Decan Walk in UE5: Gemini I, II and III Post-Mortem
90 days into my 365-day-long esoteric game jam.
In Decan Walk — Aries I, I broke down my plan: perform a Decan Walk (following along with Susan T. Chang’s 36 Secrets) as a 365-day-long game jam, creating a new “platform” for each Decan every ten days. In Aries II and III I continued my technical, conceptual, and magical, post-mortems. Taurus I, II, and III are recounted here. And now I present Gemini I, II, and III.
Gemini I
These ten days were somewhat on autopilot with my summer class in full swing and many of my administrative tasks on hold while I waited for other machinery to grind through paperwork and red tape.
The Eight of Swords is, in some ways, a self-evident card, but its position between The Wheel of Fortune and The Lovers is fascinating. T. Susan unpacks this as Fate versus Free Will (one of my favorite bones to contemplatively gnaw upon). In this case, however, I was struck by the fact that the figure is not truly bound.
Her eyes are blindfolded, yes, and she’s wrapped up in what appears to be the same fabric, but this is she’s not tightly bound. While you can’t see her hands, it’s easy to imagine her simply wriggling out and removing her blindfold. Her knowing smirk seems to emphasize this. The eight swords surround her, yes, but don’t enclose her. In fact, it’s just a semicircle. If she chose to remove her blindfold, she could go anywhere she wanted. In fact — she doesn’t need to even do that. She could simply walk forward blindfolded, unimpeded.
But she chooses to be bound. (Hey, if you know, you know.) And so, it underlines that we’re often faced with what appears to be tension between Fate and Free Will — but we always have Free Will. Yet, Fate weaves its threads around us, and we dance and spin in relation to its lead. Fate exists, and we who are magical practitioners often work to direct the patterns of fate towards particular goals. But ultimately, whatever clothing those fibers construct for us, we choose them or weave something new.
Obviously, there are larger social injustices that impede our ability to act according to what we desire — that’s another, larger issue. But within the spectrum of our individual lives and actions, we have the choice in how we act, react, and interact. However, the who and what of those interactions is a function of the Fates.
In this case, I found a lovely model of a European Robin and modeled a blindfold for it. It sits inside Jupiter’s tin cage, the door wide open. Snow falls, adding to Robin’s constraint. But it’s a bird — it could fly anywhere it chooses. At this moment, it chooses to remain blindfolded, inside its cold and wintry cage. There are things it is learning that only it can know. And when it has learned and achieved its avian gnosis (Nine of Swords), and it is done (Ten of Swords), it will fly away as easily as it arrived.
Gemini II
I was really distracted with work and family matters this week. This tableau (and decan) got short shrift. I have a lot of thoughts on the Nine of Swords (Lord of Cruelty). Those thoughts are mostly: “Yeah, it’s cool, I’m good. Thanks anyway.”
Gemini III
This was also done hastily due to work, family, and travel obligations. However, I have to acknowledge that the initial excitement of the project from Aries I is probably fading away.
Part of it is my need to challenge myself technically. For instance, I’m eager to animate the skybox and create weather transitions between the decans. I’ve also been contemplating user interaction and designing a user interface to navigate between the decans.
However, I need to prioritize my summer class, which has approximately another week remaining, as well as work on the new podcast (more details on that later!) and make the most of the long-planned travel and events scheduled for this month and the next.
Nevertheless, Gemini III — the Ten of Swords — captures a strong sentiment. Initially, I considered depicting the robin from Gemini I, with the poor creature un-blindfolded and pierced by ten swords, a sad little dead cock-robin. While there is undoubtedly a narrative woven through the minor arcana, I wanted to keep an alternative timeline open for the robin, one in which it chose to remain blindfolded in its cage, maintaining a connection to the Hanged Man.
Yet these decans represent a phase of learning, where brutal knowledge unfolds, inevitable and transformative. There are lessons in life that we contort ourselves into impossible shapes to avoid — loss, heartbreak, death. But how many of us live without experiencing loss or heartbreak? And none of us can escape death.
In a utilitarian sense, we may question the value of knowledge if it lacks actionable outcomes. Yes, we can learn from loss and heartbreak, often leveraging these experiences to avoid future pain. However, by doing so, aren’t we depriving ourselves of other forms of Knowing? The knowledge of our own mortality may not be actionable in the conventional sense (at least from most perspectives on that transition), but it remains a Mystery, a form of Knowing.
If we strip Knowledge of its utility and allow it to exist as a sensation — like joy, contentment, surprise, disappointment — then even the most profound and transformative Knowings, such as death, find their place.
(Whelp, this took a dark turn quickly.)
Finally, the hand represents the Magician and/or the Hierophant. Is it “solve”? Is it “coagula”? Does it even matter? The hand embodies the awareness of the Thing and the absolute transformation that comes with Knowing. The impact of the Ten of Swords is transformative in itself; it cannot be avoided any more than it can be undone. As much as we might prefer to remain blindfolded and motionless, sometimes we just have to deal with it.
