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Chinese Oracle Bone Divination Deck, Version 2.0, Free Deck + Book Set
2015 September 24: Original Posting
While writing my forthcoming second book, tentatively titled The Tao of Craft, I had to do some intense study of oracle bone script. That’s where the knowledge for the card content comes from. All citations to the amazing references I used are in the book, but one person I want to thank right away is Richard Sears, who runs ChineseEtymology.org. Now, as for the inspiration, that’s a little harder for me to convey.
On a morning I was to drive my parents to the airport, I thought I heard a voice speaking to me in my room, while I was sleeping in bed, and that woke me up. Then after that, no matter how hard I tried to go back to sleep, I couldn’t, so I relented, booted up my computer, and in that same sitting, a complete first draft of this deck was done. I talk more about the conception of this deck in the accompanying 55-page Guidebook. The deck itself is made up of 33 cards.
Screenshots of the first 18 cards
These cards are not for sale, but I am offering a free license for you to use them. Keep reading for now. (Or skim and scroll down. Whatevs.)
I recount this as calmly as possible. That is said more for my frame of mind than yours.
I had stumbled upon a fortune teller in Chinatown sitting at a makeshift tabletop. The chairs were miniature and when sitting, your knees would be up next to your ears. What had intrigued me to stop and listen in was her method of fortune telling: the tarot. You don’t see tarot divination that often among the Chinese, so of course I had to observe. A young woman about 20-ish years of age and her friend sat across from the fortuneteller. From what I overheard, the question was about love.
The fortune teller used what appeared to be a Marseille-based deck. I couldn’t figure out a discrete way to take photographs, so let’s assume my memory is good and go with the below reenactment, using the CBD Tarot de Marseille.
I don’t have educational degrees that would qualify me to write about any of this, so please understand that I am writing my observations within that non-expert context. Lately I’ve been fascinated with pagan and neopagan belief systems, mostly for how strikingly similar paganism is to Chinese Taoist-based folk religion.
Here’s how I understand paganism in context: Back in the day across Europe, Abrahamic religions rose to dominance, became institutionalized, and began setting up centralized bodies of authority that often started in the cities and spread its influence from there. At the fringes of the countryside, however, pagan faiths endured among the minority. These pagan faiths were polytheistic, though pantheist, strongly nature-based, and because they believed that everything was connected, it was thought that certain herbs, incantations of words, ritualistic conduct, and representations of elements could be harnessed to manifest intentions–in other words, magic exists.
Replace a few specifics from the previous paragraph and you could apply it to the relationship between Confucianism (and to a great extent Buddhism) and Chinese folk religions. These folk religions were looked upon in the same way pagan faiths were looked upon by the Christians. Those who practice pagan/neo-pagan religions (like Wicca, Druidism, Heathenry, or some form of pagan reconstructionism) tend to keep their faiths concealed or strictly private. That’s less of an issue among those who practice Chinese folk religions, and so you’ll see altars set up in Chinese businesses that still pay homage to the faiths of their [often agricultural] ancestors. However, like what pagans experience, those who still practice Chinese folk religions are considered fringe.
from the CBD Tarot de Marseille by Yoav Ben-Dov (cbdtarot.com)
I grew up trained to fear the number 4. In any scenario where I had to be assigned a number, I would sit there praying that the number 4 would not appear in my assignment and dreading that it would. If my seat number in the exam room had a 4 in it, I’d take it as an omen of impending failure.
I’m not the only one. There’s a name for it: tetraphobia. If they’ve got a name for it, it means I’m not alone. The Taiwanese and South Korean navies avoid assigning the number 4 to their ships. In Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and many other parts of East Asia, you’ll hardly ever see a 4th floor. It’s the 1st floor, 2nd, 3rd, and then 5th. For a race stereotyped to be good at math you’d think they’d know how to count. Hospitals don’t have a 4th floor for sure, and no room number in those hospitals will have a 4 in it.
To the Chinese, 4 means death. 4 means bad luck. 4 means misfortune. 4 means you’re going to suck at life. 4 means you are not a Chosen One. Chosen Ones never get number 4. They get, well, 1. Or 8. Chinese people love the number 8 the way tarot readers love the Ace of Cups or The World card. As for The World card, by most counts it is the 22nd card in the Majors and the theosophic reduction of 22, 2 + 2, is 4 and so take that tetraphobic Chinese people!
I guess back in the day in Chinese grammar schools, the concept of homonyms got glossed over. Everybody there missed the lesson on how a homonym is when two words sound the same but have different meanings. Different. So even though pronouncing the number 4 in most East Asian languages and dialects sounds the same way one might pronounce the word for death, the two words should still retain their different meanings.
Not so to the Chinese. Just because the number 4 sounds like the word for death, suddenly 4 means death. There’s some serious issues with logical reasoning there, which is hilarious to me, because in the Western tradition, 4 means logic, rationality. More on that later.
When I first started study of the tarot, especially when reading with a Marseille deck, numerological associations for the number 4 tripped me up. The numerological association for 4 seemed all too clear: you were doomed. 4 in batons? You’re doomed to fail at work. 4 of cups? You’re doomed to fail in love. You get the pattern. Growing up in the Chinese culture meant I hyperventilated just a little when the number 4 appeared in my life.
Tarot helped me overcome that fear of the number 4. Don’t laugh. I’m serious.
The Emperor might not be all sunshine and rainbows, but it is still a strong card with an empowering message. In western numerology, 4 symbolizes stability, like the four legs of a table or chair, the four corners of the universe, the four elements, the telegrammaton YHVH. 4 is the number of rationalism. Hey, I like rationalism– 44 means great power and physical vigor. 444 is said to be an omen of the Divine’s presence.
When four Fours appear in a tarot spread, there will be peace and order. The Four of Wands in the Rider Waite Smith deck is all about prosperity. The Four of Cups: introspection. Introspection is hardly death and doom. Four of Swords: repose, recuperation; not your preferred state of being but there is a positive message latent in the card–the loved ones awaiting your return depicted in the stained glass window, the secret weapon underneath you– whereas the number 4 according to the Chinese is straight up bad, no nuances.
Those of Life Path 4 are indispensable to a society. They’re our builders, our planners, our architects, the designers of all social constructs. People of Life Path 4 make things happen. Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, and Bill Gates are all 4s. Leonardo da Vinci, Mark Twain, J. P. Morgan, Paul McCartney? All 4s with 4s littered throughout their numerology charts.
Even more intriguing is how 4 is so not a big deal even in traditional Chinese metaphysics. Take the I Ching hexagrams. Hexagram 4 suggests naiveté, not death. Hexagram 14 is abundance, validation, all good stuff, like the Four of Wands. Hexagram 24 hints at progress. Hexagram 34 is a powerful, positive omen. So okay, Hexagram 44 is getting a bit darker. Entropy ain’t great news, but still. Hexagram 54 is back to positive again. I’m using the terms positive and negative very loosely here, by the way, as neither tarot nor the I Ching can be characterized with absolutes. And Hexagram 64 is like the Judgement card, give or take huge liberties with the interpretation.
The Four Pillars of Destiny (四柱命理學), which is said to date back to the Song Dynasty, is founded on the idea that there are four components to mapping out a person’s destiny chart. That destiny chart, based on month, day, year, and time (the four pillars) of birth, is supposed to be a playbook of your life. Four for life, people, not four for death!
Understanding quells fears. It is now my dedicated mission to alleviate tetraphobia among the Chinese. Or– okay– at the very least, the Chinese in my arm’s length social network…
Hubby is the Year of the Horse, which means this year, 2014, is going to be a year of major changes and flux in his life. At least that’s what the Chinese believe. It’s called your Ben Ming Nian. Every lunar year is governed by a zodiac house and there are 12 of them. When a lunar year is your zodiac house of birth, you will be experiencing a great deal of flux that year, which can be great if you’re careful and proactive, but can quickly become misfortune if left unchecked (chaos theory? entropy?).
Growing up I’d hear about the Grand Duke Tai Sui. Every 12 years the Grand Duke reigns over a different zodiac house and when he’s in your house, you better move out or risk offending him. Move out, good luck. Stay put, bad luck.
Turns out he’s Jupiter. As in the planet. Jupiter’s orbital period is 12 years and each year it appears to be in a different cardinal direction in the sky at particular degrees, and that corresponds with one of the 12 zodiac houses of the lunar calendar. Since it’s also the largest planet in the solar system and bright enough to cast shadows on earth, it is believed that the energies of Jupiter can greatly affect the personal energies of those on earth. It can exert interfering energetic waves on the earth’s magnetic fields and thus affect our personal Qi. It most affects the personal Qi (energy) of those born in a year corresponding with the zodiac house that Jupiter is in that year.
When Jupiter (aka Grand Duke Tai Sui) is in your house, your personal Qi will be thrown for a ride, which can be a really good thing if you know how to keep it in check, but can be an awful thing if you don’t. Enter fun Chinese superstitions. They’ve got all sorts of talismans, rituals, and other incredible ways to “please the Grand Duke” and avoid “offending him.” Basically, know that your personal Qi will be in flux and be aware and conscious of how to navigate that Qi in flux so that it doesn’t afflict you but rather, supports you.
Now my Hubby is an interesting character. He is a full on skeptic… until shit hits the fan. His year went off on a rocky start and he’s worried about his Ben Ming Nian. Ben Ming Nian just means it’s the year of the zodiac house that you were born in. He was born in the year of the Horse and now it is the year of the Horse. It’s his Ben Ming Nian, you would say. You would be surprised, floored really, how many perfectly intelligent and rational Chinese people flock to temples and energetic practitioners to try to get their good mojo on for their Ben Ming Nian. Hubby knows that a few years ago it was my little sister’s Ben Ming Nian and her year, too, started off hellish. I assembled some happy charms and sent them to her. By that year’s end, she met a wonderful guy who is still the love of her life right now (they’re making plans to marry soon) and she got an offer to work at the biggest law firm in the country, in the city she loves, Manhattan. So this year, 2014, Hubby nagged me to do the same for him.
While reorganizing a closet that contained boxes of things I hadn’t touched in years, I came across some of my grandmother’s personal effects and found a trinket box with the above sigil painted underneath, on the bottom of the box. It’s a feng shui talisman of some sort, that much I know.
According to my mother and those who are in the know, it’s “a spell.” Their words, not mine. A blessing spell meant to guard and protect.
The left-most column of text calls upon the guardians of the four cardinal directions, which in feng shui theory are the Red Phoenix in the South, the Black Tortoise in the North, the Blue Dragon in the East, and the White Tiger in the West.
The right-most column of text calls upon the spirit guardians of the five relative directions, or Up, Down, Left, Right, and Center.
The center column is about the founder of the Ba Gua, or eight trigrams, and calling upon that energetic legacy for protection. I might liken that to praying to a venerated saint and hoping that the saint will come and bail you out of trouble.
Meanwhile the guardians of the four cardinal directions are about the universal, collective Qi energy while the guardians of the five relative directions are about the personal Qi, like a call for summoning up your own inner strength. Then the characters inscribed in the circles with the little squares at the center are just various characters for good luck and fortune, like happiness, prosperity, yada yada.
The square within the circle is symbolic of the harmony between heaven and earth. It’s basically a pictorial expression of “heaven is on my side.” The diamond thing forming the four points are representative of the four gates of…something. It’s a mandala thing.
The chain of lemniscates or infinity symbols reinforce the intensity of power or the efficacy of the spell. It’s the insurance policy. I suppose it’s like adding a string of exclamation marks behind a statement to show you really mean what you’re saying!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Then you have the overall form or structure of the painted sigil, which is meant to represent a bell or wind chime, which is superstitiously believed to ward off evil spirits. Allegedly, evil spirits are afraid of the sound of bells, which is a pretty interesting belief if you consider the cross-cultural employ of bells in religious services. A less abracadabra way of phrasing it (though no more scientific) is to say that the sound of bells or wind chimes can scatter malignant energies or bad Qi.
Sutras are Buddhist texts that memorialize a particular teaching, not unlike Sunday school parables (which I got big doses of as a kid: Bible Study classes in some offshoot wing of a church, playing tag or hide-and-seek in said church, and daring one another to utter H-E-double-hockey-sticks in God’s house will forever be ingrained in my memory). Recently I got into reading sutras and came across one that I felt compelled to illustrate. In jest, I tell people this is the kind of bedtime story I’d tell my kid if I had one. Here’s how it goes:
benebell wen 