She bends the world around herself, and binds it about her with a story. Or is she the world, bending into itself, and trying to explain itself with narration? Just the whole cosmos finding a way of talking to itself. At the very least this card may be a reminder that the whole deck can just be an elaborate way of talking to yourself – what story do you bring to these cards, what begs itself to be connected in ways you wouldn’t let yourself connect normally?

A two-dimensional regular grid bent into a cone: the ‘rubber sheet’ popularization of relativity, pushed past the breaking of the metaphor by a singularity. And yet here the singularity has a face, has hands, might be something that has a name. What will happen when she opens her eyes and unties herself? Will the rubber contract, pulling her uniqueness back into the endless grid? Or will she become more solid and real?

X is the Roman numeral for 10 – Fortune, who also rises out of a checkered ground. 10 is a personification of the uncaring randomness of the universe, offering success or failure with no real pattern, while X is your own influence on the randomness. You are the X-factor that shapes your own fate to your own agenda, if you choose to. If you can work out the right stories to tell the world, and yourself. And keep in mind that as you shape the world with your stories, you’re also shaping yourself – look out for writing yourself into a corner!

Language shapes thought.

What’s the story you’re telling yourself? Can you read it? Is this really the one you want to be the main character in? Tell us a good one, please.

(While 0 — Void — is the limitless possibility of the future from the emptiness of now, X — History — is the limits we create by filling now with the past. Void is having no script to follow. Together, they are a koan: Which holds more, Nothing or Everything?)