Orphalese Tarot Zone Community Forum

Hi again Richard,

This time in reply to your note from 11 days ago

As far as the numbering thing goes, one easy way to bring the two things into line might be have a preference to Number from zero instead of one on the Card Note form. This would be easy to do because the number that appears there is just a label, it doesn't affect the rest of the program. So you could opt to have the fool displayed as zero the same as the card itself is numbered. Or maybe I could just change it to work that way, I can't imagine anyone would be really upset...(?)

If I understand you right you're saying that you might make it a Deck Option or even a Universal Program change, so that the Cards in the 'Card Notes Editor' are numbered exactly as the image files.

I think that this is a brilliant idea. I'm all for it. It would mean there was just one system and would reduce the possibilities of errors.

The current Image Numbering, 00 - 21 in the case of the Major Arcana, is of course the same as the cards and this simple fact is enough to make it desirable!

I see no problem in any divergent Decks simply being renumbered for Orphalese, as they are currently to allow easy comparisons. The Original Deck Numbering can be retained in the Card Data file for display, so as not to tamper with the Author's wishes!!

Sometimes converting an interesting Deck to Orphalese ordering can require converting lots of numbers and it CAN do one's head in! So the fewer different numerical systems the better!

Regards Greg the Yeti

Hi Richard, I spent a little time thinking about your suggestion of a 5° increment for the Rotation of Decks and also for an 'Intuitive method' of actually doing this.How about using the Number Pad in the following way.

4 Represents an anticlockwise rotation
6 Represents a clockwise rotation
5 Pressed continuously with either 4 or 6 moves in increments of 5
1 Pressed continuously with either 4 or 6 moves in increments of 1 (if you decided to allow us 1 degree control)
0 Pressed continuously with either 4 or 6 moves in increments of 10 (not quite intuitive, but the best I could do!)

Perhaps there would be a default. Perhaps that would be 90°? or perhaps the existing 180°

With regard to the most useful or popular rotations. I thought through the various ones I could think of and came up with the following list.

Divisions of

2 180° Reflections and Opposites
3 120° 'Divine' Number
4 90° Compass Points
5 72° Symbolic Number. Pentagram etc
6 60° Star of David. Unity of Masculine and Feminine.
7 51.428571° Seven Pointed Star, used in Wicca etc
8 45° 8 winds
9 40°
10 36°
11 32.727272° Tree of Life, Kabbalah
12 30° Zodiac
22 16.363636° Major Arcana
36 10° All the Houses of the Zodiac
72 5° Number of years for one degree of Procession, Mayan Calendar etc.

Probably the '22 divisions' does not matter since it's already well covered by Orphalese.

'5 divisions' is important but could perhaps be got around by making the two divisions on either side of the top point 75°, with the remaining three gaps of just 70°. The Pentagon is sometimes not symetrical, so perhaps this is OK? I think this might become a popular option so It's important to get right!

'7 divisions' is important but could perhaps be got round by making the two divisions on either side of the top point 55°, with all the other gaps just 50°. The seven pointed star is very often not symetrical anyway! Perhaps those affected most could tell you if this would be good enough.

'11 divisions', the Tree of Life, The Kabbalah. This would be much harder with only 5° increments. I can't see a really easy way around this. I can see this division being very useful to encode in the rotation for new created Decks of the Future. Cabalistic symbolism is rife in Tarot!

That's just for placing the Cards into a Spread with cards at a given angle to create a special symbolism. However if at some time you enable the shuffling mecanism to match these new possibilities, ( as I certainly hope you will!) then that makes things more tricky. As I see it there are just a few possibilities.

1.- Random 5° or perhaps 1° increments of the card, which could then be judged by the reader by eye or according to a template laid out either by the Spread or in a Background to match the Deck.

2:- 'Positions' around the Circle allocated appropriately according to each deck's requirements, which are then randomly selected by the shuffling mechaninsm. So for example with the Seven Pointed Star
0°, 55°, 105°, 155°, 205°, 255°, 305°, (360°). Note these star points are NOT equally spaced and require 5 gaps of 50° and 2 gaps of 55°.

3:- To insist on the same degrees for each increment in the shuffle would limit the possibilities and exclude 5, 7 and 11 being used. But this is the only other way you could get the cards come up automatically at the 'right' orientations exactly (for those symbolic numbers covered)

Please note also that with any increment of degrees that does not EXACTLY match the symbolic number or symbol, then a random shuffle, using that increment would be 'Loaded' in favour of those 'points' about which the gaps had been 'Spread'! (This would not affect the harder to implement option No 2 above.)

I hope this discussion of the issues helps clarify things and makes it clearer exactly what will be involved with a choice of increments of 5° as you suggested.

Regards Greg the Yeti

Shari, ZenMusic, Greg

Re the next set of tweaks to the beta...

I am going to modify the numbering in the Edit Notes form to make it zero based, because that seems to be desirable. I will also have a look at some of the shortcuts that Greg mentioned.

I will also take a look at letting the user edit the Free Selection spread and the business about adding a card to the spread. Could you just clarify it a bit Shari, when do you need to add the extra card? Is it when you are designing a spread, or recording a reading for someone?

Greg, thanks for doing the analysis of those spreads. I had completely forgotten about precessional mathematics. Bloody Babylonians. I am afraid the card rotation is still way back on the list for the moment.

Cheers,
Richard

Hi Richard,
When I'm doing a reading I draw the cards manually, and then put that into Orphalese. Many times when I've finished a reading with someone, due to the reading or whatever I'll need to draw an additional card based on the reading. So I don't know it until I'm typing up the reading. So if there was a way in the reading wizard your could click to add a card into the reading that would be great. There is a way I do this manually, but if I could click a add position button, That would be great. It wouldn't matter if it was above or below the conclusion, above would be best, but below would be fine to.

What I do now is copy everything to RTF, and then redraw the entire spread with the added card, and copy and paste back into the redrawn reading, so it would be a huge time saver for me.

This is a perfect example of why I feel a Wiki would be great. There isn't anything I haven't been able to do with your program, one way or another, that I can do with a real reading... and how we do those things would be wonderful to share with others that might be looking at how to do something.

Shari