Muzoracle Casting with Traditional Tarot

The question. My question this morning dealt with money and location. I need to bring in more cash in the short term. The possibilities for accomplishing that are more numerous in the city – where I’m staying – than in the country, where I live. I love my home and its close proximity to family and friends ... but a fella’s gotta make a living. What shall I do about this? Like many folks these days, I’m anxious about money – when confronting these issues, I run into a kind of confusion and muddiness regarding how to proceed. What assumptions and fears are operating unseen within me? What am I buying into?

The casting. The Musician’s Die landed on Gb, pointing absolute south, which indicates the general perspective of the casting was to be about “what’s coming down” – or coming through – vertically, in terms of being. The first Solfége Die I rolled was fa, which indicates a time of transition.

The card I drew underneath fa was a Minor Sixth of Woodwinds: longing or hunger in the Realm of Mind. I think of this card as the "thirst for knowledge" card – and indeed, I'm dying to know what to do at this time of transition ... I am constantly distracted. Gotta know, gotta know, gotta know.

I rolled again: le, the point of mechanicality, of unconscious behavior. The card I drew above it: the Conductor of Woodwinds, a Leader in the Realm of Mind. Now, conductors, especially when operating unconsciously, can point to control issues; an unconscious Conductor of Woodwinds can indicate an attachment to being right. These first two positions together, then – the Minor Sixth of Woodwinds under fa and the Conductor of Woodwinds over le – speak of a kind of mental obsession with having things figured out.

The next die I rolled was fa again, which created a double at the first position and so formed the casting's axis. The card I then drew to cross was the Orchestration Card, which I placed horizontally across the Minor Sixth. The Orchestration Card deals with delegation and managing resources – sometimes within, sometimes without. In forming the axis, the hunger of the Minor Sixth, this need to figure things out, had become bound up with deciding who's going to do what and when. Which of my many irons in the fire should take precedence? What can I hand off, and to whom? Figure figure figure, clickety click click – put all this in the hands of a Conductor obsessed with control and you've got a guy who isn't sleeping much.

So what do I do with all of this? Get out of my head, certainly – but in what way? As sometimes happens, the casting has accurately telegraphed a situation and seems to suggest something, but hasn't pointed strongly to a particular course of action. When this occurs, I'll sometimes just roll and draw again, or maybe do a separate One-Up. The axis of a casting usually signals its end – sometimes, though, it just signals a pause, a time to take stock and do some interpreting before continuing on.

Adding in the Tarot. The course of action I decided to take in this instance was to break out my Universal-Waite Tarot. I shuffled and pulled a card from the center of the deck, and placed it face up below Position 1: the card was The Fool. What might this card mean at a time of transition, in combination with intellectual hunger and delegating responsibility? The Fool's striking difference to the Muzoracle cards above it suggest to me a balm to all this obsessive thinking, a kind of return to innocence, a simple and childlike following of one's heart and conscience. It seems a call to lighten up – the white prancing dog on the card even looks like my Havanese! The Fool also suggests the presence of the Trickster, that this pickle I'm in is a kind of cosmic joke, which, if taken correctly, can really show me some things I'd otherwise not be able to see.

I then drew another card from the middle of the deck and placed it over position 2: it was the Seven of Wands reversed. Now, last night one of the questions on Jeopardy! was "What is Pyrrhic victory?" When this card turned up, this question rang in my head. Sevens are about victory, and the Seven of Wands is about relishing the fight; but it's upside down here, and joined to an unconscious leader. The Conductor here is Pyrrhus himself: this is a battle I don't want to fight. Again, there is a call to relinquish control, to loosen this mental grip.

Looking at all this, I had an intuition to cap what I had so far with a One-Up. I rolled te ascending, and drew a Major Triad of Percussion over it: Fulfillment in the Realm of Body at the point of Effort. I then drew The Emperor over that. This position was most helpful: the triad was a call to examine what I want as an endpoint in the real physical world, and also a call to ground. The Emperor I drew next indicated order, but on the terms of the Major Triad adjacent to it; an anathema to the tyranny of thought found in position 2, it spoke of kingship over a bounteous land.

Musician's Notes. In the first position, the Minor Sixth built downward from fa creates an open voicing of a Major Triad: if we sound our Gb and then add below it Cb and the Eb below that, we hear an open Cb triad with an Eb at the bottom – very consonant, very rich. The second position in our casting involves just the one note D; in conjunction with our droning Gb, we hear an implied D Major Triad. The third position is a E Major Triad; the droning Gb sounds like an "add 2."

This casting is extraordinarily triadic and consonant. Although its key center is Gb, the key we really feel is Cb, the key of fa, sounded at the first position. Harmonically, Cb Major is the source of Gb Major; musically, this casting is centered around the notion of returning to source, as exemplified by The Fool. The E Major Triad in position 3 lifts you right out of your boots. This casting was very healing and soothing to play.