One of my favorite games in my workshops is the Index Card Oracle. I get everyone in the circle to write something – a summary of a dream, an incident from memory, a reflection or a favorite quote – one one side of a 3×5 index card, as legibly as possible. We gather the cards into a deck. I then ask everyone to write down an intention for guidance, expressing this as simply and clearly as possible. (“I would like guidance on….”) I then go around the circle, offering the deck. Everyone pulls a card at random.
The game requires us to pretend that whatever is written on the card is a direct message from the universe in response to the intention for guidance. The message may be obscure or ambiguous but, hey, that’s how oracles stay in business long-term.
As a divination deck, our Coincidence Cards can’t be beat. We come up with a one-time deck, exclusively for us, that will never be used in this form again. Of course, some of the messages are “keepers”. My journals are stuffed with index cards whose inscriptions remind me of big dreams and coincidence fugues, of wildly funny incidents and of moments of insight and epiphany when we punched a hole in the surface world and saw into a deeper order of reality.
I’ve been looking over my collection of Coincidence Cards and I’ll share some of the messages here, without attempting to recall the specific meanings that each of them assumed in the context of the intentions. Notes from the dreamworld included:
I‘m in a wedding procession. As we walk down the aisle of the church and step up to the altar, I realize we have entered a diner.
Circus elephants circle around linked trunk to tail, lovingly, caringly giving each other a way to follow. Each is a leader as much as a follower.
I’m in a large room where we each have to fly up to the ceiling every 2 or 3 minutes to breathe, as if the room is under water.
I
The Moon goddess stands in her majesty above the Sea of Tranquillity. She is flanked by her armored Moon soldiers and carried on the back of a giant crab moving gently through the sea.
The dragon sits on your shoulder. His fire breath drives back the dark.
Two men are taking me to my execution by beheading. I fight until my mother appears and tells me it will be okay. I submit myself to the execution and I am happy.
A jaguar leaps out of the forest and into the driver’s seat of a pink Firebird convertible. It morphs into a cartoon version of itself, puts on sunglasses, and drives away, waving as it says, “Hasta la vista”.
Some of the messages come from observations on the roads of everyday life:
My daughter hands me the feather of a blue heron and tells me I will need it this weekend.
A red passion flower lying in the roadway all alone.
A red passion flower lying in the roadway all alone.
A death’s head skull is floating in mid-air. I look for its origin and find that it is the reflection of a pattern on a woman’s purse.
A salmon pink trumpet-like flower opens before my eyes, bursting with joyful life!
Some of the cards contain insights harvested from the workshops:
You do not need to hunt your power. Your power will hunt you. Find a sacred space where your power can find you.
Throw out your net and fish in the River of Dreams.
The child does not need to grow up to be complete.
In playing the Coincidence Card game, we sometimes draw our own card, which is statistically improbable and often very interesting. It suggests, for one thing, that you already have the answer. You don’t need to look outside yourself, only to go deeper within.
For more on the Index Card Oracle, please read Robert’s book The Three “Only” Things.
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