Wednesday, March 22, 2017

The Feather and Stone Spread - Weighing Your Options

Sometimes, I can't sleep, no matter how hard I try. Last night was one of those nights. (Well, by the time this post goes live, it will have been several nights ago...) I finally grabbed my phone and opened a drawing app  (Autodesk SketchBook) and ended up designing three new layouts. Ill give them each a post, and we will see how they work out. They could be useless, they may need tweaking, but please understand it was 4am and my brain and body were desperate for sleep. My muse, however? Not so much.

Here's the third and final 4 am spread:


1: The Feather
2: The Stone
3: The Risk
4: The Benefit
5: The Consequence

So, this layout is for when you're trying to make a decision, and need to get your ducks in a row. On one side of the scale, you have The Feather - this is the thing that looks easy but maybe isn't as simple a decision as you think. On the other side of the scale you have The Stone. This is the heavy decision, the thing that perhaps you are stressing out about more than you need to. Between them are The Risk, The Benefit, and The Consequence. They speak for themselves, I think. Note: I did not include an outcome card, because I have never felt that one should make decisions based on what a card draw tells you. I'd rather use a spread that helps you see your options, and weigh them against one another before deciding on your own what your future holds.

I drew the cards for this layout, and this is what I got (no photo  because I did this while my cellphone was dead):

The Feather: 2 of Swords - precariousness, treachery, blindness, decision, peace, integrative mind
The Stone: 7 of Cups - temptation, selfishness, illusion, debauchery, addiction, over-everything, promiscuity
The Risk: 9 of Pentacles - gain, prudence, benefit, balance, order, organization, unification
The Benefit: King of Wands - authority, leadership, fatherhood, inspired direction, vision, intuition, evolution, spiritual growth, energy, arrogance
The Consequence: 5 of pentacles - impoverishment, destitution, loss, loneliness, worry, concern, preoccupation

Before I start, I have had the chance to play with this layout a bit more since I created it, as well as have a few people test it out, like The Nerdy Witch, and what I think I have discovered is that the Feather and Stone are relative. The Feather could be a big issue, that maybe you don't consider to be as big as you thought, and The Stone could be an issue much less important than you thought. The layout is really just about weighing your options, and I included no conclusion/solution/answer card here because I want the querent to come to their own decisions, rather than depending on the cards to decide for them. That is not to say that the cards drawn wont change the querent's mind or at least influence the decision in the end.

So this is where the explication goes, but I have had a crazy week full of really big changes and this draw is not fully relevant anymore. It is, but it isn't.

So for The Feather, I drew a somewhat two-faced card. The 2 of Swords not only indicates treachery and negative things, but also making decisions and the peace that comes with the integrative mind (integrative is an adjective that means 'serving or intending to unify separate things'.) It seems somewhat contradictory, but I think it also can express the feelings one has when they are of two minds about something, and make a decision. You may feel guilty or badly about the decision, but once it is made, a sort of peace arrives that allows you to reap the benefits of that decision.

The Stone card I drew talks about temptation - specifically the temptations of the flesh, and the illusions we cast on ourselves when we follow those temptations blindly, and the addictions that come along with getting in too deep too quickly.

So, before I talk about the other cards, lets talk about The Feather and The Stone together. Each of them represents one side of the scale. The Feather is the thing we thing may not be  big deal and that carries less weight, while The Stone is the thing we are perhaps putting too much weight upon. So here, this is saying that my Feather is my need to make a decision about something im feeling at odds with, and that my Stone is the guilt and fear itself I have regarding that decision.

Moving on to The Risk: This card seems to indicate to me that the decision I'm facing puts things I value at risk, like balance and order, prudence and unification. However, any change in life puts these things at risk.

The Benefit card speaks about authority, leadership, inspired direction, vision, intuition, evolution, spiritual growth, energy, and arrogance. Considering the decision I was facing at the time of the draw, this makes a lot of sense to me. The person it is clearly speaking of does mean many of these things to me, and the decision I needed to make would affect my relationship with that person.

The final card, the Consequence card, talks about some fairly negative things. At the time I did the reading, I was worried that it meant that making the decision was a bad idea, but now I think it may have been a warning to not allow my Feather and my Stone (the guilt, and fear) - to overwhelm me.

**Sorry for the delay in posts. I should be getting back on track over the next few days!**





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