Parrott Tarot: The World

Today's card is The World from the curious Parrott Tarot deck by Margaret and Thom Parrott. It's a self-published deck that apparently came out in 2008 (or at least that is the date it was first available on Amazon.) I received it in trade and find it quite amusing. The deck came in a tuck box with no instructions, though I gather that originally it had a fold-out information sheet. However, I've managed to find images of the sheet online and from what I can see, it's no more helpful than a traditional LWB. So all these esoteric notations must be either something you're familiar with from elsewhere, used 'intuitively', or simply ignored. They come from Golden Dawn tradition, and as we know, Golden Dawn is behind both the RWS and the Thoth decks. Strangely, the box says 'A deck of 82 cards based on the Rider Waite deck,' but the cards of this deck are so Thoth-y it hurts, as you'll see in subsequent draws this week. (The four extra cards are 'The Mentors', which apparently belong in the courts, but those who know me can well guess where they are. In the box.)

Each card has a Thoth-inspired image, number in upper and lower left corner (in pip cards the upper left is the playing card equivalent, which is nice), Hebrew letter, astrological sign, and a parrot in the lower right corner. In majors, he's singing a note that is apparently associated with the card in Golden Dawn tradition. (I don't know what the two Arabic numerals are next to the Hebrew letter, but I'm not deep into Golden Dawn, really.  I'll have to look those up.) In the pip cards, he's doing some sort of action that reflects the meaning of the card. The pips have Thoth key words.

Must rush this morning, but it least it looks like it's going to be a positive day! I drew The World!

Cups and more cups

Looks like our house purchase is proceeding, now the question has turned to insurance. Home owners, life, critical illness, income protection, and all that jazz. How much insurance cover do I need? What action should I take with regard to insurance?

Jean Dodal Tarot, Flornoy 2009 

I was really surprised by this draw, as I was expecting a lot of swords, to indicate both trouble and decision making. Three cups in a row! Really?

So yeah, three cups in a row, and on either side, the World and the Empress both look away from the cups. I also can't help but notice that 21 and 3 are both 3, and two of the three cups is a multiple of three. What you make of that is up to the reader, but there it is.

The first message: There's all the insurance in the world out there, and it's an extremely emotive subject that plays upon our instinct to protect the nest.

The second message: This emotion doesn't have a great connection to the actual world or actual nurture. Ie, fears and reality are not necessarily directly linked.

The third message: The best action I can take at this point with regard to insurance is to look away from the multitude of emotions -- most to do with fear -- and look to more pertinent issues.

That's funny, because I didn't think I was being emotional, I thought I was being quite rational and gathering information at this point.  The cups represent being fed, basic needs, and by association, fear of not being fed or having basic needs met. And that of course is the very driver of insurance.

If the two figures are looking away from all this emotion, what are the they looking at instead?

What is the World looking at? 4 of Swords -- I figured a sword would turn up.  There may be a World of insurance out there, but I am constrained by certain limitations. I must avoid being led by emotion and turn my attention toward what is actually a logical best choice. 'Four does not change.' The only unchanging aspect in this equation is the finite amount of money I have to work with. That should be a prime consideration, obviously.

What is the Empress looking at? 7 of Wands -- 'Seven brings troubles that fate has assigned.' The Empress looks toward the likelihood of trouble. Trouble is pretty certain to come, but we don't have much chance of knowing exactly what it might be or when it might occur. There are lots of troubles that never happen at all. But she's looking toward the card that represents problems, so it's important to identify those things that are most likely to be an issue for us, and not get carried away by lots of fears and wild what-ifs.

My two real advice cards, then, seem to be 4 of Swords and 7 of Wands, as they are the ones that pull away from the quagmire of emotion in the middle. Both cards suggest protection. 4 of Swords shows a central flower encased in 4 curved scimitars. It is protected by the four interlocked blades. Similarly, 7 of Wands shows an upright wand shielded behind 6 interlocked wands. One is surrounded, the other is shielded. There may be a story in that, but either way, a lone figure is protected, which would have been quite vulnerable on its own. Both are defended.

It seems to me I should examine my current protections and look for gaps that would need to be filled by insurance coverage, rather than being led entirely by the hungry mouths of emotion.

It's interesting that no Coin cards have turned up. I suppose once you identify the type of cover you need, the money side of it is ruled entirely by ability to pay. Not much use looking at prices. Just identify cover and then buy what you can afford.

Analyse it all you want, it comes back to the first impression. All those cups cards shouted to me at once: 'Too much emotion, whether you realise it or not. Dial that back and then proceed.'

Confronting the stalker cards

'Stalker' cards are those that keep turning up over and over, no matter what deck you're using, what question you're asking, or sometimes even what person you're reading for! The lovely and wise Pearl Annie shared a technique for looking at stalker cards (she calls them 'cards that haunt me') in a group on Facebook called The Tarot Readers Development and Study Group. She shuffles her deck thoroughly and then divides it into five piles to determine what plane of existence the stalker card is attempting to deal with: Fire, Water, Earth, Air or Spirit.

I thought I'd just try that with my two recent stalkers, Knight of Wands and Chariot.

Three cards into the Fire pack, I found the Knight of Wands. I placed the two cards before him face down above the Fire pack, and placed him on top of them facing up. Then after two more cards, I found the Chariot! So I placed it and its previous cards below the Fire pack. 

(It doesn't matter what order you put them, that's just the order I said out loud as I laid them out so I stuck with that, even though normally I would have done Fire - Water -Air - Earth - Spirit. It's early, and I am a witch of dismal memory.) 

Both cards have fallen in the Fire pack, which comes as no surprise at all, but you never know until you ask. Knight of Wands is a Fire card of course, being Wands, and its elemental affinity is Air, so he is Air of Fire. The Chariot is a Water card, associated with the moon and Cancer. It's action that they're calling for, both in thoughts and feelings. I should act on thoughts and feelings, and not just think or feel them. 

I thought it would interesting to take this technique a bit further. What would happen if I looked to see what cards fell in the same spot in the other packs? Would that give me insight into how to support the Knight of Wands and Chariot across all planes? How can my other aspects aid this one that wants so much to come out?

I counted down into each pack and repeated the laying out of the cards as I did for the Fire pack:

Aiding the Knight of Wands

Fire - Knight of Wands, Water - 9 of Wands, Earth - Queen of Wands, Air - 2 of Cups, Spirit - 8 of Wands (confession, the 9 of Wands and Queen of Wands came out reversed, but I turned them over for the photo, so I'm going to read them reversed). 

I can aid the Knight of Wands' manifestation by watching out for feelings of being judged by others, being more sympathetic and forgiving of my physical body and habits, sharing ideas with others, and engaging in a daily spiritual practice. 

Aiding the Chariot

Fire - Chariot, Water - 7 of Wands, Earth - World, Air - 9 of Cups, Spirit - 2 of Pents Rx (confession, 7 of Wands was reversed so I will read it that way.) 

I can aid the Chariot's manifestation, again by avoiding defensive reactions, glorying in my physical self (note the glorified naked form in the card), thinking about where I am satisfied and successful, and accepting that being alive means not always (or even usually) feeling anything like being on an 'even keel'.

In summary 

My stalker cards want very much for me to make progress. The other cards show the blockages to these cards -- possibly they are the real reasons the stalkers keep stalking. They're not waving but drowning, as the poem says. They're stymied by attitudes in the other planes. The cards are telling me to stop seeking balance and get on with things. Lighten up. Stop looking for perfection in myself or my methods. Just DO something. Knight of Wands and Chariot will be satisfied if they see me do something, anything. So stop telling myself it won't be good enough.

Good insights. 

Ride the Snake

Thoth Tarot 

I blogged about this card this time last year: The Snake Charmer. I'm no closer to coming to grips with its imagery now than I was then. To be honest, I don't think anybody is. Lon Milo DuQuette devotes more pages to this trump than any other (8!) and says, 'It is one of the most mysterious and complex cards in the deck. There are several elements in the card I don't understand at all.' Tell me about it!

So what is this Universe card from Thoth Tarot all about? Who knows! There's a naked golden girl wrangling in mid-air with a big snake. An eye beams down. She's holding a fish hook in her right hand, and her left hand does not so much grapple with the snake as point toward the eye. The finger is actually pointing. Squint at it. The four kerubic beasts snort, wild-eyed, in the four corners. Below the Little Lady (as Harris calls her), there is a building of some kind. I wonder what it represents. And the overall shape of the entire card has to do with 'squaring the circle', and is a shape called a vesica piscis. Bewildering.

Marina of Saturness links the song to 'The End' by The Doors, which is a great connection, look at this:

'This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need of some stranger's hand
In a desperate land

Ride the snake, ride the snake,
To the lake, the ancient lake baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake, he's old and his skin is cold'

Which all works very well, until  the song describes a killer walking through his house murdering his sister, brother and parents one by one, and then it urges us all to catch the blue bus that is callin' us, after telling us to 'kill kill kill kill kill kill'. Well. It was Jim Morrison after all. Who knows what he was on when he wrote it.

The Universe card is the culmination of the Fool's journey. Angel Paths (a great resource for working with Thoth) says, 'recap your achievements on a Universe day, remember where you came from. Then turn your face to the future and decide where you're going!' That makes good sense for me today, because it is the last day of my old timetable (I'm not counting working this weekend because working weekends shouldn't count! It shouldn't happen! I shun it! ;) ) 

Enter the dragon

Haindl, Lotos 2002

Another major today! This is the World card, or 'The Universe', from the Haindl Tarot (Lotos 2002). It's certainly nothing like the World card familiar to us through older decks such as RWS, TdM, or even Thoth. The first thing you notice on this card is this big fire-breathing worm or firedrake, a very romantic-sounding word, and one I prefer to the word 'dragon'. Don't you love the word 'firedrake'?

Anyway, this firedrake is flying through outerspace, and he's a big old boy, because you can see that his body and tail actually encircle the earth (the end of his tail curls around the globe and is coming round from the left side of the card, see it?) Who is this serpent and what could he mean? Because he sure doesn't remind me at all of the Christ-in-glory imagery of the traditional World cards:

Click for image source

Nor is he like the Thoth Universe card, on which this card is presumably based, though at least there's a snake in that card. In Haindl's Universe card, the firedrake seems to be based on the World Serpent of Germanic myth, who has grown so large that he encircles the earth and grasps his own tail. When he lets go of his tail, the world will end. We can see in Haindl's card that the serpent has let go of his tail, so what does that mean? Is this a card of the end of the world? In a way, yes, because the Universe card is a card of transcendence, and releasing his tail allows the firedrake to fly off into the vastness of space and have a look around, just as enlightenment for us means a greater connection to whatever is beyond our current experience and understanding. However, I have no doubts that the dragon will come back to the earth. As Rachel Pollack says in Haindl Tarot: The Major Arcana, transcendence does not mean abandonment. In fact it means embracing the earth. The feeling here seems to be that in order to unite wholly with the earth, we must release our grip on it.

Dealing with Dosh

I wanted to know about financial planning today, so I asked for three cards: Do this - Don't do this - Outcome:

Cosmic Tarot, US Games 1988

The cards are telling me to keep my emotions shielded and my gaze steady. The Princess of Cups is a thoughtful, even pensive person. I believe she is saying to pay close attention to instincts and intuition and avoid being gullible. There is a lot of information out there about investments, much of it actually marketing strategies. I will do best to pay attention to my feelings about things. For example, if a service provider has a great interest rate on offer but I don't feel good about the customer service I receive, I should pay attention to that. If  I feel attracted to a provider because of their ethical investing or even just their friendly approach, I should pay attention to that. A big part of being happy in my investments is feeling happy in myself about it all. This also reminds me to pay attention to level of risk tolerance. That could be another reason she is shielding her cup. 

Joy to the World!

Servants of the Light Tarot, Aquarian 1991

It's Christmas Day!
I've beeeeeeen---
Off wooooorrrk---
Four daaaaaays!
And I 'm not going ba-a-a-a-ack
For three more da-a-a-a-ys
Let heaven and nature sing
Let heaven and nature sing
Let heaven, let heaven and nature sing!

Okay, enough with the rejoicing, let's have a look at the Servants of the Light Tarot's take on the World card.

The Fool has come full circle in this card, and it is traditional in its depiction of a half-male, half-female figure, emerging from a victory laurel wreath. The companion book says the figure is Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu, as well as Lakshmi, Saraswati and Kali, watched over from the corners by the Four Holy Creatures. What a lovely card.

Right, now I'm off to wing an improvised cashew and lentil nut roast because I have failed to plan my Christmas menu. I'm sure it will be lovely and after all -- it's only lunch.

May I feel the balance of the universe today.

Mantra: Om bhur bhuva swaha, tatsavitur varenyam, bhargo devasya dimhahi, dhiyo yonah prachodayat

Flower essence: Clematis, to avoid the fuzzy-headedness of being too much in the upper chakras. :)

Come hear the music play

Click the card to hear the song

What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret.

Put down the knitting,
The book and the broom.
Time for a holiday.
Life is Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret.

Come taste the wine,
Come hear the band.
Come blow your horn,
Start celebrating;
Right this way,
Your table's waiting

No use permitting
some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret!

I used to have a girlfriend
known as Elsie
With whom I shared
Four sordid rooms in Chelsea

She wasn't what you'd call
A blushing flower...
As a matter of fact
She rented by the hour.

The day she died the neighbors
came to snicker:
"Well, thats what comes
from to much pills and liquor."

But when I saw her laid out like a Queen
She was the happiest...corpse...I'd ever seen.
I think of Elsie to this very day.
I'd remember how'd she turn to me and say:

"What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum,
Come to the Cabaret."

And as for me,
I made up my mind back in Chelsea,
When I go, I'm going like Elsie.

Start by admitting from cradle to tomb,

It isn't that long a stay. 

Life is a Cabaret, old chum, 

Only a Cabaret, old chum, 

And I love a Cabaret!

~Fred Ebb & John Kander

Tap dance on a floor tiled with sky and a bottomless pit. You can do anything! You've walked through the door between the impossible and the possible, between doubt and fearlessness. You've got the keys to the kingdom, lady! 

(Okay, I know the song contains a lot of desperation and nihilism, especially as intrepreted by Liza Minelli, and doesn't quite fit the card, but...I love Liza and the card reminds me of the song. ;) )

So today, may I dance, in a good way. 

Who is that guy?

Touchstone Tarot, 2009

Today's draw comes from Kat Black's beautiful Touchstone Tarot, published by Kunati, 2009. The deck comes with wide borders designed to look like wooden picture frames, because all (or most) of the cards in this deck are composed of Renaissance portraits. I trimmed the top and sides of my deck to make them easier to handle. To me, the overall look of the cards is greatly enhanced by this change.

Waite Smith 1909

The card I pulled from the deck today is The World. Our usual image of the World card includes a female nude at the centre of the card, with the four figures around the edges (human face, eagle, lion, bull) said to  represent the four elements (air, water, fire, earth).  But older decks contain a male figure, as does this deck. Both Paul Huson in his 'Mystical Origins of the Tarot' and Robert Place in 'Tarot: History, Symbolism and Divination' agree (as do many other writers) that the central figure originally represented Christ in glory, with the four figures surrounded him simultaneously representing the four evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), the four beasts surrounding the throne of God in Revelation 4:7 ("And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle"), and the Holy Living creatures described in the book of Ezekiel, each having the face of an ox, eagle, lion and man. ("As for the likeness of their faces, they four had the face of a man, and the face of a lion, on the right side: and they four had the face of an ox on the left side; they four also had the face of an eagle." -- Ezekiel 1:10). The World card, then shows the ascended Christ after the Judgement of the world at the end of days, reigning supreme and being worshipped by all creatures. This card does fall in sequence directly after the Judgement card, and there is no doubt in my mind it originated to represent the second coming. So some tarot cards depict Christ in glory, while others, the ones with female figures, refer to the Anima Mundi, the Soul of the World, which is the bride of Christ, or the New Jerusalem. When you get into historical decks, or even decks based on historical decks, there's no getting around the Christian imagery. It is totally and completely there, and you can glaze over it with all the pagan stuff you like, but you can't get around that truth.

Anyway,in a reading, the World card represents achieved goals, complete fruition, absolute success, enlightenment, and so on. Well, I mean, can you get much higher than the glorified Christ, when it comes to symbols of success? I ask you!