World Enough and Time

Had a good Tarot gathering at MacLaren's on Elgin Street. Since I was plagued by indigestion last night, I was cautious in my eating and ordered only mushroom soup - then had Kahlua in milk as a treat.

The subject of the meeting was Court cards, and it was fun. I find that if there are any readings that perplex me, or bits of Tarot lore I find intimidating, these meetings are a good way of demystifying it all, and getting me past any mental blocks I might have. It's sort of fluid and liberating in terms of what it does for one's readings.

I got two and a half readings, because I had come prepared with questions, proving this is a good thing to do. One was with the Shadowscape deck, one with the Norse deck. The second reading was particularly illuminating. It had a coda (also with the Norse deck) that was very clear indeed.

I walked home - a cool, pleasant night.

Stormantic is a Tarot card reader and X-Men fan who writes a bog about the X-Men, focussing on Storm, his favourite character. And Emma Frost, who seems to be a close second. Since his interests and my interests are parallel, I have been reading his blog with interest.

He has devised a system of reading the X-Men playing card deck as Tarot cards, which I think is a wonderful idea. I wanted to make notes on his comments, so I'm doing that ( here. )

Groundhog Day. A movie - a good one - that sparked a slew of excellent copies, and some fine fanfic. Making déjà vu a literary genre.

Funny thing is, I keep forgetting from year to year what it is that the groundhog is actually supposed to do, or why. See his shadow? Predict spring? Is this a joke, or a superstition? I never really get my brain around it. Well, it makes about as much sense as most long-term weather reports.

This was a snowy day in Ottawa. Snow, snow, and more snow. We haven't had as much as usual this year, maybe because the rest of the world is covering the universal snow quota. It was pretty, but hard to get around - several of my plans were cancelled because people didn't want to go out.

Me, I went out. I might have skipped getting my comics today, except I knew it was the day Daken: Dark Wolverine #5 comes out. So I went to the Silver Snail, and bought comics, and walked home in the show. I picked up my dry cleaning and bought food to make chili for supper, and bird seed because the supply for the Little Feathered Guys was getting low. Then I went out again, to deliver a job application. It was all very aerobic.

I did a Tarot reading with the Barbara Walker deck. I read her Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets when it first came out, and wasn't very impressed - there was some interesting material there, but it was fairly superficial, and not all of it well-researched. Bad scholarship, bad feminism.

I didn't like her Tarot deck for several reasons. For one thing, it's ugly. For another, she gives identities to cards that aren't traditionally given names - for instance, the Queen of Swords is a rather horrific drawing of Kali, and the King of Pentacles is Baal. There are some nice touches - the brim of the Magician's hat is the infinity sign in red and black, for instance, and the Tower is called "The House of God". But really, I'd rather not read with this deck ever again.

I was online, browsing for Tarot cards - specifically for good images of The Magician. I was amused to find the Buffy Tarot deck.

Yeah, I know, there's every sort of Tarot deck you can imagine. I myself have concocted (in my imagination) a Lymond deck and a Torchwood deck. In which, of course, the Doctor is the Magician and Captain Jack is the Fool.

Do any of you have favourite tarot decks? And links to them?

I had a yen for The Labyrinth Tarot by Luis Royo, which I saw a month ago or so, and have been thinking about ever since. But when I tried to order it at The Tarot Garden, I got this message:

We're sorry. This item can't be shipped to your selected destination. You may either change the shipping address or delete the item from your order by changing its quantity to 0 and clicking the update button below.

And at Amazon.ca they say:

Sign up to be notified when this item becomes available.

I take it that it isn't licensed for Canada yet.

Drat. This saves me money, but makes me want it more.

I was pleased to see that the deck I got for Pim last year, The Legacy of the Divine Tarot, is one of the most popular decks on the lists. I chose it by browsing hundreds of decks online - a pleasant task - and narrowing my choices. I thought it the most visually interesting, and suitable for her.

Though if buying Tarot cards for myself, I should probably get a Rider-Waite deck. It's the one I learned with - that is, it's the one my teacher used, though I used the Hanson-Roberts. But Rider-Waite is cassic, and there's a Centennary Edition.

I find browsing cards to be fascinating. Did you know there was a Tarot deck of Italian football stars? A Tarot of Pagan Cats? A Prairie Tarot? Vampire Tarot seems to be popular these days - well, no surprise, vampires are the gout du jour - of which the best seems to be the Favole. Victorian styles are proliferating, too.

A few that caught my fancy in this browse:

1. The Fengshen Tarot
   
2. The Transparent Tarot - an interesting innovation in reading style
   
3. The Rabbit Tarot
   
4. The Tyldwick Taro
   
5. Mage the Awakening Tarot Deck - this had me going "ooh, ooh, ooh!", and then I was embarrassed to be excited by a deck based on a game. But then... why not? I wonder what the Queen of Swords in this deck looks like. I see it's by the same talented woman who did the Shadowscapes deck: Stephanie Pui-Mun Law. I've come across her before, for dragon art. Sadly, this deck is currently unavailable, and if it were available, very expensive.
   
6. The Pirate Tarot

I treated myself to a tarot reading this morning, with the question, "How shall I compose my New Year's Resolutions?"

I love making New Year's Resolutions. I also love reading Tarot Cards, and may even do a physical reading as well as the electronic one online. I have the deck pictured here, but I also have several others - my favourite to do a reading with is the Hanson Roberts deck, though I'm also very fond of the Norse Tarot.

Like all oracles, the meaning of the cards is whatever we put into them. I like that as an exercise in creativity, in using parts of the brain and imagination that don't usually get used, a bit of psychological aerobics. I like finding patterns of meaning in bits of art. I like the historicity of the act - people have been doing this for centuries.

And it's a particularly useful thing to do at the end of the year.