior attitudes, treating people without your gifts as fools, not being willing to recognise that others may have great personal strengths in areas, such as sensitivity, where you yourself have weaknesses.

Divinatory meanings

Showing initiative; providing inspirational leadership; being far-sighted; behaving in an authoritarian manner; imposing yourself by force of argument; polarising a situation to the spirit side of the equation.

29. The Wanton: Group – Will (2 red)

The Image

A young, very sensual woman sits alone on cushions next to a low table. She has the body of a dancer, and her eyes give the impression of her being in a languid or stupefied state, perhaps because intensely felt sexual desire distracts her away from the outer world. With her left hand she reaches to pluck a fruit from a bowl on the table, whilst her right hand, which holds some kind of ornamental feather, also lifts her red dress, showing some of her upper thigh.

The portrait

The Wanton is the woman of will. She is sensual, passionate, vibrant, exuberant and dangerous to know: the scourge of men and the nightmare of other women.

Her type has been so heavily repressed that we seldom see such women living their inclinations with any degree of freedom in the public arena.

You know what you want, and are prepared to do what it takes to get it. What you want is pleasure, fun, enjoyment, laughter, dancing and of course, sex. Because yours is also a polar personality you, like the patriarch, have the power to move people. But in your case, the source of your power is not mental but emotional. You are someone with enormous energy and zest for life. Your vitality, like that of young children, is the outcome of your pursuit of pleasure, your determination to settle for nothing less than what you want. You offer others the opportunity, in your company, to throw caution to the winds and to live a high-octane, moment-by-moment, intoxicating existence.

Your passion for sex is in fact an urge to be penetrated by spirit. As the polar opposites, you and the patriarch are fatally drawn to one another, though you can never overcome the polarisation between you. You are a very unstable marriage partner, because you have too much raw power to be contained by one man. In former times, you would have been broken in by constant pregnancy throughout your child-rearing years. In a contemporary setting, it is not obvious how you will find fulfilment in monogamous marriage. Finally, there is a surfeit of fierceness in your character: you shine with great intensity, but fitfully. You lack the resources needed to deal with the mundane, routine aspects of existence; being volatile, you are unsteady. And although you will fight to the death when cornered, you lack the self-confidence needed to shine steadily, to hold your space, in less extreme situations.

Divinatory meanings

being in touch with your emotions; doing what you feel like; living in the moment; ignoring convention; throwing caution to the winds; pursuing your desires with great intensity, including sexual ones; being unstable and temperamental; blowing hot and cold; lack of realism; polarising a situation away from sprit to the will side of the equation.

30. The Youth: Group – Heart (3 green)

The Image

The Youth is pictured sitting on a bench with his feet in water. He sits between two male companions, also on the bench, and all three are singing lustily. A bottle in his left hand, another at the end of the bench, and the somewhat glazed look of the three young men all suggest quite clearly that they are at least somewhat intoxicated! In his right hand, The Youth grips a flute. The image is imbued with a feeling of the carefree quality of youth – these young men appear to wear the burdens of living lightly, and have given themselves up to having a good time.

The portrait

Psychologically, the dynamics of The Youth’s life are very similar to those of the child. As the son of Spirit and Will, The Youth incarnates the union of male and female. As the heart chakra is at the centre of the body, so The Youth is at the balance point between the male and female poles.

At present, you are exhibiting the qualities of youth – enthusiasm, naivety, insouciance. Those around find you charming, exuberant but also capable of enormous dedication and self-sacrifice in support of what you truly believe in. Your enthusiasm can make you oblivious to mundane physical matters such as cold or hunger. Also, you show great warmth and are a kind and caring friend. Your greatest asset is that you have the energies of spirit and will in balance – it is natural to you to shun both extremes; to see both points of view; to wish for and to work always to see them reconciled. You are also an innovator, because the new generation, with whom you are allied by this card, wants always to remake the world and to surpass their parents. In fact, you are close to the spirit of the artist, because the green vibration of The Youth is also that of Creation. In your case, creativity is likely to be embedded in inter-relation: if you create, you want your friends either to participate in the work, or at least to be there to share its outcome.

On the down side, you may lack the virtues of maturity. Charm, naivety and optimism are lovely attributes, but there are times when they are insufficient. The big difficulty in your life is that of trying to balance spirit and will, so that you are pulled in both directions like a child identifying now with the father, now with the mother. This is exemplified in its most acute form in the terrible pain experienced by children whose parents separate. However precious the idealism of youth, it needs to be tempered by the steel of experience. The Youth alone is limited in what he can do; he needs to find a life-partner and when he eventually does so, the whole dynamic of his existence changes. This means that your greatest weakness is the destabilising effects of your urge towards encounters with young women.

Divinatory meanings

Enthusiasm, exuberance, spontaneity, being ‘young at heart’, trust, naivety, idealism, lack of calculation; warmth, friendliness, sincerity; moderation; immaturity, irresponsibility, lack of insight, indecisiveness; moodiness.      

31. The Hero: Group – Form (4 orange)

The image

The landscape, the presence of an aboriginal hunter, and three kangaroos in the background suggest an Australian landscape. The presence of a lion, however implies symbolic, rather than merely naturalistic, elements to the scene. A bull lies dead in the foreground. A lion, its body partly covering the carcass, places its right foreleg and paw across the prey, as if claiming ownership. At the bull’s head, and right next to the lion, kneels an aboriginal man holding in his left hand a staff with a lizard carved into the upper end, whilst his right hand grips a gleaming hunting knife. This tableau is not so much a hunting scene, as a statement about the nature of the hero.

The portrait

The Hero is associated with endurance, fortitude and practicality. The Patriarch may inspire with his vision and rhetoric, but the Hero is the man you want at your side in moments of life-threatening danger.

You feel yourself to be very at home in the physical world – you may be hardly aware that this is not the case for everyone. You have sound instincts and thrive on challenges of a practical kind: driving non-stop across a continent, restoring an old property, working flat out to meet a deadline. Physically, you are typically of a strong build and have a robust constitution. You are self-confident, have plenty of common sense, distrust intellectuals and can do well at all physical activities such as sport, and DIY. You enjoy sex, but with the emphasis on the physical rather than the emotional elements. But you also have a family orientation, and enjoy settling down and having children. In this role, you will prove an excellent provider. You have physical courage and would easily take the lead where any danger of a practical nature threatens people. You could well be an extrovert, in which case you enjoy partying and will be among the last to leave. You have a good sense of humour, but prefer your jokes simple and not wordy. You are a formidable ally and an implacable adversary.

Your qualities are so strongly defined that the corresponding weaknesses are inevitable. You are not a thinker, but a doer. Your self-confidence and straightforwardness means that you are easily taken advantage of: you don’t take enough precautions. You are not naturally at home in the world of emotional nuances, though you can acquire ability in this area. In terms of personal communication, you have two facets, and move unstably between them. You can make yourself the centre of the action and attention, but you can also retreat into the role of the strong, silent type. Imagination is not your strong point. Your forte is to carry out the work, not to dream up its nature and shape. You may have little patience or sympathy with those who struggle to handle the real world. Your basic nature is warm and tactile, though you can also be superficial, boorish and insensitive. Artistic sensibility is not your strong suit, and if you have a developed aesthetic sense, it most likely involves artefacts: furniture, ceramics, textiles etc, or you might be into vintage cars or old buildings. To reach your fullest potential, you need to find, then channel your great gifts into an enterprise of high moral purpose. Otherwise, your energies may be squandered in trivial and inconsequential battles.

Divinatory meaningsstrength, persistence, tenacity, fortitude, vitality, humour, practicality, enterprise, successful battles against the odds; groundedness, physicality, good sense-perception, common sense, robust health; obstinacy, narrow-mindedness, insensitivity, lack of imagination, obsessive tendency, boorishness.          

32. The Seer: Group – Unconscious (5 indigo)

The image      

 The scene has an other-worldly quality. A light similar to bright moonlight seems to come from everywhere and nowhere. In the foreground sits the figure of an old Amerindian – a female who could easily be mistaken for a male. She wears a shapeless one-piece garment, sits on the ground and is throwing some small objects such as stones, held in her closed hand, onto the ground. Behind her we see a lake with a large flat rock next to it, upon which a stallion unicorn rears up towards the sky.

The portrait/meaning

As the type in touch with the Unconscious, the Seer carries the weight of untold secrets – of knowledge that cannot be shared with the man in the street. This type is in some ways far removed from the common man (or woman) and is likely to be solitary – often in an obvious external sense, but always in the inner dimension.

You have abilities of clairvoyance or clairaudience, various psychic gifts, or an acutely developed ‘sixth sense’. If you do not work as a clairvoyant or medium, you will do well in any situation where a keen intuition is an advantage. You could be a stock market investor, entrepreneur, gambler or detective. Whatever the case, you will succeed not by method but by flair – by backing your hunches. The hallmark of your type is the possession of power, or psychic force. You can make things happen because you have access to the resources of the Unconscious. This is dangerous territory – you have to guard not only against predators from out there, but also against bigotry, intolerance and even persecution by those who fear and envy your knowledge and powers. These abilities put you in a position to teach, just as you have learnt from others, both on this plane and beyond. How will you discharge this obligation to pass on what you know?

On the debit side, the serious nature of your practice means that you are likely to be heavy and lacking in the social graces. Given the awesome nature of the Unconscious, those who navigate it steer perilously close to obsession. Once tuned in, it may become problematic for you to tune out. How does a spy on mission go off duty? Perhaps your biggest difficulty as a Seer is the disjunction between the vastness of your vision and the limitations of your ability to communicate it. Your type is the introvert par excellence – you have great depth, can draw on huge inner resources, but you may struggle to make affectionate contact with others. If you teach, your success will depend above all on the compelling nature of the material you offer, rather than on the emotional bond that you create with your pupils. The issue which will determine your level of fulfilment as a human being is that of grounding. It is of the utmost importance that you find a way – such as through a person close to you – to make a bridge between your world and the consensus reality, the place where people are deaf, blind and ignorant, but gifted in the enjoyment of simple pleasures! Finally, the rewards of power can seduce seers into potentially catastrophic failures in self-awareness, leading you ultimately to use your power not to heal, but to harm.

In conclusion, as a Seer, to develop the possibilities inherent in your nature is to leave yourself with no choice but that of struggling with particular obstacles to achieving a rounded personality.

Divinatory meaningsSeeing below the surface, not being taken in by appearances; being in touch with your dreams; intuitive awareness; trusting your inner voice; shedding light in areas of obscurity; communicating with the world beyond the consensus reality; secretiveness, paranoia, aloofness, haughtiness, lack of the common touch, isolation, obsessive introversion; absence of humour.