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.
The playful materials help to visualise what is at stake on a quest: “What does your issue look like as a journey? What mythical creatures and animals will you meet along the way? What other questions become relevant when you look at the issue from others perspectives?” A multidimensional approach is enhanced by means of philosophical and intercultural sayings on the playing cards. In the fourth and final circle, the four basic colours green, blue, yellow, and red in the
creative excersise in-between the dialogue
four quadrants, symbolise the reaping of concluding visions from the conversations in the four rounds. With a Quintessence drop, you unroll the dialogue as a journey across the dialogue tablecloth: this symbolic act helps to imagine the essence of the exploration of the issue at stake and to express this in a poetic form
Dialogue as an art: listening, asking questions and answering authentically
Playing Guide Four Winds
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.
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
Butterfly, Scorpion, Fenix
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
Symbolic objects to enricht the dialogue
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?
Playing materials for a dialogue workshop
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.
Duration: 2 hours to one (half) day in a small group up to 8 players.
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
Dialogue Tablecloth with symbolic objects
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
The Colourful Tablecloth with the four rounds is to purchase for € 10.
Costs: You become a ‘QfWf-friend’ through a donation and get a welcoming gift of the book Amor Fati! If possible € 45,= a year on IBAN NL14TRIO0777827654 of the Quest for Wisdom foundation in Weesp.
The QfWf is happy with every donation given from a good heart!
Playfulness creates space for establishing meaningful connections between people, which fosters encounters that both entertain, educate and stimulate the participants: by letting go of our compulsion to let norms, codes and protocolles decide for us. This is an escape from our human responsibility and the possibility to cocreate a new interplay: the human condition of natality, as Hannah Arendt calls the new beginning that may arise in in-between spaces…. Feeling free to explore different perspectives together and to agree on appropriate rules for what is at stake, is what makes us human.
The Quest for Wisdom foundation has created the Wheel of the Intercultural Art of Living, on which the book and game Amor Fati elaborates, enhancing Global Citizenship. Amor Fati is an intercultural redesign of the board game Know your self! The book explains the board game as well as the philosophy of the Wheel of the intercultural art of living. Lecturer Michiel de Ronde says about this book:
“I see your work as a great reassessment, also revaluation, of the pre-modern world orientation. All those profound insights and life-creating practices that were often worshipped or cursed through hierarchical dominance, you present within a depth perspective of an endless horizontal mythic-human field, through which the world can become a home for all beings and people can meet on the basis of dialogue and appreciation.”
With the Quest for Wisdom Soul Circle the Amor Fati game and book have been performed by means of Arts Dialogues in nine gatherings from the summer 2025 till the summer 2026: Read the red thread through these gatherings as Playing Wisdom with Amor Fati Arts Dialogues for the Cosmopolis!
NL/EN, 2024, ISBN 978 90 441 3970 9
Also the bilingual Dialogue Tables Four Winds (De Vier Winden) is developed to enhance an open cosmopolitan culture as global citizens — the intercultural enriched version of What is at stake? What is your Quest?
The Adinkra-game consists of a set of cards with Akan symbols and proverbs, ordered according to the wisdom of the five elements earth, water, air, fire and ether — in a way that the Ghanaian elemental wisdom might be compared to European visions on the natural elements. In this way the game invites you to excercise intercultural communication!
There are more World Games and educative materials (to be) developed, in which intercultural perspectives are playfully and dialogically incorporated.
Workshops and Masterclasses around the themes of the QfWf-Archive dialogue and play forms are still to be requested, though not for sale anymore as board-game or Dialogue Table:
QfWf-Archive — Mythical-Philosophical Boardgames
Know yourself — the mythical-philosophical boardgame
One hundred percent of the money raised by the sale of all of the products will be used in realising our upcoming QfWf educational projects, all of which are non-profit and run by volunteers.
We’d love to receive your donation via a bank transfer:
bankrekening IBAN: NL14TRIO0777827654
Thanks for your gift that helps to realize the goals of the Quest for wisdom foundation (QfWf)!
You become a QfWf-friend by donating yearly
We hope for a donation of € 45,= per year – though we are happy with the amount you are able to give!
In addition in helping to realize the intercultural QfWf-programmes, contributing to our aim of Global Citizenship, by donating € 45,= per year as a QfWf friend you get:
the (e)book about the annual QfWf-programme, such as Amor Fati in 2025 and Amor Mundi in 2024;
The Wisdom Web operationalizes the intercultural art of living.
Around its core of reciprocity are transcultural values like empathy for inclusion and the beauty of being different.
On the Wisdom Web, wisdom from all corners of the world is collected and presented in a special symbolic way.
By collecting and arranging the artistic, handcrafted, philosophical, spiritual, narrative, and symbolic contributions from all over the world — via the Wheel of the Intercultural Art of Living — they are organized as expressions of wisdom, developing the Intercultural Art of Living.
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 2026-08
[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.
“It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us — onze diepste angst is dat we buitenmatig krachtig zijn. Het is ons licht niet onze duisternis die ons het meest bang maakt…” — Marianne Williamson in: A Return to Love.
“Let freedom reign. The sun shall never set on so glorious a human achievement!” — Nelson Mandela, 1994.
Leidschendammer Lounge Meeting
Each year the Quest for Wisdom organizes Seasonal Meetings in Circles to cocreate inter-cultural perspectives on themes of social relevance. The materials will be presented bij the Soul Circle on the Annual Meeting Day and events, like the intercultural 2024 programme. The poems, essays, music and other artistic materials are published on the Golden Ratio website as explorations and expressions of the QfWf-World Dream. In 2024 the theme “Global Citizenship” was documented in Amor Mundi and in 2025 Amor Fati, as stepping stones to make the Wheel of the Intercultural Art of Living work for an inclusive cosmopolitan culture, in which all people may feel at home and in harmony with all living beings:
“Global Citizenship is open communication between people, without being judgemental.
Respectful to each other, acknowledging that however different we are, we can stay connected, and are able to share!”
A world dream emerges when we start dreaming together. By sowing seeds of love in our own circles — instead of going along with reflexes of indifference, aggression and fear — so that a smile elicits laughter, spontaneity is embraced with opening your heart. How valuable are the differences between people to create a meaningful world and to make (working) life more colourful and fascinating — with people developing an eye for (inner) beauty. How beneficial when people are opening up so that the lover between people creates an inclusive society.
World Citizenship – Nour Kayali
A world we dream of is created by dreaming. By not forgetting our ‘childishly naive’ way to be open and confident. And let us not forget that the most beautiful things are born from our hopes and dreams. The most beautiful dreams and positive emotions empower ourselves both as individuals and communities, by an ethos that reaches to the stars and can change the world – these dreams begin with powerful dreamers like Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King. Like John Lennon singing “I’m a dreamer and I’m not the only one…”. Let’s start dreaming together about a world where each can find shelter and people around to feel at home, by starting with small actions in our own circles, so that our world-dream-power comes alive. With small steps that are big and loving deeds that are contagious. Weaving threads of soft skills that connects us as global citizens and living beings on Mother Earth, flowing with the stream of life….
Platform for the QfWf yearly theme — Global Citizenship
QfWf-event on Global Citizenship
The QfWf has launched the digital platform De Gulden Snede in 2024 in order to present the development of the project “Global Citizenship of the streat”. The Quest for Wisdom’s yearly search for themes through different creative media and channels will be elaborating in a World Citizenship programme. In it, the QfWf wants to express cosmopolitan voices in the harsh debate around the multicultural society, answering the hardening migration policies with positive experiences of intercultural encounters. In words, images and by music, the central idea and value of inclusion is expressed and embodied in a ceramic sculpture: the Rainbow Bird of Paradise with the Cosmic Egg, as part of a exhibition. See the Quest for Wisdom-Brochure.
Quo vadis: Becoming who you are
Hey you, being on two feet, wandering around the world … Dazedly dividing Mother Earth into mine and thine: Is this commandment of possession mayby theft and the greatest venom by which you have to prove with a document to be a human ‘citizen’ in order not to be treated as undocumented stranger and pariah?
Beyond the boundaries of the nation-state lies the cosmopolis: there, all beings-with-a-heart-that-can-bleed are welcomed and are asked for their names and stories, sitting around the fire with connecting scents, transcultural spices and honey wine in colourful company, where you as stranger and ‘other’ are welcomed.
World citizen where are you? As a fugitive from inner affairs in danger of losing the most precious thing, that is covered by status and power You split the world into friends and enemies, us and them, and your heart becomes hard – yet you feel a nomadic yearning for paradise with melancholy and sorrow.
Angela Gilds’ Spoken Word in the Amsterdam Library Reigersbos
For the 2025-theme, “Practices of Global Citizenship“, artists, philosophers and professionals highlighted their practices and visions as global citizens through artistic expressions, stories, podcasts and videos. The launching of the Amor Fati programme at the Amsterdam Public Library Reigersbos with the Amor Mundi exhibition including the Welcoming Migrant Series, as well as the book presentation, resulted in Arts Dialogues around Amor Fati themes by means of music, spoken word and dancing to welcome people as World Citizens, as we all are human from heart to heart:
The indigenous Surinamese cultural group Wehpokamanong
“World citizenship is open communication between people without judgment. Dignity toward each other, knowing that no matter how different we are, we are in connection with each other and can share this feeling together. Getting to know each other, transferring knowledge and experience, recognizing and acknowledging each other’s qualities. Beautiful journey to undertake together.
Last year was a wonderful year with several workshops aimed at connecting with each other through the art of living. Yodeling, modeling, painting, word art, dance, singing. A rich experience that we will continue and pass on this year. Let your light shine. You are unique!”
The Golden Ratio 2026-theme around World Citizenship explores “Inter-Cultural Rituals” with visual and musical expressions, philosophical and professional perspectives. Please, see the contributions from the QfWf circles on our digital platform Multimedia – De Gulden Snede.
A team event on intercultural communication around the dialogue tablecloth Four Winds
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.
The Quest for Wisdom foundation develops intercultural play and dialogue tables for celebrating life as humans in the cosmopolis. These forms can be used also for both individual and group counselling.
With the QfWf-educational and artistic materials, the foundation aims to contribute to the intercultural art of living and enhance developmental processes as well as a sense of community!
World Cafe dialogues with wisdom cards
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 fully human if and only if they play. 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 contexts 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 arts ― whereas oracle games, such as the Chinese Yijing and the Ghanaian Ifa oracle, exist in all cultures. Both gaming and playing are a powerful means, together with dialogue, for establishing connections between cultures.
The World Games contain a Guide for how to play the game with suggestions for engaging in a dialogue together as play group; family, team or community. Also, it is possible to ask for a Quest for Wisdom-facilitator or counsellor to guide you through the game.
Amor Fati
Workshop Know thyself!
The board game Man, know your self! has been enriched with intercultural perspectives and mythical symbols in a series of try outs 2022-2024 with the readers of the manuscript Amor Fati. After the publication of the book Amor Fati the redesigned version of the board game has beel realized in 2025 — thanks to the funding in 2023-2024 of the Quest for Wisdom project “Global Citizenship of the Street” in which the vision of the Quest for Wisdom is explained through the symbols in the Wheel of intercultural art of living.
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
Playful dialogues
Four Winds is a dialogue game around a colourful dialogue tablecloth, full of symbolism. Sitting around the tablecloth, the symbols enrich your conversation and deepen insights of you address the life themes or a social issues. With this redesign of the dialogue game What is at stake? How is your Quest? you will be using both a set of cards with quotes of European philosophers as well as a set of cards with intercultural perspectives from all corners of the world.
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 may explore as a group of friends, family or (sports or working) 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. If you prefer an expert who can introduce the Ghanaian wisdom tradition, ask for a Quest for Wisdom-counsellor.
Quintessence
introduces Amor Fati for 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 the four directions of the world, in order to find the good life!
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.
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The Annual Meeting for the QfWf-foundation with a Cultural ANBI status!
