Amor Fati

World Games — Amor Fati — Four Winds — Adinkra — Quintessence Game

The Cosmopolitan Art of Living

Amor Fati is a board game, in which you re-enact and reflect on life as a journey through a colourful landscape full of symbolism, picking up intercultural visions and mythical wisdom about the journey of life along the way. How the picked wisdoms enrich your vision on life, you share with your mates in the group, so that you deepen each other’s insights. As a result, the game stimulates both personal growth and offers an exercise for the art of living as a world citizen.

With the help of a Game Guide, a group of friends, family or team might go on a journey across the game board — while exchanging each others view on happiness in life — if one of the players wants to be the guide as a game and

dialogue facilitator. Also, it is possible to practice the art of living of amor fati under the guidance of a game supervisor from the Quest for Wisdom foundation.

Two world citizens have written a wonderful reflection, one in images and one poetical, on their journey towards happiness through the landscape of the art of living.

Amor Fati is a board game with 7 card sets, playing figures, rings, natural elements, dice, hourglass, spinning top, quintessence-shell and a game guide: ISBN: 9789492127167

Duration: depending on your wishes and possibilities, two to eight half-days, in a small group of 2 to 8 players.

Dialogue and Imagination

Amor Fati introduces players to the intercultural art of living; its name being derived from the classic motto of the art of living, literally meaning ‘the love of life’s fate’. The journey towards your destiny in life is captured in symbolic signposts to different wisdom traditions from the four cardinal directions. The power of play lies in the dynamics that arises between contemplation and playful interaction by throwing the dice and spinning the toll, resulting in surprise about which symbol one lands on (your destiny, fate or coincidence?). All these aspects contribute to a deepened understanding: the symbolism on the playing field appeals to the imagination and the game assignments call for alignment with the moral compass and trigger both reflection as well as exchange with the others from the playing group. It is precisely the tapping of all the sources within oneself and from each other and what life has in store for us, that forms the basis for a wise handling of the questions that life poses on us.

Each concentric circle on the playing field represents a theme of life, which is addressed by means of the symbols in each circle. Wandering over the symbolic landscape, you bring the intercultural meaning of the symbolism into a dialogue with your fellow players as a travel group; and you harvest the meaning after each game round on the game sheet. The intercultural significance of the symbolism is indicated on the playing cards with wisdom from stories, sayings and visions from different cultures. For example, players will be asked to wonder about enigmatic questions; comparable to koans — paradoxical statements such as “What is the sound of one hand?”, which students receive from their Buddhist teacher — and to philosophical ‘aporia’ (ancient Greek for desperation) and riddles to which there are several but no conclusive answers. These game assignments on the playing cards call for dialogue with oneself and exchange with the travel group.

Finding your destiny between freedom and determination

The journey across the playing field triggers the tension between the coercion of fate and the freedom to shape life yourself, which lies at the core of amor fati as art of living. In the game, players experience this tension by throwing the dice and the call to interpret the symbol on their path, by asking themselves: “What does the dark forest mean for the theme I’m investigating in the game?“. In this way, players are stimulated to reflect on the paradox of being thrown into situations and giving meaning to it as if you designed life’s course yourself: The

art of living of amor fati consists of the call to reconcile these two poles and to embrace being ‘thrown’ into life: by throwing the dice, giving meaning to the assigned symbol as a significant place in the labyrinth of life. By reflective notes on the game sheet as well as through dialogue with the travel group, players are making the proverbs and intercultural perspectives on the playing cards meaningful to the themes they explore in the game.

From outside to inside through seven stages (game rounds)

Players practice the cosmopolitan art of living as they wander along the paths in the game to the mysterious quintessence in the centre of the game board. They give meaning to their journey as it meanders in the existential tension between the coercion of destiny and the freedom to shape life yourself.

1. Pregame Round; players choose one of the four natural elements and a basic attitude in life, visible in the figure with the arms down for an alert following orientation or with the arms raised for a sensitive entrepreneurial life-based attitude.
2. The outer circle around the theme of Authenticity shows eight starting positions in the game as frames of thinking with a principle of happiness. These positions connect the roads in the game to one of the natural elements and the corresponding basic symbol eye, heart, spiral, hand.
3. The orange circle of Bildung (Education) is about how to find a good course in the dynamics between nature and culture, as well as intercultural tensions: players are given a philosophical tool, by means of six symbols that depict intercultural perspectives from different wisdom traditions.
4. The green circle represents the constant dynamics in life of Ups & Downs; heading towards the centre, players pass one of the six mythical places, which connect the good life with the tragic side of life, in order to align their inner compass – this is made visible by the Rings of moral motives.

5. 

   The purple circle of Ordeal invites the players t0 continue their journey and find themselves in one of the six landscapes of elemental imbalance, by which they are metaphorically confronted with the question how do I deal with a crisis in life?
6. The in-between Round of Encountering ‘the strange other’: here, the question at stake is whether you tend to ‘keep everything under control’ in a crisis situation or whether you are willing to accept help. Do you want to meet the mythical creature or animal that lives here and can offer you a different perspective on the journey of life?
7. The inner circle of finding your Destination. What does it mean to you that the centre with the four quadrants are of the same colours and show the same elemental symbols as the outer circle? Are you back at the beginning or is your perspective tilting from having to being: how does your basic element open the gateway to the quintessence?
   

   Game and book for world citizenship

   

   In the book of the same name, Amor Fati: Playing Wisdom for the Cosmopolis, Heidi Muijen provides background for the game as well as for the QfWf philosophy about the Wheel of the Intercultural Art of Living. This full-colour edition of 499 pages with English intercultural reflections by Greg Suffanti on his watercolour series – together with the visual work of Agnes Roothaan, who painted the game-board, Louis van Marissing who made the icons for the Wheel of the Intercultural Art of Living, Annelie van Steenbergen, Caroline Young, Nour Kayali, Klaske Rehorst, Josee Tesser, Elin Maljaars, Maya Plas & Mitra Muijen around the mythical-philosophical themes of Amor Fati – give the reader a surprising route of the imagination through the book. Amor Fati is a co-production with publisher Garant
   NL/EN 2024, ISBN 978-90-441-3970-9

   Amor Fati (game and book) wants to appeal to people with an open mind and a warm heart for the world. People with an interest in wisdom traditions as well as wisdom that arises from good conversation, living encounters and teamwork. Encounters between people ensure cross-pollination between their cultural backgrounds: a vital lifeline for the cosmopolis. This ideal of ‘the cosmic city’ — the ‘polis’ of citizens connected as a community across national borders — has ancient roots. It is the city of people who feel connected to a larger whole and to circles of concern. Global citizens who, in the words of freedom fighter Rosa Luxemburg, “feel at home in the whole world” and are touched by human tears and the ‘small’ good and beautiful things in life. People who feel that we are in need for wisdom from cultures worldwide for the questions of life in the global city — and who want to contribute with dedication to this ideal.

   

   Amor fati is the motto of the premodern attitude in life to bow for one’s fate. Although the name seems to indicate a fatalistic orientation in life, this ancient spiritual-philosophical art rather aims to strengthen the good life as a community and the mastery in life as an individual: by mildly greeting whatever comes on your path — neither to combat the unpleasent things nor to appropriate what gives happiness, but to embrace it and let it go again with love and understanding. This requires people to open their hearts to the full life, including tragedy — the ‘counterpart’ that is inextricably linked to happiness in life, like shadows to the light.

Update 2025-02