instead of crazy poetry, i will attempt plainspoken meta-analysis when The Moon is done dancing here:
OvER the moon and away ~ every time i rub the genie's tummy (channel 4, deal 3, trick V), originally uploaded by KevinHutchins314.
Strategy:
Dealer (Contractor) = You'll be able to capture the final two of these three remaining tierces with your unassailable co-titans, the 21 and 20 of trumps. But here you must lead with your last card in the mundane elements: it's time to give up your Π Clown of Fire to the opponents. Out he dances gaily, his huge rod stuck up and burning brightly, with a crazy laugh because despite his sacrifice you know your contract is now guaranteed to succeed!
Initiate = You can deduce the obvious: your teammate still holds trumps, so you are able to favorably dispose of any element here. Your final face card is free at last: the graceful sea Princess of the Waters sings in acceptance of fate. You know your Π Pion of Cups (Valet de Coeurs, Jack of Hearts, Page of Chalices) is able to escape here and count toward your side's Tricky Pile, and you will have no further optimizations upon which to decide. But you now have a good guess about the outcome of the contract. You are happy-sad and wistful-cheerful because your side wins this trick but will probably be unable to stop the contractor from winning this deal. C'est la vie.
Medium = You know the contractor still holds the unstoppable 21 and 20 of trumps, so it doesn't matter which of your three remaining dancers in the Aether you play here. Your 14, 15, and 18 of trumps are all now co-adjacent. Your Sun has already set, so the Moon comes up here. You capture this tierce with your Aether 18 OvER the moon and away with the fairies into the twinkling glimmer in the skies. You beckon to the Dybbuk who has now arrived to dance with you, to synchronize with your cycles, to match your tempo because all further moves by all players will be automatic! This brings us to our DESTINY! Free us, and we shall dance, darling!
Scansion:
Dealer (Contractor) = lead with a leap and laugh, Π Pion clown, shaman of Fire (valet de trèfles, page of rods, jack of clubs, however the silly name tag fits!)
Initiate = favorably dipose of the graceful Π Pion mermaid, final face card from the Court of Cups, dear hearts.
Medium = void, 18 trumps for the last time on your side of the cycles, Moon over the sea and into the dark (and thus "No more soup for you.")
Defense scores +1 tête point for the Π Pion clown of Wands, plus +1 tête point for the Π Pion princess of Cups, plus +1 Tricky Point for the tierce. These 3 are added to their previous 38 for a grand total of 41 points on their defending side at the end of this Trick V. The Medium will lead into the next move. When the Initiate chose to dispose of the princess into this tierce before the Medium tricked with the Moon, that was the final possible decision any player could make which would be able to change any outcome of the scores; thus we say the final automatic moves are subsequently "handled by the Dybbuk", comically speaking.
~ ~ ~ I hope i can plainly explain some meta-analysis. ~ ~ ~
All card players will agree the sequence of the final few remaining items to appear in order on the tableau can not change the outcome of the contract scoring, thus we playfully refer to this as the sequence of "DESTINY" because the items are somewhat mechanically forced into their places by all of the previous decisions which influenced their ultimate dispositions. The Destiny is one of the three loci of the incident; the others were the Prognostication (dealing and bidding, announcing, optional preparatory information) and the Initiation (instigation of the contract with the least amount of information available to begin the tricking and scoring, until the tempo changes).
I always enjoy these three loci of each incident because they give us these sorts of "fortune cookie" outcomes as we organize the chaos into a game. There are other bits of game meta-information which can also be amusingly viewed for allegory. For example, "titanic line of succession" is the sequence of cards (beginning with the highest 21 of trumps) unassailable over the course of the tricking, working it's way sort of like a Plinko chip on The Price Is Right, dropping downward through the various positions (via whichever card or cards might be the "unassailable" remaining) … until it reaches a final designation of the item (or items) which could not be beaten by any move.
Another consideration is the rules of discarding when a contractor bids "take" or "guard", because the six items they throw away must never be terminals nor Ω archons (neither "kings" nor "keys"), nor can people ordinarily discard trumps in most situations. So you typically see a blend of six mundane elemental cards in each of those bids. When a contract-taker decides to bid "without looking" or "against the Bitch", you always see six random cards at the end whose dancers are gradually deduced during the tricking, and these have certain statistics regarding the amount of trump and/or face cards and/or pip cards found. These Bitches and discards always give us six interesting items grouped together for one reason or another, that's why i think of them as sort of "fortune cookie" sequences based on their canonical hierarchies.
Another peculiarity which is narrower in scope but interesting as a meta-observation (sort of mini- fortune cookie) is the rare case when a player wishes to declare a "Handful" but they're in a situation where they have a surplus beyond the required amount for their announcement. A simple, double, or triple "Handful" is when a player has one-half, two-thirds, or three-quarters supermajority of their twenty-four cards dealt in the Void as trumps. This means they can declare thirteen, sixteen, or eighteen dancers in the Aether (Atouts/ trumps/ void). If they happen to fortunately have slightly more than the thirteen, sixteen, or eighteen dancers needed to expose their supermajority, there are rules governing which one or two items they might be able to luckily conceal. So in these rare instances we find a sort of tiny "fortune cookie" usually consisting of only one or two cards, and they are specifically cards in the Major Arcana (the 1 thru 21 of trumps). The mechanics of the game tend to favor the items nearest to the terminals, so you more frequently expect the 21 or 1 to be hidden, or perhaps the 20 or 19 up near the 21 (because of strategic information withholdings away from the opponents). But occasionally there is a supermajority sequence where we find some other bizarre card in the void which is intentionally kept concealed for better strategic value, so you might have an important reason to pick some lower or middling trump card to hide because of its adjacency to some other revealed sequence.
If you have an incredible sort of "Chelem" (Slam) hand, and you have almost the entire suit of twenty-one trumps, there may be several trump cards which you keep concealed in the Void despite your supermajority announcement, so that would be a very rare fortune cookie in the Major Arcana.
Also, another consideration whenever a person announces a Simple, Double, or Triple Handful is the combination of mundane elements which they never show (along with the optionally unshown trumps if they are so blessed.) This means they might hold eleven, eight, or six cards "behind the veil" while announcing the supermajority, almost entirely from the 'minor' four suits and favoring the higher face cards, very rarely with trumps; you often find the Fool-ish Demon joker unsuitable pseudo-zero there. So you have a skewed combination of mostly elemental cards, but they are somewhat chaotically dealt and appear almost randomly. It's like a fortune cookie whose typographer might not have spoken your language the same way as you do, but it's nevertheless grammatically correct. Capiche?
These are always mechanical game reasons, but the quasi-unpredictable nature allows us to laugh at them like fortunes coming out of cookies. They're not random like bingo balls coming out of the chute, but they're chaotic and situational and ephemeral and suitably unpredictable to be of interest. Don't you love to encounter a random joke, quip, aphorism, or symbol now and then?
At any rate, these sorts of arrangements give us peculiar symbol combinations based on a game but filled with genuine meaning in the moment because of the mathematics of the scoring and the rules of the system. You could probably do the same with a variety of other card games (bridge? whist? spades? contract 500?), but i'm not sure how the symbolism would work. I'm hoping there's a sort of universality like a Rubik's Cube, where it doesn't matter which colors you paint on the sides of the cube, as long as you follow a system of having each side show a unique color pattern on its grid of squares. I hope that explains part of why i love these amusements of mental hopscotch: they allow me to meditate on flows of complex symbology beyond the simple structures of a merry little game. Psychedelics enhance the imagination and stimulate delightful apophenia. OvER the moon and away! Dance, dear fairies!
When i was younger i could solve a Rubik's Cube in under five minutes, but now it usually takes me ten. I can still solve the Rubik's tetrahedron in under three minutes, but it only has four axes instead of six, so i don't know whether that's anything to brag about. I remember being curious about the mathematical patterns of some of the moves which were convenient shortcuts to certain positionings, but i don't recall ever imagining more complex symbology. The Cosmic Tribe cards are sufficiently aesthetically complex to inspire me when i toy with the art and listen to music and inhale and enjoy the sensuality. It's as though i owned a magic jukebox, and every time i rub the genie's tummy— OUT! pop some queer fortune cookies!
(go ahead: rub the genie's tummy. don't forget to exhale.)
