A Primer
The 36 Expressions are an application of a larger model I have been developing called the HERE Framework (the fuller framework is not quite ready to public). This particular expression of it came out unexpectedly, and a few synchronicities came together, not least of which coming across the structure of Lenormand oracle cards. It gave me an aspect that can be used for contemplation or divination with this framework. It is in no way analogous to Lenormand, it simply opened the thread for me to follow.
You do not need to know the full HERE Framework to understand or work with the 36 Expressions. In fact, this system can serve as an introduction to some of HERE’s underlying architecture.
The larger framework includes additional layers, including a geometric orientation model built around the cube. That larger geometry is outside the scope of this primer. Here (no pun intended), we are working with a particular part of HERE: Location, Type, and Polarity. Location is a Combination of Lines and Domains
At its simplest, this system is a way of locating and describing what is happening here.
The Framework at a Glance
Location → What kind of happening we’re examining
A Location is created by the intersection of a Line and a Domain.
Lines → Where the happening sits in relation to realization
Potential
→ what could be
Liminal
→ what is in transition or becoming
Realized
→ what has taken form
Domains → What kind of phenomenon we’re examining
Information
→ distinction, meaning, and knowing
Energy
→ movement, capacity, and action
Structure
→ form, organization, and constraint
Field → What is happening here
Day / Night → the quality of the Field
Relation → How it is interacting
Out / In → the orientation of the Relation
3 Lines × 3 Domains = 9 Locations
9 Locations × 2 Types × 2 Polarities = 36 Expressions of Here
The Three Lines
The Line describes where something is located in the process of emergence.
Potential
What could be.
Potential contains capacity or possibility that has not yet crossed fully into formation or actuality.
Potential does not mean unreal. A seed contains real potential before it becomes a tree. Information can exist as possibility before it is known. Energy can be present before it moves. Structure can exist as a pattern before it takes form.
Liminal
What is becoming.
Liminal is the threshold. It is the Location of crossing, negotiation, encounter, change, and transformation.
Something is no longer simply possible, but neither has it settled fully into realized form. Liminal is where possibility meets conditions.
Realized
What has taken form.
Realized describes something sufficiently actualized to operate as an existing distinction, movement, condition, or form.
Realized does not mean permanent or complete. Something can be realized and continue to change.
The Three Domains
The Domain describes what fundamental dimension of an experience is being considered.
Information
Distinction, meaning, and knowing.
Information allows one thing to be distinguished from another. It concerns what can be known, interpreted, articulated, and recognized.
Energy
Capacity, movement, and change.
Energy concerns the capacity for something to happen and the movement through which change occurs.
Structure
Organization, pattern, and form.
Structure concerns how something is organized. It includes the patterns, constraints, relationships, and boundaries through which form becomes possible and persists.
The Nine Locations
Each location is created by the intersection of a Line, Potential, Liminal, or Realized, and a Domain, Information, Energy, or Structure.
The location names what kind of event is occurring there. Each location can then be encountered in two ways: as Field, describing the state or quality of the event itself, or as Relation, describing how a participant stands in relationship to it.
| Information | Energy | Structure | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Potential | Availability | Capacity | Conditions |
| Liminal | Perspective | Choice | Change |
| Realized | Awareness | Movement | Configuration |
These are not nine additional variables. They are names for the nine intersections already created by the system.
The Processes
Drawing lines through the grid, we can see processes emerging.
Information
Availability → Perspective → Awareness
What can be known is encountered through perspective and realized in awareness.
Energy
Capacity → Choice → Movement
What can move passes through choice and expresses as movement.
Structure
Conditions → Change → Configuration
What can take form is shaped through change into configuration.
But the grid can be read in other directions as well.
Liminal: Perspective → Choice → Change
We encounter from somewhere. We choose from there. Change occurs.
Traversals of Choice
The diagonals are two Traversals of Choice, the Encountered and the Underlying. Reading along either diagonal means traversing Choice from a different orientation.
Encountered
Availability → Choice → Configuration
Bounded by what is informationally available and what has actually taken form. This is the situated reality of the participant.
What can I know? What can I choose? What is here?
This is the more immediate, experiential orientation. Choice is informed by what is available to knowing and by the reality already configured around us.
Underlying
Conditions → Choice → Awareness
Asks what is operating beneath or through the encounter.
What makes this possible? What can I choose? What becomes known?
This is a more underlying or esoteric orientation. Choice is situated between the conditions that make an experience possible and the awareness that emerges through it.
In both cases, Choice is at the center.
Not choice as omnipotence. Not choice as the ability to dictate reality.
Choice as a liminal event, occurring within conditions, informed by perspective, acting upon capacity, and participating in change.
Location Types and Polarities
A Location tells us where we are in the model. But Location alone does not tell us everything that is happening there. At each Location, we can look in two different ways.
Field (Day/Night)
Relation (In/Out)
These Expressions are the basis of the cards. They are not 36 isolated concepts. Each belongs to a Location, emerges through a Type, and expresses one pole of that Type.
Field and Relation are the two Types. Each Type contains a polarity. The Field is expressed through Day and Night. The Relation is expressed through Out and In.
The nine Locations tell us where something is occurring; Field and Relation tell us how we are looking at it; the polarities tell us how it is being expressed; and the cards create meaning through their relationships with one another.
Across nine Locations, this produces 36 Expressions: 9 Locations x 2 Types x 2 Polarities = 36 Expressions
Field
What is happening here in itself?
Day
What is available or apparent here?
Night
What remains latent or unapparent here?
Relation
How is it interacting?
Out
How is this oriented toward what lies beyond itself?
In
How is this oriented toward what is held within?
Field
Definition
Field describes the intrinsic condition, state, or mode of what is occurring at a Location. It considers the phenomenon as it exists or operates in itself, without making its relationship to what lies beyond itself the primary focus.
Core question
What is happening here in itself?
Interpretive function
Use Field when the emphasis is on the internal condition of the Location rather than its interaction, orientation, or relationship with something else.
Day
Definition
Day describes a Field operating through what is presently available, apparent, determinate, distinguishable, or sufficiently established to be engaged directly. Day represents availability within the Field, not positivity, activity, consciousness, visibility, certainty, or externality.
Core question
What is available or apparent here?
Does not mean: good, correct, positive, active, conscious, objective, external, certain, permanent, or complete.
Semantic anchors: availability, apparentness, determination, presence, distinction, direct engagement, established capacity.
Night
Definition
Night describes a Field operating through what is presently latent, unapparent, unresolved, indirect, indeterminate, concealed, or still open to discovery or reconfiguration. Night can hold possibility that Day cannot.
Core question
What remains latent or unapparent here?
Does not mean: bad, false, negative, passive, unconscious, hidden intentionally, confused, weak, absent, or unreal.
Semantic anchors: latency, non-apparentness, indeterminacy, depth, unresolved possibility, indirect presence, discovery, openness.
Relation
Definition
Relation describes how what is occurring at a Location interfaces with what lies beyond itself. It considers orientation across a distinction between the phenomenon and something other than, surrounding, preceding, following, containing, or contained by it.
Core question
How does what is happening here relate to what lies beyond itself?
Interpretive function
Use Relation when the emphasis is not simply on what something is doing or being, but on how it is positioned, oriented, exchanged, influenced, connected, differentiated, or bounded in relation to something else.
Out
Definition
Out describes a Relation oriented from the Location toward what lies beyond it, reaching, addressing, affecting, or making contact with what is other than itself. Out does not require literal motion.
Core question
How is this oriented toward what lies beyond itself?
Does not mean: active, masculine, positive, expansive, aggressive, expressive, public, giving, independent, or physically outward.
Semantic anchors: beyond, extension, external reference, projection, influence, contact, differentiation, outward orientation.
In
Definition
In describes a Relation oriented toward, through, or in continuity with what is held within the Location or system, through reception, incorporation, return, retention, or containment. In does not require passivity.
Core question
How is this oriented toward what is held within itself?
Does not mean: passive, feminine, negative, contracted, private, withholding, dependent, receptive in every sense, stagnant, or physically inward.
Semantic anchors: within, internal reference, reception, incorporation, continuity, retention, return, containment.
A Coordinate
The 36 Expressions are not intended to divide reality into good and bad states.
Day is not better than Night. Out is not better than In.
Likewise: Known is not inherently better than Unknown. Assert is not inherently better than Yield. Construction is not inherently better than Dissolution. Open is not inherently better than Closed.
Each describes a different expression available at a particular Location.
A card therefore identifies a coordinate, not a conclusion.
It tells us something about where we are and how something is operating there. Meaning develops through the question being asked, the position of the card, and its relationships with the other cards around it.
This is important to how the system is meant to be used. The cards do not need to contain complete stories on their own. Relationship creates meaning.
The Nine Locations, In Full
Combining the three Lines and three Domains creates the nine Locations of this system. Each Location can then be examined through both Field and Relation.
Availability is the information that could enter into knowing. It describes informational possibility before a particular knowing is realized, including both what information is present as Concept and how that information may be reached through Access. Availability does not mean something is already known. It means it is available to knowing.
Field
Concept
What information is available?
Concept describes information as a possible object of knowing: a distinction, idea, pattern, or meaning that may or may not yet be available to awareness.
Day: Known
Information is available to awareness or recognition.
Night: Unknown
Information remains outside present knowing. It may exist as possibility or pattern without yet being recognized.
Relation
Access
How is that information available to the knower?
Access describes the manner by which potential information is available to be encountered or entered into relationship with.
Out: Exoteric
Information is outwardly, publicly, commonly, or externally accessible.
In: Esoteric
Information is inwardly or conditionally accessible, such as through interiority, specialized understanding, symbolism, or initiation.
Perspective is the situated encounter through which information becomes legible. It exists at the threshold between information being available and information becoming realized as awareness. Perspective includes both the Context in which information appears and the Standing of the knower in relation to it. Information is never encountered from nowhere. Perspective names the somewhere from which it is encountered.
Field
Context
What shapes the legibility of the information?
Context describes the informational conditions surrounding a distinction that affect how it can be interpreted, situated, or understood.
Day: Clarifying
Context makes distinctions, relationships, or meaning easier to discern.
Night: Obscuring
Context conceals, complicates, blends, or leaves distinctions unresolved.
Relation
Standing
From where does the knower encounter it?
Standing describes the standpoint from which information is encountered, the relationship between the knower and that which is known.
Out: Objective
The standpoint is oriented beyond the particular observer toward what can be established independently or intersubjectively.
In: Subjective
The standpoint is oriented through the particular observer’s perspective, interpretation, interiority, or experience. Subjective does not mean false, just as Objective does not guarantee truth.
Awareness is information present as realized knowing. What was available to knowing and encountered through perspective has become distinguishable within awareness. Awareness includes both Definition, how information is articulated, and Validation, how that knowing is established in relationship to the knower or the world. Awareness does not necessarily mean objective truth. Something can be known experientially, empirically, explicitly, or implicitly.
Field
Definition
What has become distinct or articulated?
Definition describes information that has acquired enough determination to articulate what something is, means, or distinguishes.
Day: Explicit
Meaning or distinction is directly articulated, specified, or apparent.
Night: Implicit
Meaning is present without being fully articulated. It may be embedded, inferred, tacit, or carried within something else.
Relation
Validation
How is that knowing established or tested?
Validation describes the basis through which realized information is established or recognized as knowing.
Out: Empirical
Knowing is grounded in externally observable evidence, measurement, or phenomena that can in principle be checked beyond the individual knower.
In: Experiential
Knowing is grounded in direct lived or interior experience, with the experience itself providing the primary basis of knowing.
Capacity is the energy available for movement or change. It describes energetic possibility before movement is realized, including both energy held as Charge and energy available through Exchange. Capacity is not movement itself. It is what could move.
Field
Charge
How is capacity for movement held?
Charge describes capacity for movement or change held as potential before that movement is enacted.
Day: Potent
Capacity for movement or effect is presently available as potency.
Night: Latent
Capacity remains present but dormant, reserved, concealed, or not presently expressed.
Relation
Exchange
How is capacity for movement exchanged?
Exchange describes the movement of energetic potential between a system and what lies beyond it.
Out: Radiate
Energy is emitted, offered, or distributed outward into the surrounding field.
In: Absorb
Energy is taken in, received, or incorporated from the surrounding field.
Choice is the threshold at which available capacity is oriented toward movement. It sits between what could move and what does move. Choice includes both Authority, how the capacity to act is held, and Agency, how participation in movement occurs. Choice here does not mean omnipotence or unlimited control. Choice occurs within conditions, from a perspective, and with the capacity actually available.
Field
Authority
How is the capacity for choice held or permitted?
Authority describes the manner in which capacity to act is held at the threshold between potential and realized movement.
Day: Assert
Capacity to act is brought actively into presence or exercised.
Night: Yield
The active exercise of force is loosened, allowing movement, conditions, or other influence to be met without imposing against them. Yield is not the absence of authority. It is a way of holding authority.
Relation
Agency
How is choice enacted?
Agency describes the manner in which a system participates in determining movement rather than merely possessing the capacity for it.
Out: Direct
Participate by supplying orientation to movement or influencing how it proceeds.
In: Receive
Participate by allowing orientation, impulse, or movement to arrive and responding to what is received.
Movement is energy expressed in actuality. Capacity is no longer merely available. Something is occurring. Movement includes both Flow, how movement proceeds, and Direction, how that movement is oriented. Movement does not require dramatic action. Returning, receiving, searching, yielding, and other less externally visible movements remain movement within the system.
Field
Flow
How does the movement proceed?
Flow describes the mode through which energy moves once potential has become activity.
Day: Execute
Carry an available movement, pattern, or capacity into effect.
Night: Search
Move through what is not yet fully determined. Movement itself becomes a means of discovery. Search is not failed execution.
Relation
Direction
Where is the movement oriented?
Direction describes realized movement relative to its course, trajectory, origin, or prior condition.
Out: Advance
Carry movement onward into what comes next.
In: Return
Carry movement toward origin, source, center, prior state, or previously traversed condition.
Conditions are the structural possibilities and limitations within which form can arise. They describe what makes particular configurations possible, including both the Blueprint that patterns possible form and the Constraint that permits or restricts it. Conditions do not determine exactly what will take form. They establish the space of possibility within which form can occur.
Field
Blueprint
What pattern makes form possible?
Blueprint describes structure held as possibility: the organizing pattern from which particular form may emerge.
Day: Specification
Possible structure is encoded through determinate particulars, parameters, requirements, or arrangements.
Night: Principle
Possible structure is encoded through an organizing rule or underlying pattern whose particular realization remains open. A Principle preserves organization across potentially different particulars.
Relation
Constraint
What limits or conditions the forms that are possible?
Constraint describes how a possibility space is bounded or structured.
Out: Prescribe
Determine or direct what form may take place.
In: Permit
Establish the space within which form is allowed to emerge. Permission is not the absence of structure.
Change is the alteration of structure between configurations. It describes structure in transition rather than structure as either pure possibility or completed form. Change includes both Formation, how structure is constructed or dissolved, and Transformation, how changing structure relates to what already exists through replacement or preservation. Change does not inherently mean progress, growth, or improvement.
Field
Formation
How is structure taking shape?
Formation describes organization or disorganization at the threshold between possible and realized form.
Day: Construction
Organization is assembled, established, or increased through the formation of structure.
Night: Dissolution
Organization is loosened, disassembled, or released through the loss of existing structure.
Relation
Transformation
How is structure changed through relationship?
Transformation describes the relationship between structural change and the organization already present.
Out: Replace
Establish a different organization in place of an existing one.
In: Preserve
Transform while retaining continuity with an existing organization, pattern, or form. Preservation does not mean preventing change.
Configuration is structure present in a particular arrangement. It describes what has actually taken form here and now. Configuration includes both Form, how realized structure holds, and Boundary, how that form relates to what exists beyond it. A configuration is not necessarily permanent. It is simply the structure that is present now.
Field
Form
What shape or organization has structure taken?
Form describes structure sufficiently instantiated to maintain an actual configuration.
Day: Stable
Organization tends to persist or maintain its configuration through change or time.
Night: Mutable
Organization remains available to alteration, variation, or reconfiguration while continuing to exist as form. Mutable does not mean unstable.
Relation
Boundary
Where does this configuration meet what is outside it?
Boundary describes the structural distinction through which realized form establishes relationship with what lies beyond itself.
Out: Open
The boundary permits contact, exchange, entry, exit, or relationship across itself.
In: Closed
The boundary restricts contact or exchange across itself, maintaining separation or containment. Neither is inherently preferable.
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