In my quest to simplify card meanings, I reached out to concepts coming from Theory of Consciousness studies and the philosopher Clarence Irving Lewis (1883-1964). He studied Linguistics, philosophy, ethics and logic, and he coined this term "Qualia." Basically, qualia are the building blocks of conscious existence. They are subjective, ineffable, and nonphysical. And that's perfect for the interpretations of cards, because that is what gives the cards a varying amount of interpretations. That is what storytelling is about, fundamentally. Reading the cards, stripped of spiritual significance, is simply and magnificently a highly skilled storyteller doing improv narrative for a person who wants to be the main character in that narrative using nothing more than a handful of idea cards and social cues. Looking at it that way, it's kind of sad that skilled readers are not cherished in society. Everything you need to be a good card reader also makes you a great leader, teacher, motivational speaker, actor or comedian. Personal storytelling is kind of a dying art in the age of mass media, but it's been going on since humans huddled around campfires. So cheers to y'all. Readers are amazing. 

So if something can be that simple, why can't the cards be condensed down to one overarching nonphysical concept? I began looking through all kinds of interpretations, thought about it and researched the best words to fit. And I did cheat a little. Because Tarot does, in fact have several modes to pick choose from. There's elemental interpretations, numerological, astrological, alchemical, psychological, philosophical, mythological, even. Modern decks, fully illustrated, provide an even easier and referential tool because of the iconography in the illustrations. And the cool thing is, you can puzzle together the significance of any of these modes to make a cohesive narrative for the querant.    

Cheating for the Travail basically meant choosing what interpretations to kick out of the card's description in favor of putting it into a mode. If you distill out those meanings back to where they belong and look at what is left, you get to the heart of the card. And it really, as far as the Travail is concerned, very seriously down to one Quale. One interrogative: What is this? or What is it like?

Why qualium and not quale? Basically, I don't know Latin. But inadvertently choosing to use this version of the word makes it a pronoun. So the idea becomes What is this that is that? Honestly, that pretty much fits for Tarot cards, because that's exactly what people ask when a card is drawn. Latin language lovers are cringing at me right now, almost certainly.

So what got distilled? Well, I yanked the astrological significance out of the cards first and pinned the astrological significance to the numerological significance, because I wanted a Chthonic interpretation. What that means is that the primary message comes from underneath rather than from above. And yes, while that does have spiritual significance, it doesn't need to. What it really means for these cards is the underpinnings of western understanding giving provenance to modern interpretation. There is a whole lot of borrowing in the Tarot, and that's kindly put. Where possible, I wanted it to be stripped out of the borrowing from Vedic practice and from Kabala, and get it back to more open practice and philosophy. That was a positive move because it makes it more accessible to beginners, and making it accessible to beginners was part of the whole point to begin with.

I chose numerology as the easy keeper. They're playing cards in a bijective base 10 format. That works all the way across the tarot until you come to the problem of The Fool and The World. But if you go back to the actual playing of the game, those cards are not scored the same. If you are into the card game, the trumps, just like the pips, give you only half a point. Even though the trumps are their own whole suit that wins any trick played, they are still only that half a point. Kings, the Magician, The World and the Fool give you 4.5 points. the rest of the court cards 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, respectively, officially.

The point is brought up because of the concept of Oudlers. Yes, The World has a number of XXI, technically. But it doesn't need to. In fact, the numbers of the trumps weren't even printed on early decks. You just had to know the order. But if we use a bijective set of ten and apply it across all the cards, it falls outside the number set. So, in Travail, because it is outside the number set, it becomes undefined, just like the fool.

On that point, the Fool is NOT the number zero. In a bijective system, zero doesn't actually exist. It is, in fact, the placeholder Omicron. That's an ancient numbering practice for the placeholder and one reason why zero looks the way it does. -- was also used, but I wanted Omicron to be that, even if it gets confused with the letter O or the Arabic numeral number 0. The reason is so that the world can take the infinity symbol as it's number, which is a much better placeholder character for that card. The fool is one loop O, the World is two conjoined loops ∞.

And since zero in a bijective system does not exist, to make that a continuity point I had to do the same for the pips. 10 does not exist because zero does not exist. The problem is that you usually count in base 10 bijective: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A (alpha). You can't use Alpha because A is already Ace, so Travail calls the tenth place Omega instead, which is sensical because it closes the set as Omega closes the alphabet set. When you look through the pips, you will see A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, Ω. The Major arcana didn't need that same adjustment because roman numerals are already bijective base ten. It doesn't change the numerology any. 

And, once again, same as the cards It is numerology simplified to a single quale. That will be explained in a later post. I can show you the numerological chart here though. Never mind what it means for the top two columns yet. I will get to those in another post. Mind you these are quale that get applied to all the cards with the same number. Think of it as horizontal interpretation. 

What got distilled out next is some alchemical and esoteric odds and ends that are related to the elemental significance. These were brought in by Hippocrates and so forth. These were just references where it concerns the elements and how the old philosophers thought of the elemental qualities. It's stuff that went into the protoscientific ideas about the humors that still seems to stick around, but it sticks because we still find literary references to these all the time and these do wind up enmeshed with Tarot concepts too. A little changes because the action of Aether made the changes necessary. This is a way more complicated table and will require a more in depth explanation. I wound up including these because of literary writing. When I create characters for books or for storytelling games and I am trying to find motivation and appearance for a character It's a handy cheat.

But you all came in to see the qualia for the cards themselves. The thing is that this deck isn't designed to replace Tarot, it's a companion to it. It's not going to really disagree. What it does do is test. Which, I think I mentioned in the last post, is how the deck got its names, Travail, Trials, Tribulation. The pips are the trials. Just the pips, not the court cards. The courts are their own thing. SO when you draw a card and you know the quale of it, what you are interpreting with this to make the narrative are the underlying tests of the question at hand so you can build narrative off of that instead of the surface level question.   

So. What one word per card can be used to define the "what is it?" Just note that Shields does in fact have three. That's because Shields are bidirectional cards. The other pip cards actually don't have a different meaning inverted, which really was standard until a hundred years or so ago.

Shields does, however have different meanings for orientation. Upright, they are ascending qualia, the qualia that break cycles into a higher conscious understanding, and inverted they are expanding, how we bring the cycle breaking energy of the card out into the world around us and elevate the whole world through our understanding. So two positives.

The third quale listed is the action of Instinct, the animal in us that resists; that wants to stay in the transactional and attritional state of being. You can't really interpret that based on card orientation, but even when we are experiencing cycle breaking qualia we are still creatures that are triggered to instinct. They're not negative or opposite, but they are a kind of opposition. I put it in there because I wanted to give readers this option. You really don't have to interpret shields as the Aetheric concepts if you are not of a spiritual inclination or if the querant is not interested. Instincts are rational qualia, just like the qualia of the other suits. Aetheric qualia are irrational, qualia that can only be understood if you are functioning in an open cycle. 

Last note, the arrows are there to tell you how to read the cards in sequence. Travail recognizes the straight suits as constructive and round suits as deconstructive. SO when you read in complete sequence, for example, the swords, and you get to the Omega, the next card in sequence is the Omega of Cups. When you get to the ace of Cups, the next in sequence is the Ace of Rods.  After that, the Omega of Rods leads to the Omega of Coins, and the natural cycle can start over from there or Aether can be explored. Aether does remain odd like that. But then again it moves a little bit differently.