How to Record a Reading
This app records a reading you have already pulled with a physical deck and coins. It does not draw for you. Pull first, then enter what came.
The Metu Neter Pull
The deck
14 archetypes across 5 suits, 70 cards. Metu Neter Vol. 1: the oracle is composed of the combined influences of the five primary binary figures, and 14 archetypes (70 cards) of the shaping forces of all events in and as the world. These archetypes are the 14 pieces created by the dismemberment of the body of Ausar, and are related to the 14 kau of Ra.
Eleven of the 14 are the Neter facets: Amen, Ausar, Tehuti, Sekhert, Ma’at, Herukhuti, Heru, Het-Heru, Sebek, Auset, and Geb. The remaining three are Sheps, the Dark Deceased, and one two-poled archetype that presents as either Nekhebet or Uatchet. Those last three can only ever appear as shaping cards. They can never be the reading card or the focus card.
Why 15 names give 14 archetypes
Nekhebet and Uatchet are not two archetypes. They are the two poles of one. Vol. 1 calls the auraut “composed of the conjunction of Uatchet and Nekhebet,” one object made of two. They share a single mantra, Aung Hang Kshang. Nekhebet is the passive and receptive pole, Uatchet the active and projective one. So 15 card names resolve to 14 archetypes, and 14 across 5 suits is 70 cards.
Card and suit
A reading is recorded as card plus suit, not as two cards drawn side by side. There are exactly five fixed suit names. The suit is not a verdict on the outcome. It is a guide to your likelihood of succeeding or failing through the strategy and faculties you are using in the situation.
Read the suit last, not first
Considering the suit comes after you have studied the correspondences of the cards and compared them against the significator of the situation. Reading the suit first inverts the meaning. Seeing Auset in Hetep and concluding “the undertaking will succeed” can be catastrophic. Placed properly, it says only that you are likely to succeed by adopting the strategy that card names.
| Suit | The way | What it means and what it asks of you |
|---|---|---|
| Hetep | Open | The greatest likelihood of success. It does not predict success without effort. It is like being shackled with a light chain that can be easily slipped off, but you must make the effort. Hetep does not mean the absence of negativity. It means negativity is relatively easy to transcend. The way is open for the indwelling intelligence to assist you through the faculties of the deity of the reading. |
| Tu Maat | Opening | The way is opening for the influence of the indwelling intelligence to assist you. Focus on living, not just knowing, the truths and virtues associated with the deity of the reading. Your meditations and rituals must focus on what must be done to carry out the counsel of the oracle. |
| Tu Tchaas | Opening | The way is opening for the influence of the indwelling intelligence to assist you. Focus on increasing your stock of information regarding the situation, through study and meditation. Meditate also on impressing these ideas upon your spirit, the first level of the meditation process. |
| Tem Tchaas | Closing | The way is closing to the indwelling intelligence to assist you, due to your vulnerability to the wrong beliefs denoted by the card. |
| Tem Maat | Closed | The way is closed to the indwelling intelligence to assist you, due to your vulnerability to the wrong beliefs and emotions denoted by the card. |
The lowest suits indicate more work to be done, more obstructions to overcome, and a greater chance of failing. In most cases it is advisable to avoid undertakings when Tem Tchaas or Tem Maat is drawn. If the thing must be done anyway, a great deal of care, meditation, and study must be observed.
Positive readings
Hetep, Tu Maat, and Tu Tchaas mean the way is open or opening. They do not state that you are free of negative traits, only that the way is open to transcend them. Study the negative side of the card as well as the positive. Because effort is virtually impossible to measure, it would be foolhardy to take it easier than you would have with a negative reading.
Negative readings
The purpose of labelling a reading negative is to direct you away from certain undertakings. When you must act regardless, the factors the negative reading names have to be converted into positives. Study the positive correspondences of the card, meditate, and be consistent in living truth. When something must be done, give it your best whatever the reading.
Suit definitions on this page are from Ra Un Nefer Amen, Metu Neter Vol. 1, “The Suits.”
Where the pull stops
A pull ends only on a Neter of spheres 1 through 9: Ausar, Tehuti, Sekhert, Ma’at, Herukhuti, Heru, Het-Heru, Sebek, Auset. Everything else keeps the pull going. That includes Amen (sphere 0) and Geb (sphere 10), the two poles of the Tree, and the four non-deity cards Sheps, Dark Deceased, Nekhebet and Uatchet.
- First position. A sphere 1 to 9 card in Hetep ends it there: a one-card reading. The same card in any other suit takes exactly one more card, and that card may be any card at all. Anything else keeps pulling.
- Second position onward. A sphere 1 to 9 card ends it, in any suit. Anything else keeps pulling.
- There is no maximum pull length. Keep drawing until a sphere 1 to 9 card arrives.
Amen never needs a rule of its own. It is a consequence: if a pull can only end on spheres 1 through 9, Amen can never be last, so it is always accompanied. The companion may arrive before it, as in Sebek then Amen.
The position is the role. The first card is the First Metu, the Matter, and speaks about the situation. The second is the Second Metu, the Means, and speaks about what realizing the Matter depends on. Cards three and beyond contribute their own card text to the understanding rather than filling a grammatical slot.
A negative reading is not a verdict. Vol. 3’s own protocol is to convert what the negative names into its positive: study the card’s positive correspondences, meditate, and be consistent in living truth.
The I Ching Cast
The three-coin method
Throw three coins together, once for each of the six lines. Assign a value to each face, add the three, and the sum names the line.
Coin values used in this app
Heads = 2, tails = 3. This is the convention assumed throughout the table below. Many practitioners reverse it, using heads = 3 and tails = 2. Either is valid, but you must hold one convention for the whole cast. Reversing it mid-reading swaps which physical throw produces which line.
The sums are 6, 7, 8, and 9 under either convention, and the line each sum means is the same. Only the coin faces that produce a given sum change.
| Throw | Sum | Line | Drawn | Moving | Odds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 heads | 6 | Old yin | Broken, changing | Yes, becomes solid | 1 in 8 |
| 2 heads, 1 tail | 7 | Young yang | Solid | No | 3 in 8 |
| 1 head, 2 tails | 8 | Young yin | Broken | No | 3 in 8 |
| 3 tails | 9 | Old yang | Solid, changing | Yes, becomes broken | 1 in 8 |
If you use the reversed convention, heads = 3 and tails = 2, swap the Throw column: three tails gives 6, and three heads gives 9. Every other column is unchanged.
Building the hexagram
- Build from the bottom up. The first throw is line 1, at the bottom. The sixth throw is line 6, at the top.
- The six lines as first thrown are the primary hexagram. This is the present situation.
- If any line came up 6 or 9, it is moving. Change only those lines to their opposite to get the secondary hexagram, which is where the situation is tending.
- If no line came up 6 or 9, there is no secondary hexagram. The reading rests on the primary alone.
- The complement of a hexagram inverts every line, moving or not. It names what has to be kept in check for the hexagram’s counsel to hold. The app fills complements in for you once you choose a hexagram.
Recording It Here
- Cards. Enter each card and suit in the order pulled. The app derives each card’s Metu from its position and will reject a pull that breaks the stop rules above. Once the pull is complete the form stops offering another card.
- Hexagram. Enter the primary hexagram and any moving lines. Complements and the secondary hexagram are computed for you.
- Keynotes. Harvest the phrases word for word from the source books for each card pulled. Keep them short. They are spliced into the summarizing sentence, so a phrase, not a paragraph, is what you want.
- Summary. The two summarizing statements are drafted from your keynotes and hexagrams. Edit them freely. A Ma’at review flags wording that appears to contradict one of the 11 Laws. It is advisory and never blocks saving.
- Specific details and shaping factors. Vol. 3 makes this Step 1 of interpreting a reading, and it pairs two different things. The shaping factors are the principles common to the class the situation belongs to: “Your marriage is shaped by certain factors that are common to the success of all marriages. The reading will show the uniqueness of your situation.” The specific details are the true facts of this case, the events in the life of the inquirer and of those involved. Both are needed, and the second has a job of its own: the keynotes speak as though the subject is the person consulting the oracle, and “this is not always the case. The shaping factors and details concerning the events in the life of the inquirer and related persons will clarify who the reading is speaking about.” Vol. 3 calls knowledge of the shaping factors “the determining factor of the level of expertise of a diviner.” The meditation scenarios are drawn from what you record here.
- Meditation scenarios. Three scenarios, each with its truism, action, and blessing, drawn from the shaping factors above and never invented to fill a slot.
- Recommendations and declaration. Affirmations, healing sounds, and the closing declaration.