maiji
I recently got my copy of the Trine Oracle, which is a fun coin-based oracle system designed by my amazing friend Tory Woollcott ✨
Here's a demo reading and reflection on use of oracle systems for creative inspiration and writing! (I did an SO2-themed question for fun hahah) https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/4865241
maiji: Trine Oracle unboxing and practice reading
[Image: Photo of components of the Trine oracle system on a wood surface. An open square box with its lid on the side, foil stamped with a shape that looks like a triangle overlaid on other geometric forms. Two gold foil stickers are on the lid. On the box is a foil stamped square print of a crane, wings spread, with a gold foil-stamped sun or moon behind it, and three fish jumping over it. Three large circular stickers of the same image in shimmering green, red, and blue lie to the left. A small black cloth bag with the same geometric triangle forms printed in gold at the bottom. To the right are three coins: a bronze fox, a silver frog, and a gold fish.]My lovely friend Tory creates imaginative and beautiful oracle systems, including the Tessera system which I’ve shared readings with before. (You can see the posts here!) She’s an amazing artist and designer with impeccable illustration skills and aesthetics. Everything she makes is so darned pretty, thoughtful, and well put together. I recently got my copy of her latest project the Trine Oracle! (check out the Kickstarter page for all the details and much better photos than mine, haha.)Trine is a fun coin-based oracle system that has a very interactive, tactile and spatially aware approach. You can do readings based not only on the coin image, but also on parameters such as the coin drop order, behaviour on drop, and where it lands. I had a chill day with orange recently, just hanging out and chatting, eating food, working on creative projects. We had fun unboxing the Trine set and oohing and aahing over its fantastic design and production. One of the things I really like using oracle systems for is creative inspiration, and orange was also looking for some inspiration on some connections for her creative writing, so we did some readings to brainstorm based on that. To get familiar with this system, I did a warm up practice reading. For funsies, here's my demo question, the first thing that came to mind - Star Ocean 2! Hey, if that's where my brain is, let's work with it.Pangalactic Federation Ensign Claude C. Kenni has accidentally splatted on the surface of an underdeveloped planet. He doesn’t know what to do. What should he be aware of/reflect on as he embarks on this journey?With Trine, you customize the surface of your drops to create zones for your reading. The segmentation of the surface and what different zones mean can be thought of like a spread. For example, in a card-based oracle system, you could do a three card spread where card 1 represents past, card 2 = present, card 3 = future, that sort of thing. You do the same with Trine by designating different zones to represent those aspects. Trine comes with a number of reading cards (surface designs) you can use with the box so that you can drop your coins safely, but you can also make your own using any surface with a pattern, or something to help you create and outline boundaries (like a string). Check out all the fun reading card designs![Photo of a bunch of square coaster-like prints splayed out on the table, with colourful geometric designs in blue, orange, yellow, indigo, green, plum, pink. Some have moon and star motifs.]For this demo/practice reading I picked a nice moon and stars design because it looked appropriately Star Ocean-y. Vibes.[Photo of the box with a reading card that has a moon-and-stars motif with three rings of colour. The centre is a pale grey-blue with the moon, surrounded by a ring of medium blue with wave like outlines, and finally the last layer/area is a darker blue. Three coins are in the box, their positions as described below.]I designated the centre, palest circle “things within your control” and everything else “things outside of your control”. These zones make sense due to the nature of the question, and also are easy to remember: inside, outside. I don't think I could do a reading with more than 3 zones, I'd forget and confuse myself. The drops were as follows. Most noticeable drop = the snake. It wobbled when it hit the surface, which indicated “pay more attention to this”. It landed touching the “within your control” space. The fish and rabbit both landed close together in the “outside of your control” space. The rabbit is closer to “in your control” than the other one, but they’re very close to each other. According to the little book, some of the meanings you can work with for these symbols are: Snake (I’m putting more meanings here because the snake was the focal coin) = intuition, leaving the past behind, fighting for yourself, letting go, setting boundaries, prioritizing well-being. “Recognize the potential for both harm and healing in your actions.” Fish = opportunities. Rabbits = relationships, community. In my experience, first readings are usually descriptions of the existing situation—let’s figure out the lay of the land, the pieces we have to work with. It's kind of like establishing common ground for what we’re going to focus on later readings. Say I didn’t know anything about Claude’s character—or if Claude were a real person, say I didn’t know anything about him. I’d start asking things like “Do you have something in your life where you didn’t prioritize your own well-being, didn’t set boundaries, didn’t fight for yourself? Do you have something you want to leave behind?” And then hypothetical Claude might respond, “Yeah! I have a really famous dad whose shadow I’ve been living in all my life, so I’ve always been doing things just to please other people, and I feel like I’ve never been living as my own person, and nobody sees me for myself! Wow! This is so accurate!!” or something, haha. (For anyone who hasn’t played SO2, this doesn’t spoil anything you won’t have learned in the opening of the game for Claude’s story. Hilariously, there's a PA in the game where Claude gets roped in by a fortune teller basically doing something like this.) Sure, it may seem so accurate… except you could replace those personal insights with any number of other situations where someone didn’t prioritize personal well-being/set boundaries etc. But for this character or person, this is the story they’re living. This is what’s 100% top of mind for them. As soon as the prompts come out, your brain is making those connections in the way that makes the most sense to you, and suddenly things may seem obvious in a way they weren’t before, or in a way where you now have to face them when you were avoiding it before. Even when the original question had nothing to do with Claude’s dad issues. Now we’ve identified what’s important to the person/character receiving the reading, and we can look for a possible interpretation that has meaning for this situation. Tory suggests thinking of the coins as parts of a sentence, which is similar to how I like to do my Lenormand two-card spreads, as a conversation. So my first kick interpretation is: Hey Claude, you did something rash (stupid…) and ended up somewhere unexpected. Now you’re facing the consequences of those actions. You now have no control over the people you’re going to meet (relationships - the rabbit), and your circumstances (opportunities - the fish). What’s in your control is how you choose to respond to them. For the first time you’re alone in a place where no one knows anything about you. If you can get out of your unhealthy mental space with all the issues stemming from your relationship with your father, you can find a better path (the snake). Let go of the past and don't let it define you. Put your effort into where you want to go and what you want to become. Don’t be afraid to let other people help you (the rabbit, which landed closer to “in your control”)—that will influence the outcome of your opportunities, what doors open or close for you. But be careful. Because being rash is how you got into this situation in the first place. So be mindful when picking answers in your PAs or you're going to mess up your relationship values for your endings lol. I found this sequence really fun because of how much I’ve been going on about choice and perspective and the Star Ocean PA system lately. Again, this is a pretty simple surface level reading. It's literally my first go at this system to wrap my head around how it works. This reading is not really telling me anything I don't already know/think about this character. Although, the symbols and lens it's using with its imagery and prompts may have given me some new language to consider in whatever narrative I'm creating. And we can certainly interpret it in other ways as well. If we try to dig deeper for creative writing purposes, I would now try to expand on the question, like “With this in mind, what actions could Claude consider in situation X”? “What does specific relationship Y (with a particular character) or opportunity Z (event in the game, or speculative event if writing a story) offer?” sort of thing. (But I didn't since this is a test reading. You can see more readings here that I did with Fortune Lenormand, I apply a lot of the same principles.)And of course just lots of fun to handle and drop pretty coins on pretty surfaces and play pattern matching and storytelling with them!
@infosec_jcp 🐈🃏 done differently
