ABOUTS

Sigmos

Dogs and Sigmos Dogs live in the moment. Their personalities and sensibilities are conditioned by emotional or stressful moments, especially early in life. Humans are not so different. Unlike dogs, humans are more able to recondition their personalities and sensibilities.

Significant moments or sigmos occur during therapy, grief over a loss, a family crisis or any number of circumstances. Sigmos open the door to illumination, understanding, “ah ha”. They invite a reexamination of prior responses to similar stimuli. During a sigmo, humans consciously make the choice to either react as per usual, or try a new way.

Symbols

Like other symbolic systems such as the Tarot, astrology, numerology or the runes, the Dognostication Cards are a tool for self-discovery and the expansion of one’s frame of reference. Readings are less about data and more about the reader’s synthesis of symbols and connections made by the querent.

Symbols – whether they be sentimental, the result of new or old sigmos, or archetypes – immediately allow greater amounts of information to be assimilated. Some symbols can inspire, provoke a feeling, trigger a memory. Combinations of symbols speak their own language, singly and in concert. Intuition and other “wu wu” forces may also find their way into readings.

Dognosticate

Prognosticating is about predicting the future; dognosticating is about understanding the present as influenced by the past, so that the future is a logical progression. In practice, dognosticating can feel like magick. Dognosticating sheds new light on the sigmos of life.

History

Z. Sharon Glantz was an avid student and practitioner of tarot, numerology, astrology and ritual magick. Over a 10 year period, she and Char, a popular Seattle tarot consultant, collaborated on Tarot for Fools, an exploration of the tarot using poetry, script, rituals and delineations of each of the Tarot’s major arcana. Subsequently, the poetry portions became a chapbook and the script portions, a full-length play. Char died in 1999 and the Dognostication Cards are dedicated to her.

Since then, Z. Sharon completed the first of her Dogpeople series, Rover’s Masterpack, a novel for fellow dog lovers. She completed a draft of Tarot Journaling, utilizing the rituals developed with Char and a wide range of writing exercises, inspired by the Tarot’s major arcana. The publisher to whom she submitted a proposal has since produced a book of the same name. Such is the publishing world where luck, timing and connections reign.

The beta version of the Dognostication Cards was created as holiday gifts for some of the regulars of the dogpark at Golden Gardens in Seattle, Washington. A booklet delineating the meaning of each card accompanied thirty-six printed and laminated cards. Those who received a deck insisted they would be well received by fellow dog lovers. Z. Sharon saw an opportunity to combine her love of dogs with that of symbolic systems.

The nakshatras of Vedic astrology were appealing because they put a very different spin on the western practices with which she was familiar. The lunar manazils of the Arabic tradition that correspond to each nakshatra, contributed to the evolution of the meaning of each Abstraction Card. As the meaning of the cards evolved, adding the overlay of the developmental stages seemed a natural and way to integrate a psychological system into the mix.

Z. Sharon, remembered how easily environmental factors condition each reading. Rather than rely upon random events, she included Action Cards to actively alter perspective and change point of view by adding a physical action. She chose the chakras, the energy centers of the body, as a model for the 14 Action Cards. Although their actual history is unknown, like Vedic astrology, the chakras became a part of the Jyotish tradition of the Hindus.

The Reaction Cards came out of Z. Sharon’s observation that most querents come to a reading with strong feelings and opinions about metaphysics, intuition and/or the act of reading cards. These presuppositions affect a reading in a meaningful way. Reaction Cards ask the reader and the querent to stop dognosticating, and discuss the process of dognosticating or the cards or even their latest sigmo. The seven steps of alchemy as outlined by Dennis William Hauck help the focus the discussion.