The Emperor - Diplomacy and Negotiations

I've been spending the week's vacation I just had on exercising my skills at three things - sleeping, reading and manipulating people online and off to do my bidding at games and tests of skill. That's right, not eating... I'm malnourished but not hungry nowadays for some reason.

But back to business. I play wargames, games of grand strategy, tactical games, real-time strategy... but where I shine is wherever people meet together and words, not skill at arms, decide the outcome. I have a way with words, they say, but I like to imagine the strength of my words arises from the strength of my perception. It's simple to say the right words when you know what they are, is it not?

Currently, I'm a barely-adult student who hasn't chosen a major yet. I'm also engaged at peace negotiations between four long-opposed star systems. I'm leading the Pact of Steel against the Entente, except that Russia is much stronger than in real life and aiming to destroy both us and the Western powers. I'm leading a fleet of warships in space against a dreadnought the size of the Moon, with psychic weaponry capable of feeding our crew lies if we do not keep our shields on. I'm commanding a group of rebels against a galactic hegemony of a female caucasian tyrant, invulnerable to age, immune to words and barely killable by a nuke.

It's interesting. It's fun. And, may I say so myself, I'm damn good at it.

Dasvidanya - Eurasian Federation for Global Domination, logging out.

The Empress - Mystic nonsense goes here

There's one thing I wish to talk about here. Let me illustrate by the following sentence:
i
 am tryngn to write this text on a mini-laptop. This is a really annoying process which wastes time and effort on the poor interface and performance of both soft- and hardware.

For instance, I use shift to make capital letters. But the shift is beyond the Pgup key on this laptop's keyboard. This understandably results in frustration.

Therefore, I hope my nonexistant readers will forgive me for not talking about anything interesting or writing much at all, really. If you won't, then screw you anyway.

The Priestess - Meeting your guide

Well, my guide is generally Google. Hierophant would be Wikipedia, though.

Anyway, the mystic nonsense that seems to condense around Tarot nowadays is frustratingly stupid. I got a book on the stuff, and the bullshit-per-word content is off the charts. A few chapters and a headache later, I gave up on reading it.

I'm going to teach some volunteers to actually play Tarocchi, the French way. That's what you're supposed to do with playing cards. Tautologies and other useless 'wisdom' are worth squat.

The Magician - First strides

What?

Tarot-deck consists of four suits and the Major Arcana trump cards, plus the Fool. There are several varieties, but I'll be generally explaining the Tarot de Marseilles, which is the most common. The suits there are Wands, Swords, Cups and Coins, with ten minor cards from Ace to ten and four trump cards each, the Page, the Knight, the Queen and the King. The Major Arcana are:

1. The Magician
2. The Priestess ('Popess')
3. The Empress
4. The Emperor
5. The Hierophant
6. The Lovers
7. The Chariot
8. Justice
9. The Hermit
10. Fortune
11. Strength
12. The Hanged Man
13. Death
14. Temperance
15. The Devil
16. The Tower
17. The Star
18. The Moon
19. The Sun
20. Judgement
21. The World

In addition, there's the card zero - the Fool. Many of these names are often translated differently, but these meanings should be clear enough.

When?

The Tarot cards, which have evolved into modern playing cards only later on, entered Europe probably from the Turks in the mid-fourteenth century. They arrived in Italy, and spread over the Mediterranean first, after which they quickly travelled inlands into other European nations. They were used to play a variety of card games, and spawned several slighly different variants in different countries.

Why?

At first, the Tarot cards were simply playing cards, like the ones commonly in use nowadays. Their use in divination, which is what most people think of when hearing of Tarot, only began in the beginning of the 18th century.

The Fool's Path - the journey begins

First assignment for my newest philosophy course is apparently to create some sort of a presentation on a subject that has at least some sort of a tenuous connection to the subject. Well, I chose Tarot - mainly because the subjects listed weren't particularly inspiring and, while I don't have a deck, I've been playing the Shin Megami Tensei Persona series (3 FES and 4, actually) lately, which gave me some handle on the art of the cards.

My own philosophy can be summed up rather easily. I believe in science and rationality. I relate to different old mystical superstitions by knowing that they're utterly false, but trying to see how they were born out of the beliefs of the time, and how they in turn affected the culture around them.