Cogitamen
A Contemporary Oracle
While other oracles ask you to translate esoterica across centuries,
Cogitamen is built from signs you already read.
Signs from now
A broadcast camera, a screen full of hearts and binary, a skyline, a coin. The symbols come from the world you already live in, so nothing has to be decoded before it can be read.
Inverted isn’t worse
Every card carries two faces, and the reversed one is a different question rather than a bad answer. The Reaper inverted is rebirth. The Remedy inverted is the upkeep that means nothing breaks.
No numbers
The cards aren’t numbered, because numbered cards invite numerology, exactly the inherited, specialist knowledge this oracle sets out to do without.
The forty five cards
Grouped by what they concern. No group outranks another, and no card outranks another. Open any card to see both of its faces.
how a reading goes
1
wash the deck
Spread the cards face down and swirl them. Cards that come out turned around are meant to be; that’s how inversions happen.
2
fix the query
Ask a question out aloud or write it down first. A question still being edited while the cards come up is one you’ll bend to fit whatever appears.
3
lay a spread
Each position asks something specific. Draw one card per position, in order, and don’t rotate what you turn over.
4
read the gaps
The card answers its position. The reading is what happens between positions, and that part is yours to do.
four spreads to start with
Symbolae — a game played with Cogitamen
The oracle asks what a card means to you.
Symbolae asks what it means to someone else.​​
The Subject
One card sits at the center all game. Everything that follows has to answer to it, and no two sessions feel alike.
The Challenges
Trouble arrives one card at a time, in an order nobody chose. Some of it lands close to home.
The Methods
You decide what the Subject should do. What you don't decide is who ends up defending it.
The Reading
Draw the line between the three. The table votes on whose line went somewhere worth going.
cogitamen
​
© 2026 ParaMind CR S.R.L., cédula jurídica 3-102-756186. All rights reserved.
Concept, text, card design, and illustration © 2026 Alberto Neurohr.
Cogitamen™ is a trademark of ParaMind CR S.R.L.
A tool for reflection, not a substitute for professional advice.