When Two Isn’t Enough Anymore
Sometimes there comes a point in a relationship when two feel like they are no longer enough. Fortune-tellers are bombarded with questions from querents about how long before they "start creating a family". I always have fun with the idea of two partners not being a family before there is a third: a baby. This sentiment never sat right with me. I am by no means a "kids" person, yet my partner and I are a family. Our house is a family house. Instead of choosing cribs and schools for children, we choose designer furniture, and we are perfectly happy. But people rarely go to fortune-tellers for the prospect of buying a new chaise longue, so we are here with the question of becoming a parent. When will it happen?
When it comes to Balkan cultures and fortune-telling, predictive questions make up for probably 90% of all the questions posed. This is a plain and simple 50/50 prospect: yes or no. I am not going to go into a discussion about the meaningfulness of predictive questions here, and why doesn't one opt for a more insightful question, like "What CAN we do to conceive a child as soon as possible?" We can work well with predictions, and even get some background story while we're at it. For these purposes, some Balkan fortune-tellers love going to the beans.
Fortune telling with beans, or Favomancy, probably came to the Balkan during the Ottoman occupation. It is practiced throughout Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, and Romania, with some small regional variations, although recently it gave way to other forms of fortune-telling. Cartomancy in particular. But regardless of the region, the basics tend to be the same: 41 beans or corn seeds are used (sometimes 42, with one being set aside as the "witness"), the "enchantment", during which a question is posed, and casting a spread of 9 groups by using the counting system. Well, since this is not a post about the method, but rather about predictive questions, I will use an example. A woman wanted to know: "Will we conceive a child this year?". So I cast a spread accordingly:
A traditional 3x3 square spread, traditionally cast on a red cloth or a wooden casting tray.
The Modus operandi of favomancy is quite simple: 1 is a little, 4 is a lot, 3 is just right (a nice parallel with the question posed), while 2 comes and goes; left is the woman's side, right is the man's side, the middle is what binds them. The three rows are comparable to the 9-card spread in cartomancy: the first row shows what's in one's head, the middle row shows what's in one's heart, and the bottom row shows what one already has or controls, and it is often called "The Doorstep".
If we are dealing with predictions, tradition says that 9 beans should fall in the first row for a positive outcome to even be an option. Otherwise, it simply means "No". Here, tradition follows a simple logic: if 1 is a little, and 4 is a lot, in these three piles we need to have mostly 3s or 4s to get to 9, or higher. Now that we have this covered, we can turn to the question at hand. We are here with exactly 9 beans in the Head row, so we may say yes. But we take a look at the rest of the spread, and there we decide not to wax poetic about a completely positive outcome. In a bean spread, one needs to look at the tensions: where do the beans concentrate, and where are they lacking? The beans concentrate on the male partner's side, so by just glancing at it, we can say that he has it all covered when it comes to conception. However, 4 beans in the "Head" indicate too much on his mind, and 2 in the "Heart" may make for a "wandering heart". He may seem all up for it, but there may be some ambivalence and a sense of pressure. And even though our querent's thoughts are in the right place (3 beans in the "Head"), she lacks both emotionally, and physically (1 bean in both the "Heart" and the "Doorstep"). We see that the bond between them may also suffer (2-1-3): doubts arise (2), and cold creeps into the heart of their relationship (1), even though the bases seem to be covered, at least materially (3).
Having observed all that, we deliver the sentence: There is a good chance for you to conceive a child this year, as long as you address the issues on both the emotional and the physical front. Run the tests on your body, and your heart, then see what are you missing. Do you fear the possible ambivalence in your partner's heart (1-1-2)? You might want to address that as well, together with what may be creating stress for him in this situation.
Just by observing what we see, following the progression of piles and tensions in the spread, we quickly come to an answer. And most importantly, I did my best not to veer off the context of the question posed. To quote my cartomancy mentor Camelia Elias: "Question leads the answer". If we want to achieve any kind of precision, we cannot digress into sub-questions that no one even asked for. So, next to following the visual cues, we need to stay on topic.
