I feel asleep at 8:30 pm last night so now I’m wide awake at 3 am. Darn, I’m trying to get balanced out on the sleep routine but with Christmas and holidays it went awry.

Back to the Sorcerers Tarot today. I am still working on some Saints, but I got some new books and went off in another direction. I do feel a bit like a ping pong ball some days as my creativity goes where it will. A friend just showed me some beads she made from potatoes, I am hoping to try that.

9 OF CHALICES

The famous Wish Card. The one girl seems to be about to conjure up her heart’s desire with her magic wand, and the other girl is concentrating on twining a flower into her friend’s hair.

Well that’s just it, isn’t it? Flowers! I am working on some botanical beads and thinking of different things to do with them. I was considering a peyote stitch abstract and some potato beads all mixed in there some how. Smoosh-la.

A day to relax in any case, and go with the flow of chance meetings and ideas. There is so much positive energy to the day, I can feel it.

I like the suggestion of being at ease and lack of embarrassment in the company of someone else that is highlighted in the booklet and in this painting. Some might ask “Why the nudity on this card?” but it’s a way to hint at this relaxation and total ease.

Later the same day. . . .

Gee, I don’t know, is this kind of like a lump of coal from Santa? Real Canadian potato lumps from a real Canadian garden, skewered and drying in a real Canadian kitchen. All because of a tarot card.

Notice my total ease and lack of embarrassment, per today’s card.

I don’t have that many cards to go in my Tarot of the Saints study. It’s taken me over three years and I’m going to miss the stories, history, and personalities.

One of the books I got for Christmas is called Illuminating the Word: The Making of the Saint John’s Bible by Christopher Calderhead which I briefly mentioned at the end of my study of Saint Paul. While reading this book, I realized that I was way, way behind in knowledge of new bible editions and translations. The Saint John’s Bible uses the “New” Revised Standard Version which I’ve never heard of. As I was browsing at Amazon, I found many of the newer bible editions to have an American fundamentalist or pop culture flavour to them. That’s not something I would like.

So I noodled around reading about other translations and editions. I’ve got the original Living Bible that was published in 1972 and my trusty Revised Standard Version, plus The Good News Bible, and a Catholic Bible. The Good News Bible has small line drawings reminiscent of Rockwell Kent’s dingbats for Candide–they are charming. I love different editions of books for comparison.

I eventually settled on the New International Version as sounding fairly balanced. They have a study bible of it called the NIV Quest Study Bible with fabulous annotations and lots of history, sociology and geography. That interested me, you can’t have too many notes or tangents to explore, so I bought a cheaper hardcover edition of it.

This is a sample page of how they set it up, the annotations are down the left side:

Then I got to thinking about the Brian Williams Minchiate Tarot deck again. I like it, but what to do with it? I like to use cards for learning something. The Minchiate is a historical deck and what better way to use it than with a historical book, like the bible? Along the way of studying these two together I can also mix in the Ancient Minchiate Etruria, and a little Dante as I fancy. Dante goes with everything, even Ezekiel.

I’ll call the study Two Testaments of Terra Lucida because it’s a study using the Old and New testaments, and I’ll use Terra, the old Latin name for the Earth, as a nod to gnosticism and “lucida” means light.

I imagine it will clarify itself as I go along here and there. I think I’d like to stick to a character study of sorts, similar to my study of the Saints. I printed a study help online that calls itself 30 Stories You’ve Probably Never Heard. They are all in the Old Testament and I was intrigued by the friendly subtitles. The third one is from Numbers 16 and says “Korah, Dathan, and Abiran: Gulp!” Having checked this out I would agree.

But how to wrap that into a card study? I usually do random draws; I can’t yet settle my mind on a method for doing this.

The mail arrived today with my bible and the Minchiate Tarot, both are fabulous. I’ve decided to redistribute a few things so the Minchiate deck is now in a fancy bag and I’m going to use my handmade Coptic stitch notebook with it. The bag and notebook were formerly with the Illustrative Lenormand Oracle that I designed and printed, but they relate better visually to the Minchiate.

Note how well the colours all go together in this new set. Yup, it’s an exciting life I live.

EIGHT OF COINS

This shows Joseph and his son Jesus doing carpentry work. Jesus apprenticed to his father to learn the trade. I like Robert Place’s text in which he states “To be satisfying, labor must bring spiritual rewards as well as monetary.” We so often place the emphasis on making money and people don’t make things or make art because they can’t make money at it.

I nearly gave up my artwork for the same reason but I absolutely love making things. It’s important to foster that, to labour at what you love. If you feel compelled to use a talent, to sing, to draw, to play an instrument, then you must, regardless of what else it brings you. This card is a classic of apprenticeship and workmanship and I imagine Jesus worked for many years as a carpenter, increasing his skill and knowledge.

EIGHT OF SWORDS

I usually call this the “dagger of the mind” card. Here a saint sits chained in prison awaiting his execution, at least in his mind. The suggestion here is of the mind making things worse or blocking you. Sometimes we do make things worse with our imagination, inventing shadows and beasties to threaten us. I have found that making things with my hands counters this. You need to give your mind a different focus, give it something concrete to grip, or it drifts into fantasy scenarios of the worst kind.

EIGHT OF CUPS

This depicts King David singing and playing the harp. Sing with joy as David did, be creative, write songs and poetry, foster a creative occupation. The usual meaning of this card is to move on, and there is some of that here in the choice to be creative which in itself is a movement forward.

EIGHT OF STAFFS

How timely, since I just studied Saint Martin. Here he is hiding and hoping they’d leave him alone when they offered him the Bishopric at Tours. I think of this as a defensive card where you shut yourself away, but is this always the best action to take? We may feel overburdened or put upon and want to hide but you could change the world with your acceptance. I like that Place mentions this could mean not living up to your potential. We can be stubborn about that sometimes.

How bad can it be to reach your potential?

Before I get started, Peter and Paul always remind me of a quilt block called Drunkard’s Path, which in variations is also called Rob Peter to Pay Paul, the implication being that you take resources from one and shift it to another. The saying first appeared in writing by John Wycliffe circa 1382 and it does remind me of these two apostles, juggling followers and missionary work, balancing the work of the early Church. It’s a wonderful quilt block to work up in scraps and makes interesting secondary patterns, much like the Apostles did.

I think Paul on this card is one of the best characterizations that Robert Place has used in this deck. Hey Bob, when you’re right, you’re right.

When he was Saul of Tarsus and persecuted Christians with vehemence and near obsession, he was autocratic in his hatred, seeming to revel in violence. After his conversion to Christianity, he still had the authority of overseer, and writing to other churches and visiting them, he could be quite stern, very much an authority with a sharp tongue, challenging, teaching, and admonishing. The intellect of the King of Swords, the philosopher, the diplomatic politician, the man of order and justice. Twisted and cruel as these abilities were before he became a Christian, afterward they made him a capable counsellor and leader of the early Church. Place mentions “destiny” in the text, and the feeling of destiny and leadership is strong in this archetype, so Paul really fits. The idea of mental energy really fits him too, he rarely stopped writing and travelling, he was a thinker.

In my teenage years I used to love reading Paul’s Letters. He was a great teacher, an inspiring person, and just a bit frightening. It’s good for humans to have idealistic and inspiring authority figures. I used to read and reread Taylor Caldwell’s fictional biography of Paul Great Lion of God which is where I learned what a gillyflower was. Such is history and its interesting tangents.

Saul had a vision of Jesus while travelling and was blinded for three days, after which he converted, changed his name to Paul, and started his mission to convert the Gentiles to Christianity, with as much vehemence and strong-headedness as he had previously used to persecute Christians. He also continued to witness and preach to Jewish people in synagogues, although given his previous status they weren’t too friendly to his overtures. He is definitely a man of contrasts. Nothing seems to have phased him, despite being chased incessantly and threatened with death. He also paid his way using his trade as a tentmaker, and this conventional work was part of his life in addition to his mission.

Imagery of St. Paul often shows him in a ship or with the wreck of a ship, which refers to his journey in Roman captivity when the ship was wrecked off Malta, yet his life was saved and he was freed. In the Golden Tarot of the Tsar he is shown in a ship on his way to Syracuse as described in Acts, a book of the New Testament.

He suffered martyrdom at Rome, most likely by decapitation. They probably had to cut his head off to get him to stop talking, which sounds disrespectful but is meant to measure his personality. I imagine he was trying up to the end to reason and speak with his strong need to explain and teach in his King of Swords fashion.

I recently bought the book Illuminating the Word: The Making of the Saint John’s Bible by Christopher Calderhead, and the day after I studied Saint Paul in this deck I read a discussion in this book about how they viewed the full page illumination they did of Paul for the bible. It was interesting that they wanted to convey not just his life, or the shipwreck, but a sense of reverberation of his teaching and care for the Church. At full size, the original artwork must be about 20 inches tall, so this snippet of it won’t have the same impact, but I really like the way they’ve done it. There is a suggestion of a ship in the foreground, and there are old churches and new churches interlinking with homes and tenements, a range of human architecture, of human society, spreading, evolving. There he stands in front, cradling the church.

He must have been quite a man. Some people would argue that it was the holy spirit through Paul that made him great, but let’s give him his due as an exceptional human being too.

The Goethe Playing Cards are misnamed as they have nothing to do with Goethe, they are actually a reproduction of a deck published in 1805 called the Jeanne d’Arc transformation deck. The pip cards have the suit symbols transformed into pictures, hence the transformative aspect. In several old historical playing cards, St. Joan is depicted on the Queen of Spades like she is in this deck. I assume this is where Robert Place got the idea to put her on the equivalent tarot card.

The lily depicted on the Voices of Saints card refers to the d’Arc family name Du Lis (of the lily) that was added when the dauphin, now crowned King, made them nobles and allowed the lily on their coat of arms. It is also a nod to the French emblem of the fleur-de-lis which was painted on Joan’s banner along with God the Father, although some accounts say it was an image of Christ with two angels. Such a fine gesture from a King who abandoned her after she stopped being useful to him. He could have exchanged English prisoners for her, he could have rescued her without doing battle. He couldn’t be bothered.

My view of Joan of Arc is coloured by the movie of her life starring Ingrid Bergman, which I used to watch on television a lot when I was a child. Some days I am more inclined to believe she was a schizophrenic manipulated by those around her, but apart from hearing voices, she didn’t have signs of schizophrenia or any other mental illness or religious hysterics. She believed in God, hardly a reason to diagnose mental illness. That she had leadership ability and could draw people to her with her sincerity and ideas, is also true.

Visions and voices, I believe the famous scene in which the Dauphin disguised himself in the crowd and tried to trick her with an imposter posing as him, but she picked him out nevertheless. It rings true, it rings of intuition which is an innate human faculty not of the occult, merely biological. It’s hard to believe that she was illiterate as she scurried with reason and common sense around her inquisitors with her intellect and memory. They deliberately confused her, the trial was illegal, but she had a sense of humour, she had a sense of irony and fatalism through cheer. She was a prudent young girl in her teens who sang and danced, sewed and spun, and was extremely pious and dutiful.

In relation to the Queen of Swords who embodies intellect and shrewdness, she seems rather naive, but she had the mind, she had the fierceness of purpose and ideals of this Queen. Joan had the courage and strength of will of any Queen, she was a leader. Who better to stand by you? That’s a very Queen of Swords concept.

In the 15th century people were not as well-fed and doctored as we are today. They were much smaller in height and weight and died sooner, so her youth is incredibly salient to the fact of her marching into battle. With the heavy weapons they used then she would have had trouble even physically using them. She wore a suit of armour, quite a feat in itself. She had attendants and led sorties, for which she would have used strategy and nimbleness, but she wouldn’t have been able to physically wield a sword in battle despite the legend. She carried it but did not participate in the actual fighting. It was her moral leadership and encouragement that was tremendous. She carried a banner as depicted in the playing cards, and rode in the army, identified by her banner, while marching.

What I find most horrific about the story of Saint Joan is what those of us who have been wrongly accused, imprisoned, raped, and discarded know to be true: You can do your best, you can serve and toil, you can say all the right things, and still be manipulated, lied about, deceived, abandoned. Your family cannot help, Church and State will desert you, and you will stand alone and burn.

Poor soul, betrayed, sold to the English, and left to be interrogated, heavily chained, browbeaten, deprived, probably raped, and finally burnt alive. How poorly humans treat their heroes.

Yet we are fond of her because a quiet resolve and personality shines through this disturbing history. Her legacy is the courage to simply be yourself and stand your ground.

There will always be an England if St. George lives in our memories! Hip, hip, up the Raj. St. George slays the dragon and all is right when chivalry and courage Rule Britannia. You might have guessed that St. George is the patron Saint of England. He is also the patron Saint of Germany, Portugal, Greece, Canada, the Boy Scouts and many more things.

In keeping with the Knight of Swords archetype, or Mr. Harum-Scarum as I call him, George can be seen to be rushing in, hacking dragons to death, when all he’s really got in front of him is a minor worm that could be handled with a more reasoned approach. Between the black and white is grey, between enormous and tiny, is middling small. It does remind me of Imperial Britain and her attitude toward the colonies and natives.

There is no solid historical documentation of George’s life, but after years of trying to sort it out and either verify or disprove his existence, the Catholic Church is saying that somebody lived and died. He was a martyr, and he was referred to as a good man, but the legend of the dragon was a Medieval invention apparently. George was simply a Christian man, possibly a soldier in the Roman army at Lydda, who came to be persecuted by the Emperor Diocletian in this region of Palestine around the 3rd or 4th century A.D. He was thus tortured and beheaded for his faith.

Other accounts say Diocletian was a friend of his father, an army official, and that’s why George was accepted into the army, and eventually rose to the position of Tribune in the imperial guard, where he directly clashed with Diocletian’s bias against soldiers in the Roman army who were Christian. He objected and couldn’t be persuaded to change his mind and was martyred. I’m skeptical of this enlargement of legend and personal ties to Diocletian. They say George died at Nicomedia, but this seems to be another legend. That there was a martyr who clashed with Diocletian or Dadianus (a local administrator) and was killed at Nicomedia is true, but he is not verified to be George. Diocletian himself would not have been scampering about in remote army camps in the provinces, chatting to mere soldiers about their faith, family friend or not. This story wasn’t even related to the cult of George at Lydda until much later.

People like to embellish a good story.

That wasn’t enough for Medieval literature and someone in the 12th century decided to really romanticize George. It was then written that George came to a town where a dragon was eating two people a day and the King’s daughter was next up in the lottery of townspeople to be sacrificed. So George killed the dragon and rescued the daughter. The banner with the red cross was given to him by the town and some stories say he converted the town to Christianity using the cross on the banner. This red cross is the base for the flag of Great Britain and seems to owe its birth to the Crusades rather than George, but why not throw it all into the mix? Give that guy in the scriptorium a bit more to fill up that page of vellum and paint some chopped up pieces of George’s flesh flowing with milk for marginalia and we’ve got a book, by George.

Does every story have to be bigger and better with shiny doodads, desperate maidens, cruel family friends, and dragons in it? The Patron Saint of Excessive Embellishment seems more interesting to me as he was, a dusty Roman in an out of the way place who happened to have the wrong ideas for the time and suffered terribly for it.

In the cards I have here, there are three in the Golden Tarot of the Tsar. XI Strength and the 6 of Wands refer to the dragon legend and George’s triumph there, and the 8 of Swords refers to his martyrdom and great suffering which I find moving since we so rarely hear of this aspect of his life. The playing card has a beautiful painting from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris from a French illuminated manuscript, again showcasing the dragon legend. Interestingly, St. George on the XI Strength card in the Golden Tarot of the Tsar is about intelligence dominating brutality, common sense and self-control, which is opposite to what we often think of with the Knight of Swords, a point that author Robert Place emphasizes in his text for the Tarot of the Saints.

Back to my Tarot of the Saints study which has been ongoing for three years. I’m actually just into my fourth year now and almost finished.

I started this card on July 1st, 2009 and scanned all the relevant imagery in and then stopped. I think St. Martin is one of those Saints that have been done to death. Martin and his cloak, Martin the do-gooder. “Ho-hum” we sigh.

It is a true thing that if you hear something or someone too often, you tune it out, ready for newer stimuli.

This is specifically St. Martin of Tours who was Hungarian, but was raised in Italy and became a soldier as young men of the time did. While an officer at Amiens (in northern France near the river Somme, so famous during the first World War in the region of Picardy), he saw a naked beggar, and when he recognized Christ in the poor man, Martin gave him half his cloak. Some accounts say that Martin gave the beggar his cloak but later dreamed he had given his cloak to Christ. This set his mind toward spirituality rather than soldiering, and he was baptized after that and chose to leave the army as he now felt he was Christ’s soldier.

Unfortunately the Roman army disagreed and imprisoned him, accusing him of cowardice. When he insisted on leading an army with only a cross instead of arming himself, I suppose they figured that was courageous and let him go without asking him to fulfill the imagined destiny. All very neatly tied up in this package of faith, off he went.

He lived as a hermit for some years and eventually founded a slightly eremitical order and set up the first monastery in Gaul (the ancient name for central France.) About a decade later they made him Bishop at Tours, where he still liked solitary living and eventually founded another order. Although obviously fond of solitude and contemplation, he travelled a lot and preached to remoter areas, and was quite stern with heathens, destroying pagan shrines to introduce Christianity. He was considered a model for other administrators and communities and became very well-known across Christian communities in Europe. Although not a martyr, he became a Saint due to his fame as an evangelist and Father of Monasticism in France.

Like others who have a large impact, St. Martin seems to be a person who directly affected people through his command of speech and audience. He was aggressive enough to be active as a missionary, but contemplative enough not to abuse the position. He was a Master of humility. There were some opponents to him in his later years, St. Brice is mentioned as stirring it up a bit against him. Brice (also called Brictio or Britius) was one of the clergy under Martin and succeeded him as Bishop of Tours. However, for a while he was considered insubordinate and troublesome and was exiled for seven years. No one knows accurately what the big kafuffle was about, the history of their differences has been exaggerated and embellished. I imagine that a holy order would be quite strict about obedience to the Bishop though, so if you disagreed continuously it would be cause for banishment. Exit St. Brice, with an eye to the future. Perhaps if St. Martin had given him half his cloak they might have patched things up. Hahaha.

The Saints are also very human, which makes them so appealing centuries down the timeline. This tarot card can often point to gossip or intrigue, and Martin seems to have participated in such things.

Perhaps this is what I shall take from this study of St. Martin: The opposing pull of human nature to reach out and to hide, to give comfort and to destroy, to communicate sincerely and to argue with vehemence. Beggars and Kings we are, a species with complete dichotomy of purpose, swirling around doing our best as we lurch through life.

Daily Draw December 26th, 2009

I shall try another Lenormand draw with the deck I made myself, The Illustrative Lenormand Oracle as I call it.

I know many people get a lot out of Lenormand cards, but so far I find them to be static in comparison to the work I do with other cards. I might get a better vibe with them if I mix them with another deck. That’s more my style.

Okay, I’m going to do two Lenormand cards with one clarifying card.  Let’s see what happens with The Illustrative Lenormand Oracle and the Celtic Tarot. While I love some of the individual art in the Celtic Tarot, I haven’t clicked with it either.

DOG; CHILD; 7 OF SWORDS

The Dog means home to me and comfort, a friend and succour. The Child is so exuberant and open, talking and fairly bursting with energy as witnessed by the green explosion of colour behind her.

The 7 of Swords is a card of theft and deceit. What a contrast! I think this is the clarity of the situation, the feelings of safety and openness to creativity that I feel at home, and the deceit I have encountered elsewhere. There is the suggestion of paranoia or suspicion destroying the naive trust of the Child here too.

Card draws often point to a balance in life, a way to be aware of when you are out of balance. This is a tricky concept as you get older I find. The need to withdraw and not bother with people is quite strong in me, but without people there is no balance to being human. After all, that little girl needs someone to tell all the wonderful things in her mind to, and she will get wonderful ideas and inspiration back.

I’d rather read a book. Oh Judith, don’t be such a Scrooge.

Daily Draw December 25th, 2009

Here I am pulling all my lovely Christmas gifts out of my sack and Santa has left me the Ace of Swords from the Sorcerers Tarot.

It’s a day for ideas and reaching for more ideas.

Reach!

Daily Draw December 24th, 2009

I was browsing through the Faerie Tarot last night and noticed a great detail on the Hanged Man card. I can’t believe I never noticed this and I’ve owned the deck for 11 months.

XII – THE HANGED MAN

Hanging suspended (in winter I expect) forever trying to reach that strawberry and the fruits of Spring. Look at that big, fat bird in the upper left corner. Isn’t it great? Like no known bird but it reminds me of a robin.

We have robins nesting all over our property, I just love them, I love their particular twilight song which I remember from childhood and being put to bed at 7:30 or 8 in early summer, and listening to them chortling, drifting off to sleep. They are very comforting birds.

I’ve got my third cold of the month and I’m somewhat suspended over Christmas, going steady with the hot water bottle and dreaming of Spring strawberries while listening to A Jazz Musician’s Christmas by Jack Sheldon on the radio.