Showing posts with label Star. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Star. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

inspiration or hope in unusual places and ways

Just a quick little two-card general advice/food for though draw with another favorite deck, Tarot of the Absurd.


First thought: two majors in such a small spread suggest quite the strong message indeed - interesting.

We have paired The Star and Justice. The Star is a familiar card, featuring as is did in the Thoth two-card reading I posted the other week. A theme, the fact that it is showing up in deck after deck? But look, how different the card is here, both from the imagery of the Thoth's and from the traditional RWS and clones. Here there is no woman reaching up to grasp, nor pouring water from a jug, nothing so esoteric. Instead we have a more bizarre image - A woman walking, perhaps even prancing over the heads of strange beasts, each of of them distinct in their oddity. She is looking down at them with a pair of binoculars, inspecting, fascinated.

Next to her we have a more familiar image for Justice, a sort of classical figure but for the fact that she seems to be dancing, or perhaps entering into some kind of performative fighting stance, rather than standing still and stoic as we more often see her. She has her sword, and her scales, and in this deck she is blindfolded, weighing without seeing what. Her scales are balanced, one empty, the other with a stream of feathers - a reference perhaps to mythology, Maat - falling out of it.

The message I see here:

That inspiration, that hope, that 'dreams' and goals and finding a way to live, are not thing we can only find in the abstract, in pondering, in books. They do not always have to be high-minded things, the products of so much thought, the kind of thing that sounds impressive. Nor do they have to be like anything you would expect, and they do not have to be distant, theoretical things. No, inspiration, healing or hope can be found in things that are strange and even ugly, unpleasant perhaps at first; they can be things mundane, unremarkable to most people, small; they can be found in the world around you, the things you walk over and past and through, the things that grab your attention and hold it and leave you longing to see more, know more, to do it again. And sometimes, finding these things and holding onto them means pushing past that first instinct to judge against already held notions, or to weigh the pros and cons logically and put into organized thoughts emotions you cannot explain. Sometimes it means trying something blind, knowing that there are things, perhaps even significant things that you just do not know, cannot know; it means going in blind, willfully, and that can feel like some kind of tricky, dangerous dance, and it might be tempting to question, to overthink, 'should I, should I really?' and weigh things against what ought and what should. Indeed, sometimes you must recognize that scary and unknowable and bizarre might be worth it even if you don't know why and how and, within reason, go ahead and see, give it a chance.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

stillness, change and choices

It's interesting, how still the two of disks feels in this deck, seemingly devoid of movement. In the traditional RWS image, and in many decks based off of it, you see a man juggling coins, pentacles, trying to keep them in the air. It requires a good bit of effort, that - dexterity, coordination, sheer energy.

Here, instead, you have a motionless figure, with two coins covering its eyes. It's not an unfamiliar image - the ancient Greeks and Romans used to do that, coins on the eyes to pay the ferryman to the underworld, and it is a myth and custom that is referenced commonly enough to this day, in stories, movies, tv shows. So you have a that, suggesting lifelessness, passing, but then the figure is green, with vines and leaves extending across the forehead, the cheeks. Is that not spring, renewal, birth and growth of a sort?

One coin is silver and one coin is gold - right and left, dexter and sinister, yameen and yasaar. One coin has the two-headed picture of Janus - another reference to antiquity. He was, apparently, the god of beginnings and ends, doorways, passages, gates and time. The other coin has an owl carved into it - a reference to wisdom perhaps, wisdom and a bird capable of the freedom of flight.

The thoth calls this card Change, and change see here, yes, in stillness. It is not a kind of change that necessarily brings to mind this cards, traditionally, rather than say, Death. Life begins and ends and if you do burial than yes, eventually your remains might fertilize the earth and some kind of flora might sprout forth in the same place, but usually this card refers to more immediate, more mundane change - the ones you yourself have to make, the ones in your grasp. Choices and decisions and juggling all the things on your plate.

As it so happens, in my case, right now, this card is apt.

Sometimes you can get so overwhelmed with despair, or resignation, or frustration, ennui, exhaustion, whatever you want to call it. It spins around your head and the temptation to just give up is so strong, except you can quite bring yourself to go there, but the pull of it is paralyzing in a way and it is so difficult to get anything done.

Sometimes, the unconventional, extreme type approach is the most helpful: narrow it down to a simple choice, with two options, two coins. Stillness or motion - give up or get to work, but pick one and do it right now, right here, right in this moment.

Not insignificant, I think, that I would pull this card alongside the Star. The recommended choice and change is pretty clear, here. Bathed in a kind of intense, red light, the woman walks through what looks like it could be an ordinary field, but could also be one made of so many vaguely sketched people. She walks forward, and keeps walking.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

Starry Memory Exercise

Realized I hadn't done one of my memory exercises in a bit of a while. Seems a good way as any to start off a week I plan to spent with another of my most favorite decks...

Considering how much I like astrology, it's a bit funny how infrequently I actually pay attention to, or take time to really look at, the stars in the sky at night. Perhaps this is only natural - I have always gravitated towards and felt most comfortable in cities - NYC, Boston, DC...places where, well, at the best of times it isn't so very easy to see the stars clearly, the way that they are meant to be seen. Most of my closest friends in New York work in the vicinity of Times Square, so I find myself there at night quite a bit when I am back in that city and well...so much flashing light, bill-boards, advertisements, even pharmacies with huge colorful flashing signs and the stars, ha, what stars, there...

When was the last time I really...looked up and appreciated the stars, in all their natural glory? The second weekend of August, the Saturday when our Arabic teacher took three of us in the car with him on a day trip to see Dougga, his native city. We spent the day-time walking around old roman ruins and then in the car, being given a kind of tour of his early life. This is where my parents live and this village is where I went to primary school and this town is where I went to secondary school and that land belongs to my uncle and that store belongs to another uncle and so on. Mostly in Arabic, for practice.

Later, at night, after we had the iftar meal at his parents' house, we took a walk around his hometown. Rural, small, no streetlights, rudimentary paving in the streets. We went to the cafe in the center of the town, which was really a field that they brought out tables and chairs for you when you arrived. There were several dozen people there, and I was one of two women, the other a foreigner as well, sitting several tables away. We had dark, strong coffee served in little cups. They smoked unflavored shisha and cigarettes, the scent of the smoke strong, curling around everything. After a while our teacher left to go pray, leaving us with his cousin, who spoke very little English, and we with not much Arabic - and certainly not enough dialect Arabic - and me with some French but not enough confidence, and so.

I looked up at the sky then, really looked. It was so clear, so inky black, so many bright pinpricks of light. I could make out whole constellations, easily. The sky was almost always cloudless in Tunisia, but now, at night...it just looked so amazing. Sitting in a rural cafe at night, after a day of ancient ruins, of farms, fields, cactus fruit, cows and goats and sheep and even camels seen up close or from afar, of eating fresh makrouch that made fig newtons taste like a joke and grapes fresh off the tree and now, the brilliance of the stars right above me...it was one of those moments where you are fully, acutely aware of the wonder you feel, the privileged of what you have been allowed to experience, the terribly temporary, fleeting nature of it all...

Moments like that, and you can understand why the Star represents what it does in the cards. It stops being an abstract concept....rather, a truth; something that makes sense in your gut, your soul.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

hope and action, circles and spirals

"Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens."
Khalil Gibran


I am reminded here of the inter-connection between these two cards: the way that it can be so hard to get started on things, to work up the motivation to take initiative and action when you feel devoid of hope; and the way sometimes, just taking to doing things can be the best way to start the process of self-empowerment, of healing and renewal.

Perspective and action, thought and carry through, tools. The Magician stands in front of a table full of them. Does he really need them all to carry out his tasks? Or does he only think he does? And how much does the virtue of their existence give him the confidence to start? The Star too, despite the nature scene, her nudity...she too has those jugs, for pouring into the stream or scooping out. What do we need to pour away? What is truly necessary to sustain us, allow us to grow, transform, fly?

The abstract notion of hope and the concrete initiative of the individual...the more I think on it, the more it seems like the ouroboros on the belt of the Magus...who can really untangle what comes first, and what last? Circles and spirals of life...

Monday, July 2, 2012

My Favorite Majors: The Star

This is, in just about every way, one of my favorite cards. In terms of artwork, it is very often one of the most excellent of the majors in a deck - in fact, I can think of several decks I don't particularly like overall, but which have amazing star cards. I love the concepts behind the star (not least because it often comes up in readings right when I most need it) and love seeing how it is executed in various artistic styles, color palettes, etc.

I kept putting off writing this post, in fact, because I didn't want to have to CHOOSE between a handful of favorites from among my decks. Like I really, really had trouble narrowing it down to just TWO. But, those are the rules I set down for myself with this post series, and so...

XVII. Star


Favorite
I realize I have quite a few cards from the LotD up here in the favorites; in my defense, the majors are my favorite part on that favorite deck of mine (have a more issues with minors/courts) and...well. What can I say, I guess. I really, really like this card both on a visual and on an intuitive level. The colors work perfectly for me...blues, with just the right amount of white light, the right amount of shadow...this is a card served really well by those fade to black borders, methinks.

We have ruin at the bottom of this card - some kind of ancient structure, or perhaps the wreckage of a ship, jutting out of a pool of stagnant water. The way things can fall apart and then stay there, in pieces, as if to remind us of those previous failures. But then we have the woman, the fairy, whatever the figure is, really, real or unreal, drapes in scarves, pulling a stream of stars out of the water and connecting that with the stars in the sky above. Salvaging, healing, renewing, guiding. So many ideas to build off of in a reading from this one image. The card really speaks to me.
 
Runner Up
As I said, it was really difficult to choose just two favorites for the star card. Ultimately, I went with this as my second, the Star from the Golden Tarot of Klimt. It hews pretty far from the traditional star images in the RWS/Thoth/TdM traditions. It doesn't even, arguably, at first glance present the same kind of mood/feeling that the star is usually associated with. But as I wrote a while ago when working with this deck, that's kind of what I really appreciate about it. This card speaks of the realities of hope, realities of the times you need it, realities of where you can find it. It presents the less idealized, less stylized representation of this major. It speaks to be very viscerally on an intuitive level, and presents a nice change and a challenge in a way that the traditional image of a pretty woman pouring water does not. Also, especially in real life with the gold foil...this card just is artistically stunning.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

variations on hope

These cards...the effect of the gold emboss that just can't be translated onto a computer screen...definitely more stunning to have them in front of you...

Anyway, I really, really like this take on the Star, I must say. Usually the star is such a positively drawn card, so hopeful...and yes, it is after all, the major that deals most specifically with the concept of hope, and yet...in a way, by illustrating it so nicely, it almost takes away from the flip side - the fact that, when you need hope most...the times when seeing that star card's message can be most helpful...those are the times when things aren't going so well at all.

We see two figures here - bony, scrawny, near-naked. One of them buries her head in the embrace of the other who holds her, comforting. Sometimes that's what hope is: the person or thing that you can turn to, when things are most difficult. The shoulder you can cry on. Reasuring words. A hug, a pat, a friendly squeeze of the hands. More, less. The knowledge that someone is there, listening; that someone still cares enough to stand there with you in the dark, among the small, glittering stars.

And sometimes hope can be found in the other end of that too. Sometimes, when you just can't seem to find it for yourself...the act of helping someone else, the act of offering support, of having to reassure, say nice things because someone is crying, upset and you want to make them feel better...it can brighten, lighten things for you too. If you say it to someone else enough, it may start creeping back into your mind too, bit by bit, the light. Things you may not be motivated to do for 'me' you may in fact get done if it is 'we' that you can focus on...

Hope in giving and hope in getting, in being alone and in finding someone else. Hope born of difficult, of shivering in the dark, of learning to do without clothes. Hope in a touch, hope in breaking away, hope in the promise of something more, eventually. Hope etched into skin and hair. Hope in the distance, in the abstract. Hope in memories and dreams. Hope hidden in the corners where you'd never think to look, normally. Hope from the people and places you'd least expect. Hope from within you, long after you thought you had none of it left. Hope that blossoms in the moments when you are certain you have nothing left to spare. Synthesis, Symbiosis. Hope in touch, in sound, in the glittering gold detail.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

draw that made me think of a recent poem

starshine-
you were there with us,
dimly glowing in the darkest corner of...

you did not know us.
you did not hold our hands.
you did not brush the sweat or the tears
from our eyes.

and yet: your faint glow,
the siren-song of distant promise,
a half-forgotten laugh.

you gave us reason to grasp,
to claw our way up.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

shiny new deck :D

So - due to my life and especially my housing situation being in a state of perpetual chaos, I woke up this morning to the sight and sound of random men entering my bedroom to measure the floors...fun times...

On the bright side, however, my roommate had gone to ask the building manager about fixing broken sink and she came back to hand still half-asleep me a package. What was in the package, you may ask? A new deck! :D

And not just any deck, but one I've very much been a hankering for as of late...the Tarot de Marrakesh.

This one comes out of France, and what makes it special, to me...is well, the fact that it is so very North African themed.

See, I've been studying French and Arabic for years now, very academically interested in the North Africa/Mid-East region spent last semester doing a ton of reading and writing about security issues in North Africa, want desperately to visit Tunisia/Algeria/Morocco (in that order of preference, lol) and yeah, I could go on...

So of course I would want this deck very much as soon as I set my eyes on scans of it. And now it is in my clutches!

The art is so genuine a capture of North African Arab-Berber culture, and I love the art style, and the limited color palette of the cards really works well, in my opinion at least. There's a minimalism here that just...works. Also quite like the titles on the majors. Interesting. I'm actually going to read the lwb that comes with the deck because...curious :0

Pips are unillustrated, but at this point I'm comfortable reading those, so no problemo there. And to make things even simpler, the standard wands = fire, swords = air associations are used.

Sadly, I have a bunch of other obligations, both life, school, and reading-related that I need to take care of before I can get to working with this deck but...yay it is MINE ALL MINE :D

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

something to hold onto

had to post this because it was just so...appropriate.

let us just say: a moment in time when you are so physically and mentally exhausted everything just seems so unbearable, and futile to because you've tried so hard, doing the best you could despite, despite...

and yet there is still so much you must do and so little time left to do it and after that even more


pause a moment. pull out a deck. please, whisper, give me something to hold onto. some advice, something to help keep me going, just something. please.


and then you draw these:

(again, no time to use nicer real-life card images, so from Egypt's website again)

And the message is just so...simple and clear and utterly appropriate for the moment you can't help but muster a little laugh.