Meaning Behind the Shapes

Hi Bert,

I'm not the very best person to answer this, as I haven't done much work with the SGO, so take all of this with an appropriate serving of salt.

First off, with any symbolic system, remember that some amount of it is going to be arbitrary - 4 is the number of Earth because the system you're working with said so (or the like)! Ideally, even the arbitrary element should still be capable of making sense if you think about it and squint hard enough.

Secondly, whether symbolic meanings are arbitrary, divinely inspired, carefully crafted, or whatever else, much of their value to any person seems to be in the links and associations you make with it. This kind of thing builds up over time through meditation, observation, and repetition. One highly idiosyncratic example from another divinatory symbolic system: the Rune Berkano means "Birch Goddess" and in most systems is associated with death and rebirth, a kind of "Mother Earth" vibe. For me, it certainly has those associations, but if it comes up in a divination, I also assume it might have something to say about a spiritual rebirth in particular. Why is this? Because I had my "conversion experience" when meditating on this Rune, which led to a major spiritual rebirth! That association is very much my own, and I don't expect anyone else to have it, but it's consistent with the more "universal" meaning for anyone who learns the Runes.

Thirdly, trying to be more concretely helpful here, you might want to revisit some of the correspondences given in the Way of the Golden Section, and in particular, look for connections between concepts you feel like you "get" and the ones you're trying to make sense of. For example, if one of the shape descriptions associates it with an element, go look for what else the book has to say about that element, and see if any of those associations illuminate the shape. If the square root references the number 2, look for what else is linked with 2, and think about/meditate on some connections.

Putting these threads together, are you doing daily divination with the cards? I have found with the divination systems I know so far (Runes and Ogham) that this really does help to make the symbols start to make sense in a way that just reading or meditating on them doesn't. It's an engine to produce those links and associations I mentioned above that will both make your interpretation of the system your own, but also illuminate the associations that make less sense. Or at least, that's how they've worked for me. One more thought here, in case your answer is "I have been doing daily divination, and it doesn't seem to help!" If you've been drawing only one card in response to "what do I most need to understand about the coming day" or something like that, you might want to try a slightly different approach. I did that for a while when I was first learning the Runes and found a single Rune far too broad to get much insight into what would/did happen. When I started learning Ogham, on the other hand, I jumped straight into a "Past/Present/Future" (well, really "Knowledge, Peace, Power") spread, and I felt like I got up-to-speed on the symbols much faster.

Otherwise, a more general piece of advice to take or leave as you like (coming from someone ~6 years into taking this stuff kinda seriously and ~3 years into taking it more seriously): there's a balance to be struck between "doing it thoroughly instead of rushing ahead" and "pushing on even if it's not perfect." I'm a "rush ahead" person by nature, so I've had to slow myself down, but even so, there's been times where I've gone "okay, I did the work, I dunno if I got anything out of it, but I guess we'll see," and then a few months or a year down the line, something clicks, or is made clear in hindsight, or whatever.

Anyway, hope this helps, and sorry again I don't have more experience on the SGO specifically to share - it's very likely next on my "to learn" list, but I'm still deepening my understanding of the Ogham.

Cheers,
Jeff