Why Freedom is in the deck
Freedom is card 45, in the Values cluster. It’s here because the word carries different weight in different languages, and the deck is played by people who grew up in many of them.
It has three readings:
- Having options. The common English reading: being able to choose.
- An inner, unbounded state. Russian has two words for freedom, svoboda and volya. Meduza describes volya as a wide, inner kind of freedom.
- An ideal you fight for. Gladkova and Larina discuss Polish wolność as a word with that kind of weight.
A critical review of this line of work doubts how testable “untranslatable” words are. So treat these as strong tendencies, not fixed facts.
Read from different places
At a table, the three readings turn into three kinds of story. One person might talk about the day they moved out. Another might describe a feeling on an empty road. A third might bring up a grandparent and a border.
If you’re asking what freedom means to you, the card gives that question somewhere to land. The die picks the angle, and every player brings their own language to it.
Freedom shares the Values cluster with Fairness, Luck, Honesty and Death.
The other side: Compass
The other side is Compass. It was picked for finding direction, and as a gift for someone who’s leaving.
How to play this card
Draw it. Choose a side: Freedom or Compass. Roll the die. Look at the word from that side. Say as much or as little as feels right.
Keep going
- Honesty · card 14
- Death · card 11
- Adulthood · card 18
- Thesis: the game · Play online · Research