THE NOHNS’ WHEEL
Questions
The thing we call “fortune” is the manifest expression of the process of transformation that we experience in our lifetime. These show us the structures concealed within the deeds, which are both cause and effect to the same degree. Therefore, we are not prisoners of the Norns’ Wheel, but wanderers upon a path that leads us through the effects of our own actions. Although this means that we do not have the power to alter our destiny, we can still change our view of things. The vital question of destiny is not what we are able to change in the current situation, but what is the meaning of our actions: the goal towards which our development is heading.
Background (The Norns of Destiny)
This spread is a combination of beginning and end, of the Big Bang (IV) and the Hammer of Destruction (V). It links the polarities of creation and destruction to the steady movement of the Norns’ Wheel that, because it spins eternally, is therefore between the two. The question that moves you is the point of intersection through which you focus the journey to yourself (between birth and death). You must accept that everything you experience is in turn never the actual cause but only a ripple triggered by pre-existing causes that can themselves be traced back to a basic pattern increasingly distant in time; effects following causes that can be found in your spiritual development. Everything that you experience is never just the cause but also the effect of a genealogical pattern pressing tirelessly further into the future. As the subject of your question (and the focal point of your increasing consciousness) it swings both back into the past and forward into the future. On the allegorical level the three Norns – who turn the wheel of Fortune, and therefore keep the cosmic cycles in motion – symbolize the inner laws that take effect in the actions of people.
Interpretation
1 The material as the basis
The issue in question.
2 The impact as resistance from outside
The shadow you encounter outside yourself.
3 The flood as a consequence of this resistance
The physical plane, upon which the shadow manifests itself.
4 Chaos as the primal beginning
The first opportunity dawning on you in the fog of numinous fears (the aim).
5 The Quark Era as creative quality
The higher (spiritual) meaning of your action.
6 The cooling down of the Earth as inner frustration
Emotional resistance.
7 The Greenhouse Effect as emotional overheating
The inner (exaggerated) reaction to external resistance.
8 The Hadron Era as physical assertion
The dynamic quality of your actions.
9 The Radiation Era as physical condensation
The compression of your aim (hopes and fears) in time and space.
10 The human being as the outer goal of our development
The goal towards which your development leads.
VII THE FIVE-RAY SPREAD
(THE PATH OF DECISION)
Questions
What shall I decide to do? Should I buy a car? Resign from my job? Take a holiday? What’s going to happen if I do it? And what’s going to happen if I don’t? What’s the right path?
Background
This spread is only appropriate when we cannot decide in favor of one or the other possibilities. The right-hand side (the left from the reader’s perspective) describes the active possibility (if we do it). The other side describes the passive possibility (if we don’t do it). In this process, the significator (card 1) makes it possible to psychologically clarify the background to the question since it reflects the personal state of consciousness, which is mirrored at the time of this decision.
Interpretation
1 The Basic Situation
The realities of those conditions that lead us to make a decision. This also includes the quality of the background of the question that you are currently interested in.
2 The Physical Level of Acting
The physical realm of experience if you decide to do it.
3 The Physical Level of Not Acting
The physical realm of experience if you decide not to do it.
4 The Emotional Level of Acting
The psychological realm of emotions if you decide to do it.
5 The Emotional Level of Not Acting
The psychological realm of emotions if you decide not to do it.
VIII THE NINE-RAY SPREAD
(THE RELATIONSHIP GAME)
Questions
• How do I see my partner and how does my partner see me?
• What shadow do I reflect in the other person or live out in my counterpart?
• How do I consider my relationship overall?
• What does my inner image of the relationship look like?
Background
This is about the relationship between you and your partner. In more precise terms, this is about making contact with the aspect of your partner that reflects you. None of us can be content with ourselves – or with what we consider to be ourselves. As a result, we need the other person, or at least the image of the other person, which corresponds to our expectations. A man experiences himself in a woman through his own unconscious feminine aspect (anima); the woman experiences
