The Cosmic Game of Snakes and Arrows: An Oracle for Mapping Your Destiny

The Cosmic Game of Snakes and Arrows: An Oracle for Mapping Your Destiny

A profound and modern approach to playing the ancient board game • Offers a comprehensive guide to the traditional Hindu game gyān caupar —a predecessor to Snakes and Arrows—and includes a three-color gameboard allowing readers to play • Analyzes archetypes of consciousness with the 72 squares of gyān caupar , enriched by spiritual references to deepen the game’s messages • Offers instruction for conducting personal development ceremonies and receiving guidance from the game The origins of Snakes and Arrows trace back to gyan caupar , or the “game of knowledge,” a spiritual board game from ancient India. Like other forms of divination, such as the I Ching and the Tarot, the game offers a playful yet profound approach to explore the self, the present, and the future as well as understand one’s destiny. Polina Rud delves into the oracle, shedding light on gyan caupar’s archetypal wisdom and its power as a divinatory tool. Using a 72-square gameboard, players are invited to step back and observe their lives from above, seeing the emotional and behavioral patterns that guide their steps and, at times, lead them astray. Rud shows how the 72 squares represent different levels of human experience. Each square provides a philosophical key while practical exercises reveal the hidden beliefs and obstacles that hinder progress in the area of life that matters most to the player. The game’s ascending path mirrors spiritual evolution and guides players toward enlightenment, akin to systems like the Kabbalistic Tree of Life or the Road to Paradise. Rud shows how gyan caupar symbolizes the psyche’s journey, leading toward the ultimate prize: cosmic consciousness. The Cosmic Game of Snakes and Arrows offers a way to learn more deeply about who you are while fostering a connection with the divine. Polina Rud, a doctoral candidate in art history at Moscow University with a master’s in international relations, is an art curator and lecturer. With expertise in Theosophy, Nordic runic oracles, and Hindu astrology, she combines therapeutic experience, including mental health and suicide risk training at UNAM, with diverse spiritual teachings. A renowned gyan caupar guide, she helps individuals uncover hidden obstacles. She lives in Mexico City. Gyan Caupar and My Journey Through Grief My very first existential question surfaced while sitting on the bed in my childhood bedroom. I was five, and it was an evening like any other, with my parents engrossed in the evening news. I found myself absentmindedly drawing autumn leaves on the wallpaper. Then, out of nowhere, a weighty question pierced my mind: What if my parents were no longer here? I can still feel the tears that welled up when I realized this possibility, and it’s the only scene from my early years that my memory can spontaneously conjure up. It was my first encounter with the concept of death. While my school friends were immersed in the works of Carlos Castaneda, I stumbled upon Lobsang Rampa’s book The Third Eye while exploring the dusty shelves of my grandfather’s library one summer. It wasn’t the book’s title that initially piqued my interest; at the tender age of ten, I had little inclination toward spiritual matters. My primary motivation was that I had exhausted my supply of detective novels and was eager to dive into another book. In those days, we didn’t have internet access at home, and the not-so-quiet atmosphere of 1990s Russia would not have allowed me to go to the bookstore alone. The book’s detailed descriptions of Buddhist funeral traditions fascinated me even more than the novels of Gilbert Chesterton and Agatha Christie. Phrases like “the disposers of the dead who chop up corpses and feed them to vultures” made a deep impression on me. Little did I know then that life was gently and meticulously preparing me for important lessons by orchestrating a series of encounters with death. RECONCILING WITH DEATH When I was seventeen, I faced death for the first time. On the day of my high school graduation, my first boyfriend, my first love, was tragically struck by a car. It was one thing to read about the rituals and beliefs surrounding death in various cultures, but to see the lifeless body of someone I loved was an entirely different experience. I was completely disoriented, as if a heavy weight had crushed me, leaving me with impaired vision and hearing. The next day I had to sit for the university entrance exams, which turned out to be the easiest exams of my life because I no longer cared about success. Strangely enough, I excelled in all the exams and secured a scholarship to a prestigious university. Then I arrived at a mistaken belief that I would grapple with for a long time afterward: Great success comes at a high price. As the exams drew to a close, I cried incessantly, unable to eat or drink, and struggled with the relentless onslaught of suicidal thoughts, exacerbated by the towering windows of my twenty-third floor apartmen