The King of Nothing

Daily Draw November 4th, 2009

From the Celtic Tarot:

KING OF WANDS

He’s a bit creepy in this card. I once knew someone who referred to himself as the King of Wands. He did have that intellectual fire and creativity, yet was a bit like this fellow with the empty face, but a shadow of a real human. A very good liar, and deceitful. Spooky. It also reminds how creativity can be a dark pit if you don’t bring your creations to fruition. They can be only a glimmer of fire in the head instead of being real.

Once again, I am creating about 50 million things at once in my head, but I’ve got to pull back to reality and actually get a few of them done. All the rippling muscles and seated power need a focus to be of benefit. The lack of a face means deceit to me, so best not to deceive myself either. That spot of red really glows and simmers, like ideas in the mind, but it isn’t getting bigger because he isn’t making his ideas concrete and giving them actual form. He’s going to be the King of Nothing if he doesn’t use his mind in better ways.

 

Clarity Before Action

Daily Draw November 2nd, 2009

I have geared up again after ten years to complete dollhouses and miniature needlework projects. I downloaded the demo version of PC Stitch and I’m trying out the Pro version. I can use it for needlepoint, cross stitch, beading and knitting for graphed patterns in regular and miniature sizes. So far I’m really pleased with it so I’m hoping to buy it with Christmas money.

I started a miniature French knot rug and I’m finishing up a couple more in petit point and planning designs and painted furniture and wallpapering to finish two of my dollhouses. I’ve got a 1:144 scale dollhouse for a dollhouse I need to finish and I’m considering buying a very fancy 1:144 kit for Christmas. I received permission from an artist to interpret an abstract painting for a dollhouse, so I’m really excited about that as it’s a Kandinsky-type artwork and will look fabulous as a miniature rug. It’s been a long time since I worked on these houses, but similar to unpacking and finishing some old quilt blocks and making new ones over the summer, I’m doing that with my miniatures.

I’ve been too busy to draw a daily card. What scandal is this, too busy for cards? How can this be?

From the Silenus Tarot:

5 OF WANDS

Struggle, and difficult situation. Seek to clarify what is really going on.

Yeah, I suppose you can battle with people about one thing and it’s really about another, so it helps to have a think on what’s really bothering everyone.

Theseus (of minotaur fame) was at the wedding feast of his good friend and the centaurs got a bit out of hand with drink and tried to abduct the women, including the bride, hence this battle. Theseus slayed a few centaurs, in a classic story of good and evil and the hero coming to the rescue.

Murder at a wedding, was there no other way to resolve the situation? That also occurs to me. Yes, the centaurs were wrong and got drunk and unruly, always a bad scene, but is murder heroic?

So, a good old think is something one should consider before acting on difficulties.

 

 

 

Stuff To Do on the Forest Floor

Daily Draw October 25th, 2009

Choices, choices, I feel like breaking out in a mad, passionate frenzy and using the Aquarian Tarot. Hey, it may have been around for decades, but it’s new to me.

TWO OF CUPS

Sipping the cider with the loved one today. Is that it, is that all there is? No wild love affairs with golden men on horseback, drifting off into the greenwood in our woollen capes fastened with silver Celtic brooches? No passion, no frenzy, no lust on forest floor?

Affinity, friendship, and harmony shall have to do then.

And a cup of tea might be nice.

In the woods.

The Kundalini Gobbledygook Man

Daily Draw October 24th, 2009

From The Book of Kaos Tarot Deck:

I THE MAGICIAN

Sadly, as terrific as the art is in this deck, the booklet is full of senseless bafflegab. Here, The Fool as the flipside of the Magus, supposedly takes Fate into his own hands, binding kundalini serpents to his caduceus for shakti power and assertion of his phallic, true will in accord with the flow of tao through the magickal operation of communion with the holy guardian angel etc. etc.

In essence, creative power, control, and assertion of will, which actually my day was today. I got a lot done, was very organized, moved further along in a bookbinding project, and took steps to finish a miniature kit I bought ten years ago. I do think I found a little magic when I was photographing another 1:144 scale kit I’d finished ten years ago, and then a book fell against it and it went flying off my drafting board onto the floor and did not get damaged. Whew. Bob and Mary live on in their log cabin, although Bob had to be reglued to the base as he went for a bit of a fly. Take the train from now on Bob.

The Magician was in pure form today, without all his trickster nonsense, just intense intellectual focus. No hocus-pocus here, just work and organization and communication, but it all came together like the smooth operator Magus was calculating the functions of the Universe. On a good day, he is the guy you want beside you!

Nobody Can Be Anybody Else in the Garden

Daily Draw October 22nd, 2009

Every now and then I feel such a distance from the greater world of tarot that I go on a browse over the Internet looking for new decks or books, and generally listening to what people are saying.

There is one recent tarot book I am intrigued by, but I realized that the associations the author adds on to the cards bug me. I feel it an arbitrary imposition if systems like numerology are butted onto cards.

Yesterday morning I was reading what used to be one of my favourite books, and the author’s death grip on Kabbalah for every card was starting to bug me too. Who says Binah means this or that or is related to this card or that? Who says this card or that one obviously relates to 4 or 6 or whatever? The cards never did in the beginning, so who decided? One lady argued with me vehemently about numerology once on a tarot list, saying that her parents had been numerologists and she too had been practicing it for years. So what? Why should I or anyone else add those associations onto cards because you and your parents chose to? Why should I believe what you do?

That’s why I like to putter the way I putter on this blog: Mixing and matching books and cards, and making things to go with decks and occasionally making my own decks on the computer.

No constraints or impositions, isn’t it lovely in the quietude?

Today I am entering the Bafflegab World of Osho and the New Century.

FIVE OF PENTACLES
28 – SELF-ACCEPTANCE

I love the way Rolf Eichelmann put those clouds in the Five of Pentacles. It reminds me of Nigel Jackson’s clouds in the Rumi Tarot. Into each life a little cloud will saunter, wisping across the horizon, shadowing the day. Money, and you don’t need a lot to be comfortable, but if you have less than you need it drags you down. I had a dream last night where I went to the bank to change $40 into lower denominations and they didn’t give me my money back, the just gave me 11 large beads and insisted I hadn’t given them more bills.

Always this feeling of lack, of being robbed in life. Some assertion of infinite abundance would be helpful for me today.

However, Osho rattles on about self-acceptance in the next card. “Heart’s-Ease in the King’s Garden.”

In the picture, Heart’s Ease flourishes because it is just itself and happy. It isn’t like the oak, moaning about not being able to bear grapes or bloom like a rose. God could have made a million Buddhas, Krishnas or Christs, but instead he made me. Their work is done, time for me to do my unique contribution.

Interesting that Osho speaks of priests saying you must be a rose or become a lotus, which very much reminds me of the tarot fundamentalists who say you must do this or that and this card means this or that and adds up to this number and means this.

“They drive the whole garden crazy, everything starts dying – because nobody can be anybody else, that is not possible.”

“That’s what happened to humanity. Everybody is pretending. Authenticity is lost, truth is lost, everybody is trying to show that he is somebody else.”

It is not possible to be anyone else but yourself. (Strange how they insist on it though. Yikes.)

Thank goodness I can’t be anybody else.

I’ve Lost My Polish

Daily Draw October 21st, 2009

Okay, the trick today is to use stuff I have at hand. That means no poetry today as all the books are upstairs. My eye falls upon the Color Idea Book:

“Don’t overlook your cabinetry as a place to use color. Unexpected combinations can add pizzazz to your kitchen or bathroom. And be creative in the use: Consider a different color on an island than on the perimeter cabinets, or paint the doors a different color than the cabinet box. If you’re thinking of using colored cabinetry, first consider your countertops, since their color and pattern will help inform what color you use on the cabinets.”

Oh what fun! These people have obviously not been stuck with a 40 year-old kitchen with limited floor space and cabinetry all a mish-mash of styles. To be quaint, my kitchen would be called a “galley” kitchen, because it’s narrow like a galley on a ship. The cabinets don’t match as some were ripped out for a dishwasher and had to be rebuilt, and some were added later. I have them painted white with pale grey handles.

Here are the examples from the book:

Isn’t that nice?

And from the Rumi Tarot today (which is suspiciously coloured like the cabinets in the decorator photo):

ACE OF SWORDS
“Be like a polished sword,
free from tarnish.”

One of my personal cards which I call the Reach Card, because it symbolizes reaching for new ideas and fresh starts and creativity.

Maybe like this. . . no matter what your surroundings you can polish them and keep them free from tarnish. OR no matter where you are, your thoughts can be polished and free from tarnish.

The “Greater Struggle,” as Nigel Jackson explains in the book, is a Sufi term to denote striving in your own heart to overcome and win victory over negative forces and the ego. Keep tempering and shining the sword toward this purification.

Yeah, the old ego wants a gorgeous kitchen that doesn’t look like I’ve lumped green paint over decades of old paint and grime. It’s not going to happen.

Keep polishing amid the greater struggle. . . .

Jade Summer of the Golden Fish

Daily Draw October 20th, 2009

Today I am pairing The Art of Tibet Knowledge Cards with a poem snippet by Yehuda Amichai.

Amichai wrote in Hebrew so this is an English translation. He is very respected and I read a couple of his poems and liked them, but then couldn’t connect to the larger volume. I think sometimes love of poetry for me is in the small words and sentences rather than the larger poem. Ideas and words that leap out like the sun from behind clouds.

BOWL AND STAND

This is from Batang in eastern Tibet from the 18th century. Jade bowl, repoussé and openwork silver stand; 6.25 inches.

Repoussé is a type of embossing where the pattern is hammered out from the reverse side of the piece. The word means “pushed up” in French and comes from the Latin “pulsare” which means “to push.” Famous examples of repoussé are the Statue of Liberty and Tutankhamun’s mask. The region of Batang is now under the control of the Chinese government. There is still a large monastery there with hundreds of Buddhist monks.

Fine utensils were used to serve tea and other refreshments to lamas and guests during ceremonies and audiences in monasteries. This might have been used for ceremonial rice or small fruits placed on a low table in front of the lama. The jade cup sits on a lotus flower and the lower base has lotus petals. Each of the eight petals fanning out from the flower contains one of the Eight Buddhist Emblems:

1. The Umbrella or Parasol

2. The Golden Fish

3. The Treasure Vase

4. The Lotus

5. The Conch

6. The Auspicious or Endless Knot

7. The Victory Banner

8. The Dharma Wheel

And the stanza by Yehuda Amichai that I turned to at random is from a poem called Indian Summer at Princeton:

Indian summer is Jewish summer
In your heavy eyes that always fall out
Because of their heaviness and because of the sadness
Of your face holding them.
Not because of dryness or the forgetfulness of fruit, but a falling
From heavy remembering. The ground keeps moving away from beneath us,
These leaves keep on falling.

Not unlike the heavy remembering, when Batang was Tibetan. In the 18th century this little jade bowl was carved like an eye to fit a socket of lotus, now falling from heavy remembering. The victory banner and the wheel look up from their petals and see the heavy eye of the lotus, and those leaves keep on falling into the pond of the golden fish, waiting for someone to sound the conch again.

Leaping Salmon and Al

Daily Draw October 19th, 2009

I got the notion to take a random snippet from my big anthology of Al Purdy poems. Today’s stanza comes from Vancouver:

A state of mind of course this city
some geographic quirk
can sparkle in the sauntering eye
or glimmer grey in sullen heart
reflect the moods of trees
- on certain mornings of such clarity
mountains are seen to have moved
stumped on stone legs to Granville Street
- at the traffic light’s first green
rose-red spring salmon migrate
the intersection at Hastings & Main

Today’s card is from the Kaos Tarot.

10 of Staves

The man’s dreadlocks morph into a burden of sticks and staves, much like those salmon migrating in the mind’s eye when walking in a large city in the early morning.

The burdens we carry are styled by us, like our hair, we are overwhelmed by our own creativity. Persevere, persevere, we shall make it through that intersection to spawn where we have gone for centuries to create.

We are rose-red ready under our commitment
oppressed, we leap regardless, eyes to the green
the past and future intersecting
in this glimmer of clarity

The Discipline of Transmutation

Daily Draw October 18th, 2009

Great day today, I went for a 4 km bike ride and a walk in the woods. I am all a-tingle with circulation and respiration.

I thought I’d try the 2-card Energy Spread today from the book Power Tarot with the Etruscan Tarot. The first card is the energy I’ll be dealing with today, and the second card relates how I can transmute that energy so that it works for me.

“Trans” means across, beyond, through, on the other side. “Mute” comes from the Latin “mutare” which means change. So how to change the energy across the day so that it works for me, and perhaps how to make it last across the moment when I feel most charged up.

Card 1 – Three of Pentacles
Card 2 – Knave of Swords

Oh, no doubt I was charged up with 3 of Pents energy. Creation, mastery, fine-tuning, exactitude. The lady on the card seems to be dyeing or painting wreaths.

The Knave of Swords has such power of youth. Power to exercise and move the body as well as the power to act when people think you’re too young or incapable. Here he seems to be concentrating on his own tasks, enjoying the feeling of his muscles and movement, for he is a warrior, a crusader.

Instead of sitting quietly and creating and making things as I normally do, I used that energy for physical pursuits, which I am not known to do well. I also used the discipline I normally use for makings things to exercise. There is some sense here of training–sometimes training is simply doing, the discipline to act, and one way to transmute the energy is to act, even if it’s not what you usually do.

Capability comes from action and so does its energy.

Escape the Labyrinth

Daily Draw October 17th, 2009

8 of CUPS

The moving on card. I love the way he’s done this, like the dawn as Icarus and his father Daedalus escape from the island of Crete.

I didn’t remember this but on Crete, Daedalus built the famous labyrinth for Minos II. In this picture, he was escaping from Minos who tried to confine him in the labyrinth. The minotaur that was eventually kept in the labyrinth was the child of Minos II’s wife and a bull.

The thing that’s interesting is that Daedalus built the wings, so he’s moving on through his own ingenuity. Something to remember when you need to escape a situation: you might have to create the means to escape.

Escaping a situation can also imply that you leave the memory behind of something that’s bothering you. Give your mind the wings it needs to leave.