Card Number IX - The Hermit

I did some musings about this card before, but did not post them here. Recently I get The Hermit quite often, so I thought I would write a post about him. Also (and that is the main reason, hehe) I found that a Japanese picture I kept on my refrigerator for quite a while resembles the card and I'm very inspired by Enrique Enriquez idea of seeing tarot in the world around us.

VIIII L'Hermite from Tarot de Marseille, ukiyo-e lady with a lantern, IX The Hermit from Crystal Tarot.

What I struggled with was that 9 is a number I associate with birth - it's the number of months of human pregnancy. Instead of a newborn baby, however, we get a grandpa dressed in a habit. He has a lantern: maybe he's awaking to a new life? Birth is also a shock and a kind of trauma to the baby that was in the darkness and comfy for whole their life. The Hermit is withdrawn and he's looking at the life he left in the past. He has a walking stick - he'll soon walk on, but he still wants a glance at his old shell he's leaving behind.

In the card we can see an old man, round-shouldered with age. Where is he going to in the winter of his life? Maybe he wants to show to other people what he's discovered? His hood is off his head - he's ready for new ideas.

The Hermit is an ascetic, he practices in solitude. He's not afraid to meet his inner self. Isolating himself is to help him find God and himself too.

The counterpart of IX The Hermit is XIX The Sun. The small lantern he's holding will turn into huge celestial body. In The Hermit you're learning alone, in solitude. In The Sun you've got company, you're learning from others. You can see God in another human being and you're much closer to the end of your journey than you were in The Hermit.

In the spreads the card can mean wisdom, experience, solitude, old age, being isolated.

Positive sides: wisdom, experience, self-determination.

Negative sides: loneliness, lack of understanding from others, tiredness.

Card number XV - The Devil

I've written a post where I put some of my thoughts on this cards before, you can find it here.

Today I pulled a card for meditation and it was XV The Devil. And I had some new thoughts.

There's that song by Elvis Presley that I like a lot, "Devil In Disguise" and I did listen to it while writing this post. Devil - the Prince Of Lies, master of deceit... Yeah, I actually think that the Devil is one of the most truthful cards in the deck.

Why is that?

First of all, the tarot Devil rubs our faces in the truths we would prefer to not know about ourselves. He says: "look, look at all this ugliness and awkwardness! Look how false you are". His role is also to unmask false people around us. He points to them, warning us against them. That's because he knows all about baaad things. Look at these three cards: intererstingly the Devil figure has wings on each of them. He is the fallen angel - he has experienced both heaven and hell. He knows it all.

XV The Devil from Crystal Tarot, Jodorowsky-Camoin TdM, Jaśniak Tarot.

What I like about The Devil too, is that sometimes you can interpret him as a card telling you to laugh people in the faces, show them your tongue. Don't care for appearances. Let them be shocked and don't let them chain you up. Also, very important: don't be so serious about yourself all the time! Have a good laugh sometimes :D

And listen to Elvis.

Expressiveness of TdM

Before Tarot de Marseille started talking to me, I wouldn't have thought how talkative it can be! After all, there are no people on number cards. But let me just share an example of a reading I have just recently experienced.

The question was why a certain person acts in a certain way towards the querent. I got three pip cards (oh noes!) and the message was in fact very clear.

I got 4/Swords, 8/Swords, 9/Coins. Each and every card has something trapped inside! A flower, a precious coin... imprisoned. The person is feeling hurt, vulnerable, not ready to take part in wordly things. After the reading I got a confirmation that it is actually true. Those chatty pips!

St. Catherine's Eve

It's St. Catherine's Eve today! In the old Polish tradition, it's the time for fortune telling - particularly for unmarried men, about their future wives. Since I'm neither a man nor unmarried, I decided it's just a good time for fortune telling. And my tarot agrees with me!

I did a daily draw today and here's what I got: 7/Coins, XVIII The Moon, III The Empress + Queen/Swords.

I think it's about leaving the mundane for a bit (7/Coins) to go deeper into the intuitive world (XVIII). Perfect time for divination! The two women of the last two cards correspond with two dogs/wolves from The Moon. The floral motif from 7/Coins lookes like the crayfish. Everythig is pointing to the XVIII card.

Also the Empress struck me as very resembling of St. Catherine that I saw on a painting. The crucifix/scepter with a cross, the crown, holding a wheel/shield, being royal... She lacks the sword, but look, the helpful Queen is handing it to her!

M&L?

With my tarot passion rekindled, my hunger for new decks has also awoken. To to be expected.

I managed, however, to stop myself from buying new tarot decks - I've ordered two oracle decks instead! Can't wait to receive them. They will be my first ever oracle deck experience.

The dangerous thing is, my old unconsummated love for a tarot deck is alive again. I have a weak spot for decks that are pieces of art and this one is just... I can't put it into words. I mean the "Mary-El Tarot". I looked at it on the Internet many times loving it, but I never bought it because I had the feeling it won't work for me as a regular reading deck. Like I ask a question and get all those seraphim, firey lions and I totally don't get the message. However, now I've started to think I could do some meditations with it, using also the companion book it comes together with. I could expose myself to this stunning imagery putting a card on the desk and so on.

Then I asked my Tarot de Marseille about the matter. The question for the upper row was "how would my meditations with 'Mary-El Tarot' go?". I got 3/Coins, Le Mat, 7/Coins. For the lower row: "what would the effect be?". I got 2/Wands, Ace/Wands, King/Cups and additional card to see what he's looking at: 9/Swords.

It looks surprisingly promissing! Like I will start a whole new thing and I will feel uncertain and unsure, but also excited and will have the feeling I'm gaining something.
It would help me overcome some blockades (2/Wands being crashed by the huge branch of the Ace) and allow me to analyze my emotions (King/Cup looking at 9/Swords).
Oh, man... Now I have to get it, don't I?

Different faces of the Star

Hello everyone!

Somewhere deep inside I knew I would come back. It's been over a year since my last post. There were various things going on in my life and tarot was not so present during that time. But now I feel that it's time to come back to tarot world.

I have calculated my year card for 2016 (by adding the day and moth of my birthday to the numerals of 2016) and it seems it's XVII The Star. It honestly seems right, because then 2015 was XVI The Tower and 2014 XV The Devil. These were very difficult years for me, and full of radical changes. I'm still recovering. And when I looked at The Star from my favorite Tarot de Marseille deck, it looked to me like she's pouring a lot of dirty water to the sewer. I know it's against the traditional view of crystal clear water... But that's how it looked to me at the time. She's cleansing her life. I need to get rid of many painful things and take the next step.

I took the Star cards from most of my decks and spread them on the table. They all seem to be saying the same thing (except for the "1001 Nights Tarot", but this deck doesn't talk to me anyway).

2017 should be XVIII The Moon... Shoud I worry?

Tarot. The Open Reading - review

These are only a couple of thoughts I had about "Tarot. The Open Reading".

I liked the book very much. The author draws the reader's attention to many various ways to read what the cards want to tell us - how the figures and objects in the spread correspond to each other by gestures, glances, colours and shapes that patches of colours create. I think the author reads the pips in a less detailed way than we do when we read scenic pips like RWS. He sees them more like smaller pieces showing a bigger picture. However, he also gives in his book interpretation for every card and what's interesting - he has an interpretation for a reverse card, if the card can be reversed at all (some of the pips are so symmetrical it's hard to see whether they're straight or upright).

About the suits: Dr. Yoav Ben-Dov seems to refer to classical playing cards suits where we have black and red suits - and where black suits are believed to mean struggle and complication and red suits are about love, company and money. Thus he sees Cups and Coins as "soft suits" that show more pleasant things and Wands and Swords as "hard suits" that show us our challenges and limitations.

The book was interesting for me also because the author is a disciple of Alejandro Jodorowsky and he refers to his teachings frequently. In suits he sees correspondences to the elements, directions, parts of human body etc. and he points that we can put the suits into the order according to them. For example:

Coins=body=legs, that ground us, that give us the base. Without a body there's no emotion, no desire and no intellect.

Wands=desire=pelvis, where our sexual desires dwell.

Cups=emotion=chest, where our heart is.

Swords=intellect=head.

What I didn't like and thus skipped that chapter - detailed instructions for how you should do a reading and what to avoid (like use blue bag for your deck, but not red, better use matches to light the candle, than a lighter). I believe that to be a very personal thing and nobody should give such detailed instructions about it. I'm also not into "magical ritual" kind of thing, so these parts were not interesting for me. 

I must also say that the deck that the author has restored is great, I like it very much. I have the Jodorowsky&Camoin restored deck and I love it to bits, but maybe one day I will also buy the CBD :) What is lovely about the CBD, is that Dr. Ben-Dov altered the expressions of the figures a bit - and they don't look so stern; they mostly smile gently.