Open Questions

Open Archangel Oracle Cards

Why It Is Open Multiple independent reviews describe this deck's artwork as compiled from several different artists rather than one credited illustrator, and Aeclectic Tarot's own review, read directly, describes the card layout without naming an artist. No source checked names a contributor for this specific title.

What Would Settle It The deck's own guidebook, examined directly, since compiled-artwork Hay House oracle decks typically credit each contributor inside the booklet even when retailer listings do not.

Expertise Needed Publishing history

Question posed in Archangel Oracle Cards, A 45 Card Deck and Guidebook (Amazon listing), Doreen Virtue.

Open Ascended Masters Oracle Cards

Why It Is Open Aggregated web listings attach several painters' names to this deck, but none of the pages actually read, the publisher's own listing, Goodreads, and Aeclectic Tarot's review, states a name directly, so the claim could not be traced to a citable page and is left unresolved rather than repeated from an aggregation.

What Would Settle It The deck's own guidebook, examined directly, which is understood to list contributor credits even where retailer and review pages do not.

Expertise Needed Publishing history

Question posed in Ascended Masters Oracle Cards, 44-Card Deck and Guidebook (AbeBooks listing), Doreen Virtue.

Open Flower of Life

Why It Is Open No illustrator is credited on the publisher's page or any retailer listing checked. The deck prints its interpretive text directly on the back of each card rather than in a separate guidebook, so creator Denise Jarvie may be the sole author of both image and text, but that could not be verified to certainty.

What Would Settle It The deck's own packaging or a publisher catalogue record, examined directly, stating whether the imagery is Jarvie's own work or a separate illustrator's.

Expertise Needed Publishing history

Question posed in The Flower of Life, Wisdom of Astar Oracle Deck (Amazon listing), Denise Jarvie.

Open Numerology Guidance Cards

Why It Is Open No illustrator is credited on the publisher's listing or any retailer listing checked. The deck's imagery is mostly numbers, colors and named geometric symbols rather than figurative art, so a separate illustrator credit may genuinely not exist, but that could not be confirmed either way.

What Would Settle It The deck's own guidebook or box, examined directly, or a publisher catalogue record naming a designer or illustrator if one exists.

Expertise Needed Publishing history

Question posed in Numerology Guidance Cards, A 44-Card Deck (Penguin Random House listing), Michelle Buchanan.

Open Numerology Guidance Cards

Why It Is Open No review checked, including the publisher's own product page, states whether the guidebook offers a reversed meaning for its numeric and symbolic cards. Reviewers describe reversal as left up to the reader's own approach, with no official guidance found stated either way.

What Would Settle It The deck's own guidebook, examined directly for a stated position on reversed cards.

Expertise Needed Deck design and cartomancy practice

Question posed in Numerology Guidance Cards, A 44-Card Deck (Penguin Random House listing), Michelle Buchanan.

Open Sacred Geometry Activations Oracle

Why It Is Open No review checked states whether the guidebook offers a reversed meaning alongside its stated Activations. A similarly named deck by a different creator, Francene Hart's Sacred Geometry Oracle Deck, is recorded elsewhere in this registry as offering reversed meanings for non-symmetrical cards, and the two are easily confused, but they are not the same deck and this one's own practice was not found stated anywhere.

What Would Settle It The deck's own 160-page guidebook by LON, examined directly for a stated position on reversed cards.

Expertise Needed Deck design and cartomancy practice

Question posed in Sacred Geometry Activations Oracle (Blue Angel Publishing product page), LON.

Open The Crystal Wisdom Healing Oracle

Why It Is Open An independent review's own deck-data table records the card backs as reversible, but no review checked, including one that engages closely with the guidebook's own structure of Vibration groupings, states whether the guidebook itself offers a distinct reversed meaning for any card. A reversible back alone does not settle the question.

What Would Settle It The deck's own 119-page guidebook by Judy Hall, examined directly for a stated position on reversed cards.

Expertise Needed Deck design and cartomancy practice

Question posed in Deck Review: The Crystal Wisdom Healing Oracle (Tarot Elements), Tarot Elements.

Open Zodiac Reading Cards

Why It Is Open No review checked states whether the guidebook offers a reversed meaning for its sun, moon and eclipse cards, and creator Patsy Bennett's own product page for the deck, read directly, is silent on card orientation as well.

What Would Settle It The deck's own guidebook, examined directly for a stated position on reversed cards.

Expertise Needed Deck design and cartomancy practice

Question posed in Zodiac Reading Cards, Guidance from the Sun, Moon and Stars (Simon and Schuster official page), Patsy Bennett and Richard Crookes.

Open The Army, Line 5

Why It Is Open King Wen 7 lines 3 and 5 contain the same two character phrase in the received Chinese text, the one usually rendered as carrying corpses in the wagon. The atlas keeps the image at line 3, whose description reads that the army may carry corpses in its wagons, and drops it at line 5, whose description reads only that disorder follows even a just cause. One phrase is therefore represented twice in two incompatible registers, and nothing on either page tells a reader that the underlying text is the same. Whether this was a deliberate reading or an accident of two passes is not recorded.

What Would Settle It Checking the received text of King Wen 7 lines 3 and 5 against a critical edition, then deciding one way for both lines: either the concrete image is kept in both, or the reason for treating the two occurrences differently is stated on the page. Any correction touches a line description and is owner gated.

Expertise Needed Sinology, specifically the textual history of the Zhou Yi.

Question posed in Divinity Atlas Open Questions Register, First Edition.

Open 57

Why It Is Open The anecdote is very widely told and 57 is called the Grothendieck prime because of it. Its literal veracity is disputed within mathematical folklore, and the tellings do not agree on the setting or the wording.

What Would Settle It A first-hand account from someone present, or a contemporary written record of the exchange.

Expertise Needed History of mathematics, and oral history of the Grothendieck circle.

Question posed in Comme Appele du Neant, As If Summoned from the Void: The Life of Alexandre Grothendieck, Allyn Jackson, Part 2, page 1196.

Open Kislev

Why It Is Open Several Hebrew month names carry an accepted native gloss (Adar, mighty; Av, father; Elul, search or inquiry; Iyar, blossoming), already recorded on this atlas. Kislev, Shevat, Tevet and, separately, the deity name Tammuz do not: their Babylonian origin is well established but no settled etymology for the specific Hebrew forms is recorded in the sources consulted for this pass.

What Would Settle It An Assyriological or comparative Semitic source tracing each Babylonian calendar-month name to its own root meaning, matched against the accepted glosses already recorded for the other months in the same cycle.

Expertise Needed Assyriology and comparative Semitic philology

Question posed in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition, Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.).

Open Chen

Why It Is Open In the Classic inscriptions this month is written as a colour term joined to a second element read as sihoom. The colour term is secure. The second element is left untranslated, so the literal sense of the month name cannot be recovered from the inscriptions, and the storm gloss that circulates for it comes from the post-conquest Yucatec name instead.

What Would Settle It A collation of every spelling of the sign group across the Classic corpus, with its substitution sets and phonetic complements, set against the Colonial-period Yucatec and Cholan dictionaries, to test whether sihoom has a surviving lexical match.

Expertise Needed Maya epigraphy, with Mayan historical linguistics.

Question posed in The Maya (9th edition), Michael D. Coe and Stephen Houston.

Open Yax

Why It Is Open In the Classic inscriptions this month is written as a colour term joined to a second element read as sihoom. The colour term is secure. The second element is left untranslated, so the literal sense of the month name cannot be recovered from the inscriptions, and the storm gloss that circulates for it comes from the post-conquest Yucatec name instead.

What Would Settle It A collation of every spelling of the sign group across the Classic corpus, with its substitution sets and phonetic complements, set against the Colonial-period Yucatec and Cholan dictionaries, to test whether sihoom has a surviving lexical match.

Expertise Needed Maya epigraphy, with Mayan historical linguistics.

Question posed in The Maya (9th edition), Michael D. Coe and Stephen Houston.

Open Sak

Why It Is Open In the Classic inscriptions this month is written as a colour term joined to a second element read as sihoom. The colour term is secure. The second element is left untranslated, so the literal sense of the month name cannot be recovered from the inscriptions, and the storm gloss that circulates for it comes from the post-conquest Yucatec name instead.

What Would Settle It A collation of every spelling of the sign group across the Classic corpus, with its substitution sets and phonetic complements, set against the Colonial-period Yucatec and Cholan dictionaries, to test whether sihoom has a surviving lexical match.

Expertise Needed Maya epigraphy, with Mayan historical linguistics.

Question posed in The Maya (9th edition), Michael D. Coe and Stephen Houston.

Open Keh

Why It Is Open In the Classic inscriptions this month is written as a colour term joined to a second element read as sihoom. The colour term is secure. The second element is left untranslated, so the literal sense of the month name cannot be recovered from the inscriptions, and the storm gloss that circulates for it comes from the post-conquest Yucatec name instead.

What Would Settle It A collation of every spelling of the sign group across the Classic corpus, with its substitution sets and phonetic complements, set against the Colonial-period Yucatec and Cholan dictionaries, to test whether sihoom has a surviving lexical match.

Expertise Needed Maya epigraphy, with Mayan historical linguistics.

Question posed in The Maya (9th edition), Michael D. Coe and Stephen Houston.

Open Uncle

Why It Is Open Lilly's catalogue of the sixth house names uncles and aunts on the father's side directly, and turning the chart from the fourth produces the same answer independently, but which of the two came first is not established here. The step may be a Hellenistic inheritance, an Arabic development, or a Latin systematisation, and the atlas has found no study that settles it. The answer matters because every derived reading of an extended relative inherits whatever assignment the parent's house is given.

What Would Settle It A textual comparison across the Hellenistic, Arabic and Latin house literature, identifying the earliest passage that derives a collateral relative from a parent house rather than simply listing that relative among a house catalogue, and dating the transmission of that step.

Expertise Needed History of astrology; Arabic and Latin manuscript studies; history of the exact sciences

Question posed in A History of Horoscopic Astrology, James Herschel Holden.

Open Aries 26

Why It Is Open Charubel gave a picture to every other degree of Aries. Here the entry opens straight into the reading and no image is set at all. Two independent transcriptions of the book agree, and the second of them does preserve his picture-less lines elsewhere, such as "This is a blank degree." and "Too revolting to be given.", so this is an absence in the printing rather than a loss in a scan. Whether the degree was ever set with an image, and whether Charubel withheld one deliberately, is not settled by the copies consulted.

What Would Settle It Collation of this degree against a copy of the 1898 first printing, and against the serialisation Charubel published in Alan Leo's Astrologer's Magazine from December 1890, either of which would show whether an image line was ever set and later dropped.

Expertise Needed History of astrology; analytical bibliography of Victorian occult printing

Question posed in The Degrees of the Zodiac Symbolised, Charubel (John Thomas), 1826-1908, Aries 26.

Open Scorpio 27

Why It Is Open The neighbouring degrees carry pictures, a mole at Scorpio 26 and a crouching tiger at Scorpio 28, but this entry opens straight into the reading with no image set. Two independent transcriptions agree, and the second preserves Charubel's picture-less lines elsewhere, so the gap belongs to the printing rather than to a damaged scan. Whether an image was ever set for the degree is not settled by the copies consulted.

What Would Settle It Collation of this degree against a copy of the 1898 first printing, and against the serialisation Charubel published in Alan Leo's Astrologer's Magazine from December 1890, either of which would show whether an image line was ever set and later dropped.

Expertise Needed History of astrology; analytical bibliography of Victorian occult printing

Question posed in The Degrees of the Zodiac Symbolised, Charubel (John Thomas), 1826-1908, Scorpio 27.

Open Pisces 24

Why It Is Open Where every neighbouring degree carries a picture, this one carries a row of stars in the printed source, and the reading that follows opens by saying the degree is not capable of being described in words. Whether the stars are Charubel's own mark for something he would not put into a picture, or a compositor's rule standing in for matter that never reached the page, is not decided by the printing itself, and the two transcriptions consulted here render the mark differently from each other.

What Would Settle It Collation against a copy of the 1898 first printing and against the serialisation in Alan Leo's Astrologer's Magazine from December 1890, together with any surviving correspondence or editorial note that explains the mark.

Expertise Needed History of astrology; analytical bibliography of Victorian occult printing

Question posed in The Degrees of the Zodiac Symbolised, Charubel (John Thomas), 1826-1908, Pisces 24.

Open Cerberus

Why It Is Open A popular claimed Sanskrit cognate (sarvara, an epithet of one of Yama's dogs) has been judged phonetically problematic by the standard modern academic authority on Greek etymology, Robert Beekes, who classifies the name Kerberos as Pre-Greek instead, meaning no successful derivation from any known Indo-European root has been established.

What Would Settle It Either a securely attested Pre-Greek Aegean word the name can be shown to derive from, which would require new epigraphic or comparative evidence beyond what currently survives, or a phonologically sound Indo-European derivation succeeding where the Sanskrit-cognate proposal has failed.

Expertise Needed Historical and comparative Indo-European linguistics, Pre-Greek substrate studies

Question posed in Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Robert S. P. Beekes, with Lucien van Beek.