Past/Present/Future with TOA Cards

I'm still experimenting with the TOA cards. I'm not sure that experimentation ever will (or should) end. These don't feel like the kind of cards one gets so familiar with everything designed into them that one becomes some kind of master of using them. That's not to say mastery cannot be reached, but that it would come from a very different approach than with other decks.

I decided to go ahead and try a Past/Present/Future reading and see what I get. The way I've been reading three cards each day is really working. I intend to take some time one day to think about the shape it makes when I follow the written messages that way. But the first time I tried the P/P/F reading, following it that way didn't look like it would work.

Following it that way would give me:

Past - With a pandemoniac cachinnation

Present - Beyond the world of man

Future - Fire from Earth can't burn it

Growing in hidden evil caves

Present - Prehuman vaults of nightmares

Past - My own brain held the key

I know the situation I was looking at with this reading, and that made no sense. So I tried going back to reading across the tops, then across the bottoms. Still couldn't make it make sense. Applying the messages to segments of time is different from just reading the whole thing as a message. But does it have to be? I was approaching this from the point of view that time flows like water, and it's not that time is inherently linear just because that's how we can physically measure it and humans usually think of it.

Really, though, the only way I could make it make sense was to read each card individually.

Past - 73

With a pandemoniac cachinnation

My own brain held the key

Present - 96

Prehuman vaults of nightmares

Beyond the world of man

Future - 75

Fire from Earth can't burn it

Growing in hidden evil caves

That was three days ago. I decided to try it again, looking at a different situation, yesterday. I went into it this time prepared to read each card individually.

Past - 98

Eyes forming and unforming

A descent into darkness

Present - 72

Within the repellant form

Opening the way for waves

Future - 27

The dwellers of the abyss

Extraordinary transformations

Past made sense. Present was a little weird, but okay. Future...did not make enough sense to even seem like it would be speaking of a possibility, taking into account how I was understanding Past and Future. So I tried doing across the tops and bottoms again. I tried looking at it as two different messages that both apply. After all, following a trail of how things unfold is usually following the multiple trails that weave in and out of each other. I figured this would be like reading two closely related stories instead of trying to get one giant message.

That didn't really work, either. Good ideas, but the results really couldn't be applied to the situation. So I was not expecting this to work, but why not try it? Just go back to reading things in that crisscrossing way that I do. And that... actually worked!

It's complicated to type it out here, so I'm not even going to try. Labeling one bit Past and another Present... it's just not that simple. Or, it is, but not when putting it all into words. The words matter, the flow of the directions matter, the numbers matter. Letting go of that linear way of seeing things unfold was important. Being able to see it as a story that has to make a point before explaining the backstory for that point. Past, Present, and Future remained the focuses, but the story couldn't simply be told in that order.

I went back and reviewed the first attempt. Maybe something had clicked into place the second time that would make that one make more sense. Nope. Still can't see that one making sense any way other than each card read individually.

This may be a deck I just don't use for those kinds of readings. Or maybe only when looking at certain subjects. Or maybe I'll have to figure out another approach for being able to be consistent with how I read them. I don't know yet. This is something of an adventure.