You don’t often start a sunny November and the holiday season with a cautionary tale, but here we are.
Maybe it’s because the social media collective declared an early spooky season this year in response to the apocalyptic heat this summer, and we are all feeling a little fatigue at the end of it. I get a strange sense of melancholy blowing in the wind today, which seems an odd way to start the Holiday season. It’s all turkey dinners and holiday shopping this month – I’ve already heard Carol of the Bells in advertising. That’s hard core.
A sunny Thursday like this doesn’t often start with a feeling of caution but here we are.
Today’s card is the king of pentacles, in reverse (meaning the card turned over upside down relative to the person doing the reading.)
“So what?” you might ask.
Every Tarot reader handles reversals in their own way. Some always reverse the meaning into ‘darker’ meanings. Some make it into the opposite of the upright meaning. Some disregard them outright. As we are learning in the Wednesday “Learn With Me: Lenormand” series, Lenormand readings handle reversals by not handling them. They just flip the card and go on as usual.
In true Taoism influenced style, I do a blend of both. The cards embody both light and dark, positive and negative aspects all the time anyway. I take all of those aspects into consideration with every reading regardless of the card’s orientation. When a reversal comes along, I let intuition lead. Either it is a hint that the card’s layout position is blocked or turbulent or somehow problematic OR it can feel energetically neutral and I just flip it upright and move on like the Lenormand folks do.
In this case, it feels like it is telling us something.
The phrase “risky buiseness” comes through. The King of Pentacles can reflect material success, a breadwinner, a provider, a good payoff for hard work.
Reversed, it can mean that sort of prosperity flow can get jumbled up.
To be literal about it – don’t get carried away this holiday season. Don’t go into debt or live beyond your means just for the sake of social expectations about how holidays are “supposed” to be celebrated, whatever your chosen holiday may be.
Here, I am reminded of a meme…”tradition is just peer pressure from dead people.” I have a sense that this meme might be particularly true this year. We’ve all been through a heckuva thing with the pandemic and such. We have an opportunity to re-define our Holidays. Let go of the peer pressure from dead people and make this year into something heartfelt more than material.
The suit of coins / pentacles is focused on the material realm, career, wealth and so on – but this is Tarot. The whole point of Tarot is understanding and spirituality, not physical realm predictions. Tarot isn’t made for physical realm except where physical and mental/emotional/spiritual all meet. The whole suit has esoteric threads intertwined with its real-world practicality. The whole suit has a “money can’t buy happiness” element to it.
My hunch that is what the inverted King is telling us. This isn’t the year for materialistic celebrations OR for forced traditions. Friendsgiving is a thing. This is a year for found family and perhaps a chance to let go of toxic or forced traditions that bow to the peer pressure from generations past.
That isn’t to say be overly austere. Celebrate. Indulge in the traditions and treats that speak to your heart. But don’t spend money or energy or emotion necessarily forcing yourself (or trying to coerce anyone else) into following old traditions that no longer serve or excesses that are no longer needed. Do, but do the truly meaningful, heartfelt things. Do, but let go of the forced, habitual, or ostentatious. Mind your bank account – both physical and emotional – this holiday season.
Thank you so much for reading!
There won’t be a newsletter next week or US Thanksgiving week.
In fact, the blogs and socials will go quiet November 9 – 13 and again November 22 – 27. I’m setting a pretty low bar for the holidays myself, but I do need to finish that sweater I’m knitting for a gift, sooo….
Merry Elfcon 5 for 2023!
BUT – private email Tarot will be OPEN those dates and all through the Holidays. You can order any time HERE. Your reading purchases, Sage Sip (ko-fi) memberships, and virtual coffees all support this FREE collective energy Tarot readings in this newsletter, the blog and the socials. None of this is ad monetized, so your Tarot message comes first with me. Any ads you see with any of my content is generated by the platform and all proceeds go to them – so in other words, please support me on ko-fi or by your likes, subs, follows and shares here and on social media.
Let’s take a closer look at another card from my new Lenormand Tarot deck.
The more I work with this deck, the more it feels like a real-talk oracle card, really a thing of its own. Not a toxic positive overly optimistic oracle deck that sees the world through rose colored glasses, certainly, but not the depth and complexity that the 78 RWS or the 130+ card Alleyman’s Tarot. A bigger deck with smaller layouts seems to be the sweet spot for my intuition.
See, we learned something right there.
Finding – and frequently using – your intuitive comfort zone is not only OK but it is a good idea to better readings for yourself in the end. BUT at the same time learning, growing, and expanding that comfort zone is equally important. How else are you going to know what your optimum intuition conditions ARE?
That little bit of meta-analysis aside, let’s look at today’s card, the Snake.
All of the animal related ideas from the Bear last week still apply, just swap out the bear characteristics for snake characteristics.
Which I may not be super objective about.
I was born in the year of the wood snake – the green snake. After I learned about Taoism, feng shui, I ching and the like, I’ve always resonated with my chinese astrology symbol just as much if not more than my western Pisces sun sign. Although I don’t know anything about sidereal vs tropical astrology, all I know is that I’m Pisces in both, which in itself is supposed to mean something in itself, I think. I’ll leave that to the astrology adepts of you to figure out. But back to Snake.
The Christopher Butler guidebook to this Healing Light Lenormand deck reads the Snake as someone deceptive with malicious intent (Hey!)
Like owls, snakes are feared in some cultures, revered in others. Makes sense, because in the real world the old nope rope may be either harmless or lethal and you have to know something about them to be able to tell which is which. That’s not the snake being deceptive. It’s up to you to know “Red touches black, no worries for Jack. Red touches yellow, dangerous fellow.” and so on.
Knowledge arms you against deception, both literally and figuratively. But that’s another story.
Chinese astrology, the restaurant place mat edition, reflects the real world duality. Snake year people can be stubborn, opinionated, intimidating with a heaping helping of hubris to go with it. But at the same time they are viewed as intelligent, wise, creative and intuitive.
Or, as the Sirius Black character says in one of the Harry Potter books “We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are.”
Part of enlarging our comfort zone, part of learning new things is associating them with things we know well. Just like with the oracle dice from the last “Learn With Me” series I associate this with a few RWS Tarot cards, the Devil and the Three of Swords. Both acknowledge the malevolent side of human nature, cautions us to be on guard as well as asking us to be honest with ourselves about our deepest motives. Are we being deceptive, or are we being deceived.
As for the playing card inset, the queen of clubs, in my system of reading playing cards (I intend to write about that in an upcoming book) the Queen of Clubs is analogous to the Queen of Wands with a message of nurturing and self-care. Watching your back and taking care for your safety is, indeed, self-care.is
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But I will, begrudgingly, admit they sometimes have utility.
Most of the time, pithy little adages are either a shorthand reminder of something bigger. They also can also be empty headed, hollow, shallow and avoid the depth and complexity of a situation.
The Reagan era “Just say no” campaign was exactly the latter.
But today, in a vastly different context, it actually has a little bit of utility.
Today’s card is the six of inking balls (“Holy inkballs, Batman!) from the Strange Suit of the Alleyman’s Tarot deck (Jost Amman Deck, Museum of Tarot and Playing Cards)
The artwork says it all about this card. It asks who is the dunk-er and who is the dunk-ee and that it probably doesn’t matter because everyone is getting drenched anyway.
At heart, the card is about feeling overwhelmed. When you feel out of control, or just way out of your depth, who put you there? Or, more importantly, how do you prevent winding up there the next time?
Just say no has a place. It isn’t in dealing with the complexities of chemical dependence but it has everything to do with setting healthy boundaries.
You are allowed to say no. Just plain no. If it makes you feel better to give some explanation or excuse, go ahead. But you have every right not to overextend yourself. You have every right to take care of yourself, regardless of what other people’s wants, needs, or rampant self-indulgence may be.
If you don’t say no, or allow no to be said to you, then things can get real inky and real messy real quick.
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“People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint – it’s more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly… time-y wimey… stuff.”
There are two words that make me cringe a little when I get them in a Tarot question: “will” and “when.”
Predictions and time are knotty subjects in psychic work. Mostly because they don’t legitimately exist. Tarot isn’t about predicting the future. They are about CREATING the future through your choices and your actions.
Tarot doesn’t’ tell you what is going to happen in life; Tarot helps you figure out what to do when life happens.
Predictions are actually a scientific thing. A scientific prediction is essentially a pronouncement about what will happen based on existing data and past results. For example, we can predict where in the sky Mars will be a year from now based on Newton’s laws of gravity, Kepler’s laws of planetary motion, existing observations and so on. As I understand it, that is the kind ofprediction that a law of physics or scientific principle has to be able to make in order for the principle to be considered valid within the scientific method.
Skeptics spend a great deal of time and energy bashing and demeaning “psychic predictions” in the name of science. Unlike overt scams, ego trips and outlandish fiction, authentic psychic predictions are essentially the same as the scientific kind. The psychic reader is an objective observer who is knowledgeable about symbolism and human nature. Because of that wider perspective the reader can see trends that the person getting the reading may not see. A Tarot reader can predict where things are headed in a relationship just like a scientist can predict where Mars is headed in the sky. The biggest difference that is that psychic predictions are based in non-linear logic, experience with human behavior and psychology instead of linear logic and numerical data.
That is looking at it all from a very superficial, everyday experience point of view. This is Isaac Newton kind of stuff. It’s like predicting that when an apple detaches from a tree, it will fall down. What if we go a just a little bit more modern with it?
Think Schrodinger’s Cat.
Schrodinger’s Cat is a thought experiment that everyone seems to know. Often it’s used to take a swipe at non-scientific or spiritual thinking. If you want to understand the hard core science side of Schrodinger’s Cat, Star Talk with Dr. Degrasse Tyson and Chuck Nice is MWHA *chef’s kiss*. Watch it. You are welcome.
I’m no physicist but let me take a stab at this, more for the analogy of it than for the science of it. As Dr. Degrasse Tyson hints, this experiment is really about stuff we can’t observe and we can’t know. Tarot is one way people could talk about stuff we can’t know in a time long before quantum physics. The Visconti-Sforza Tarot deck dates back to the 1440s, predating both Galileo and Newton. The discovery of quantum physics doesn’t mean that Newton’s laws are untrue. The existence of objective science doesn’t mean subjective experiences of human intuition is untrue.
Thought experiments rely on your imagination. Intuition relies on your imagination. So it seems reasonable to use a thought experiment to talk about psychic predictions.
But back to the Schrodinger thing.
In the thought experiment, a poor unsuspecting cat from an era when no one cared about animal welfare was put in a box with a vial of poison gas. There is a trigger on the vial connected to a radioactive molecule that has a 50-50 random chance of breaking down within the next hour. During that hour we cannot know and we cannot predict what the result is going to be. Either the molecule decays and triggers the poison, or it doesn’t. Until the observation is made and the whole thing has happened the cat can potentially wind up in either condition. During the time that the experiment is in progress, the cat is both dead and alive up until the moment when we look in the box to see what happened.
Once the experiment is set up and started, the cat could come out of it alive or not. But why not both or neither? Why are those possibilities excluded when so much of life is on a spectrum like electromagnetic energy? Why are other possibilities excluded when so little of life is a strict dichotomy? Disappearing Cat or Zombie Cat could happen…it’s possible. As I understand the BBC Horizon Series’ program “Parallel Universes” (hosted by Dr. Michio Kaku, based on his book “Parallel Worlds”) anything and everything is possible. Some things are, however, wildly unlikely within the laws of physics of our particular universe.
Multiple universes is one possible explanation of it all. The cat is both…it just does it in different universes. It can’t be both dead and alive in the same universe.
Why not? I ask the computer screen every time I see the Minute Physics video about multiple universes. Why not a zombie cat that is both or a disappearing cat that is neither?
When the moment of discovery is still in the future, the possibility and attendant levels of probability exists for all outcomes. In the mysterious and undetermined future, all conditions potentially exist, even our wildly unlikely disappearing or undead pet. Can you predict which way THAT is headed using nothing but your brain and handful of Tarot cards? If you “predict” the more likely dead vs alive construct, is that psychic or science? If you predict Zombie Cat, is that quackery or was the intuitive vision simply dialed into a different part of a far flung multiverse?
Zombie Cat may well exist out there. We don’t know because multiverses, as the video says, is unproven. No-cat and Zombie Cat might be out there, but they just don’t make the jump from possible to probable to IS, at least not in this world. All potentials exists until the possibility becomes “entangled” with our reality and the moment becomes NOW instead of future, and then slips instantly into the past. Now and Past are fully collapsed probability waves. They exist. Ska-doosh! It’s a done deal with nothing to predict. The future on the other hand, that’s a different animal than any of our imaginary cats.
Now, just to make things really interesting, let’s introduce Zombie Cat to Alice the Vampire.
In the movie Twilight, the psychic vampire Alice could see the future insofar as people have decided what they want to do. If someone changes their mind or changes their actions, then her vision changes. She can predict but with uncertainty. Her predictions are predicated on the course people are on, not any one fixed outcome. Alice the vampire’s visions and Zombie Cat’s existence are a matter of probability, not “accurate prediction.” And so it is with Tarot and psychic readings.
Let’s say our imaginary cat has human-like intelligence and has a choice rather than being a victim of circumstance as in the classic thought experiment. What if there was something the cat could think or do or meow or some action it could take that could detach the vial from its molecular decay trigger?
Now how do you make predictions under that set of conditions?
Imagine your psychic vision was of a dead cat which had a 50% mathematical probability in the experiment. What if the cat heard you make that “psychic prediction” and disconnected the trigger when it otherwise wouldn’t have acted that way? Was the the initial prediction wrong?
Now would be a good time to google “self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Will you get that job?
I dunno.
Did you apply for it? Update your resume? Schedule an interview? Learned good interview skills? Has the person doing the hiring made any decisions or taken any actions that have connected the possibility to reality?
A reading can’t predict a specific outcome, but it can give you advice and it can help you make decisions that nudge the probabilities in your favor such as be flexible (4 of swords), emphasize your skills and experience (The Emperor) or show you’d be a hard working team player (3 of coins). A good advice reading is like the psychic yelling at the cat in the thought experiment box to disconnect the trigger and improve its chances of survival.
When will you get married?
I dunno.
But in the meantime you can do social things that make you happy (3 of cups) be clear in your mind about the kind of person and marriage you really want (The Lovers) and engage with the life you have now as happily as you can (10 of pentacles)
The future is just as wibbly-wobbly as the Doctor told us. But Tarot can give you ideas about how to bring love and happiness of all types into your life.
Psychics, Tarot and intuition are intended to help you make the best possible choices along the way, not predict what lies at the end of the road.
If you do nothing, take no advice, make no choices, then it is all just a coin toss. Your might wind up with anything from a living happy cat to unalived cat right up to a Zombie Cat. But who knows? Maybe a friendly Tarot-reading Zombie Cat might not be such a bad thing.
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Today, two points jump to mind about the Lenormand Tarot deck as a whole rather than the Bear card specifically.
It is interesting that Lenormand has several cards with (non-human) animals as the whole focus and symbolism: bear, snake, birds or owls, fox, stork, mouse and fish. Marseilles / Visconti / RWS format decks have animals sprinkled through the deck but never as the primary or sole focus of a card. The closest is the Strength card which prominently features a lion, but it is more about the human’s interaction with the lion and the symbolism about strength and leadership that is associated with lions rather than the animal’s actual characteristics or behavior. Other than that, we mostly see the knight’s horses, a few dogs, an ox, a fish in a cup and a lobster taking a moonlight stroll on a beach.
There are two full decks that share a similar energy to Lenormand’s animal cards: the Medicine Cards oracle deck by David Carson and Jamie Sams and Animal Wise Tarot by Ted Andrews. I’m sentimentally attached to both of these decks because Medicine Cards was my first deck and entry point to reading any cards, Tarot or otherwise. I have always had great respect for Ted Andrews and his writings have been utterly influential and invaluable to me. I was so fortunate to meet him at one of his Animal Speak workshops around the time that Animal Wise Tarot was first published. There is a significant intuitive connection from between these decks and the Lenormand, more than typical RWS decks seem to have. This is the first I’ve noticed that energy-similarity since this is the first animal-symbol Lenormand card we’ve drawn.
The Bear card is about that well-known “mama bear” protectiveness, and begs the question of who protects you? Who do you need to protect? Where do you need to protect yourself better? Where are you too guarded?
The other thing that captures my attention is the 10 of clubs on the Bear card.
All 36 of the Lenormand cards have a playing card on them in addition to their primary symbol. Not all of the playing cards can be represented in the smaller Lenormand deck. Christopher Butler’s guidebook that came with this Healing Light Lenormand deck is oddly silent about the playing card references. I’m looking for more information about that part of the Lenormand cards and will update you later in the series.
In my book Peace Tarot, I give you an easy technique for using regular playing cards to find your Tarot daily meditation card meaning if you don’t have a Tarot deck to use. There is a link where you can buy a copy of Peace Tarot above the video if you are interested in learning more about DIY daily meditation style Tarot, that works even if you don’t own a Tarot deck. Using that method, the 10 of clubs connects with the 10 of wands, which is a different energy than the bear. The bear to my mind today is connecting with a major arcana energy much more akin to the Emperor card is also connected with strength and protectiveness. It is difficult to access that kind of major arcana vibe with the playing deck (we talk about that in Peace Tarot, too)
If you live in the South Hills area of Pittsburgh PA, USA keep an eye on your local library websites. I’ll be presenting a Tarot for relaxation workshop based on the information in Peace Tarot at a few locations this Fall. It’s a very inexpensive .pdf in the Sage Words Tarot Shop, I hope you’ll consider giving it a read.
In honor of 10 years of Peace Tarot and how meaningful and useful a daily meditation Tarot practice has been for me over 30 years of card reading, I’ve decided to return to daily meditation Tarot readings for the collective energy in the blog through New Year 2024 which will mark the one year anniversary of TaoCraft Tarot relaunching as Sage Words Tarot. I’ll decide then what, if anything is next. After all the upheaval in the world since the pandemic (politically since 2016 here in the U.S.) a return to some steadiness and simplicity is probably a pretty good idea.
Instagram and Threads is still the best social media to catch me if you want to actually interact. I’m Sage Words Tarot on all the socials (except Twitter – X . I quit that mess months ago) I hope you’ll follow along here, on the socials, on ko-fi or the Substack weekly newsletter. The newsletter happens on Thursdays. Next Wendsday “Learn With Me” will be back with a review of the Healing Light Lenormand deck as a whole thing that I bought – on sale from Llwellyn Publishing. Thanks for reading! See you at the next sip!
Where else does a sinkhole + a bus = a holiday ornament?
It’s been a heckuva four years since the sinkhole swallowed the bus. This October feels tame by comparison. But that’s OK – I’ll take it.
The Hanged Man card has been turning up a lot lately in a variety of contexts, both in private and collective energy readings. That kind of repetition is usually a good clue that there is a bigger, longer-lasting wave of energy trying to make itself heard.
There are a few different things that might be going on, but that’s typical for a major arcana card to have several threads of possible meaning. The best known meaning for the card is being stuck or stagnant. Sometimes it is about needing a change in perspective. Some authors connect the Hanged Man card with self-sacrifice. I haven’t seen that. If the Hanged Man has any not-the-usual vibes it is more like a caution about self-sabotage, that “you are shooting yourself in the foot” rather than a heroic sacrifice or advice to “take one for the team”
In this case, it might just be pure inertia. Newton’s first law says that something that is still will stay still until something else makes it move. Something that is moving will keep moving in the same direction until something else makes it move in a different direction.
Life has been moving in some odd directions since the bus thing. When the pothole happened, there was no known coronavirus in humans yet. Wrap your head around THAT. We’ve been craving quiet. We’ve been craving normal. We will never have the old normal back, but the pace has slowed down a bit and it seems relatively quiet. Slow might feel stuck or stopped in comparison to recent chaos. A speeding locomotive takes a long distance and a long time to slow down. My hunch is that we are all feeling the change in speed, but in the opposite direction from recent years. We are in a different place and can’t go back, but things aren’t moving forward as screaming fast as before, either.
It’s the ghost tour time of year too.
Have you ever been on a walking tour or a bus tour and the group stopped someplace of particular interest so that people could take pictures or spend a little extra time appreciating the featured thing? I get the feeling there is a little bit of that going on here too.
If life stops your tour bus, it’s because there is something that needs your attention.
If you are in traffic and all of a sudden your back wheels are stuck in a big hole, look around. What have you been zooming by and not seeing?
That trope applies to any repeating card. It’s boilerplate – if a card or a life experience (or both) keeps repeating, then there is something important that we are missing, some important lesson that we just aren’t learning.
If the Hanged Man comes to your reading or you are just feeling stuck the stuck part may not be the message. The message may be to slow down, stop and take a look. It may just be life tapping you on the shoulder reminding you to do the pocket pat down and check for your phone, wallet and keys and anything else important you might be missing.
Thank you for reading!
Email readings are OPEN all through the holidays. Zombie cat is doing free yes/no readings in the blog through October 31, 2023 if you leave a question in the comments.
Deck: Alleyman’s Tarot by Seven Dane Asmund and Publishing Goblin LLC used with permission.
Consider it recycling. I’m saving the planet doing this, right?
Actually, this is me sticking to the plan for a change. Thursdays are newsletter days. Today’s substack newsletter uses the card from here yesterday. If this was made of paper I’d say we’re saving trees, but really it is just saving me a few headaches during a busy week.
Just a reminder:
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Please comment and let me know if you like the daily card or the week-ahead format better. I’ve always been partial to daily meditation one card readings. They are the most helpful most of the time unless a crisis hits or you need to make a big decision. Then the big layouts are the way to go. (Individualized one cards are more helpful than the collective energy one card posts, too)
Wishing you all a great weekend. See you at the next sip!
Hello and welcome to Sage Sips blog: Tarot for your day in the time it takes to sip your coffee (or whatever you like to sip whenever you read this). I’m glad you are here.
Just a quick review: Every now and then I’ll post a series of blog posts where we learn a new Tarot deck, Oracle Deck, or other oracle device together. While I’ve been reading Tarot for (I can’t believe I’m saying this) 30 years now, I don’t know every deck in existence. Each deck of cards or divination method has its own character that is worth exploring. Of course there is always something to learn process wise. If a psychic isn’t still learning, how can clients learn from their readings? Learning is change, change is life.
As we go through these new decks and tools, I’ll show you the methods I’ve used to learn intuitive reading in general as well as learning the particulars of the new thing.
My hope is that this process will build your trust in me as a reader, so you can feel confident getting a professional reading but also (more importantly) I hope this process will build your confidence in your own intuition.
Just like decks that use the Marseille, Visconti, or RWS structure the artwork can vary wildly from deck to deck. I’m glad for artwork on the Healing Light deck for a couple of reasons.
First, color on black is one of my favorite aesthetics. Gold on black is a particular favorite – no surprise if you’ve ever seen sagewordstarot.com
Second, like many contemporary decks, it is a bit more abstracted and drops a lot of the religious imagery that was the norm in the Victorian Era but is anathema to a 21st century freethinker. Hurray for that.
Especially with the ring card.
The guide book connects the Ring with “religious vows” or “religious commitment when it is connected or adjacent to the Cross card. The two together gives an energy akin to the Hierophant or Pope card in RWS style decks.
It also can symbolize a mutual, loving commitment akin to the hand fasting or marriage connotations of the RWS two of cups.
Intuitively I want to synthesize both of those things.
Commitment is a two way street. You have to give to get, and you get what you give (cue the New Radicals song). A commitment born of blind faith and adherence where all you do is give cannot last. A commitment where you sit and expect to receive can not last either.
The idea of a “twin flame” that makes you happy or “completes you” comes to mind – and falls into that take-only second category.
The circle of the ring connotes wholeness.
Commitments are both people all in, both giving and receiving in moving dynamic symbiosis.
Cue all the symbolism of the Zen enso
Ahhhhh…I get it – cue a big cartoon light bulb hanging over our head.
The guide book for the Lenormand deck is minimal. The grand tableau layout is so broad as to be unfocused and unhelpful. Lenormand is direct and to the point because it forces us to read intuitively if we are going to read it at all. Its small deck and broad symbolism can meld to whatever the message of the moment may be. It’s strength lies in touching the emotions of the moment.
In the ring card alone we can branch out to the Pope, the Two of Cups, The Moon and more as needs be. Lenormand utterly relies on our intuition as much as it prompts or amplifies our intuition.
Interesting, to say the least.
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