Reading the I Ching in English
· By Orivana · 6 min read
The version most English readers know is a translation of a translation, and it is still in copyright. What Legge and Wilhelm each did to the...
The Journal
Longer pieces about how these five systems work, where their claims came from, and what the evidence actually supports. The reference pages state a meaning; these argue about it.
Why two Life Path calculators disagree
· By Orivana · 6 min read
Two standard methods, both in print for a century, return different Life Paths for 13.4 per cent of birth dates. We counted: 2,756 of the 20,496...
What the tropical zodiac actually measures
· By Orivana · 6 min read
Western astrology's zodiac has not tracked the constellations for around two thousand years, and it was never trying to. It measures the seasons. That is a...
What a tarot reading cannot tell you
· By Orivana · 6 min read
Outcomes, other people's private thoughts, and anything a doctor or a lawyer should be answering. The limits stated plainly, and what the cards are genuinely good...
Is any of this true?
· By Orivana · 7 min read
No mechanism has been demonstrated for any of the five systems here, and where the claims have been tested they have not held up. What is...
Waite and Smith: what actually happened in 1909
· By Orivana · 6 min read
Pamela Colman Smith drew all seventy-eight cards, was paid once, and died in debt in 1951. The name the deck is usually sold under is a...
Mercury retrograde: what is actually happening
· By Orivana · 6 min read
Nothing reverses. Mercury overtakes Earth on the inside three or four times a year, and for about three weeks the planet appears to slide backwards against...
Why a dream dictionary is the wrong tool
· By Orivana · 6 min read
A dictionary works because a language is held in common. Dreams are not. The lookup table is a genre error before you read a single entry,...
Reversed tarot cards, and how the spread decides
· By Orivana · 6 min read
Waite printed a reversed meaning for all seventy-eight. Plenty of good readers ignore them. Both camps make the same mistake about what a reversal actually does....
Cold reading, and how to tell it from a reading
· By Orivana · 7 min read
The shotgun, the rainbow ruse, the vanishing negative, the out. The techniques named plainly, why most people using them are not frauds, and the four questions...