And the Winner Is....

So yeah, here be the 200th post of this blog. Hurrah!

And as promised, a winner for the giveaway. We had two lovely contestants entering for it. Thanks everyone else also, for your good wishes/kind words.

I shuffled the Fenestra and drew...

The Emperor

Using my method of winner determining, the Emperor, being Arcana IV, is closest in the deck to LizMcBeth's guess of The Lovers (VI) meaning that the deck goes to her.

Congrats LizMcBeth!

Please Contact Me ASAP to let me know your mailing info so that I can get this deck sent of to you :]


And here's to more blogging and blog-following, reading and writing and deck pondering and exploring all around.

a matter of perspective

There aren't all that many decks in which I really like the Hierophant card, and this is all the more true of straightforward RWS clones. I like the Nusantara's of course - I love everything about the deck - but by and large, decks that hew too closely to the original suffer in my eyes because, well...

Though it has grown on me over the years, overall, the image presented in the RWS Hierophant is one that, for me personally, is difficult to connect to the more positive aspects of the card. I know that the Hierophant isn't only about the rigidity of authority and tradition, isn't only about oppression of hierarchy and structure, isn't only about the burden of duty, being a follower. And yet, when I see the christian-tradition priest...

We are all so very much made up of our experiences...sitting in church pews as a child, listening to things that never connected, never felt any kind of true...politics and politics, listening to people twist those same ideas into something even more intolerable...

I can appreciate Pixie's artwork, and I can read and study and educate myself all about the esoteric layers and yet... the same way that I cannot help but think of churches whenever I smell frankincense  The downstairs neighbors in Tunisia would burn it during Ramadan and all night, all I could think was...why does my apartment smell like a church? Some associations just...stay.

Whereas an eastern-influenced Hierophant, the exact same imagery, position, ideas, simply represented in a different flavor, a buddhist flavor...

I cannot really believe any religion, and yet I've always found a certain appeal in the wisdom there. I've read a couple of the Dalai Lama's books, some Thich Nhat Han. I can see them as a teacher, a guide, structure that helps rather than stifles.

I found this wall hanging in a Tibetan shop I stumbled into some random night last year while waiting to meet up with someone. I got it because it is true, and because it is something that I really do need a reminder of, sometimes.

Glance at it there, on the wall. every day. Repetition. Truth-repetition.

Precision-Oriented

The Knight of Swords can be thought of as the element of air in its purest, externalized form. He moves swiftly through the winds, one with his horse, his flexible helicopter-wings, the birds that fly near him, ready to aid. His arms are extended with pointed dagger and sword; He is efficiency, logical action.

Precision-oriented, going after one thing at a time, carrying through until it is finished, shifting and adjusting as necessary.

Sometimes - often - the big picture can be overwhelming. Too many unknowns or, quite the contrary, such a long and difficult list of shoulds that staring at the whole of it can be quite intensely demotivating.

You find everything twisted and knotted so tightly - how will you, with so limited time and energy, ever manage to straighten it out again, even a little?

So many things, so many things call out to you in little grubby voices.

Perhaps you really simply cannot do very much of it. Despite the voices of support saying it's not that hard, you've done it before, you've done a lot of difficult things before, go on. They mean well, and yet perhaps you simply...cannot find it in you. Once, before you did it, sure, quickly, and yet...

Precision-oriented. If you cannot find the strength in you to do much, focus on one thing that needs doing. Map out the steps, gather your focus, and do that one thing. Finish it. A small success, something out of the way. Two or three things on a list crossed out is something. Simpler to tackle a single task, a single set of steps.

Better sometimes to focus on a single thing and complete it, do it well, than to try to tackle everything, lose track of yourself, leave things half-done when you run out of time or energy or attention for it all.

Little things build up to bigger over time, anyway, if done in a logical kind of way.

My Arabic studies, case-in-point: you learn vocabulary word after word written and re-written, conjugated, understood within a system of roots and patterns, committed to memory. Words that slowly imprint themselves into your mind, one at a time. And suddenly I am listening to political talk show podcasts and find that I can follow along, even when the speakers get worked up, argue, speak quickly. Progress...

asking and accepting

There is a story, an anecdote my mother has told on occasion  I was too young to remember this, but apparently once, when I was three or four, I was taken out with my mother and grandmother as they ran errands. At one point, we were in front of a store, and I saw a doll I really wanted, and asked my mother for it. She said no, we cannot afford that. Ok, I replied, and dropped it. Apparently my grandmother was so impressed that I didn't beg or plead or throw a tantrum, that I was so well-behaved about it, that she went into the store and got the doll for me as a reward.

Pretty story, right? To me it will always bittersweet. I don't remember those events, but I do remember this: my entire childhood and well beyond, having this intense guilt and inability to ask for things. Material things, sure: I would trail behind my parents in stores, and well after we'd gotten to the point where they could afford to by me small things, I would nonetheless pick something up, look longingly, hoping my mother might notice, ask if I wanted that, and take my hesitant 'maybe...' as what it was, a yes, please, I do. And if most of the time she did not, then I would put whatever it was down, walk away. Asking was taboo. Asking was being needy, burdensome, wrong

It's easier, as you get older, as you painstakingly acquaint yourself with etiquette and unspoken social rules, to learn how to ask for physical things in appropriate contexts - though I can't even begin to enumerate how many times people have gotten frustrated with me for not speaking up clearly about what it is that I wanted.

Much harder to speak about more serious things, more personal things. There are issues I have struggled with for years and years that I have never had a serious conversation with my closest friends about, because...listen to me talk about how unhappy I am, listen to my troubles, help me feels too much like that image in the seven of swords. Being annoying, taking away from their time, their sympathy reserves.

Giving to poor strangers, that kind Six of Coins generosity... it seems easier in some ways because it is fleeting; you don't expect to seem them again, have no reason to feel obliged to keep giving, day after day. I don't want to be the kind of friend always making demands on others' emotional energy, or time.

It seems like in some ways it really is easier to learn to give that to receive gracefully. I know how to do that in small ways, enough so that I don't think my relationships with others feel unbalanced to either party. But for the really serious issues...that old sense of guilt, as if by asking I would be that sword thief, running away with the goods. Is there a logical reason to try anyway?

Balance, balance. Search for it.

favorite card backs

An often overlooked aspect of tarot decks, the backs are...well. for me, i can't say they are necessarily a deal breaker - i have several decks whose backs I quite dislike but which I got anyway because well, the actual deck more than made up for that particular drawback. but I must say, a nice back really does add to the awesomeness of a deck as a whole.

For me personally, i like my backs to be reversible if possible (since I read with reversals), for them to somehow thematically or visually 'go' with the card fronts, WITHOUT being merely a print of one of the cards (this tendency on the part of LoS particularly is rather annoying...) and just general aesthetic prettiness. I thought it'd be fun to just list some of my favorite card backs from within my tarot collection. Interestingly enough, they don't correspond all that much with which decks are my favorites overall...

Lookit, shiny!

The Fenestra tarot has what is probably my most favorite of backs...very nice, subtle color, a bit of an art-nouveau feel to it, nicely reversible, and goes perfectly with the art style of the cards themselves. As I said, not really corresponding with my deck preference generally...see, I love the minors in this deck, and it'd probably be much higher on my preferences list if it wasn't for the HUGE, UGLY, UNTRIMMABLE borders the publisher felt the need to take onto all the majors.

I traded this deck away because of that, and the universe recently saw that another copy of it came back to me, so holding onto it this time because I do like the art style and colors generally. And yes, the backs are a major plus.

Other cool backs:

     
I like these two a lot, the Crystal/Vetro back and the Balbi. The Crystal back doesn't really go with the art style of the deck per se, but I just really like how it looks. Reminds me of some old playing card backs I vaguely remember from when I was a kid. Nice and reversible too.

As for the Balbi, again, simple and reversible. Colors do a lot for me too - I've always liked the purple and green color combination, and the particular shades of purple and green used here really appeal. I like the vague vine type design, and the general style and bright colors perfectly encompass the nature of the deck overall and yeah, likey.

Now here are two backs that AREN'T quite reversible, but which I really like anyway. One is the Thoth back. Like the rest of that deck, it is chock full of esoteric symbolism I currently only vaguely/half-understand at best, but I can appreciate it's significance. It definitely gives you a nice feel for the rest of the deck, and visually, it just works. Plus, its not THAT badly un-reversible, so I can still read my reversals without too much distraction.

The Tarot de la Rea back, on the other hand, is very non-reversible, but given that this is one of very few decks which I DON'T read using reversals (in fact this deck likes me to use one very specific spread to read with it) that's not too much a bother. It very well represents the cool mask-filled nature of the deck as a whole and like the fronts just has a...unique, special feel to it. This deck really is one of the little treasures of my collections, and that includes the backs.