IN WHICH I ARGUE METAPHYSICS WITH THE AUTHOR
In introducing this deck, Grand Orient expanded on his reasoning behind his original designation of this oracular method as mere ‘diversion’ and not a serious tool: “In a more exact sense, a process of this kind illustrates the root-distinction between genuine modes of divination or fortune-telling processes, that is to say, which are based upon occult considerations, whatever their value—and the trickeries of artificial questions and replies. This present method belongs to the second category, and as it depends upon pure chance, it is not at all an occult process. The secrets of the future are not enshrined in the calculus of probabilities, nor are they extracted by an investigation of the law of chances.”
So the author seems to be saying the laws of mathematical probability argue against this deck being occult. If I understand him right, he’s saying that because this divination tool has a finite number of questions and answers, because the answer comes down to the matter of a limited number of possible results, it’s not truly occult. By that same line of reasoning, however, you could argue that the Kipper deck isn’t occult, because it has only 36 cards, the Sibilla deck isn’t occult, because it has only 52 cards, and the Tarot deck isn’t occult, because it has only 78 cards. If you were to do a one-card reading from each of those three decks, you would have only a one out of 36, 52 or 78 chance of drawing a particular card.
This system comes with 12 questions and 28 answers. Twelve times twenty-eight is 336. I beefed the number of yes/no questions up to 18, so eighteen times twenty-eight is 504. If you decide to add four questions and four answers to the deck on top of that, using the blanks I provided, that will mean twenty-two times thirty-two, which is 704. Depending on how many questions you’re starting-with, and/or answers you’re ending-with, that is either 336, 504, or 704 different life-scenarios for which this deck may be consulted. I think that somewhere in those numbers, you should be able to obtain an accurate answer you will also find useful.
I’ve suggested this before, and I’ll mention it again here. Go to YouTube and in the search box, type in: The Chaos Game. That’ll bring up a whole squadron of videos which demonstrate just how spooky mathematics can be. I’d be curious to see the results of The Chaos Game using an eight, ten, or twelve-sided die. Granted, An Universal Oracle isn’t The Chaos Game, but I think the question you ask and the energy you bring to your desire for an honest answer constructs an unseen conduit which will bring into your hands the one of the twenty-eight possible answers which, in itself, constitutes the most-correct answer as things look at the present time. That sounds pretty damned occult to me. I’m beginning to suspect this ‘Grand Orient’ person was a nineteenth-century stage magician. Illusionists are born skeptics. They’re always looking for the rational explanation, and mathematics is the most rational of the sciences.