Tarot Thrones | The Court Card Blog

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  • S L MacGregor Mathers| Etteilla | Court Cards

    I’m all about spreading the Court Card luff, as you know, so here are a couple of useful things that I picked up the other day from a slender volume called The Tarot by S L MacGregor Mathers.

    Yes, you know, the Golden Dawn guy.  Right at the back of the book, under the heading ‘Special Insights’ I noted the following:
    Knight of Sceptres
    (Knight of Wands)
    You can interpret the DEPARTURE of the energies of the card following the Knight of Wands.  So, if the Knight of Wands is followed by 3 Swords, it would mean the departure of grief/loss.

    Knave of Sceptres
    (Page of Wands)
    Reversed:  See what cards it lies between and they shall show you the source of the news and what the news is about.

    The Knight of Cups
    Where the Wands Knight showed departure, the Cups Knight shows ARRIVAL in the following card.  So Knight of Cups followed by 3 of Swords shows the arrival of grief/loss.

    The Queen of Swords
    Much less useful information for us – can show someone who has just been widowed.  Or simply show that ‘if two people are married, the one will die some time before the other, but not necessarily that the event will occur immediately’.  See? Not hugely useful.  But presented for you nonetheless 🙂

    The Knave of Swords
    (Page of Swords)
    Reversed:  Indicates that the card following is UNEXPECTED.  So, followed by 6 of Wands, you would have an unexpected victory.

    Knave of Pentacles
    (Page of Pentacles)
    Reversed: The following card will show where the querant is PRODIGAL  (ie wastefully extravagant)

    These are ‘chiefly’ taken from Etteilla, according to Mathers.  Am now, of course, sweeping myself off to the dustiest corner of the Thrones Tower library to inspect Etteilla for more court card info 🙂

    I’d be interested to know how you get on when using these insights.

  • Chinese Elements | The Fire Monkey Year

    In the West, we tend to use the classical elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water.  However, this is not the only system of elements available and as we move into the Chinese Year of the Fire Monkey, I thought that we could take a look at their elements.

    Why the interest in China? Well, hubby has just relocated there for maybe the next two years and, with any amount of luck, I’ll be able to go and visit him from time to time (worry not! he will still be coming home every eight weeks, for eight weeks!) but I am delving into all things Chinese.  And you cannot escape my burgeoning interest in all things Chinese either!  😀


    In Chinese astrology, just as in the West, there are 12 signs that you can be born under.  However, there is no Leo, Aquarius or Taurus … instead we have:

    Rat
    Ox
    Tiger
    Rabbit
    Dragon
    Snake
    Horse
    Sheep
    Monkey
    Rooster
    Dog
    Pig

    Every 12-year cycle begins with the Year of The Rat. This year we have entered a Monkey year, so next year will be Rooster etc.  An additional dimension is added to this, with the inclusion of the appropriate Chinese element:

    Wood
    Fire
    Earth
    Metal
    Water

    Yup, the Chinese have FIVE as opposed to our usual FOUR.

    Each of the signs has its own natural element – for example: Monkey’s natural element is Metal.

    But this is a Fire year.  So how does Fire and Metal sit together with Monkey’s nature? Well, clearly you would need to go to an expert in Chinese astrology for a proper reading but, here’s my tuppence worth!

    Metal is associated with the wind – so it’s changeable very quickly. Couple this with Monkey’s mischievous and curious nature and you have got a potentially tricky year ahead!  Be aware that things can/will change quickly, so there is a lack of certainty and bear in mind that while curiosity is the source of many marvellous discoveries, that it also killed the cat 🙂

    新年快乐 !!!

  • Robin Wood Tarot | Review

    Confession time: I’ve had this deck for years and never really used it. Why? I don’t know – too many new decks flashing their eyes saucily at me, if I’m honest.  But I recently had cause to dig the Robin Wood Tarot out because my good friend Nancy Hendrickson wanted to use it for an exercise that we were doing together. What can I say? I fell in love with the damned thing!

    I’ve made a li’l video to celebrate the fact that by changing my broadband supplier, it no longer takes me DAYS to load up a 1 minute long creation.

    Take a lookie at the video and then see what you think of my observations – I’d love you to add your tuppenceworth in the comments at the end 🙂

    There is a clear elemental colour palette for the suits.  This always makes me very happy!

    Wands are fiery/sunny in yellow/red
    Cups are watery in blue/pink
    Pentacles are earthy/land-orientated in brown/purple
    Swords are Airy/cloudy in blue/white

    First up, let’s look at the Pages.

    To me these all look like girls, but you know what, it doesn’t matter a jot. If you read them as long-haired boys, that’s totally fine.  Each Page holds a gleaming symbol of their suit and each sports a little clue to their personalities on their belts:

    Page of Cups has an artist’s palette
    Page of Swords has a spy glass
    Page of Wands has fire-crackers
    Page of Pentacles has a book

    Onwards to the bold Knights! As you would expect, they are all mounted:

    Knight of Swords – Pegasus
    Knight of Cups – Seahorse
    Knight of Wands – very fiery steed
    Knight of Pentacles – a proper, solid-looking horse

    The Knight of Cups is actually quite a foamy and active looking horse.  Although he himself is not as dynamic as the Knights of Wands and Swords.  The darling Knight of Pentacles is absolutely rooted in the ploughed fields that surround him.

    The Queens are glorious creatures.  The first thing that I noticed is that the two active/Yang suits of Swords and Wands have standing Queens while Cups and Pentacles are seated.

    Each Queen (bar one) has a flower and an animal associated with them:

    Queen of Swords – rose and butterfly
    Queen of Pentacles – fruit and rabbits
    Queen of Wands – sunflower and cat

    The Queen of Cups doesn’t have anything obviously associated with her.

    The Kings are worthy consorts for their Queens.  They too stand and sit, to match their Queen.

    I love how the King of Swords has a starry night-sky lining to his cloak. The King of Cups drinks from a cup with the Yin/Yang symbol.
    The King of Wands continues his RWS reputation as the Lizard King.
    The King of Pentacles looks comfortable, sitting with his slippers on!

    The Robin Wood is so comforting in its similarities to the RWS, yet its different enough to warrant having both in your collection!  It’s a joy to shuffle and so easy to read with.

    *** Note*** There is also a companion book for this deck, but I don’t have it.  Thanks to Nicole Diamond for the info <3

    *** Note 2 *** There is an App (iOS and Android) – by The Fool’s Dog (who make great apps!)  Thank you for the heads-up on that from Nancy Hendrickson <3

    What do you think of it?

  • Tarot | Scottish Opera

    Just thought I’d share some images that Scottish Opera had printed to promote their season. I cannot tell a lie, this post was scheduled to post a looooong time ago, and failed.  So am popping it out now, because it’s good to share!

    No, they are not proper Tarot cards, nor are they my raison d’etre court cards, but I am sharing them here to remind you to keep your eyes open for Tarot-inspired artworks everywhere.

    These items of ephemera are worth seeking out and procuring to add to your collection.  One day they might be worth something to a collector. But in the meantime, they look excellent in little clip frames on the wall!

  • Marseille Sophistiqué | TPC Games | Review

    So, I decided to hazard another foray into the Dark Arts of Imovie, this time with the Marseille Sophistiqué.  The MS is a rather gorgeous little deck from those clever comic book artists at TPC Games.
    click on the photo to visit TPC Games
    Before we get into the review, I know that there are a couple of glitchy things there in the video, but it takes about an hour for me to load up a video of this teeny tiny size to youtube. Fibre optic? I think we’ve got string here …  
    As you can see from the photo, the box is a sturdy lift-top box that depicts 4 cards from the deck – a Major and a Minor, flanked by a King and Queen.
    The cards themselves are 4 3/4″ tall x 2 3/4 wide and printed on a linen-effect card which results in delightfully slippy shuffling.
    It’s a 78-card deck with Justice at VIII and La Force at XI.  Yes, the titles are in French.  It’s a Marseille, so, yanno – get over it 🙂  The deck is based (fairly faithfully, I think) on the Conver Marseille Tarot (1760s).
    The Unnamed Chappie
    First up, this is a Tarot that has been created with GAMES in mind, not divination.  There IS a LWB with the deck, but it is stuffed to the gunwales with rules for game playing and details of games, such as Baronetti and French Tarot.  They do mention divination in an Appendix at the back of the LWB, but there are no card meanings included. 
    The first thing you’ll notice are the non-traditional hues of the colour-scheme. If the primary colours of a traditional Marseille have you reaching for your sun-glasses, then this might be the deck for you.  It’s in muted shades of green, gold, blue and red, with white highlights.  Very tasteful!
    The colouring-in is deliberately quite scrappy – like an old deck – with lines clearly visible. However, although you can see the ‘pencil marks’, they colour outside of the lines just enough to be attractively arty and not so much that the untidy artwork shifts the gear-stick on your OCD into overdrive.  

    Scribbly colouring.  I like it.

    It’s a 78-card deck, with traditional Marseille pips.  The suits are Deniers, Epees, Batons and Coupe.  The Minors have coloured borders – Cups is red (more like pink, really), Deniers are gold, Swords blue and Batons are green.  These borders also go around the Courts.  The Majors don’t have such a border.

    Above are the four 10s of the deck, to illustrate the Minors.  There is a X symbol for 10 in the top left, bottom right corners.  Where the X coloured yellow is in the bottom right, the card is right-sides up.  Where the yellow X is in the upper left, it is upside down. 
    The back (shown at the end of the video above) is suitable for reversals.
    So, what do I think? It’s a nice size for handling and it shuffles beautifully.  It’s easy to distinguish Swords from Wands thanks to the colours selected.  The muted, almost sugar almond, shades are delicious. And of course, the design is a proven classic.
    I think this deck is gorgeous and a worthy addition to anyone’s collection. 
    Do you have the Marseille Sophistiqué – what do you think of it?
    Do you use it or just admire the artwork?
    How are you at reading with unillustrated pips?
    Want more games to play with it? 
    Click here for game variants not in the LWB
    Update 31/3/17 – the deck can be purchased here  but only US sales, alas!

  • Tarot Thrones is Supporting Syrian Refugees

    No court card humour from me today.  And believe me, be glad that there is no photograph to illustrate today’s blog post.

    I’m appalled  by the humanitarian crisis that we are seeing as a result of Syrians fleeing their homes.  The newspaper headlines would break your heart.

    So, TABI has set up a justgiving page to show the world that Tarot people CARE about what’s happening to these people in their time of crisis.

    No more drowned children.

    Please.

    Let’s put a stop to it.

    https://www.justgiving.com/TABITarotsyria/

    You can make a donation through that portal.

    You can take this code and put it as a button on to your website or your blog and also support us that way.

    To add to your blogger blog, select the ‘add html’ widget in ‘layout’ and drop the code in, save.  That’s it.

    <a href=’http://www.justgiving.com/TABITarotsyria’ title=’JustGiving – Sponsor me now!’ target=’_blank’><img src=’http://www.justgiving.com/App_Themes/JustGiving/images/badges/badge5.gif’ width=’150′ height=’85’ alt=’JustGiving – Sponsor me now!’ /></a>



    Thank you








  • The Alchemical Tarot | Robert Place |4th Edition

    The Alchemical Tarot
    on the Throne!

    I’ve been coveting a Robert Place deck for a long time now and lo! because I’m a dozy mare and got my Alchemicals and my Sevenfolds all mixed up, I will shortly be the proud owner of both the decks and the book and poorer than a Church Mouse.

    This is the 4th Edition of this deck and it has been funded via an Indigogo campaign.

    We’ve got four families – Staffs, Swords, Vessels and Coins; nice and traditional.

    Each family member sports their name and also the elemental glyph associated with that suit.  The first thing that you will notice about the courts in the Alchemical Tarot is that the Pages have been replaced with the rank of Lady and the second thing is that the King is not a figure but a creature.

    Let’s take a closer look …

    Suit of Staffs
    Each member of our Staff family stands in a progressively dry landscape, which is perfect because they are identified with the element of Fire (the glyph for fire is at the top of each card).
    The Lady of Staffs reminds me of the Page of Wands in the RWS – they adopt the same kind of pose with their Wands.  In the Alchemical, all the Wands are ablaze.
    The Knight of Staffs, on the other hand, is in a fairly relaxed attitude which is NOT what we associate with him in the RWS.
    The Queen faces us, a burning sceptre in one hand and her flaming wand in the other.  She is barefoot and bare-boobed.
    The King is a red dragon … which is probably a very alchemically thing, but I find him being the only creature in the suit a bit distracting.  There will be a reason for it, but I don’t know what it is because the deck doesn’t come with any kind of LWB.  Which is a pity.
    The suit of Swords
    Moving on to the Swords family, we can see that the Lady of Swords plays a lute.  This might strike you as odd, but the Sola Busca Tarot has the Page of Swords playing a lute too, so a nice nod backwards to this important and ancient deck.
    The Knight of Swords is the only Knight depicted with his face obscured and the only one involved in any kind of fighting.  None of the Knights are on horseback.  I am reliably informed that this is a Wyvern and not the red dragon of the King of Staffs.
    The Queen of Swords looks very much like the Queen of Staffs, same barefoot and balanced pose – sword in each hand.  Curiously, a red wing and a green wing.  Again, something that a LWB might have clarified for me.
    The King is an eagle.  Or a lethal-looking chicken.  Let’s go with the eagle.  The other Swords are depicted amongst clouds, but the King has no background at all.
    The glyph for Air shows us that the suit of Swords is associated with this particular element.  
    The suit of Vessels

    Now to the suit of Vessels.  We see that theyare all found in or on water. All their vessels are different -alembics, jugs, goblets.


    The Lady of Vessels stands ON the water with a jug balanced upon her head.  A light breeze ruffles the waves at her feet. 


    The Knight wades through the water, holding up his golden vessel as if to take a swig from it.  A little fish looks up at him – reminding us of the fish in the RWS Page of Cups.  The waters around him are still and tranquil.


    The Queen of Vessels looks quite different to the other two queens we have encountered so far.  She has both breasts bared and looks towards her suit symbol. She has the finned and fishy tail of a mermaid and she sits on the surface of the water.  The Queen’s large vessel is closed and the stopper resembles a question mark.  I’m sure that she is an alchemical figure, but it is infuriating to have a deck with so much glorious alchemical content and no handy LWB to refer to!

    The King is a crowned whale who seems to be spouting water into a huge goblet on his back.  Except whales spout air out of their breathing holes in real life.  Mind you, in real life they don’t have crowns or goblets on their backs….  The sea around him is white with choppy waves. 
    The suit of Coins

    Just as the Lady of Swords had her suit symbol above her, so the Lady of Coins can have her suit symbol in the coin-like lunar disk in the sky or in the purse around her waist.  She is elaborately dressed and stands before lush vegetation.  The focus of her gaze is the flowers in her hand.

    The Knight of Coins holds a mace, not a sword and his suit symbol is on a great shield that he rests on the ground before him.  He too stands amidst rich greenery, with a castle in the background – perhaps his home.

    The Queen of Coins is naked as the day she was born and her pose links her to the Queen of Vessels (without the fish tail of course).  She cradles and gazes at a cornucopia, whilst holding a small unicursal pentagram in her right hand.  Again the vegetation around her is lush and there are more buildings in the background – she is closer to home than the Knight.

    The King is a crowned lion.  I’m sorry, but I can only think of Aslan when I see this chap.  A great paw rests on a golden disk which contains the image of a lion rampant.  Or self portrait.

    So, what do I think of the deck?

    It’s a fully illustrated deck that gives you a choice of Lovers cards (one more risque than the other!) with enough similarities throughout the deck to the RWS to ensure that even a beginner reader could use it.

    Strength is at XI and Justice is at VIII – the traditional, pre-Golden Dawn positioning.

    There are some images that could do with clarification – for example, the 5 of Staffs is a hand with the five fingers burning; the Hanged Man is not the relaxed beatific saint but a struggling figure strung up by one leg. These image choices could all be easily explained in a LWB.  But there is none included with the deck, which is a pity.

    There IS a large companion book, but it is purchased separately.

    It’s a beautiful deck and I love the muted antique colour-palette throughout.  It’s a dream to shuffle and to use and, even with a limited knowledge of alchemy – it reads beautifully.  I just wish that an LWB had been included.

    I’d love to hear what you think of the Alchemical Tarot 🙂

    Edit:   Thanks to Moti for this information.  You can download the LWB at this link:

      http://robertmplacetarot.com/the-alchemical-tarot-little-white-book/ 

  • TABI’s Tarot Conference 2015 | Court Cards

    Saturday saw the return of TABI’s annual Tarot Conference in Birmingham.  Here it is, in court cards:

    So we checked in to our rooms and the speakers and organisers had been presented with a li’l hand-made bar of chocolate and a welcome card. Everyone was thrilled and posted photos like this:

    © Viv Kacal 

    As Page of Pentacles, my first thought was ‘Thank God, something to eat. So my photo was like this:

    *wipes chocolate smears from mouth to take photo*

    We met up before dinner on the Friday.  My inner Queen of Wands became my Outer.  Are you digging the leopard print cardi and the gold high heels?

    I’m working my Bette Lynch vibe like mad here.
    © Viv Kacal or Ania Marczyk (I wasn’t looking)

    Our meal on Friday night was very tasty indeed.  I barely stopped eating to look up for photos.  Look – I’m not even drunk.  But my head can’t do that Linda Blair 360 degree thing….

    © Ania Marczyk

    On Saturday morning I was the first speaker on the floor – the warm up act for our wonderful head-liners – Jane Struthers, Andy Boroshevengra and Caitlin Matthews.

    I attended dressed as the Druidcraft’s Queen of Swords:

    © Viv Kacal (I think)
    That’s me in the spotlight! That’s me as the Queen of Swords 🙂
    It’s me! No, it’s not – it’s the Queen of Swords!

    I didn’t do the bare feet thing though.  Sometimes you can take something too far …. I wore the gold high heels though. See? My outer skin at the Conference was the Queen of Swords, but my feet are forever the Queen of Wands.  Until about lunch time and then they morphed into terribly unflattering running shoes and I went all Queen of Pentacles 😀

    And also managed to double up as Queen of Cups in Ania Marczyk’s forthcoming Meniscus Tarot too.  Tha’ Queen of Swords outfit is VERSATILE!

    Queen of Cups Meniscus Tarot Ania Marczyk
    © Ania Marczyk

    I brought home a throne – as you do!

    And brought home one of Moti’s beautiful prints!

    Moti’s original painting was there for us to see too – what a talent!

    So, only one question remains ……Why have I not posted pix of the speakers as Court Cards?

    Because they were all complete STARS!

    Coming along next year?!

  • The Book of Shadows | Andrea Aste | Page of Swords |Kickstarter

    Andrea Aste

    I first encountered the delightful genius of Andrea Aste when I was on Arnell Ando’s Tarot Tour of Italy back in April and I was struck a) by the amazing artwork that he showed us and b) the overall vision of his Tarot project.

    So, here’s a quick Q&A with the man himself about that vision and his Tarot deck – through the Page of Swords, of course!
    Me:  Andrea – for those that aren’t aware of your Tarot project can you briefly outline it here?

    Andrea:  “Thanks Alison, it is very kind of you. The project is a vision I had 3 years ago. I wanted to create a multimedia project meant to be a tour of exhibitions: I wanted to re-create a parallel fictional world revolving around a mysterious deck of tarot and a coded Alchemy book… 

    “Thus I started to create the deck and the book.. but While working on them I had many ideas.. the tarot started to tell me their stories, new suggestions, a plot, feelings. I imagine strange places, old dusty libraries, strange alchemists and secret sects..I had a plot for a film..and I did it! 
    “An historical thriller-mockumentary, where I decided to present everything I’ve created as a real archaeological discovery… The goals of the project is always the same: create a parallel world in the Renaissance, to show how, in our world, philosophy, alchemy, magic, occultism, art and new-born sciences were mixed all together. It is a great challenge. I think we need more culture and what better way than to create a series of exhibitions where people can have fun and think, see things in many different ways and discover our perception of reality changed through time? 
    “So, while organising the tour of exhibitions, I thought it would have been great to start to share the project with people. I looked for sponsors in my country, Italy, needless to say in vain. So I decided to make everything in English and go to another level: international one, on kickstarter! 🙂

    Me: Tell me about the Tarot deck itself – is it ‘traditional’ in that it has 78 cards, four suits, 22 Majors etc?


    Andrea: “The deck is very traditional in its concept. I wanted to present it as the first ever created, the origin of all tarot decks. It is a game of fantasy, but a challenge too!

    “I have my artistic style, I wanted to be very personal, in my style, not in a possible renaissance style… so I had to work on the meanings and references of every single card, to make it realistic as a primordial tarot. It was fun and very interesting – I spent months studying books and tarot, consulting historians, logicians, an art expert, a sociologist (one of my best friends has a PhD in Sociology – he’s an expert of magic phenomena from a sociological point of view). 
    “The tarot is inspired by the Marseille deck and above all from the oldest surviving deck: The Visconti Sforza. So, yes, 22 Major Arcana, 78 cards in total, numeral cards in the Italian oldest tradition, with every number represented by the corresponding number of items. The 8 of cups shows 8 cups! 🙂 very traditional 🙂

    Me: Have you renamed any of the cards?

    Andrea: “Actually the card has the name given by the tradition of the Marseille’s deck… but I didn’t want to write in any language: Old Latin? Old English? German? Italian? Which language could ever being used to create the first tarot?

    “So, I opted for NONE… I invented a code, every symbol is a set of meanings, like in Egyptian hieroglyphs, or the Mayan’s symbols. So every name of every card is composed of symbols that capture the name of the card and its meaning.  It was a very complex game to play…but I loved it, but it was a dream I had from the time when I was studying philosophy at University: invent a language, a parallel world, a fantasy realm where to settle my stories… 🙂 I did year before, transforming it into my full time job! 🙂

    Me:  Let’s look specifically at the Page of Swords (on right) – there are no keywords or titles as such on the card … but there are those mysterious symbols! Can you explain for me the symbols and what the card represents within your deck?


    Andrea: “Every symbols has a meaning, a set of meanings all correlated one to the others.

    “The Page of Swords’s name it is compose by two symbols: The first means “warrior”, “guard”,”the one who is fighting for…”. The second one is the symbol of the “Swords”. The court cards are the less related to the tradition. I kept the meaning, but not the figures. I wanted them to be set in the parallel world with fantastic creatures, strange costumes, no clear cultural references – they are set in a mythical past. They are mysterious and very visionary. In this way I can use them in the future to evolve other part of the parallel world, to expand the world I created two years ago with Torineide, an exhibition held at the Natural Science Museum of my home city, Turin. 
    “The fantastic creatures and some of the characters I created there come back in The Book of Shadows. The idea is to create over time, a huge fictional world, where everything is interconnected. a multimedia project… I guess I will be very busy in the future 🙂

    Me:  I think that you will be VERY busy in the future, Andrea!  Here at Tarot Thrones, I focus on the court cards of the Tarot.  Your courts are structured Page, Knight, Queen and King – what do those ranks mean within your deck?

    Andrea: “I respected the traditional ranks and names of the traditional decks. I’ve just taken the “tetragonal” structure of the 4 cards and give them a fantastic-fictional background.

    Me: Could a beginner Tarotist use your deck or is it aimed at experienced readers?

    Andrea:  “I guess a beginner could have lot of fun with this deck and project, but like in every aspect of life, the more culture, curious, and active toward the world you are, the better you can reach out and understand it.

    “We have the misfortune to live in time where there is not enough time to go deep in what we like or what interests us – there are too many pressures, too many roles and rules we “are” forced to follow and play

    “For example – Who would take a German Grammar and dictionary just for the pleasure to read Faust by Goethe? Just the ones who have allowed themselves to do it… Difficult time, culture is everything, poetry,  music, art – if we lose these, we lose what makes us human…we are not robots, our goal is not to produce or consume but to explore, learn and improve ourselves 🙂

    Me:  Tell me about the other items that make up your whole Book of Shadows project?


    Andrea: “The Book of Shadows is a deck, a book that tells part of its stories and with all the “technical” data about the cards,  along with the new spreads inspired to the major constellations, the symbols, etc… and the film.

    “The pivotal point of the project is the mockumentary: “The Book of Shadows”. It’s an historical thriller revolving around the mystery of the manuscript and the tarot created by the Alchemist.

    “Philosophy, history and science are intermingled with fictional facts, invented arcane references and symbols, citations of esoteric passages from fabricated manuscripts, all of which are used to create an illusion of authenticity and truthfulness. The narration is accompanied by sensationalised newspaper articles, commentary and arguments by fictional cultural intellectuals, logicians, archaeologists and art historians, etc…

    “To create a perfect illusion of veracity some selected guests, who are well known international experts in different fields, have been contacted to be interviewed, so that they could express their point of view about the Alchemist’s works as if they were real. Fiction and reality had to be totally fused together: Prof. Roger Scruton, Prof. Augustus Casely-Hayford, Mary K. Greer, Chris Butler, Arnell Ando.

    “In certain moments the fabric of the parallel world is ripped apart and another level of reality appear: an animation, narrated by international star Arturo Brachetti, tells the Alchemist’s story.

    “In his search for knowledge, the Alchemist devises a new game: the Tarot cards. He wanted to challenge Nature and, by cheating her, to gain her secrets. But Destiny thwarts his plans and reality shatters into thousands of pieces. The Tarot cards take life transporting the Alchemist into a discovery journey…

    Me:  It sounds amazing! You are showcasing your work in Australia soon?


    Andrea:  “I will present the Film, the international première and the project 🙂 yes.

    Me:  There are only a few days left on the kickstarter – can people still contribute?

    Andrea: “Yes sure. we need help to make the parallel world real, to make it grow, and share it 🙂

    It’s not too late to support Andrea’s vision – and bag yourself a copy of this intriguing deck!

    https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1769110239/the-book-of-shadows-the-lost-code-of-the-tarot

    or you can keep up with the deck’s development on facebook!

    TABI has backed this project!

    *** EDIT  21 April 2017 *** The deck and accompanying book can now be purchased on Amazon as ‘The Lost Code of Tarot‘ 

  • Strength | Summer Solstice | Blog Hop

    Welcome to the Midsummer
    Blog hop! If you’ve happened here by chance, then you are in for a
    treat if you follow the links below to all the other blog hoppers who
    are providing a chain that runs from 0 The Fool through to XXI The
    World.
    My card of choice is
    Strength.
    Most decks published today show
    Strength as Major Arcana VIII, however this wasn’t always the case.
    In older Marseille-style decks Justice is found at position
    VIII.
    So why the switch? Well, Back in the early 1900s, The Golden Dawn’s 
    A
    E Waite (the creator of the Rider Waite Smith Tarot) was keen to add
    astrological references to the Major Arcana.  But if Strength (Leo),
    kept her position at Major XI, then pesky Justice (Libra) would disrupt
    their plan to show all the Astrological trumps in their correct
    order. 
    And Lo! The switch was made!  Righting some ancient Tarot wrong, no doubt 🙂
    Aleister Crowley, another but more notorious member of the Golden Dawn, stuck resolutely to the traditional
    numbering for his Thoth deck. But changed the names of the cards – Strength became Lust.  Contrary ol’ coot!
    Does this order-switching matter? Probably
    not really, because back in the day, the old decks didn’t have numbered
    Major Arcana cards. 
    Why were numbers added? I fondly imagine that the various City States of Italy – each more powerful and vainglorious than the
    next – ended up with different cards in different orders.  It’s easy to imagine courtly gents in tights arguing heatedly about whether Temperance scored more points than Justice in their card game.  That’s the sort of argument that can get you run through with a rapier….
    But I digress, what I REALLY wanted to share with you is the evolution
    of the image:
    Visconti Sforza – 1451

    Hercules giving the Ebil Nemean lion a jolly good thrashing.
    Pretty danged violent to our contemporary eyes, isn’t it? 
    The Sola Busca Tarot – 1491

    A completely different viewpoint from a completely unique deck.
     This is Tulio, meditating on the night

    Don’t mix up card VIII which shows a child being dismembered over a fire by Nero – that’s Justice, not Strength!


    This is a deck crammed with alchemical symbolism 🙂
    Tarot del Mantegna – 1470(ll Meneghello version)


    A woman holds a club and wears a lion’s mask.
    There is also a lion behind her and a broken column.
    The broken column is traditionally the symbol for Forteza.


    BTW – this deck doesn’t actually have anything to do with Mantegna 🙂
    The Rider Waite Smith – 1909

    The combination of lion, woman and physicality that we strongly associate with this card makes an appearance.

    Tarot Sophistique – 2014

    A contemporary version of a Marseille Tarot image 
    Woman and Lion
    we can see the nascent leminscate of the RWS in the circle of her hat.

    Strength earned her place in the Tarot deck by dint of being one of the four Cardinal Virtues: Fortitude.

    The other virtues are Prudence (The High Priestess), Temperance and Justice (represented by, erm, Temperance and Justice).

    I like the virtue of Fortitude being part of the Tarot deck.  But Fortitude and Strength have slightly differing meanings:

    Fortitude means courage in
    pain or adversary.
    Strength means:
    a) the
    quality or state of being physically strong
    b) the capacity of an
    object or substance to withstand great force or pressure
    The subtle difference is that Fortitude brings a moral strength, a valour (indeed a Virtue!) to the heart of the card, which Strength alone does not.
    And there endeth the Lesson on Strength!
    Hope you’re ready to hop onwards to the next card?