The Self-Kin · The Standing Thirds

The Salve

Drawn as a Sierpinski carpet. Remove the middle and the hole recurs at every scale.

The Local Rule. Reaching for what relieves the symptom. This is a Self-Kin figure: one person, repeating one thing. Everything further out in the catalogue is built by fusing figures like this one together.

Tending. Each easing makes the next reach for relief come sooner and surer, so relief is sought more often and faster..

Fraying. The reach for relief comes slower and less often, and the symptom is left to sit longer before anything is done..

Its Turning. Thin. What it builds: stopgaps stop silently becoming permanent.

Catalogued in The Self-Kin, alongside every other figure at this scale.

In a Weaving

Tending

You're reaching for relief sooner and more often, each easing making the next reach quicker.

Fraying

You're reaching for relief less often, and letting the ache sit longer before you act.

Tending is not good news, and Fraying is not bad news — a card describes a pattern already present, never an outcome. How to read the two.

Or follow a thread instead

A Standing Third

One person keeps supplying what the other needs to know. Expertise given generously, or help that stops them ever developing their own.

Part Five — The Standing Thirds

Twelve patterns one person generates alone, each with its Local Rule and both of its poles. Nothing sits underneath them, and every larger figure is built by fusing these.

Part Seven — The Turnings

The Twelve Private Turnings — Self

One per month, kept alone or with whoever's nearest — twelve small occasions, each built to make one Self-Kin's failure mode visible before it hardens.

Part Six — Weavings

The full working deck: fifty-two drawable figures across five kinships, each carrying two readings — plus one figure that's never drawn at all.

Part Four — The Ground Underneath

On Belief Systems That Know They're Built

Every belief system is constructed. The difference is honesty about it — and the difference between infecting someone and inoculating them.