Bale of Goods
What this is
A merchant's bale of goods, corded and marked with its owner's letters, set at the head of the twenty-ninth folio. It is the emblem of trade, of wares packed for the road and the venture of buying and selling.
What it governs
Presides over commerce, bargains, and goods in transit: what is sent out, what comes back, and the profit or the loss between. Folio 29.
Its properties
Its colour is canvas and hemp; its number twenty-nine. The quality is enterprise and fair dealing; its shadow is greed, goods valued above the people who make and carry them.
Where else it appears
The same note is Mercury, the merchants' god, with his purse; the caravans and the ships of Tarshish; the merchant's mark stamped on bale and seal; the scales of the market place. One bale, many roads.
Where you meet it on the Oracle
On the Oracle it heads the Folio of the Day on the daily Book of Fate surface, and it heads the folio your own five rows of strokes lead to when you consult the Book. The words you are given are the Book's own Answer on that folio, the one that stands beside your Sign; the Hieroglyph marks the page and does not choose the words. As a frame for the day, deal fairly and count the cost before you send your goods out.
Why it matters
The Book gives its Hieroglyphs no order but their folios, and no meaning but the Answers that stand under them. In the Table a Question meets this one wherever the number of the Question and the number of the Sign together make thirty or sixty-two.
Correspondences
Where this comes from
- H. Kirchenhoffer, The Book of Fate, the fourth edition (London, 1823)