Medium's Harrow Mat

[Triskavanski]

So the Harrow Mat has the following line


When this mat is used to perform a harrowing (magical or not) over a grave or other burial site, the spirit of the interned body influences the harrowing; for each card drawn related to the past, the harrower can draw from the deck twice and choose which card to place.

So say for example, I'm doing Harrow or Greater Harrow, and I'm suppose to draw nine cards. Do I have the ability to draw twice each card from the deck? Or is it only specific cards or something?

[Geddy2112]

Harrowing is based on position, from the pathfinder wiki on harrowing (http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Harrow)
"During the spread, the harrower shuffles the deck, draws nine cards, and places them in a three-by-three array that indicates the positive and negative tidings of events past, present, and future. The left column represents the past, the middle column represents the present, and the right column represents the future"

The 3x3 grid is roughly the alignment grid. Each harrow card has an alignment, and the left column is for lawful cards. In the general sense, lawful represents the past, neutral the present, and chaos the future(on the L/C axis). "Similarly, the ethical and moral dimensions of a card represent its temporal position and outlook: the lawful ethic represents past events; the neutral ethic represents present events; the chaotic ethic represents future events; moral good represents a positive outlook; moral neutrality represents an unclear outlook; and moral evil represents a negative outlook"

Although the harrow mat is exactly unclear on cards related to the past. Is it meaning lawful cards? Or cards placed in the left place? I would suppose it is for the left position, as drawing a lawful card which then allows you to draw twice seems wonky.

[Florian]

The basic Harrow reading for one person works a bit like this, very simplified:
- Shuffle cards, draw 9 cards, form the 3x3 alignment grid.
- Read one card from each column (proceeding left to right) that is either a perfect alignment match to the character or the perfect opposite. If none matches, pick a partial match/opposite, if not possible pick neutral.
... so with the Mat, you draw 2 pairs of cards for each position at the left (L) column and chose which one to place. Essentially, this will generate more straight matches, so the boni generated by spells or class abilities will come up more often.