January 2010 Archives
Hanson-Roberts 9 of Pentacles
Today’s selection is from my mini Hanson-Roberts Tarot Deck which comes with The Essential Book of Tarot from Peter Pauper Press. This is a handy little combination small enough to fit into a purse and convenient for travel. (app. 4.25 x 3.5″) The deck is based on the Rider-Waite-Smith deck. Mary Greer, in Tarot For Your Self, describes it as “fairy-tale style, non-threatening”. This is the deck that doesn’t contain any nudity, not the Marseilles deck as I previously said.
The Nine of Pentacles shows a well-dressed woman in a lush garden holding a bird on her hand. A castle rises in the right background. My first impression was of material abundance and contentment.
Nine of Pentacles
Then I turned to the companion book and saw that it interprets the card as meaning: wisdom, knowledge & talent are present, but no love life; … a lonely time, to be met with a measure of detachment. Success, recognition and wealth will follow“.
Hm. Was I really so far off? I turned to Kenner’s Tarot For Writers to find her interpretation closer to mine. She calls it a card of “comfort and prosperity” and points out that though the woman is alone, she doesn’t appear to be lonely. In fact, she is smiling, though it may be hard to tell from my slightly blurred photo.
Kenner says the card indicates financial security, safety, solitude and peace; “gardens symbolize rest and reflection, order over chaos, and refuge”.
So I guess the lesson here is that the books aren’t always going to agree. That’s why it’s called interpretation.
What do you think? Is she lonely?
Lyndi
Albano-Waite Three of Swords
Three of Swords
This image is from my Albano-Waite deck which I purchased in the 1970′s. This is a version of the standard Pamela Colman Smith / Arthur Edward Waite deck, published as a “New Color Deluxe Edition” by Frankie Albano.
The LWB that came with the deck (the original wording by Waite, I’m sure) states: Removal, absence, delay, division, rupture, dispersion, and all that the design signifies naturally, being too simple and obvious to call for specific enumeration.
The first words that come to my mind are heartbreak and sorrow. In Tarot for You Self, a terrific sourcebook, Mary Greer explains that “all threes deal with the ideal versus the real. They test your ability to handle the mundane and the disappointments of your idealizations.” But I really like her description of this card as “heart and mind at odds”. You can find her Tarot blog here: http://marygreer.wordpress.com/.
It’s interesting to me that the suit of Swords corresponds to the element of air, which represents communication. I’m not sure why that suit always shows the darkest and most negative of images. Perhaps it’s fitting in the sense that miscommunication so often leads to problems between people, not to mention what we do to ourselves through our own negative thinking.
My apologies for the fuzziness of the image. It’s not easy to photograph tarot cards. They’re fairly small and hard to focus on, plus they’re glossy, so I have to turn off the flash. Otherwise it reflects back from the card, obliterating part of the image.
Lyndi
Marseilles Tarot: The Hermit
The Hermit
Tarot de Marseilles is an old deck, with simple drawings using primary colors. While I like the colors and the style of it, it’s not an easy deck to use if you’re not proficient with the cards for a couple of reasons. First because the Minor Arcana, i.e. the Suit cards, aren’t illustrated like most other decks. They’re more like standard playing cards with a number and symbols of the suits. Second, the LWB is very perfunctory and not terribly helpful. In all fairness, they had to condense the material in order to fit both French and English versions into the book. It includes some information on how to use the cards and sample spreads. It’s also a good deck if you don’t like a lot of nudity in your cards. (Some can be quite explicit. I don’t have any of those, yet.)
The Hermit, l’hermite in French, is card nine, here represented as VIIII. It shows an old man in a robe holding a lantern in one hand and a walking stick in the other. The hermit represents the Wise Old Man (or woman) who often plays the role of mentor in the Hero’s Journey.
The LWB for this deck lists two sets of meanings for this card:
Moral: Wisdom, meditation, morality, respectability
Physical: Long life but trouble by chronic disease.
The second one had me saying, Duh! Anyone who lives a long life will undoubtedly have chronic health problems. But maybe that wasn’t so obvious 200 years ago when most people didn’t live very long.
So I turned to Corrine Kenner’s Tarot For Writers for more information:
Other keywords for the card include introspection, solitude, mysticism and illumination.
According to Kenner, in earlier tarot renditions, this card was referred to as Time. (The source of our modern archetype of Father Time, perhaps?) His robes suggest austerity. The number nine signifies “selflessness, compassion, universality, humanitarianism and spirituality”.
Kenner says the Hermit is sometimes compared to the ancient Greek Diogenes, the cynic, who roamed the streets of Athens with his lamp looking for an honest man. Some things never change, do they? She also draws parallels with Merlin the Magician and the Greek figure of Chiron, the wounded healer.
What does this card say to you?
Lyndi
Note: This post was edited to correct a misstatement at 6PM PST.
Quantum Tarot: Ace of Pentacles
Quantum Tarot Ace of Pentacles
I fell in love with the images in this deck, subtitled A Tarot of New Physics, when I spotted them on the internet. At the time the deck hadn’t been published, but I kept checking until I could buy a deck from Amazon.com. This deck is great for anyone writing science fiction, and it comes with a really terrific LWB. (Only in this case it ‘s a little black book.) Each card has the usual esoteric name plus a scientific designation. The description for each card includes the scientific background as well as an interpretation.
The science equivalent given for the Ace of Pentacles is Gluon, something I’d never heard of before. Apparently it’s a carrier of the “strong force”, one of the four forces in the universe. In the nucleus of an atom, it’s gluon that “glues” the protons and neutrons. See, we do learn something new each day, just like Mom said. 
In the tarot, Pentacles represent the “element” of Earth, meaning practical, mudane matters. The LBB interprets the Ace of Pentacles as “the first necessary step along the road to building something solid and real… Now is the time to ground your vision in reality.”
In other words, get to work. You’ve got something to do or create. So, do you think the Universe is telling me to start writing the damn book?
Lyndi
Today’s Tarot Card: Two of Wands
I’ve decided to draw a card from one of my various tarot cards each day and blog about it here. I won’t promise to do it every day, but I think it would be a good way to get to know the cards better while updating my site more often.
Today I drew from my newest deck, the mini Art Nouveau from Lo Scarabeo. I took a photo of the card you so you can all see it. Now if I can just figure out how to get it into the blog post without screwing everything up.
Art Nouveau 2 of Wands
The blonde woman on this card sits in a garden surrounded by purple orchids. She seems pensive and thoughtful in the midst of abundance. An odd face appears to her right and I’m not sure if it is supposed to be a creature or a garden gnome or whatever.
According to the LWB (little white book) the Two of Wands represents “a certain pain or sadness”.
This is very different than the reading given in the standard Rider-Waite system. Kenner’s Tarot For Writers describes the Two of Wands as a “card of influence” meaning authority, control and domination, but with a sense of loss.
Numerologically, two represents duality, so perhaps this indicates loneliness in the absence of “the other” despite one’s environment. Or perhaps the blonde lady feels trapped in her beautiful but lonely garden.
What does the card mean to you?
Lyndi
