The instruments

WhySeptem Portae · Hermeticism

Why is it like this at all? Vibration, polarity, rhythm — the classical principles give you a frame to explain what you are in, and to notice when you are calling a low ebb a personal failure.

WhereLamed-Bet · the Tree of Life

Where on the tree am I standing? Caught in Hod, thinking a thing to death; or in Netzach, wanting it too much to see it. It gives the state a location, and a location can be walked away from.

WhatTarot

What does this actually look like from underneath? The I Ching says a thing precisely and abstractly; Tarot hands you the Eight of Swords — bound, blindfolded, inside a fence of blades that has a way out — and you recognise yourself before you have finished reading.

How & WhenSix Doors · the I Ching

So how should I move, and is this the moment? A line and a position: which way this leans if nothing changes, and whether the useful act right now is to advance, to hold, or to wait. A tendency, never a forecast.

Tarot is for seeing it. The I Ching is for getting through it. The other two tell you why it is happening and where you are standing while it does.

How the four are used together →

In every instrument the shape of the practice is the same — ask, cast with provably fair randomness, see where the cast set you, and reflect on a reading anchored to the exact facts of your cast. Only the symbols differ.