Sunday's Casting

As you may know, we've been really hustling around here at Philomuse to get Muzundrum, our new music theory game, released. I've been planning on packaging the game in a triangular box – getting someone to make a triangular box, however, has been like pulling hen's teeth. You wouldn't think so – I mean, they make all kinds of weird-shaped boxes for things. Anyway, after yet another bout this weekend with flake-outs and unanswered e-mails, it occurred to me that maybe the universe was trying to tell me something: maybe I should go with a square box with an insert, save some bucks, and keep the price point down on the final product. I decided to cast the Muzoracle and see if anything helpful came up. The above is what I cast.


As you can see, the casting was an ascending one: the black Musician's Die, which I rolled first, landed pointing up. The casting, then, was to build upward, with the white Solfége Dice building up from the Musician's Die, and the cards building up from the Solfége Dice in turn. In terms of meaning, ascending castings refer generally to things we're trying to accomplish, to uphill climbs, like... like trying to get these damn boxes made.


The first die I rolled was fa, which speaks of what is being revealed, what's coming to light, what's bubbling up. The card I drew above it was a Minor Seventh of Strings. Now, minor sevenths refer to retreat, return, withdrawal... or attachment. The Suit of Strings refers to the Realm of Feeling. Hmm... could some kind of emotional attachment be coming to light here? Perhaps some kind of clinginess around my precious triangle design?


I rolled again. Mi, the point of "effort required." The card I then drew above it: Al Segno: "to the sign." Working with signs, looking for portent: a suspicion about all this peculiar flakiness I'd been encountering brought me to the casting in the first place. This position suggests that I might trust those suspicions, that I might "work with the signs."


Next roll: re, the point of mechanicality, of unconscious behavior. The card then drawn above re: the Conductor of Woodwinds. Conductors are about leadership; they can also, however, be about control issues, or even bullying, especially when they occur at the point of unconscious behavior. The Suit of Woodwinds refers to the Realm of Mind, the intellect. This position indicates to me a kind of hardheadedness, an unseen but powerful pushiness in terms of ideas.


And the next roll: te. Now, te is a chromatic point – it's not do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do, in other words. That means it goes at the top of the casting, and the card we draw subsequently will go underneath it: chromatic points always travel in the opposite direction of the casting at hand. In terms of meaning, that means that this point is opposition to our upward climb: it's about what's coming down. And what is does te descending mean? Opportunity. This card's going to be about opportunities presenting themselves in the face of my difficulties. Oh boy!


The card I draw: A Major Seventh of Strings – Lack in the Realm of Feeling. How could a lack of feeling be an opportunity? It seems kind of obvious how it could be now, but at the time I had no idea. I moved on, and rolled again. Sometimes you have to do that – just let things sit a bit and come back to them.


The die I rolled next: te again. When you roll a die for a second time, it's position becomes the axis of the casting, it's center of gravity. The doubled die is placed adjacent to its mate, a card is drawn and placed across the one already there, and the casting is complete. The final position in this case, then, this point around which my story is revolving, is about opportunity in the face of adversity.


The final card I drew: Ossia, the "alternate passage". Ossia under te: opportunity in taking an alternate path. A potential meaning of the card underneath Ossia, the Major Seventh of Strings, then began to emerge as well: perhaps the lack of feeling referred to could be a letting go of the emotional attachment talked about in the first position, which is also in the Suit of Strings. The axis of my casting, then, the center of gravity of my story? Emotional Emptiness and Alternative Passage at the Point of Opportunity.


I decide I like this story. Letting go of my emotional attachment and hardheadedness regarding my original design, paying attention to an emerging intuition, exploring alternatives: I think I'll work with that.


Now: did the oracle tell me what to do? No! I used the perspective it provided to help flesh out a creative response to my situation. Will my response bring good fortune? Dunno! Prediction, fortune telling: bad! Creativity: good!


A Note for Musicians. At first glance, we might think of a Minor Seventh and a Major Seventh together – those are the two string cards in the casting – as a musical train wreck. Looking closer, though, we see that building a minor seventh up from fa and a Major Seventh down from te makes a not-so-ugly chord at all: a G Major 7 with a flat 5 (Db up to Cb, crossed with a Gb down to G). This dreamy, open chord – especially considering we're in the key of Ab – makes for an interesting exploration regarding attachment emerging and opportunity coming down. More pertinent, perhaps, is the simple relationship between the scalepoints of the first and last positions: fa and te create between them a Perfect Fourth, which points to a kind of conscious yielding that further emphasizes a need for letting go. (On a more esoteric level, the Perfect Fourth is a manifestation of the Divine Feminine; if we include our key center and think do-fa-te, we hear two stacked Perfect Fourths between three notes: the triple Goddess. Our dreamy chord is similar: it's also built of two stacked fourths, but over the fiery tritone.)