After a five-day ordeal called New Student Orientation, I am officially matriculating.\u00a0 There\u00a0 My first class, appropriately, was Ancient Greek.\u00a0 But I\u2019ll talk about all that later.\u00a0 Right now, I have a decision to make.\u00a0 I want to work in the art-metals department to help pay for school \u2026 which is leaving me with a dilemma.<\/p>\n
There aren\u2019t any work-study openings left.\u00a0 The head of the department didn\u2019t come right out at say it, but it was made clear to me that they all go to his seniors.\u00a0 There are, however, openings in his advanced metalworking class.\u00a0 Two problems: that costs money, and I\u2019m already taking a full course load.\u00a0 He\u2019s willing to work with me, though, so I have three options: to take the course (and with it the full additional cost and workload), to work as a TA under him (and work out the cost on an ad-hoc basis), or to leave my course load alone.<\/p>\n
Being a magician, I of course consulted the Tarot \u2013 my Crowley-Harris Thoth deck, to be specific; I\u2019ve been using it for my daily readings and carrying it around with me rather like a child with a favorite blanket.\u00a0 I did a modified version of the Decision Game (Banzhaf and Theler, pp 44-45) spread for three options instead of two. The significator is the Queen of Swords \u2013 I\u2019m struggling to impose rational order on what might be a fundamentally emotional decision.<\/p>\n The first path \u2013 to take the course \u2013 procedes from [XV the Devil] to [10 Wwands \u201cOppression\u201d] to [VII the Chariot].\u00a0 In some ways, the Devil aspect of this is easy to see: the temptation of the fire, metal, and hammers calls strongly to me; the temptation to do something I already know I\u2019m good at, to keep my hand in; to make every penny of my tuition count.\u00a0 The generative aspects seem more metaphorical, but one can never be quite sure.\u00a0 Looking at the 10W, I was initially confused.\u00a0 After closer examination, however, I feel that it is simply stating the obvious: that I will be overworked, pushing the limits of my time and energy.\u00a0 That it will end in the Chariot is most interesting: that the class will give me the opportunity to move forward in some meaningful and powerful way.<\/p>\n The second path \u2013 to take the TA position \u2013 is more clear.\u00a0 [XI Lust] leads to [XII the Hanged Man] and ends in [9 Swords \u201cCruelty\u201d].\u00a0 This is probably not the way to go.\u00a0 But then, half-measures rarely are.<\/p>\n The final path \u2013 to skip it and leave my course load as is \u2013 begins with [2 Wands \u201cDominion\u201d] and leads through [the Knight of Wands] to [the Queen of Wands].\u00a0 The 2W gives me pause, as Banzhaf talks a lot about risk-taking in relationship to this card; this seems strange to me as this is the path of not<\/i> taking the risk.\u00a0 The Knight of Wands is more clear: this is the direct path, the road of staying focused and on target.\u00a0 The Queen of Wands seems to promise leadership opportunities at the end, and perhaps other opportunities as well that I can\u2019t foresee.\u00a0 It is also interesting to me that here, on the \u201cstick to the books\u201d path, is where I find the most fire cards.<\/p>\n One rarely expects clear answers from the Tarot, but rarely have I gotten answers quite so ambiguous.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a five-day ordeal called New Student Orientation, I am officially matriculating.\u00a0 There\u00a0 My first class, appropriately, was Ancient Greek.\u00a0 But I\u2019ll talk about all that later.\u00a0 Right now, I have a decision to make.\u00a0 I want to work in the art-metals department to help pay for school \u2026 which is leaving me with a … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[266,268],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scholarship","category-witchcraft","tag-tarot","tag-tarot-reading"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-1K","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/a>
My results are as follows:<\/p>\n