The ‘Four Winds’ take you on a journey of discovery in four rounds, around the colourful dialogue tablecloth, full of symbolism. These symbols enrich your conversation with mythological wisdom and intercultural perspectives.
Through a dialogue guide, you explore a challenging issue as group of friends, family or team, or, each individual can investigate their own question with the group.
Depending on the size of the group (2 to 8 players), the game will be completed in two hours, half a day or a full day.
It is also possible to engage a host dialogue coach from the Quest for wisdom foundation.
The art of listening, asking questions and answering authentically
In four rounds of dialogue ― visible as the four circles on the dialogue tablecloth ― participants move from the outside in, to the inner circle in which the Four Winds are depicted.
Images tell a story
The colours on the dialogue table refer to the four elements earth, water, air and fire. These are connected in the game with a basic symbol, which opens a space for encounter, such as the eye as a ‘mirror of the soul’.
“I dreamed I was a butterfly… or am I a butterfly dreaming of being a human?”
Zhuang Zi (369-286 BCE)
The four rounds
Dialogue tablecloth Four Winds
In the first round, the images (and rich objects) in the outer circle of the dialogue tablecloth invite participants to imagine the theme they want to investigate.
In the second round you are given one of the eight symbols for philosophical tools with intercultural perspectives: these represent qualities for the art of living to be able to deal with the issue more wisely.
In the third round, you roll the coloured dice and see which creature or animal you encounter in the mythical landscape on the dialogue tablecloth. How could the virtues and vices, as well as divine qualities that they embody, help you to realise the good life?
For the fourth round, the wind rose in the four elementary colours on the dialogue tablecloth visualizes the four cardinal directions, from which the harvest of the game might help to get the issue in the right direction. Participants describe their harvest from the dialogue on the Game Fill-in form as a quatrain.
Cards with intercultural perspectives, rich objects around the playful dialogue table. Rich objects to enrich the dialogue
Duration: 2 hours to one (half) day in a small group up to 8 players.
Playing material
ISBN: 9789492127150 Four Winds
Also in a Dutch version:
ISBN: 9789492127143 Vier Winden
Box with:
Dialogue Guide: explaining the game and the symbols
Playing Field:
1 Dialogue table cloth
Game attributes:
1 mirror;
1 key;
1 hourglass as rich object on the Dialogue table;
Small weights;
1 quintessence marble;
1 small talking stick;
1 hour glass
Playing Cards:
8 Philosophical Tools with Western perspectives
8 Philosophical Tools with intercultural perspectives
Fill-in forms:
Double sided with instructions for writing a quatrain
At the Wisdom Web, wisdom from all over the world is collected and presented in a special symbolic way.
In this sense, collecting, arranging, developing and presenting — via the Wheel of the Intercultural Art of Living — takes place in a very unique way, emphatically distinguished and handled differently than, for example, Wikipedia and other (open source) encyclopedias do.
In doing so, the QfWf wants to contribute to intercultural connections based on the realization that these:
grow through awareness of the historical roots of cultures,
thrive on interest in other cultures and wisdom traditions and
bear fruit through encounters and cross-cultural perspectives.
The Wisdom Web continues to grow organically, with a rich palette of philosophical, artistic and spiritual expression and reflections, which concretize the Wheel of the Intercultural Art of Living.
This is accomplished thanks to the input of various QfWf-authors[1]
update 2022-07
[1] QfWf authors are authors, actors, artists, designers, drafters, photographers, illustrators, video and film makers and other producers of text, images, sound, and stakeholders who make the texts and other materials available to a QfWf-site have made.
Pillar 1 World Games — playful wisdom for the cosmopolis
The Quest for wisdom foundation develops intercultural play and dialogue tables for celebrating life in the cosmopolis. These can be used also for both individual and group counselling.
With this educational material, the foundation aims to contribute to the intercultural art of living in training, education and developmental processes.
The German philosopher Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) wrote in his Aesthetic Letters that when people play they are human in the full sense of the word, and they are wholly human only if they play; and the Dutch philosopher Huizinga (1872-1945) regarded the ambivalent social and competitive nature of play as culture-building for societal domains such as justice, education and warfare.
Game forms also reflect specific cultural and social characteristics ― such as the game Monopoly, which reflects Western market ideology, the originally Persian game of chess, which is an exercise in strategic insight and martial art, whereas oracle games, such as the Chinese Yijing and the Ghanaian Ifa oracle ― exist in all corners of the world. Both gaming and playing are a powerful means, together with dialogue, for establishing connections between cultures.
The World Games series is derived from (inter)cultural wisdom traditions and they are developed with intercultural perspectives and transcultural means for the good life in the cosmopolis.
Amor Fati
The board game Man, know thyself! has been enriched with intercultural perspectives and mythical symbolism in a series of try outs 2022-2023.
Amor Fati is a board game for 2 to 8 people, in which you embark on 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 always share with your travel group, so that you deepen each other’s insights.
Four Winds
Four Winds is a dialogic game around a colourful dialogue tablecloth, full of symbolism from the four corners of the world, with which you address a life theme or a social issue, using one set of cards with European philosophies and one set of cards with intercultural perspectives.
The playing time is at least half a day and it is suitable for a group of 2 to 8 people. Using a Dialogue Guide, you will explore as a group of friends, family or team the issue at stake in four rounds. It is also possible to be guided by a game and dialogue facilitator from the Quest for wisdom foundation.
With this game for intercultural communication people get acquainted with a high context culture, especially the Ghanaian wisdom tradition.
With the Play guide it is possible to play the game as family, group of friends or team. When you want a facilitator who can introduce the Ghanaian wisdom tradition, ask for a Quest for Wisdom-facilitator.
Quintessence
Playing with wisdom from all corners of the world to help us find the good life in the cosmopolis!
The Quintessence game is a card game with wisdom from all corners of the world for practicing the art of living as a global citizen. The name refers to the intercultural symbolism of the natural elements and literally means the fifth element or the ‘quinta essencia’.
The goal is to have meaningful conversations in a small group on the basis of three described game forms and card readings with the 20 playing cards.
Duration is one hour to half a day per game form.
Animal Wisdom Crossing-Boarders
The game Animal Wisdom Crossing-Borders is under construction: Mythical symbolism which plays with wisdom and pranks of animals from all corners of the world, in order to find the good life!
Purchase of Educative Materials
One hundred percent of the money raised by the sale of all of the games will be used in realising our upcoming QFWF educational projects, all of which are non-profit and run by volunteers.
Quest for Wisdom Foundation (QFWF) stimulates the Intercultural Art of Living in a Globalized World!
The QFWF wants to contribute to a culture of openness and to cultural diversity (inter-esse) by tapping into one’s own and shared historical intercultural roots and wisdom traditions.
The QFWF programs have been honored twice by a cultural fund:
Storytelling programma Animal Wisdom in 2020-2021
With a subsidy from Prins Bernard Cultuurfonds i.s.m. Fonds zuidoost, awarded in 2020, the QFWF has developed a storytelling-Project- around animal wisdom in storytelling traditions from the four corners of the world. The purpose of this program is to bring ancient wisdom into new forms for contemporary ears, which has led to the development of the website Animal Wisdom and the development of an Intercultural lesson for elementary education.
The “Global Citizenship of the streets” project in 2023-2024
With a subsidy from the Cultural Participation Fund, the QFWF will realize the “Wereldburgerschap van de straat” “World Citizenship of the Street” project in 2023-2024 in the form of a triptych in 3 phases. Reflecting on the history of slavery (phase 1) and collecting intercultural ingredients of dreams of global citizenship in images, music, dance, stories and other expressions of (inter)cultural heritage (phase 2) culminates in a social experiment with collaborating partner organizations (phase 3) for global citizenship around an intercultural program with the wisdom and beauty from the four corners of the world.
The QDWD does this by using Art as a magic and collecting it as ingredients in book form, under the title Amor Fati and Amor Mundi, on a digital platform The Golden Ratio and in a co-creative program; developed and implemented in collaboration with the Cultural Dream Weavers Foundation and the Curinesa Foundation, independent artists, and with the Wehpokamanong association, which preserves the cultural heritage of indigenous groups from Suriname in the Netherlands and passes it on to young generations. This culminates in a final event in the late summer of 2024.
Being able to deal effectively with our differences is a delicate matter in our current times.
The objective of the foundation calls for an intercultural art of living as an answer to the appeal of ‘the multicultural society’.
Dealing with differences
Dealing with differences has been raised as a social issue by Paul Scheffer, in his controversial article Het multicultural drama (2000). Before that, the international debate had been heated up by Samuel P. Huntington’s terrifying perspective on the Clash of Civilizations (1996). Since then, there has been a heated political debate in many lands with multicultural populations, and the social debate in the social media is getting louder and more troubled ….
The QFWF wants to play a role in tilting the debate
The QFWF wants to help turn the polarized debate about migration, refugees and religious strife from a problem for ‘political experts’, to a relevant issue for all of us, making an ethical appeal to everyone, from the current administration to our neighbours on the street.
How do we deal with, and how do we want to deal with ‘the strange other’?
That strange other can be the foreigner, the outcast, the fringe figure, the refugee and sometimes ourselves …
In order to tilt the debate, the QFWF sees it as a call to recalibrate the awareness of who ‘we’ are as citizens of the cosmopolis: nomads with intercultural identities.
These geopolitical landslides affect all of us as co-inhabitants of our shared planet Earth.
That is why the QFWF addresses this issue as a question, an ethical issue of a practical, social and political nature:
How do we not exclude the other and the others ― the ‘stranger’, of a seemingly different nature ― but to see them as part of us, as ‘the strange other(s)’ in ourselves?How do we create growth inducing inter- and transcultural connections, instead of a divide and rule philosophy, us versus them mentality and an increasingly aggressive environment, as can be heard in the cry: “Who does not belong to ‘us’ (culture, race, religion, ethnicity) is against us …?”
By stimulating the recognition of the beauty of our differences and shared commonality, instead of a fear of ‘otherness’.
The world of the arts and (inter-)cultural expressions create space both in and between people and establish meaningful connections between cultures!
Creating inter- and transcultural connections
The QFWF aims to collect artistic, philosophical and practical forms of cultural wisdom from East and West, North and South and to further develop them into useful forms that inform and inspire the intercultural art of living … so that people interact as willing players in an in-between space (as defined by Hannah Arendt) and also keep in touch with their core selves, so that we can fully develop and happily share our world with each other in a spirit of cooperation, openness and hospitality.
Hospitality, respect and openness and other shared values of humanity are what truly connect people as sisters and brothers ― open to a common playing field for all!
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Images tell a story
With a subsidy from 
