The Brass Goggles Occult Society...The Esoteric Order of the Brazen Dawn...

[arcane]

I came very close to undergoing a Golden Dawn initiation ceremony, and was a student for some time before that, but real life got in the way.

[clockwork creation]

i request aceptance into this society. As an avid follower of the ocult, a witch and a collector of intetersting books on the matter as well as relics on the matter i think i may be abble to contrabute some nice things 

[DrTom]

but I suppose you could add some number selector dials of some form on it (to enter the person's birthday maybe?)

Hrmn...I like that!!  Even if the person is available, you could have him/her set the dials, thus allowing for some control of the cards.  That might also alleviate some of the concerns of the "don't let anyone else touch your cards" camp.

Tarot cards as punch cards is an amusing idea.

Feeding them into a machine for a reading, perhaps?

[clockwork creation]

yay for the cards  i like the idea of an automated reading, you could do something similar with runes and a lottery ball machine

[arcane]

http://www.forgottenbooks.org/ republishes old books and offers free full-text free versions online through Google books. There are several occult and magick -related works from the late 1800's and early 1900's that might be of interest as inspiration for pseudo-magic symbols, esoteric quotes, incantations, and other stuff for steam/occult stories, props or LARPs.

After a quick scan through the titles here's a few I saw that might be worth looking at, and there are few more I think I missed
   Ancient and Modern Initiation
   The Book of Ceremonial Magic
   The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage
        The Coming of the Fairies
   Demonology, by King James I
   The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries
   The Gardnerian Book of Shadows
   Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft
   The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy Vol 1 & 2
        The Vampire, his Kith and Kin

These sites are useful as well

http://www.sacred-texts.com/
http://wolf.mind.net/library/libindex.htm
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Texts/apollod.summ.html
http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/index.html
http://sites.google.com/site/ancienttexts/

[rovingjack]

As for rune reading and card shufflers. this sounds like fun stuff for a prop room.

I keep thinking of the new uno card despensing thing I've seen adds for. Steam punk it out and maybe even convert it to work on wind up. It will shuffle the cartds turn a set srch despense a card and wait for it to be taken and then turn again to dispense another card. It would do so for a set number of cards in a radial formation (I actually designed one based on the wheel of the year a while back.

The runes depending on what they are constructed with might be tricky to tumble through a bingo tumbler. but I like the idea. Maybe a miniaturised version of a bingo tumbler that works with ball bearings that have runes etched or plated on them (I actual think it's rather funny to think of devining with brass balls). 

But the comment on punch card from tarot cards really seems too cool. I haven't had much time to think about it so I'm not sure what could be done with it... but I'm sure something will occur to me.

I'm also struggling with the idea of those older style clocks that have the numbers on bisected plates that fold/fall to change the numbers. there has to be something that could be done with that.

which reminds me I'm planing one of my first projects to be something like the Alethiometer from Golden compass/Northern lights. I'm altering it heavily but the idea is fairly sound.

[groomporter]

Hmmm... I wonder if there's a way to adapt the facsimile sheep knucklebones that I make to a steamed version of astragalomancy.


Maybe something like the pop-up dice feature on some children's games where there is a plastic dome over the dice and and metal spring underneath that pops the dice up if you press and release the dome Kind of like this:
http://www.toywonders.com/productcart/pc/catalog/3350.jpg Maybe with a nice wooden base and some Greek inscriptions?

[clockwork creation]

 like that idea it would work with runes to

[DrTom]

I'm also struggling with the idea of those older style clocks that have the numbers on bisected plates that fold/fall to change the numbers. there has to be something that could be done with that.

Perhaps a nice-looking clockwork with three or more hands that would spin at apparent random when activated and point runes (or whatever symbol) inscribed along the perimeter?

[clockwork creation]

thas a great idea 

[Mrs. Sullivan]

I have some incredibly tiny Tarot cards that are too small to be effectively shuffled, but I like the spinner idea.  I think they could be glued to a board in a circle, and a spinner added to randomly pick the cards.  Question- would it be better to keep the cards in order by suits, or just mix the whole pack up and glue them randomly to the board?

[lavenderfae]

Question- would it be better to keep the cards in order by suits, or just mix the whole pack up and glue them randomly to the board?

My thought would be random, but to attach them in a non-permanent fashion so they can be re-randomized at a future date. No, I have no metaphysical basis for that reply. It was just the first thing that occurred to me.

[clockwork creation]

how would you treat the cards from the major arcana ?

[SteamLion]

I have some incredibly tiny Tarot cards that are too small to be effectively shuffled, but I like the spinner idea.  I think they could be glued to a board in a circle, and a spinner added to randomly pick the cards.  Question- would it be better to keep the cards in order by suits, or just mix the whole pack up and glue them randomly to the board?

I too have those cards. They are wonderful if just shuffled around on the table and selected in "go fish" fashion. As for random or in order, as with a shuffled deck, random seems the most fitting way to me.

This makes me think of using one of those spinning contraptions that are used for bingo numbers. I believe the one I had as a kid was metal wire and was hand cranked. Hook it up to a hamster wheel and you're really movin' now!

[DrTom]

From a practical standpoint, however, I suspect that using all 78 cards would result in an unweildy large contraption, or a smaller one that would be too crowded to make much practical use.  Perhaps you'd just want to use the Majors or engrave/etch runes in small brass plates and use that.

[clockwork creation]

agreed with DrTom on that one

[SteamLion]

From a practical standpoint, however, I suspect that using all 78 cards would result in an unweildy large contraption, or a smaller one that would be too crowded to make much practical use.  Perhaps you'd just want to use the Majors or engrave/etch runes in small brass plates and use that.

Or affix each suit to a seperate wheel, with gears that make all of the wheels move, such that by spinning the first wheel (with say the Major Arcana) the other wheels move, creating a different arrangement of cards. Ok this is way too complicated for me, but I know one of the more ingenius sorts in here could run with it and have something!

[DrTom]

From a practical standpoint, however, I suspect that using all 78 cards would result in an unweildy large contraption, or a smaller one that would be too crowded to make much practical use.  Perhaps you'd just want to use the Majors or engrave/etch runes in small brass plates and use that.

Or affix each suit to a seperate wheel, with gears that make all of the wheels move, such that by spinning the first wheel (with say the Major Arcana) the other wheels move, creating a different arrangement of cards. Ok this is way too complicated for me, but I know one of the more ingenius sorts in here could run with it and have something!

Hrmn...that could work...in fact, this could work well with a cube configuration.  The bottom of the cube could be left blank, as a base.  The top can have a face for Major Arcana, and the remaining four sides can each represent a suit of the Minor arcana.  You can use two or three hands per face, with each hand being roughly analagous to a position in a spread (the "outcome," "forces opposing," "family and friends" hands), for example.

I wonder if we can use an indicator for reversals...

[clockwork creation]

yes knowing if it was reversed could be a problem

[Lady Anne]

My doctor has told me to abstain from occult practices myself (bad for the digestion), but I would love to join in the discussion.

This tarot thing with wheels attached to gears makes me think of the way they were supposed to be churning out popular novels in 1984.  Perhaps I remember incorrectly (or, conceivably, I am delusional), but it seems to me that there were wheels that one would spin, and they would turn others and this would eventually end up aligning on a pattern that was a story.  Personally, that seemed to be the most far-fetched part of the story, next to, I suppose, the efficacy of the Anti-Sex League.  But I have heard of people reading tarot for the characters in stories they write, so it does seem to tie together.

[Mlle A. Aurantia]

Tarot for the storybook characters? Odd, but an interesting way to solve writers' block. My deck only works for myself and my husband. I prefer not to read for others anyway, because nine times out of ten if they want divinatory advice it is either a desperate plea for hope without work ("Is there love/money/luck in my future?") or a question that they already know the answer to but would prefer a different answer. The ones who are wise enough to use the cards correctly are usually able to read for themselves or are just wise enough to answer the question themselves. There is also the "Oh, cool! Tarot! Read for me!" crowd with curiosity but no questions, but I am not a performing monkey.

As for runes, I am imagining a set of pirate dubloons with a uniform crest of some kind on one side and the needed runes on the other. Add embellishments as desired.

[Lady Anne]

An easy place to get ready-made runes is the table of alphabets in the encyclopedia (I think there's also one in the dictionary?).  That's how I taught myself to "write in Etruscan."  Also, you might try Tolkien's various alphabets, or the D'ni language, which I believe you can get in font form if you don't want to go to all the trouble of translating.  Of course, there's also Klingon 

[groomporter]

Speaking of runes http://www.tarahill.com/runekits.html has kits with red oak or birch wood tiles and red ochre powder for coloring them.

[rovingjack]

I already made my own runes... from bisected peach pits.

[Toji Chiba]

Just to remind the rest of the order that this thread is not only about Tarot-Cards