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Posts tagged with 'Lyndi Lamont'
Lotus Circle: Four of Wands
Four of Wands, Lotus Circle Tarot
I recently went to EPICon2010 in New Orleans and this card reminds me of the lovely Southern mansions in the area.
A couple stands at the foot of a staircase leading to a columned terrace. They seem to have come home.
In The Tarot of the Lotus Circle, Marilyn Campbell lists the following keywords for this card: Commitment; Contentment, Peace; New Home
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Tarot Spreads Illustrated interprets the Four of Wands as follows:
This is where it all starts coming together. Celebration after hard work. Good foundation, strong and stable… can support the design of your dreams.
In a reading, it often points to success and prosperity.
If you’re looking for a yes or no, the answer is yes.
Lyndi
Albano-Waite: The Sun
XIX The Sun
The Sun is one of the most favorable cards in the tarot. The child represents innocence and joy, but the addition of the wall (security) means protected innocence, unlike the innocence of The Fool who usually depicted as a young man about to step off a cliff. The sunflowers imply abundance, as well as hope for a bright future.
In Tarot for Writers, Corrinne Kenner states that “the white horse is a hero’s mount. Horses represent mobility, partnership and social status”. (Horses also represent freedom of movement.) In a story, this card could represent “a child, a farmer, a horseman, a musician or a poet”.
If this card comes up as an answer to a question, assume an emphatic “Yes”.
Lyndi
Art Nouveau Knight of Swords
Knight of Swords, Art Nouveau deck
This knight appears to be a dashing fellow, riding courageously to the rescue or impetuously into danger.
The LWB says that Swords represent “fight and both physical and spiritual sufferance”. If you’re using this card as a significator*, it embodies “an able and courageous man, with a passionate, irascible and insolent nature”. (Typically, a Knight is used to represent a young man and a King for an older man.)
This is all well and good, but what if the card turns up in a spot where a type of person isn’t the answer?
I turned to The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Tarot Spreads to see what it says.
Swords “represent thoughts and ideas” and the element of air. They indicate “how we face obstacles and make decisions”.
The Knight of Swords in a reading “indicates the need to act quickly” or to make a quick decision. It makes sense; knights represent action and swords air, i.e. thoughts, so the two combined means quick thinking.
Lyndi
* A significator is a card chosen to represent either the subject of a reading, or if you’re a writer, could represent one of the characters in your book. I like this article on Significators at The Lotus Pond.
L.
Sensual Wicca: Hanged Man
Hanged Man, Sensual Wicca Tarot
This is my newest deck, and I think this photo is better than previous ones. (I actually looked at the cameral manual to figure out how to take extreme close-ups. What a concept!)
The Sensual Wicca Tarot: A Wiccan vision of the world of sexuality from Lo Scarabeo lives up to its name with some very sensual and sexual images. It differs from traditional decks in avoiding obvious Judeo-Christian images and titles for the cards. In this deck, Queens become Mothers, Kings are Sages, Knights are Acolytes and Pages are Maidens. The images in the cards represent folk magic practitioners from around the world: Europe, Africa, the Americas, etc.
The Hanged Man is traditionally shown suspended upside down by his feet, tied to the tree by a rope. In this deck, he is suspended by locking his feet over the branch, implying that this is, perhaps, self-bondage. The LWB says:
Sacrifice, dedication, a new perspective, seeing things from a different point of view.
In Tarot for Your Self, Mary Greer interprets this card as meaning “suspended action. A time of stagnation and frustration” and I can certainly relate to that. I’ve been in a long period of low writing productivity. I hope exploring the world of the tarot will help to fill my creative well. How can I not be inspired by such wonderful images?
Lyndi
Lotus Circle Tarot: 7 of Wands
I was introduced to this deck at the 2007 Romantic Times Booklovers Convention in Houston. Marilyn Campbell, who designed the deck and wrote the companion interpretive book, gave a workshop of Psychic Fiction. In the workshop, she read one or more cards for everyone present. The 7 of Wands was one of the cards I drew. I remember because she looked right at me and said, it doesn’t come faster if you push the button every five seconds. Or words to that effect. I laughed, but she was right on. I’m an Aries and I can be quite impatient at times.
Seven of Wands
In this card, a businesswoman stands waiting for an elevator. The companion book, Tarot of the Lotus Circle by Marilyn Campbell, Jasmine-Jade Enterprises, 2007, says:
Blockages; Minor Obstacles; Solvable Puzzles; Business negotiations are in order; Taking a stand. The change required at the moment is in your attitude.
If you draw this card when you’re looking for a yes or no answer to a query, the answer is clearly No.
This is a lovely deck, very contemporary, with a strong feminist feel. Unfortunately, it appears to be out of print at the moment, though a few are available through Amazon’s affiliates.
Lyndi
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
Guest Blogging at Midnight Moon Cafe
This Thursday I’ll be blogging at Midnight Moon Cafe about my upcoming release Alliance: Stellar Romance: A Collection of Erotic Romance.
Update: I’m going to see if I can add the cover art using HTML code as the uploader doesn’t seem to be working. There has been a bigger learning curve here than I anticipated.
Lyndi
