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In this section, I want to try and answer the questions: how and why do cards
work?
I wish to stress at once that although I do not refer to any sources by name, this
does NOT mean that I have somehow plucked all this straight from the ether, untouched
by human mind; quite the contrary. I doubt if more than one per cent of Rainring
is unique, if that. The other 99% is the work of others. But I do not intend to
name the sources which contributed to the Ring, and this for a number of reasons.
First, Rainring is not an academic work. It is designed to appeal not simply to
reason, but to emotion, intuition, the senses and so on. We talk of the universe
showing evidence of ‘intelligent design’. Rainring, which is also a universe, likewise
hopefully contains intelligence! But, like the great cosmos outside (I believe),
Rainring is intended as a place in which one can live, have experiences, grow. Rainring
is a tool for self-knowledge, but the ‘knowing’ involved has little to do with reasoning.
The problem with reason is that it can approach life only through explanations,
and cannot accept that explaining has any limits. I refuse to feed reason’s insatiable
appetite.
In so doing, I aim to leave as much room as possible for ambivalence. Whilst reason
seeks to make everything clear, what is required for users of the cards is obscurity,
opacity, smoke and mirrors, mist or even fog. The headlight of consciousness focuses
an intense narrow beam in one place, obliterating everything else. To drive in remote
countryside lit only by moon or stars is an altogether different, a magical experience.
I would like the cards to be that drive by moonlight, where it is our
peripheral
vision that is in play; where analysis takes the back seat, and indeed falls asleep
completely from time to time. In short, the restless intellect will inevitably probe
the world of the cards, but I will not encourage it.
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Passion: rejected illustration from Mary-Jane
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