Wistful?

Wheel of Year Tarot, LS 2011

Our final draw of the week from LoScarabeo's 2011 Wheel of the Year Tarot is 6 of Cups. It's a very pretty card. I love the colours, that yellow dress with hot pink trim and a purple shawl, wow! Really vibrant and lovely. The girl is demure in her youthful clothing, her tender little barefeet peeping out from the eyelet lace trim of the dress hem a symbol of her purity and simplicity. In the stream, an image of herself and a man. In happier times? Or is it a hope for the future? Six of Cups is normally associated with 'nostalgia', so it leads me to lean toward the scene being from her past. I don't necessarily think she's no longer involved with this man, though. The card seems too vibrant to be about pain or loss, and in fact, my associations with the number 6 do not really allow for painful feelings. The number 6, for me, is about harmony, strong relationships, reconciliation. So I would say, she's not upset or pining so much as feeling very 'loved up'. And that kind of feeling is often associated with innocence and naivety.

It's nice to be loved up on a Friday. Even if I do have to work on Saturday.

Message

Wheel of Year,  LS 2011

Today's card from Wheel of the Year Tarot, LoS 2011, is the 8 of Wands. You can see the wands in the form of the fence. In this image, a man receives a message from a falcon, or some other sporting bird (not sure). The 8 of Wands often can mean communication, a message. It can also mean simply speed, things moving along quickly. But this card takes the focus down to just communication/messages. Anna K Tarot does something similar by depicting a woman leaning over the rail of a balcony to receive a letter from a postman.

I am expecting an important phone call today, which I actually made an appointment for, so it is an apt card to draw. It is not to receive any particular news but rather to set things in motion. So it looks like Wheel of the Year got this one right! :)

Put them away, love



Wheel of Year, LS 2011

It's the Empress today from LoScarabeo's Wheel of the Year Tarot, 2011. One thing about LoS, they do love piccies of creamy-skinned young things with bare chests. I don't think the Empress has her norks out in any of my other tarot decks...

So what have we here, once you get past the nipple? She's sitting on a stone throne, in the fork of a tree, and is flanked by the sun on one side and an image of the 3 phases of the moon on the end of her sceptre on the other side, a reference to her association with the 3-fold goddess. Her necklace also has a crescent moon on it. Her floral headdress is reminiscent of the crown of stars seen on the RWS Empress. She's sexy, but I bet that stone throne is cold, and there's not much here to make me associate her with maternal instincts or Gaia/Mother Nature, such as you see on many other cards. Not my favourite Empress.

So what's the message for today, then? The Empress always makes me think of empowerment through the feminine--'Don't mess with Mother Nature' type stuff. Maybe I will be called upon to use maternal aspects of self in dealing with people at work, or even the Hubster.



Androgynous much?

Wheel of Year, LS 2011

Here's the Knight of Cups from the Wheel of the Year Tarot, LS 2011. Flowing blond locks, clear skin, could-go-either-way face, what can only be described as 'well-developed' pects, accompanied by, without being crude about, a tidy little cod piece. ha ha  Though he's rather skinny in the flanks, for a horseman. What is going on here?

Well, who knows, but this Knight of Cups is a jolly and rather fey looking fellow, surrounded by blue skies, butterflies and daffodils. He doesn't seem nearly as murky and moody as some Knights of Cups, but his horse could pass through the shadow any minute now and throw him into the depths of despair.

May I not take myself nor my emotions too seriously today, as the Knight of Cups has a tendency to do. May I not be blown about by each passing wind (or shadow).

That girl with the jugs keeps turning up

Wheel of Year, LS 2011

Oh look, it's the Temperance card again! It's one of my favourite cards, though this one from LoScarabeo's Wheel of the Year Tarot (2011) is a bit of a departure from the traditional RWS image.

Here we have a winged faery, with pale lavender skin and pointy ears, pouring water from one jug to another, which she has carefully balanced on her knees, both of which are firmly on the earth. The water flow is not doing the impossible in this image, but flows down from one jug into another just as it would in the real world. It looks vaguely to me like the card shows a transition from winter to spring. On the left side of the card we have snow, on the right green grass and blossoms. The vessel on the left side of the card seems to have icy bits hanging from it, while the one on the right side has a garland of flowers. So I'm supposing that is what is being represented. It is the Wheel of the Year Tarot, after all.

I scanned this card on Saturday and since then I've actually used a silver metallic pen to write the Roman numeral on and drew an outline around the edges. Maybe I'll post a scan of the new version. (I embellished all the majors with a line around).

A balance between winter and spring, cold and warm, austerity and abundance. But, but, but...I've been so bipolar in my lifestyle lately. Can I do lukewarm? (Particularly when today, after a weekend of abundance, I've been thinking of swinging into a bit of austerity? I'm talking food intake, here, by the way).

Let's take the advice literally and go with this: lots of liquids today. ;)

'Weird Things in the Foreground Tarot': Wheel of the Year

If I'm going to blog with The Wheel of the Year Tarot (LoScarabeo, 2011) all week -- which I think I will -- I have to get something off my chest first. There are 8 cards in this deck that very nearly spoil it for me. All of them have 'weird things in the foreground'--so let's just have a look at them and see if we can figure out why. The LWB that comes with the deck sheds no light whatsoever.

I bought this deck in October 2012 at the UK Tarot Conference on a whim. I knew I didn't particularly like the artwork, as LoScarabeo art generally doesn't appeal to me. There's a 'saminess' to their decks that grates on me. But I also knew it was colorful as a big bowl of pastel Smarties, and was promoted as being a seasonal tarot with strong RWS associations. So I bought it. From the beginning the borders bothered me, with their multi-lingual titles. Something about the borders made the already cheesy artwork seem even cheesier. For that reason, I haven't had it out of the box much. And then the second reason are those Weird Things in the Foreground cards. Let's take a look: