Tarot Thrones | The Court Card Blog

Tag: Queen of Pentacles

  • Feminism | The Tarot Queens

    For the past ten days or so, I have been feeling as though I am living through the looking glass – and it’s not good, with cake that says ‘Eat Me’. I’m not even an American.  What a challenge it is to be a liberally-minded American at the moment, because:

    YES, Trump wants to build an actual wall.

    YES, Trump shuts out Syrian refugees from America (allegedly for only a set period of time. We’ll see)  Dear America, what happened to ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore’?

    How sad that it should come to this. (more…)

  • Tarot Queens | Mothers’ Day

    Last year’s Mother’s Day Tokens
    Still unspent!

    Originally Mothers’ Day was when people returned to their Mother Church.  These days, Mothers’ Day has become a Hallmark schmaltz-fest directed at Mothers everywhere.  In the UK we have Mothering Sunday on the 6th.

    Yes, we know that it’s all a big commercial CON, but woe betide the child who fails to proffer up SOMETHING.

    Sonshine is very partial to buying me mugs.  And the odd musical teddy-bear.  I am hopeful this year of a scented candle 🙂

    The tarot’s Queens are nurturers, guardians and teachers, but how do they mother!?

    Queen of Cups

    Loving. Verily, even in the face of slammed doors and crispy sports socks discovered beneath the bed.  The Queen of Cups represents those times when the temperature of your relationship with your offspring is in the desirable range – loving, caring, empathetic, understanding, friendly. BUT she can also be an emotionally manipulative Quine* if she doesn’t get her own way.

    Mother most likely to:  Keep every scrappily-coloured in heart and crayoned card you ever made for her.

    Queen of Swords

    This is Mrs Sensible Head.  She’s not terribly happy about going along with the Tooth Fairy DECEPTION and if you have a Queen of Swords mother, you will probably be the first in your group to find out that Santa Claus IS NOT REAL. Keen to engage you in philosophical conversation, questions such as ‘Where do dogs go when they die?’ and ‘Was Jesus a real person?’ are the stuff of LIFE to this Queen!!

    Mother most likely to:  Tell you that it’s ‘for your own good’, no matter what.  Bad Cop is a role she is prepared to embrace.  For your own good. Of course.

    Queen of Pentacles

    This Queen is everyone’s favourite aunty – she’s the BEST gift-giver and the comfort-food queen.  When you are ill, she makes you chicken soup and ensures that your pillows are plumped and your bedding is fresh.

    Mother most likely to:  Make you a Tracey Island Thunderbirds birthday cake. Even though you’re 40.  Because she knows that you’ve always wanted one.

    Queen of Wands

    This is the most conflicted Queen – her fiery and watery natures do not sit comfortably together and she can struggle to keep it all together.

    Too much emotional luffy-wuffy neediness seeping her way and she feels dragged down and restricted.  But too much fiery assertiveness can burn out any emotional connection to a frazzled shadow and she can seem like an emotionally cool or unavailable mother.

    The mother most likely to:  Not be able to articulate how much she loves you.  Even though she does.  Also, she may fail to kiss your knee to make it ‘all better’.  But she will take you on the most amazing adventures.

    Which one represents your style of mothering? Or your mother’s style of mothering?

    HAPPY MOTHERING SUNDAY WHEN IT COMES!
    Morgan Greer Tarot – Amazon uk
    *Quine – Aberdonian word, queen
     – when referring to any woman, not an actual queen.
    Short-lived (but much-loved) Scottish Magazine
    was called Harpies and Quines 😀 

  • Pholarchos Tarot | Carmen Sorrenti |

    Queen of Swords
    You can never have too many owls!

    Amongst the presentations at the Tarot Museum’s garden parties was a display of four Tarot Queen paintings by Carmen Sorrenti.  


    There was so much going on and loads of people interested in talking with Carmen, I waited until I got home and then dropped her an e-mail to see whether she was up for being interrogated interviewed for m’blog.


    Fortunately for you, dear reader – she is!
    Me:  Fantastic images you’ve got going here, Carmen – you need to tell me aaaaallll about your self and your deck! 


    First of all – how did you get involved in creating Tarot art – Did your background in acting attract you to the Tarot? 

    Carmen:  “Yes, I was an actress, trained at The Guildhall in London. The theatre is a great place for exploring different worlds. I want each image to be first and foremost an inner feeling.

    Carmen!

    “Where possible, by Grace, I want to recreate the atmospheres of potent dreams where colours are more vibrant, the air has a numinosity about it – the inner experience of the archetype, a full on immersion rather than an illustration – like becoming, for a moment, the inner workings of the card. Perhaps it is tied to that famous God of Theatre, Dionysus, and his ecstatic abandon.

    “Later I did some work with the Jodorowskys and their magic acts which are tied to tarot readings with the Marseille deck. So it is the first deck I got to know in more detail.
    “This led me into an intense year of Grof’s holotropic breathwork. I had a remarkable dream during that time to do with tarot, just as I was setting up my first painting exhibit:
    ” ‘I am drawing horse dragons and a potent teacher who uses tarot shows me a thick esoteric manual they all use in the school, their reference manuscript, so I can see how they depict these creatures. A gold object the size of a die falls out and 3 mystery women comment.’

    “So it would seem simultaneous seeds were being planted.
    “Shortly after I started studying astrology at the CPA and got very caught up in the Mythic Tarot. Juliet Sharman-Burke and Liz Greene recorded a fabulous audio course on it, which I listened to rather obsessively.”

    Me: You have an amazing link with the Tarot!

    Carmen: I was born shall we say, ‘under its auspices’.  My mother saw her card reader when she was barely a month pregnant. Pina [the reader] saw the pregnancy and warned mum the baby risked dying, but would survive – to remember this.

    Sure enough in the 70s in Positano without a phone, no doctors in town, living alone, she woke in the night in a pool of blood and ran down 300 steps to find help. It was only the tarot reader that kept her focus firm and her spirits up when the doctor finally arrived. 


    Thirty years later I met my partner at the cafe in which Pina’s apartment had been.

    Me:  That’s really spooky!  Is this your first deck or have you been involved in the creation of other decks? 

    Carmen:  I’ve only been involved in the creation of one other deck, for Oltreconfine 13. The book was published last year with the images of 22 different artists and several related articles. I painted The Moon, which was later chosen as one of the winners of the Premio Giorgione, an alchemical art prize in Vicenza.


    Me:  Is there an over-arching theme to your deck? 

    Carmen: “Alchemical symbolism is one of the threads that runs thru the deck – the nigredos/blackenings where some precious thing is found/transformed and integrated into an always greater whole. In fact the Aces are all blindfolded heads where the suit rises out of the top of the cranium. Beginnings where the potential is there, not yet visible to us but fully present.

    Me:  Will your deck be 78 cards?  Is the structure of it entirely your own making or is it related to the RWS, Thoth or Marseille decks? 

    Carmen:  “Pholarchos will be a full 78 card deck which will follow the RWS pretty much… as far as I know! The cards do come in with some surprises… I played with the idea of a deck for ages and every time I put it down, thinking I wouldn’t be up to it, I was metaphorically grabbed by the hair and made to sit up and listen; one of them would be there sat cross-legged, foot swinging impatiently. Okay, I’m being a bit silly, but feelings along those lines 🙂


    “Pholarchos, I should say something about the name of my deck. A pholarchos basically a dream incubator in a cave. Perhaps we’re talking about  the precursors to the dreamers in the temples of Asclepius. There’s some mystery around the use of the word, I go with the version of ‘lord of the lair’… lair as in animal den. And like an animal they would lie there in suspended animation waiting for healing/prophetic dreams. There’s a beautiful book that goes into detail: Peter Kingsley ‘s “In the Dark Places of Wisdom”.

    “This ties in with the theme of my deck. I have a detailed presentation on my website:
     http://www.carmensorrenti.com/Home-PHOLARCHOS_TAROT-2-37.html 

    “It’s to do with us remembering the power of Direct Experience.

    “We’re so used to relying on what we are told, seeking information out in the world, all very valid – and with my gemini ascendant I’m a culprit of info gathering!

    “But we so often forget our other channels of knowledge which are deep and timeless. We think wisdom gets lost, it is always there, often dormant – another reason for the blindfolded Aces.

    “For 2 years I dreamed constantly of plants giving me messages. Each had its own specific presence, showing me, amongst other things, that plant intelligence is not generic.They reminded me of this original way of knowing, thru dreams and thru tuning in.   I woke from several of them knowing that something at the origins, something essential had been lost along the way. And I had to remember this kind of communication.

    “Now if I want to know, for example, about the properties of a plant, I listen first to the plant, then check with other sources. And so with everything else.”

    Me:  These four Queens, tell me about your Royal families – what is the structure of them – Page, Knight, Queen, King…. or something different?!
    Carmen: “I’m using the classical court names except for the Pages who become Ladies for a simple gender reason. We get 2 pairs, the brothers and sisters of alchemy. 

    “Even the Magician is a mercurial hermaphrodite with a female head and a male head who is performing alchemical unions of opposites. Below his male head is an alembic-cup alchemizing the wolf/moon femininity, while below the female head we get the cup with the dragon and the sun.

    “I’m also keeping cups/swords/wands/pentacles. I interchange them with air/water/fire/earth when I work as my take on them is linked to the elements and astrology.

    Me:  What medium do you work in – oils, acrylics etc?  
    Carmen:  I use mainly acrylics – some of the faster images get coffee and candle burns on the canvas. I did some portraits on loose canvas for a theatre production of Don Giovanni’s lovers. It was set in an underground ancient space in the centre of Rome, cavernous and damp. They needed to blend in, raw and lived in. I want some of the images to show more of the unconfined energy involved, rather than the form fully manifest in it’s pristine and presentable skin, its ‘mask’. It got me thinking. The strokes are much faster and less precise, they bump into each other and the life around them.
    Me:  How do you decide what elements to include in your paintings – the more I look into them, the more I can see.  The Queen of Wands, for example, has a fire triangle present, also a slash of cool blue at her forehead which (for me!) works perfectly with this idea that she is both water and fire – two elements that constantly war, one threatening to cancel out the other.  Well, that’s what I see anyway, but you’re the artist! Explain the card to me *grin* 
    Queen of Wands

    Carmen:  “The spray of blue water in the Queen of Wands!  Of course with any layered image there are several levels of meaning, as with dreams – it’s partly what interests me about a symbol.

    “So I’ll pull out one strand I’m keen on. The elements are never pure within us, luckily! Fire by itself can consume you right through. I have an amusing anecdote about my father.

    “He has a major astrological conjunction in aries and fittingly, he competes in professional marches in which he pushes himself so hard you find him screaming on the track as he goes, refusing to stop no matter what. He’s been known to collapse at the finishing line where they’ve had to scoop him up and carry him into a hot bath (water element) to soothe the general cramping paralysing his body.
    This kind of vulcanic outpouring can take you far, can create empires even, but it can also burn you to a crisp unless it is touched by the rhythms of water, the ebb and flow, the dark lunar moisture, the emotional needs and deep undercurrents.
    Water and fire fight, but they need each other.

    “All these Queens have some hybrid nuance.  I see them as those who can manage their element, keep its balance, know it deeply – alchemical containers. So this involves bringing in the other elements where necessary.
    “Each one has at least one animal friend that she dialogues with.
    Queen of Cups

    “The animals represent the element as much as the Queens do.

    “Cups has coral spawning; it seems that, led by the full moon at the end of summer, all coral across the world spawns in unison. She also has the wild cat, the feral, dangerous emotions she knows how to navigate.

    “Wands has the snakes/dragon of regeneration.

    “Swords has the far sighted owls.

    “Pentacles has the Venusian bull sumptuously munching. Well, that’s me messing around, humour is my sanity check in all this.

    “Each painting is like a mini production with its characters, stories, struggles, hopes – where I can tell the whole story as opposed to just my part. I guess I was always more of a storyteller than an actress, one role is too confining.
    Queen of Pentacles
    you need a comb for that fringe!

    Me:  What’s your favourite card so far?

    Carmen:  “My favourite is probably the Delphic High Priestess, her head cracked open to the voices she hears. It reminds me of the Pythia’s words at the beginning of Aeschylus’ Eumenides:
    “First, in this prayer, of all the Gods I name 
    The prophet-mother Earth; and Themis next, 
    Second who sat – for so with truth is said – 
    On this her mother’s shrine oracular.”
    (Morshead’s translation)
    Me:  What card are you least looking forward to creating?
    Carmen:  “The hardest card might be the Devil but not for the content. It’s the fixity of the image in the collective imagination – the horns, leering eyes and eternal flames, the opposite of God with the long white beard. Like fossils. I want to get away from how we expect to see the Devil.
    “The Tens are hard too, as they have a lot to do with having arrived somewhere, a completness. Painting is high adventure for me, with horse and armour. A Ten is like someone saying;  ‘we’ve arrived at the castle gates, journey over, get down now’.  I don’t think so…
    Me:  How long will it take you to complete the deck?   And after completion – what next?! 
    Carmen:  “I’m hoping I’ll be done this time next year. Might be a bit ambitious, I’ll have to check in with the cross-legged lady! Publishing has a few options open so we’ll see how it pans out.
    “I would also like for the exhibit of the original paintings to tour and for it to be an event with music, poetry and performance celebrating the Tarot. This could even combine seminars with people creating their own cards in different mediums.
    Me:  That sounds like a fantastic event – you can count me in on a return to Riola to celebrate this!
    “Carmen:  Good! I’d like to thank Arnell Ando and Michael McAteer for inviting me to the Tarot Museum in Riola during your Tarot tour. They are really inspiring people.

    You can find Carmen’s work at:

  • Tarot in Art | Queen of Pentacles | Visconti

    “Here, you take it, my arm’s getting tired!”

    On my frequent forays into the dusty art vaults at Tarot Thrones to bring you something lovely to see, I found this gem tacked on the floor behind the door behind an ancient pile of Radio Times magazines.

    This is the Queen of Pentacles, or ‘Reine de Deniers’ to give her her sale title, who was sold at Christies in Paris back in 2005.

    It is attributed to The Master of the Visconti Tarot (mid 15th century) and is gouache on board, with gilded highlights.

    Seated in front of a draped blue banner, we meet the red robed Queen.  She wears a golden crown to denote her rank and is depicted with her Coin held aloft in her right hand. Although she looks a bit pregnant, I suspect that is just the fashion of the frock.

    Just off to the left of the card we an see another figure who is either handing the Queen her Coin or receiving it from her.

    It’s a beautiful little image that measures 168mm x 63mm

    The card was estimated to sell at $33,549-$46,968

    It actually sold for $376, 817!

    Am I the only woman who wishes that Empire line frocks would come back into fashion so that we too can sit and let our tummies relax like the Queen of Pentacles.

    Also crowns.  I would like a crown……

  • Knights of Wands | Annoying little gaming dudes

    Forget the bare arms –
    pull on a sweater, woman!

    So, it was Sunday.  I am alone in the house.  I am luxuriating a la Queen of Pentacles mode on the sofa with the soundtrack from Gypsy playing discretely.  Well, as about discretely as you can have Miss Mazeppa and her bugle,  a pot of posh coffee on the go…..the Sunday newspapers….I was in heaven.

    Until.

    My son and his equally computer-mad friend arrive at the door, asking whether they could just have ‘an hour’ playing a game on line.

    Don’t ask me what it was.  They tell me that it’s building space-craft but there seems to be a LOT of shooting involved in building spacecraft the way they do it.

    Anyway, I acquiesced, determined to keep my Sunday Morning Pentacly Vibe going for as long as possible.

    And so I read the paper, ignoring the explosive noises coming from next door and supped at my coffee and let Ethel Merman do her lung-busting thang.

    And the house got colder.

    And colder…..

    And colder……

    Until it was colder than a nun’s, erm, HEART.

    I turned the radiator up the sitting room.  Nothing.  My heart sank – we only had a new boiler fitted in August. Surely it wasn’t on the blink already?

    It came with a fancy new wifi thing called Hive. Which is MAGIC.  When it works.  You can turn your central heating up or down or on or off from anywhere in the world.  But not from the living room radiator by the looks of things.

    I went into my son’s room and tapped the Hive unit anxiously.  No lights.  No nothing.  Surely that wasn’t right?

    ‘Have you done anything to this?’ I ask a small gaming Knight of Wands.

    ‘To what?’  his fingers dance over the keyboard, his gaze locked on the screen.  His face lit up in an eery blue light.

    ‘THIS’ I say, resisting the urge to smack him round the back of the head with the Hive hub.  The Queen of Pentacles’ relaxed, nurturing energy was spiralling down the plughole faster than the incoming Queen of Wands wrath was climbing up it….

    ‘Nope.  Not touched it.’

    I fiddle about with the settings at the back of the Hive hub and pull gently on the cable that runs to the wall socket.  It feels suspiciously NOT PLUGGED IN.

    I trace the path of the wire, crawling beneath the computer desk and emerge with the plug.  In my hand.  Not plugged in.

    ‘You’ve unplugged it!’ I bellow fearsomely.  This time I do give him an irritated smack – it ruffles his hair and his pride, but not much else.

    ‘Oh is THAT what that plug’s for?  oh right! Sorry! Yeah, I unplugged it.’  His fingers don’t miss a beat on the keyboard.  His small gaming friend won’t make eye-contact with me.  They are a couple of guilty puppies.

    I sigh and pick up the telephone to the helpline…

    And lo! dear reader,  it took about an hour of running from room to room with the phone clamped to my ear, taking batteries out of thermostats, switching off the boiler, switching it back on, moving booster plugs….until the heating went back online….. and I headed straight to the drink’s cabinet for a celebratory (and warming!) whisky and ginger ale.

    Well, it was 5 o’clock somewhere, right?

    Court insights:

    Knight of Wands behaviour – action without thinking.  Mindless gaming activity.
    Queen of Pentacles behaviour – luxury and self-care.  Includes restorative whisky.
    Queen of Wands behaviour – fast-rising wrath that is unabated by motherly love.  Or even chocolate.

    Enjoy the Gypsy toon 😀

  • Which Tarot court card hand-rears baby birds?

    No, it’s not a trick question, but a genuine one because as of yesterday afternoon, I am guardian to a baby crow which is FAIRLY close to ‘black bin bag’ territory, if you catch my drift…..

    I was weeding in the greenhouse (in a foul mood actually because 24 hours earlier I’d planted a rather ‘spensive clematis in the front garden and discovered today that Tartarus has joyfully weed-killered it). Reader, I was attacking those tiny green unwanted SOBs with GUSTO (imagining each one of them to be a tiny husband).

    A shadow fell across the doorway:  Tartarus.

    ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting to try to save this one too then?’  I turned round expecting to see another weed-killered plant, but instead it was….


    ……a very floppy chick.

    Well, I say ‘chick’ but it was quite well-on;  it had all its feathers, but he just didn’t have any energy to fly in this really hot weather.  His eyes didn’t look too bright and it’s never good when you can actually manage to pick them up.

    I marched up the garden to the shed and opened the door – very cool and dark in there AND it is all geared up for imminent baby crow arrival (a big lidded box with newspaper).  Sadly, this baby bird feeding lark is a road I’ve been down before.  And found it to be a cul-de-sac.  KNOW WHAT I’M SAYIN’?  *looks at you meaningfully*

    Tartarus tipped chickie (let’s call him Noir because he’s black) in to the box and he just sort of sat there.

    Well, nothing ventured nothing gained, isn’t that what they say?  So I got my tiny dropper (available from any chemist) and a little glass of water and between us, Tartarus and I managed to give Noir a couple of droppers of water.

    We shut up the box and went off to, well, basically be in The Huff with each other about the callous clematis murder in the front garden for a few more hours.

    About an hour later I thought I’d better have a look in on the bird and was heartened to see that he was much more active.  And he’d done a poop – always good news.

    Time to try a little mashed dog food.

    Nero (our greyhound) looked very interested indeed as I opened some Pedigree Chum and spooned some into an egg cup and frantically mashed it to bits with the back of a spoon.

    Tartarus got his gloves on again and I set-to with the dog food and tweezers.  Noir was very active indeed and we considered letting him go at this point.  He hopped out of the box and teetered unsteadily on the edge of it, his eyes were now nice and bright…..and – would you bloody believe it – the damned dog made a lunge for him!

    Cue much screaming and shouting at the dog as we scooped up the bird and popped him back into the safety of his box.  Well, if he survives until tomorrow he will have survived more than any of the other birds that I have tried to rescue.

    So, which court card am I?

    Unfortunately, I think I’m a bit Knight of Wands about all this – rushing around, trying to rescue a bird that has probably been abandoned because its not viable.  The Knight is definitely someone who TRIES to effect a rescue.  Is he successful?  Perhaps not. The Knight doesn’t have a lot of ‘stick-to-it-ness’ as fellow Tarot blogger Chloe so wonderfully pointed out.

    Like the Knight, I have NO plan at all for this bird, other than getting it to live until tomorrow. What if Noir survives? I haven’t thought that far ahead – I’m offsky at the weekend to a gig on the mainland – what then?! Should I look for 23 blackbirds and a packet of pastry?!

    What I really NEED to be is the Queen of Pentacles and patiently nurture and care for this little soul in dire straits.  I need to take things more slowly, be more deliberate, find out what care he really needs and be prepared to do what it takes.  Even if that means mashing up worms.  Or consigning him to the Black Bin bag.

    And the Queen of Pentacles will do well to remember that we can’t all be James Herriot.

    **NB** I wrote this post a couple of nights ago and I’m delighted to say that I released him back into the wild, well, the garden at any rate, this morning.  I spotted him this afternoon, up a tree, so providing he can pick up some grubs and stuff, he can keep himself out of harms way.  I’m calling this a ‘successful outcome’.  Until I find his desiccated body in the undergrowth in a few months.

    Update 25/6/14 – He returned to the garden twice since I wrote this post.  He had a few chunks of dog food and then proceeded to enthral me with some wobbly flights.  Yesterday, 24th June, he flew out of the garden over the gate, lovely and straight, away over all the back gardens – he can feed himself and he can fly.  Job done.

    Queen of Pents!

  • The Queens of Shoes

    If a picture is worth a thousand words, why not use images to help secure the meanings of the court cards in your head? To this end, I thought we could KICK off today (see what I did there?!) with an exploration of the Tarot Queens through the medium of HIGH-HEELED SHOES!

    *very scholarly face on*

    The Queen of Swords

    Clever, sharp, possessed of a razor wit and allergic to all sorts of flattery or bullshit, the Queen of Swords needs something suitably spiky as her footwear.  I picked this because of the fantastic spiked heel, airy cut-out feel and butterfly motif!

    The Electra by Sophia Webster
    The Queen of Wands
    She helps us handle everything in our lives with passion – if you’re not going to do it REALLY WELL, why bother? says the Queen of Wands.  Mediocre isn’t a word in her vocabulary and she likes to see every challenge as an opportunity.  She can be relentlessly upbeat – very tiring for the rest of us! She is also passionate about passion, hence I chose something really stand-out-sexy for her – tadaaaaah!
    Leopard-print Louboutins, of course!
    The Queen of Cups
    This Queen is focussed on relationships and is very much in touch with her emotions – and helps you get in touch with yours too.  The power of emotions help us to create  – and experience – our inner world, regardless of whether we make love, make oil paintings, make music, make friends or make peace.
    I wanted to find something that was ‘of the sea’ so chose shoes with pearls!  And since she is all about relationships, what better than a pair of lacy wedding shoes?
    Yes, she would rather be wearing flip flops – but one needs to SUFFER for one’s high heel
    Queen of Pentacles

    This Queen’s power is related to home, health and wealth.  She appears if we need to ground ourselves  – a spot of gardening, meditation, physical activity, care of your health, redecorating the spare room etc. But if any Queen was going to extoll the virtues of a the wellington boot, it would the the Queen of Pentacles.  But since there’s no such thing as a practical high heel….. I had to do a powerful lot of googling. Googling shoes.  What hardship.  But the struggle was worth it, for I found this: 
    Grrrr – have lost the source link for this image, sorry!

    But shhhhhh, don’t tell the other Queens or they’ll want them too!

  • The Fool and The Queen of Pentacles

    So, many years ago I read an article about the fate of greyhounds once their racing days were over.  Some, the lucky ones, were found new homes, but many of them ended up dead and in a ditch, their ears removed to prevent their identification.

    Things have changed since I read that article and many charitable bodies help rehome the 30,000 dogs that annually retire from the sport and need loving homes.

    And for some reason it stuck with me:  One day I would give one of these dogs a good home.

    Wednesday was that very day!

    It’s one thing to talk about rehoming a dog, quite another to be confronted by 48 of them peering through their kennel doors, all hugely delighted to see you and barking their heads off.

    I was quite clear about what I wanted.  I wanted a blue bitch.  I’d even seen a couple on the rescue centre’s website so that I wouldn’t have to put myself through the torture of looking at every dog (and wanting every single one of them!)

    However, I hadn’t reckoned on the formidable presence of the lady who runs the rehoming centre.  Before we could suggest the names of the dogs that we wanted, ‘Flash’ was produced for us to take for a walk around the paddock.

    Flash was a huge black dog who wasn’t much interested in us.  And, to be brutally honest, we weren’t much interested in him.  He wasn’t a blue bitch.

    We returned to the kennels and the cacophony of excited barking that greeted us was quite overwhelming.

    ‘What did you think of him?’ she asked.

    ‘Well, he’s very nice and easy to walk on the lead,’ I said, ‘But we were really looking for a blue bitch.’

    The lady nodded.  ‘Oh yes, the unusually coloured dogs always go quickly.  But it’s not about how you LOOK, in life that counts, is it?  It’s about the nature of the dog,’ she said.  Turning to one of the many smiling volunteers who walk the dogs for her, she said’ Bring down Jojo.’

    Jojo wasn’t one of the dogs on my list.

    He came in and my heart sank.  He was a big black boy with a moulting coat, shaking legs and a severe dose of dandruff.

    She handed me his lead….

    …..And he leaned against my leg, gazing up at me with eyes darker than the devil’s waistcoat.

    …and, fool that I am, I took a deep breath and stepped off the cliff.

    Reader, when I set off from home that morning I was determined about one thing:  I didn’t want a Big Black Dog.

    So here he is:  My Big Black Dog.

    This is the first time that he laid down on his blanket, hence the nervous ‘skinned rabbit’ look about him.  He didn’t recognise his name, Jojo, so we changed it to Nero because he’s black and it’s regal looking, as is he.

    As I type he is spread out on the floor behind me, sleeping.

    And I luff him.

    Sooooooo what in the hell has this got to do with Tarot – or the Tarot court specifically – I hear you mutter.  Well, it’s this.

    The Queen of Pentacles often gets landed with the nurturing home-maker label which can make people think that she’s a bit of a soft touch.

    And the woman at the Rescue Centre clearly had that caring and nurturing Queen of Pentacles nature, but also, running through her was a steely core, like a bit of high-tensile cable! She possessed the resolve to make the very best efforts for her hardest to re-home animals – the big black boys.

    So the next time the Queen of Pentacles come up in a reading for you, remember the determination of Celia to do the best for her four-legged foster kids.

    Have you had any Fool or Queen of Pentacle moments recently?

  • Boston

    So, there I was last night, plinky-plonking away on the ipad’s tiny keyboard with my eyes smarting from squinting in the darkness when I noticed that the TV seemed to be showing rather a lot of footage of people from Boston.  I was working with the sound turned down.  Why I didn’t just turn the damned telly off, I don’t know. I like the company.  Even if it is Jeremy Paxman.  I turned the sound up and the full horror seeped through the screen and into my living room.

    How strange to be working away diligently on a blog post about the history of Tarot cards when some person (I use that term very loosely) was blowing up a whole crowd of cheering, happy people who were simply raising funds for charity.

    Who would do such a thing?  The media speculation begins.  So I decided to speculate myself.  I reached for my RWS deck, shuffled and drew a card: 8 Cups.

    This is my take:  Whomever is behind the bombing seems to be someone who is disenchanted with how life is for them – those cups are artfully arranged to look like there is one missing.  But, of course, there ISN’T one missing (otherwise it would be the 9 of Cups!).

    Lots of people would be happy with 8 golden Cups, but not this person.  They have turned their back on their (comfortable? happy-looking?) life and headed off to seek for truth.  But what truth are they finding?  There’s no objective truth in an ideology – whatever ideology it might be.  Heck, sometimes it’s hard to find a definitive truth about ANYTHING – the sky isn’t blue, mountains aren’t solid, there are sounds and colours that are beyond our capacity to experience, Justin Bieber isn’t that good a singer.

    Does the red cloak have any significance here, for this question? Matadors have red cloaks.  Men who goad bulls to anger and violence? Little Red Riding Hood had a red cloak. She outwitted a big bad wolf.

    Maybe the only difference between a terrorist (a matador) and a freedom fighter (Little Red Riding Hood) is where you find yourself when he acts out his ideology?

    My second question was direct – Foreign or Domestic?

    The card drawn is the Queen of Pentacles.  She sits in a lush setting and is well-dressed – someone who is not short of a dollar or two.

    The Queen is not a character that you would associate with any kind of violence.  But Pentacles IS the suit of home and hearth.  Does this signify a home-grown terrorist?  Or does it just mean that the bomber is someone who feels that their hearth and home needs defended against ‘American Imperialism’?

    Or is it simply to do with money? She’s totally focussed on that Pentacle….

    How would you interpret these two cards for my questions? And have you drawn cards about this horrific act to see what the cards have to say?

    All thoughts are with the people of Boston.

  • Hors de Combat | The Queen of Pentacles

    I have been under the weather with the Noro Virus and it has been ghastly.  I freely admit to being a bit of a drama queen, but honestly I hate not knowing which end of my body to drape pathetically over the loo.

    It is on the way OUT – if you catch my meaningful drift – so I thought I would take a look at a suitable Tarot Court to help get me back on track.

    Because it’s a health issue, I’m choosing from the Pentacles family.

    I’m going to go for the Queen of Pentacles because I am feeling pretty sorry for myself and want to some ideas about how best to look after myself.  The Queens are all about nurturing, so the Queen of Pents should be the very gal to help me out.

    I’m using the Queen of Pents from my new Tarot from Alexander Daniloff.  Which I am luffing to DEATH.

    Here she is:

    All the Queens are presented in this ‘gallery’ format.  I hope to be able to show you the Court Cards very soon so that you too can marvel at their sheer AWESOMENESS 🙂

    Anyway, let’s take a better look at her.  I am loving her earthy colours and her bountiful fruit – pears and grapes, two of my favourites.  She looks relaxed and comfortable in her environment, with her hand lightly placed upon her Pentacle (which looks like a globe here), so she rules her world with a light and tender touch.  She has luxurious clothes on too…. that appeals to the Leo in me like you wouldn’t believe!

    So how can she help me with my health?

    Why not try upping my fruit intake?
    Relax a little more?
    Treat my ‘world’ (in this case my body) with a light and tender touch – massage?
    Get out of my slobby ‘sick clothes’ and into nicer stuff.

    Would adding an Oracle card or two bring any further information that I could use?

    Delving into my Dreaming in Colour deck by Mindy Somers (my favourite for this kind of exercise), I drew the Power card.  I like how the colours are sympathetic to the Queen of Pentacles shades.

    Maybe I could try some orange/bronze shades to make myself look a bit less corpse-like?

    And of course POWER.  I am loving the whirling spiral as it rises from the bottom of the card to the top.  This is exactly what I need to do –  I really need to be getting out and about again as I’ve hardly crossed the threshold since Saturday night.  I also acknowledge that if I was a bit more active, maybe I wouldn’t be so laid low with this?  In my house I am notoriously sedentary.  My son did a portrait of me and it was basically the back of my head, sitting at the computer. I know.  Scary.

    I don’t want you to get sick of seeing the same sorts of cards on here, so let’s expand our horizon and end with a different Oracle card.  This one is from the Celtic Animal Oracle by Anna Franklin.

    He’s BADGER!  I love badgers and the keywords for this card are Tenacity, Strength and Defence – which are appropriate!

    Badger urges me to look after my home, my world, to be strong ….. and to infect cattle with TB 😀

    What do you think of these cards? Do you have a spread or a card that you refer to when you’re feeling below par?