Card of the Day

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Card of the Day: The Lydia Tarot’s Seven of Wands

The Lydia Tarot WandsThis is me at the moment. This has been me for the past three months. I’m on uneven ground and I’m fighting back at all the attacking things coming up the hill at me. It’s frustrating and wearing me out. Plus there’s all that vertigo at the top of the hill! I’ve had small victories along the way. I replaced my useless doctor with one who is incredible. She has understood that I have a variety of different issues that conflict and agitate one another. So she’s aggressively taken each one on. This led to good and bad things. My wounded leg is blood clot free – which is awesome. One of them was in a seriously bad place. I saw a blood doctor who put me on iron infusions. Exhaustion has gone away. It helps I was taken off my blood thinner – no more alarming bruising. I see physical therapy these days for three different issues and they are mostly improving. I have torn ligaments in my knee though, which if the therapy doesn’t give me better results may lead to knee reconstruction. I’m not pumped about that. But hey, still got that semi charmed kind of life (without all the drug use found in that song, hahah.)

What keeps storming up the hill even as I fight it back is the trauma sustained to my head. There is physical trauma and ptsd to be sifted through. I didn’t get any help for it right after falling. I kind of rippled in the breeze as I tried to find a local doctor. Found one and he never listened to me or laughed off my concerns. So instead of starting the healing process right then, I was delayed more than a year and that allowed for things to get worse. The vertigo has become life disrupting. The memory loss and problems with short term memory loss has just gotten worse. I have fallen several times as a result of the dizziness. I’ve forgotten that I packaged something up but haven’t shipped it out. I’ve forgotten if I’ve asked Maggie to help me with something. It’s obnoxious. I have no confidence in my walking because my knee is unstable.

I have a very intense moment with the vertigo, which has caused it to swan dive into very bad places since. My brother and his new wife paid us a visit. We all stayed at a hotel Over the Rhine (spot across the river in Kentucky) so we didn’t have to travel back and forth during the long weekend. I love my knew sister. I can’t put in-law on it because she treats me like a sister. And the weekend started out wonderfully. We had so much fun. At one point we went to the Cincinnati museum and were having a great time and decided to go see an Omnimax movie. In hindsight the what the hell was I thinking?! idea did pop up. Have you been to one of these theaters? The average healthy person can go in there and get a little woozy over the tight and narrow seating. I never gave it a thought because I have gone there all the time throughout my life.

My husband and family went in to get good seats for us. I slowly hobbled behind. I got up the steps fine, turned to walk to my seat and was overcome with vertigo. Overcome is not a strong enough word. Completely blindsided by fear and panic. I was stranded in the middle where I couldn’t go forward, couldn’t go back. My husband came and got me and helped me to my seat. Then I could barely sit because it involved me leaning over as I sat down. Finally I’m parked in my seat and trying to control my breathing. As I finally get my shit mostly together the movie starts: An hour over flying over active volcanoes and dramatically dipping down into them. Then I had to get back out. It was awful.

So we got out of there and cooled down. I didn’t want to take the shuttle back to our hotel. I wanted to walk and get some fresh air. Again, no one is thinking and we go out to the path that connects Newport to our area. We take the option of no stairs. This leads to me walking over a bridge you can see the street below, to a very narrow sidewalk path that is elevated a story over the street below. What had I done to be here? I couldn’t breath. It was embarrassing and I hated how it upset my brother and sister because they worried they’d been thoughtless to my needs. They weren’t.

Since then it takes very little to trigger the vertigo. I’m always afraid I’m going to fall over. I can’t remember the last 15 minutes of every night before I fall asleep. I keep notes to remind myself in the morning of what I did. I keep a memory board to try and keep all my things needing doing in sight. Therapy is helping, but its still difficult. Especially when I’m keeping up with a boom in my business.

This card represents fighting through to success and needing to continue to fight to maintain it. I have come a long way and aside from these trials I am a very good position. I’ve fought a long battle to find my successes in life and these details strive to pull me back down. My worst enemy has always been procrastination. It’s what caused my business to struggle in the beginning. I knew what I wanted and needed to do, but I figured I would do it tomorrow. These issues see me waking up to a day that I just want to turn off and ignore for another day. When I do this or place my responsibilities on someone else things stop working smoothly. People outside my little world are affected by it. So I struggle through it. I try to stand firm on my uneven ground and maintain my place I worked very hard to get to. That said, if you’re written me and not heard back yet I might have forgotten it without meaning to. Poke me again.

A side note about this card’s artwork. I used the work of female artist Artemisia Gentileschi for this card because she had courage, she won her battles, but she always had to be on guard to maintain her place in the world.

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Card of the Day: The Tarot’s Three of Coins

Attic Cartomancy - Card of the Day - Three of Coins - From the Lydia TarotI tried to keep my Lydia minors within my deck’s theme and still follow the Rider Waite Smith’s design. That was not easy for every card and I think it was the hardest with the three of coins. I went with the idea of two people working in perfect unison with one another–in this instance a dance.

The reeling figures pass on by / Like ghosts in some forgotten play / Beneath the black and empty sky / Music plays and figures dance / With partners chosen by chance / And still some times remember / The masquerade’s forever – Berlin, The Masquerade

This is from one of my favorite Berlin songs and really one of my favs in general. As a kid it painted a very strange and ethereal picture for me. I have to admit that I was thinking of this when I made my bird masked dancers, moving and working in perfect harmony with one another. More the feeling the music gives me than the lyrical content. Which, on a side note, I once read were about the approaching twilight years for aging actors who have never found their fame. That actually originally gave me the idea for the deck’s Empress card The Immortal Masquerade.

In general, this card is about working in unison with someone towards a common goal, or the success of that goal. The main idea being collaboration or teamwork. I’m still a little on the newbie side when it comes to reading this card when it comes up.

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Card of the Day: The Tarot’s Four of Cups

Attic Cartomancy - Card of the Day - Four of Cups - From the Lydia TarotHey! A new card of the day of post! This one is from my Lydia Tarot and one of my favorite cards from this deck.

In the major arcana I offer a few classic movie monsters in a more romantic light. I only added one not-so-classic movie monster –who I would say counts as a classic now since it’s from my young days– courtesy of one of my favorite authors Clive Barker. The four of cups card is titled Cenobite Tea Party and gives a tip of the hat to those clanking chain wielding creepy (and slightly naughty) looking chaps.

The sub header for this card states They came and went, crippled by the boy’s indifference. The horrible gift they offered, unnoticed. I thought it appropriate given the card’s suggestion of being apathetic or just plain eh shoulder shrug. When passion is lacking it can be hard to motivate yourself to something more. I know that feeling all too well. Thankfully not at the moment, but in the past it has been a bugbear for me.

In the subtext of my card’s artwork the boy stands there in his meh state ambivalent to the three cups ahead of him. What he doesn’t realize is that his curious here and gone visitors left him, among the dangling dolls and strangeness, a fourth cup with the possibility of him finding something to help draw him from his current stagnant state. It becomes the boy’s choice to decide what he sees in that cup and the potential it offers to him.

Just as a note–I seriously never thought the opportunity to pair anything Hellraiser in nature with a tea party and the tarot would present itself to me. I think those very things keep me from falling into that stagnant rut. And while I may be getting a little lighter of heart as I get older, that old horror movie/book loving goth is still in there. Complete with black pointy nails and ankle torturing witchy boots.

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Card of the Day: The Tarot’s Five of Coins

Attic Cartmancy - Card of the Day - Five of Coins

This is one of those mornings where I pulled a card and immediately had the impulse to whistle nervously and tuck it back into the deck like I never pulled it out. At least I can say I pulled it in reverse. However, the last few days I’ve been having give me cause to read too deeply into it.

I drew the five of coins this morning. I think I whispered to my deck you better stop f’ing with me. This is a card I only briefly studied when I was doing the minors for the Isidore Tarot. I was still a novice back then. After working on the Lydia deck I think I’m finally at a point where I feel comfortable with what I’m looking at when I do a reading for myself. I also wanted to tie in the symbols of the cards with the way I created the collages. I wanted whatever dark scene you’re looking at to not only keep the theme of the deck and portray that card’s symbolism, I wanted there to be other things I could link to it for the pages in the deck’s grimoire. That means I’ve been getting really into these silly cards and I just didn’t want to pick this one upon waking.

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Card of the Day: The Lydia Tarot’s Four of Swords

Attic Cartomancy - Card of the Day - Four of Swords

So I will say at the beginning – it was only when creating the artwork for this deck that I fully appreciated the meaning of this card in the deck. The process of studying it to better understand it before I worked on my collage made me somewhat exhausted. It reminded me greatly of what this year has felt like: A year of battling back to full steam, only to continue staggering here and there when lingering remnants of my accident (now a year old) came back to call. I still get vertigo at the top of stairs. I still feel panicked at times when out in crowds. This past weekend I suffered dizzy spells from lingering head trauma, which led me to having a nasty fall one night. It brings things back into a clear picture. The healing is still going on and the fear of something worse being out there still bothers me. So I have to keep that in mind always.

The four of swords comes after the trauma of the three of swords. In this deck I represented that card with a still human heart being pierced by the scalpels of Dr. Frankenstein, looking for ways to get back in and kick-start it in a new body. It would be a shock to the system for whoever finds themselves at the end of this Dr’s quest. On the other side of that is someone who has been through something and maybe needs to pull back – either to catch their breath or to flat out retreat from further harm. I thought a lot about that as I was creating this card. I have been trying to rush rush rush and rush some more to get back to whole. In that rushing, I have had moments where I have over taxed myself and worn down as a result. It’s been a year right? It feels like I’ve spent too much time on my back resting, healing. Then I hit that moment where I realize we don’t always heal on the schedule we feel is appropriate.

In this deck, as the cards are all dark, I still didn’t portray a crypt scene. I have my heroine laying on a comfortable last bed. She is wrapped up and treated from the many things she’s suffered through. She looks content, relaxed, a little worse for wear and understanding where she is going, but she has found her resting place and she is content with it. I gave her a bright stained glass window off to the side to keep her in the light. Even as a lover of the darkness, a little light is terribly comforting.

Remember – you can back this deck here. 🙂

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Card of the Day: The Lydia Queen of Coins

Attic Cartomancy - Card of the Day - Queen of Coins

I adore this card, for both its meaning and the collage process to create it. I have a heavy dose of French-Italian painter Frédéric Soulacroix’s work in my coins suit. There is a sleek elegance to his style and his paintings almost always feature a lavish and comfortable scene. These worked very well as a foundation for many of the coin cards. The thing I wanted to make more drastic in each collage were the faces. I wanted less cheerful faces to peer from behind the many masks used in the suit. Many of the cards aren’t dark, so I wanted the masquerade aspect of Halloween to play heavily in them.

My queen is a strong woman. She’s the master of her domain. The mother to those around her who keeps a good home for them. The ruler over her working domain and practical keeper of her coins. And she does all of this with a simple grace and a level head. As the keeper of my home and my own business I identify with her quite well. There is a sometimes an intense balance that must be maintained to keep home and business both equally successful. It is far too easy to let time with a business take away from time that should be spent in the home and with family. Learning that type of balance doesn’t always happen over night. It took me two decades, but my reward was having a better home, my own independence in my business, and just enough extra to be generous with others where I can.

In my card my queen relaxes with a book in the very comfortable world she has worked hard to create. She is surrounded by nature and those things she feels are her creature comforts. She is keeping an eye on her coin. In the theme of the Lydia deck she is a part of the last masquerade of summer that comes on the night of the autumn solstice. Her masked affair begins in those last green moments of summer and ends in the first changing colors of the start of autumn. She’s one of the prettiest cards in the deck.

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Card of the Day – The Tarot’s King of Coins

Madam Lydia Wilhelmina's Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes - King of Coins

Hello my lovely card site! I have been a distracted mother. I’m so sorry my wonderful aetherweb child! But I am here, and card of the day seems a good dip back into the tarot pool.

Madam Lydia Wilhelmina’s Tarot of Monsters, the Macabre and Autumn Scenes… I love that title! I really do. It simply invokes so many wonderful memories from a time in my past. That place where I would delight in autumn because I would watch Mary Poppins and Something Wicked This Way Comes. I’m not sure why these were my autumn movies as a kid, but they were. And honestly, not related to them, I would watch a variety of other movies I no longer remember the names for, though they inspired in me this vintage place where mysterious names (like a snake oil salesman slash people charmer) connected to equally mysterious (or even wickedly infamous) characters. I wanted that for myself. I wanted my own eerie mythos for autumn. With all that said, I have been stressing I’ve given the deck a nick name–the Lydia Tarot and for some, the Autumn Tarot. This card is from that deck.

So my card of the day posts will be from this deck mostly, though not exclusively. Although, confession? Been binging on Bel Canto these past many days. I will try and keep it open. 😉

So, hello! Mr. King of Coins. Is Mr. appropriate? Meh, we’ll move on.

Who is this card, this king? I want to be selfish and craft him around my zodiac sign. Let me say I find astrology fascinating for a few different reasons. In part because I am slightly nerd minded and how long standing mythical ideas and their influence on people do finding people shaping those things to their lives as an act of suggestion. After that? Simple belief.

My great grandmother was a Rosicrucian. I found this out as an older person when my aunt passed along to me all the books of hers that her grandmother had given her. At that time what I knew of my great grandmother was that she was an incredibly kind and loving person. She’d lived life from a kid with rheumatoid arthritis and only used copper bracelets to treat the pain and joint issue. If you visited her she always sent you away with something beautiful or thoughtful she’d clipped from a magazine or book. She was that elder I wish I had met. She also created astrology charts for people, which was something she created as a Christian, which was one of the first times I realized: You can be raised in a loving environment of something not quite what you’re thinking and still have rooms for your own thoughts.

What does that mean? It means that as I look upon my King of Coins and think about how I relate to being a Taurus, I can relate to this card because it says a lot of the same things to me, without quite as much of the stubborn bullishness I also know. Yet these are things of comfort, materialism, and just what makes me feel safe. As it relates to my family (as mentioned) is being surrounded by people who are providers, they made sure my world was surrounded by what I needed and made me feel safe. We always wanted better, but we realized what we had and appreciated it. I didn’t always get what I needed from my mother when it came to envisioning a prosperous and stable life. I had to look around me at those who were living that life and extending to me when they could.

So now I relate it to myself, as I tend to always do a one card draw as a thing of meditation or reflection. I look at this card and I am reminded that this is where I want to be in life. I want to be in a position to look after those around me and encourage them forward. I want to be a person who loves someone so much, and in loving them that way, is able to (sometimes) very harshly advise them on how they may be f*cking up and how to pull away from that. I think I might be obnoxious in saying this, but that for me this is the aunt towards niece card. Slowly I’ve turned into the aunt. Bittersweet.

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Card of the Day: The Tarot’s Lovers

Attic Cartomancy - The Lovers

It’s storming outside. Let’s play hand model! *jazz hands* I can’t believe I’ve never had the Lovers card on the site yet. I must be overlooking at it, which is alright. I tend to have a different thing to say about a card depending on my mood. In this case, my mood is all about the relationship nature of this card. Today I’m going to let it represent my gent and I.

I met my gent online more than twenty years ago. He was a fellow artist and graphic designer. We chatted off and on for awhile until my health acted up again and I took a break from my sites and clients. He wouldn’t let me disappear though. He wrote my then boyfriend (who had become my ex in that time) to see if I was alright. I got the message and called him and we talked. This led to him smoothly asking me to share a table with him at a convention. Over the next four months leading up to said con we got to know each other A LOT better. By the time he stepped off the airplane and I met him in person we were in love. We’ve had nearly no time apart since that time.

Our neighbors next to us fight a lot. They’re young and jumped into a marriage I think because they thought it would heal all their insecurities and issues with one another. She came over one night after a fight and talked with me. She asked me how Myke and I managed to be so close and connected. She wanted that. I told her we didn’t start out that way. That together we have battled so many things and lived through so much together. I said he was my very best friend and I didn’t like being away from him. She didn’t quite like that answer, but that’s all I had. Relationships typically don’t come ready made, you have to work at them. And that work will manifest itself in so many different ways and some of them will catch you off guard.

In my time with my gent we’ve had highs and lows. We have traveled all avenues of this card from upright to downward. We’ve come to a crossroad on a few occasions where taking the wrong turn might have ended us. More than once I tried to hide away from the consequences of my actions and their impact on him. Throughout that time, as we worked on our own baggage and personal demons, we tried to stay focused and use our heads. The longer we’ve been together, the closer we’ve become. Eleven years later and we’ve achieved a wonderful balance and relationship. To think we’ve been engaged for ten of those years.

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Card of the Day: The Tarot’s High Priestess

Attic Cartomancy - Card of the Day - The Isidore Tarots Justice

Late at night I hear a voice whispering to me from the hallway. I think it’s trying to give me subliminal suggestions as I sleep and dream. What does it say? Pay more attention to meeeeee…. pay more attention to mee…. and then makes clicky noises. I will wake up, sleepily look towards the door and see the shadow of my cartomancy blog standing outside my door. “I will update you tomorrow! Now get back in my laptop! I’m trying to sleep!” I will tell it as I lay back down and put a pillow over my head. To be fair, it has been awhile since I sat down and really got back into the swing of things. So here I am. Happy blog?

Today’s card of the day is the high priestess card from the Isidore Tarot, in both regular and tiny size! As a designer I adore this card for its symbolism and structure. As a student of tarot I adore it for the same reasons. Today I associate most closely to its suggestion of trusting my intuition. It’s telling me to set aside the very analytical and critical talky talky part of my head that wants to logic and reason everything to death and just listen to what my inner voice has to say.

I’ve always felt it very important to pay attention to your own intuition. So much so that I’ve always trusted my feelings when something didn’t feel right or something felt absolutely right. That has been a strong thing for me much of my life. The down side is when my anxiety comes to call, usually in times of stress, I don’t listen to my intuition. Dramatic events or changes in my life (the Taurus of all Taurus creatures of comfort and habit that I am) stress me out incredibly and the anxiety tags right along. When I fell I removed my comfort and changed my day to day drastically. My anxieties came to roust. And as they sat there on my inner fence squawking at me like crows, I had a hard time allowing myself to trust my intuition. I second guessed myself constantly. I couldn’t decide if I was making my decisions based upon my actual intuition or because of the fear anxiety was helping flower within me. This all came to a head at the first of May.

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Card of the Day: The Tarot’s King of Cups

Attic Cartomancy - The Isidore Tarot - King of Cups

Generally speaking I prefer selecting what I consider a positive card from my deck when I sit down to write this type of entry. However, I’m not feeling this card one bit today. Perhaps if I had shuffled the cards so they could come out willy nilly, upwards or downwards, I might have selected this one reversed. That far more sums up my irritable mood today.

Part of my irritability at the moment has to do with the desire for it to finally warm up so I can get back outdoors. I want to plant my garden and bring new green life into my home. I feel like that would go a long way to helping me feel normal again. The body heals from injury. It knits itself back together with amazing skill. Sometimes it takes the mind a little longer to catch up. One day I’m fine and upbeat, the next I’m feeling the weight of the last many years of my life pressing down. Every now and then I do feel like the good moments of my life are just brief pauses from the never ending chain of bad moments. That’s not exactly a bright and chipper thing to admit out loud. But there is something to be said for being able to admit it.

With that said, it’s also important to find a way to get a handle on emotions that are running amok. Sometimes I picture myself as the Sarah Jessica Parker daffy witch in Hocus Pocus when she bounces around chanting Amok! Amok! Amok!. Perhaps I need a witchy Bette Milder to give me a knock to the stomach. A comfortable balance needs to be found between emotions and intellect. That is far easier said than done. Little bit by little bit though. Doesn’t help with irritable days like this though. Perhaps we can revisit this card and its more positive attributes.

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Card of the Day: The Tarot’s Nine of Swords

Attic Cartomancy - Card of the Day - The Isidore Tarot - Nine of Swords

I had a nightmare last night. Not to be so literal with this card, but I did. It came after a day of unhappy remembering.

It was time to send out updates to my family. I sent my aunt a progress shot of my healed knee. But to nab it, I saw a preview of the original injury. Jarring. Later I had a nice talk with my mother-in-law and she asked for a run down on my healing. Then told me, now that so much time had past, that after raising three hyper, injury prone boys she wasn’t squeamish. But when she saw my knee it looked like the place where you tear a chicken thigh off of the chick’s body. Sobering. Finally, when Myke and I left to grab dinner, after weeks of being free of it, I got vertigo at the top of our front steps. Meh. So naturally I had a nightmare during sleeping hours.

A sentient staircase was following me around promising me a bottomless bowl of reese peanut butter cups at the top. It was all shadowy and sneaky sneaky. I kept trying to tell it to go away. “Not if you had the last peanut butter cup in the world Mr Spooky Stairs!” And that says something. I do love me some reese.

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Card of the Day: The Tarot’s Queen of Cups

Attic Cartomancy - Card of the Day - The Isidore Tarot Queen of Cups

I like the queen of cups. She’s the type of woman I’d like to see myself as. She’s emotionally secure and has a warm heart. You will find no one more compassionate. She probably doesn’t spend a lot of time re-living a particular moment with a family member who said something that–after a little thought–might have been bad. She’s beyond that kind of thing; this is why I have a little ways to go to truly channel this fine lady.

Like the surface of the water she represents, the queen of cups is able to act as a reflection of those things deep inside of us. She thinks with compassion, empathy, and speaks straight from the heart. When she offers advice it comes from a place of experience. She’s a creative lass as well, and I am all about the arty types. This is not a bad card to draw, though in the wrong position or moment, she can be a suggestion that things are not necessarily all good emotionally. If you draw this card take a moment to look inward and then to those around you and evaluate the nature of those relationships.

With the Isidore Tarot (pictured here) I went a little more my way than the RWS version. My queen of cups reflects my love of mermaids. I love water and have been known to say I’m a reincarnated mermaid, so it seemed fitting to make my water queen one. (I think I said the same thing for my knight of cups.) I wanted her to have a sense of calm and inner reflection as she sits on her comfortable throne on her wave of water.

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Card of the Day: The Tarot’s Five of Pentacles

Attic Cartomancy - Card of the Day - Black Ibis Tarot - Five of Pentacles

The five of pentacles is one of those cards, I’ve come to learn, that suggests very different stories depending on whether it lands upright or reversed. Upwards it deals with a financial strife or loss and all the things that come along with such a thing. Given how much value our society puts on having wealth, the loss of such wealth can affect someone in a number of negative ways beyond being a bit poorer.

Far too often many of us place our self worth on what material goods we have, how nice our house is, or how different the rich often get treated next to the poor. We might spend much of our lives excessively devoted to making more money and moving up the financial ladder. How many relationships ultimately implode because the couples stress so much over their income and bills? Money or lack of it is one of the biggest sources of anxiety for many of us. This card should make you take a moment to think about what your relationship with money is and how that affects how you conduct yourself. Would a financial loss be more than just a lightening of your wallet? Or would it be a stab at your self esteem?

It’s not all about money though. It can suggest something much more personal. Do you feel alone? Do you feel set aside from those around you? Are you needing someone to reach out and comfort you back into the fold? Or are you just feeling run down or drained? Are you looking out into the world and missing something potentially great in front of you because you’re too focused on something else?

How would I relate this to myself? (As I try to do when I pull cards and think on them.) I was fortunate that my insurance covered a great deal of the big issues with my fall this past autumn. I’m not sure what we would have done if I needed to cover the bill just for my face/eye surgery. So for that I feel blessed. That aside, there were many small bills that needed to be covered that threw our budget out of whack. There was downtime from my shoppe that took out a good deal of my income between the gent and I. We don’t only cover our household either; my aunt has always looked out for me over the years and now that she’s needed help we’ve been helping with certain bills for her. We fell into a bit of a hole as I recovered and I felt guilty for it. Aside from the financial burdens, I felt alone. Back home in Michigan I would have had the benefit of my family popping in and out as I mended and my aunt would have been there for me around the clock. Here in Ohio I get a bit isolated during the day with my car in the shop. My gent commutes to work at dawn and doesn’t get home till dusk. My conversations tend to be with the cats and plants. It felt worse while I healed though because it seemed much of our interactions with my gent’s family disappeared as their lives went on. Autumn was a mess of difficulties and set backs. This card acts as a reminder to that.

But as I said, there are two sides to this coin. Despite the set back, the new year slipped in and things started to look up. I have most of my strength back and the ability to devote my time and attentions to my projects and shop. I was able to create two new sides of my Isidore tarot and offer them to the world. My car is one new battery away from making me mobile during day time hours again. I can get back to my Y water aerobics group and talk to someone other than my fluff balls. I can help my aunt out again and only have it make our budget tight for the moment, not in the red as before. In other words, life s feeling a bit better these days. A good reminder of how it took a turn for awhile goes a long way in being reminded of one’s blessings.

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Card of the Day: The Tarot’s Temperance

Attic Cartomancy

The Temperance card is a good card to meditate on. It’s a good card for me to study a little bit further and write a card of the day about. Why? With my accident there has been a lot of room for life and the world around me to kind of weigh down on me. However? It has not. With all that my body has been through and how beat down I should feel (and believe me, my head has been a bit weighed down by it) I still feel this overwhelming sense of contentment. This has helped me realize a few things: It will sound weird, but I think this more profoundly looking upon the somewhat aggressive and dark face of the beautiful and incredibly unique woman who offered her self portrait for my temperance card in my Black Ibis Tarot. There is a balance to be had.

The Temperance card represents the ability to find calm in stressful situations. You can channel coolness in moments of extreme not coolness. You can take a moment to take a breath, look down the long path, and find your place and be good with it. Through patience and calm you can walk through life and look at those things in front of you that would try to fuss with it all. It’s a place of understanding. This is how I’ve come to see it.

Can I tell you a secret? I’m a natural hot head. I’m the type of person who small flames used to set my inner fuse a spark and eventually led to horrible explosions. I come from a family of dramatic, aggressive, yell as oppose to speaking calmly type of folk. It has taken me much of my life to find the ability to take a deep breath and exhale before I react. This is no small accomplishment when you can see yourself as being the only chick in Fight Club. Had I not learned to relax a little and understand the ability to let go, these past few months of mine would have been a fight. A fight between my rage of circumstance and my own body. But I know it is better to just go with life, appreciate the positives around us, and let go of the anger. If I can recommend anything to you; when looking at the Temperance card take a breath, feel grateful for life, and take a calm approach to your life and move on.

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Card of the Day: The Tarot’s Devil

Attic Cartomancy - Card of the Day - The Black Ibis Devil

The devil card just came up as card of the day not so long ago. You can read that post here. That card was from my Isidore Tarot deck and very close to the symbolism from the Rider Waite Smith tradition. Today’s devil is from my Black Ibis Tarot where some of the symbolism can be matched to the RWS deck, but in most cases is quite different.

This is one of my favorite cards in this deck, not for meaning, but for the model who let me use his mischievous mug for it. Gerald Brom is one of my most favorite artists hands down and a great influence on me. I’ve also had the pleasure of being able to ask him advice and for favors over the years. This card was one of those favors. I really wanted him as the devil. If you’re familiar with his work you’ll know that such a request didn’t bother him one bit.

The Black Ibis Tarot’s devil is more about whispering in your ear and giving you all the wrong advice. In one sense it has much the same meaning at the Isidore Tarot’s devil, but in this case perhaps you’re already aware that you’re trapped in a bad place and want to be free of that bondage. This devil doesn’t give you the illusion that you are actually trapped; he simply strokes your ego and tells you everything is aces and that you actually like being in that bondage. He is the devil on your shoulder, the voice in the middle of the night that tells you everything is swell, and he knows a lot of tricks to keep you held back in that place. I like to think of this card as one that reminds you that there’s just a con artist behind that alluring voice and it’s about time to shut him down and tell him to shut up. You can try and blame him for life’s messy patches, but in the end only you can actually pick up a mop and bucket and clean it up and get on with life.

In this photo my Brom card is surrounded by his Plucker characters, who are some very scary dolls in this case. The only thing I like better than collecting tarot decks is collecting creepy toys. I keep holding out hope Brom will do some sort of card deck, but so far when I put in Brom and Tarot into a search my Black Ibis deck comes up first. The heart can dream. Check out his work! It’s very dark and beautiful. 😉

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Card of the Day: The Tarots Four of Coins

Attic Cartomancy - Card of the Day - The Isidore Tarot Four of Coins

In the original Rider Waite Smith deck the four of coins shows a man possessively holding his coins close to him. So much so that he can’t stand up and walk away for fear of losing possession of the two coins his feet are protecting. In the Isidore Tarot the same message is trying to be conveyed via this, uh, we’ll say pup owl mix? 😉 The creature’s wings are keeping guard over two coins, while its claws hold the other two coins in place. This bird cannot fly without giving up that control of his coins. That’s the nature of this card: Both positive and negative depending on how you choose to guard over and control the possessions you’ve worked very hard to come by.

The coins suit, overall, appeals to my Taurus nature when it comes to material things or wealth. It makes me think because I have some hang-ups when it comes to having things. I grew up very poor in a rather chaotic household. The only time I felt any sense of security was when I spent my summers at my father’s house, which was fairly well off, lacking in the chaos, and I knew I would be able to lay down in my bed with good sheets at night and wake up to a healthy breakfast and a day that was going to be routine and most likely safe. Because of this I have triggers when it comes to my environment and what makes me feel safe.

I relate well to this card because I find my security in having the resources to take care of my life and the people around me. I guard over every cent and I’m very proud of any coinage my pursuits provide me. It gives me confidence. However, I’ll never be able to forget my upbringing; the two sides of it. This might lead me to being too possessive of my things, my fiances. It can sometimes lead me to wanting to give into greed. It’s a balancing act and that’s what I meditate on when I see this card.

The four of coins can represent being in a place where you know what works and in needing that control you become inflexible to change. You might be too concerned with controlling everything around you to keep it that way–to keep the status quo and the security it brings. There is something positive in protecting what you work hard to earn and the life it provides, but sometimes change can’t be avoided so it’s good to allow a little flexibility in life. That’s a hard concept for me at of late. So today this card gave me pause to sit and think about things a little. What does it make you think about?

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Card of the Day: The Tarot’s Sun

Attic Cartomancy Card of the Day The Isidore Tarot's Sun

The card of the day is from my Isidore Tarot and features the sun. This is a good card. It represents success and abundance. I like to think it literally represents warmth. When this card comes up I like to sit back and look out the window and take a deep breath. I think about no matter what is going on, the day is beautiful, I feel positive, and I just kind of want to smile. It’s a good card to meditate on.

Pictured here is not the card itself, but an art print of it with some embellishing. I did these long ago for a special Isidore sale. I’m thinking I might put art prints for the deck back up. I was getting a little overwhelmed for awhile there with small orders. I especially enjoy embellishing prints. Anyhoo, today’s entry is a little light. I suggest going outside and enjoying the day. 😉

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Card of the Day: The Tarot’s Devil

Attic Cartomancy Card of the Day the Isidore Devil

The Devil is perhaps one of the most occult symbolism happy cards in the traditional Rider Waite Smith deck. In my Isidore deck the traditional satyr becomes a horned (and dashing) buffalo and the people chained to his podium are my dapper hippo & goat couple very happy to be clothed. I tried to stay true to the original symbolism beyond that right down to the bat wings and pentagram.

The devil card has a lot of shock value to it when using the tarot as a prop, but it is indeed and troublesome card. It has always reminded me of that line from Labyrinth when the goblin king says “Just fear me, love me, do as I say and I will be your slave.” only without the hot David Bowie accent and far darker tones. The devil gives you the illusion that you are stuck within whatever has you held back and you believe there’s nothing you can do about it. He offers a self imposed bondage where one feels retrained even though they have the ability to simply remove the bonds restraining them.

So if you meditate on this card, I would suggest asking yourself what is holding you back and why do you feel helpless to do anything about it? Perhaps it’s just a matter of taking a step back and really looking at the situation and realizing you’ve put yourself in that corner and it’s time to step out of it. The devil is a deceiver but in the end he only has the power you give him and that’s a good way to look at life and your own issues. Perhaps the only thing holding you back is your unwillingness to take a step and start the process of moving forward.

As a side note: This photo features my Isidore doll sized deck. The doll in the photo is Corina Corina and you can’t see it, but she has her own black bare tree twig wings, a lot of red and black, and she permanently holds this card in her arms. She is part of my U.F.R.L. doll collection; all made by hand by me. Doll making has become a bit of a distraction for me when I wasn’t able to do much computing. She, or a doll like her, is available should anyone be interested. 😉

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Card of the Day: The Hanged Man

Attic Cartomancy Card of the Day The Isidore Tarot Hanged Man

I could say that Halloween is fast coming into view so to celebrate we are starting to put our Jacks out for the season. Then I’d giggle a little. Why? Jack and every other form of Halloween thing we have is typically out year round. Halloween time simply means I switch out all of my summer flowers for autumn ones. Today Jack has selected three cards for me from my Isidore mini tarot. I have decided to touch upon the first one; if you can see it! The Hanged Man.

I’m not a fan of this card. I never have been. I think this can be strictly chalked up to how I feel about the symbolism on the card. Simply put? It bothers me. That aside, there are a few different ways to take this card. I typically think of it as a suggestion of being stuck or indecisive. Though it is also often a suggestion of giving up the lesser to gain something greater. The Hanged Man is willing to sacrifice himself for a greater good. It’s like I really want and need this now! But if I just wait and try to be patient something better might come along. There’s a lot to it. But like I originally said, for me it’s a card about being held in one place. Thankfully right now I’m only surmising it for you and not having to apply it to myself.

For the Isidore Tarot I was very mindful of keeping a certain whimsy to every card, even the darker ones. In the case of this card my hanged man is a happy little gent who was thoughtful enough to strap his hat down so he does lose it as he dangles upside down. It takes a little of the harshness out of the card’s symbolism for me without removing any of the meaning.

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Card of the Day: The Ten of Swords

Attic Cartomancy Card of the Day The Isidore Tarots Ten of Swords

Would it be too cliche of me to say, given the nature of my swords suit in the Isidore Tarot, stick a fork in me I’m done? I picked the Ten of Swords today to be dramatic, because this card looks most brutal and dramatic, but a lot of the perceived woe in it really is more just the drama. It’s about hitting the bottom and looking up and seeing that’s the only way left to go. I’ve felt very much like that the last few months.

All the misery I went through leading up to my diagnosis that resulted in surgery did a lot to squeeze the happiness out of my summer. However, no matter how hard it squeezed at the end of the day I could still take a step back and realize that I was still happy for the most part. Much of my perceived irritations in life are ones that I know I can easily sweep to the side. Like my surgery. I didn’t want to go into my fifth major surgery, be sure of that. However, the surgery went very well, I was healing very quickly, and I was no longer suffering those painful episodes. I didn’t want to do it but was very grateful it went as well as it did. It was a little harder to keep that chipper frame of mind when at the end of that healing process I took a header down a flight of stairs.

Now that I’m recovering I’m able to, here too, take a step back and allow myself a smile when I think about it. Attic is on all of my branding and it was my attic stairs that did me in. Our duplex has one large bedroom and a long finished attic. We opted to turn the spare room into a work room for the gent and I. The attic we split in half; one side being our bedroom and the other side my sewing and project room. The stairs leading up to it go through the middle of it in what looks like a closet with a door at the bottom. Well on route to the bathroom downstairs around 5am three Sundays ago I took a trip head first that left me in a trauma center looking like Edward Norton in Fight Club as he lay on an ER bed telling the nurse I fell down some stairs. Meh to that. I don’t need to recap it all here. It sucked. My personal blog has the bits for the curious.

The point being: I was knocked out cold long before I lay at the bottom of those attic stairs in a heap, but I can imagine looking up from the bottom of them in that heap and thinking sonofabitch (in a Melissa McCarthy voice). All the specialists, brain scans, body repairs, and time spent confined to a recliner half blind and feeling tore up really knocked the wind from my sails. I can look at this card and say it represents how victimized I feel by circumstance and how beat down I am. And when you hit the bottom what is there left to do? Start climbing back up. The night is always darkness before the dawn but the sun will surely rise again. So I got back up and dusted myself off, plugged my many holes, and started to trudge back forward. I still give the attic stairs the weary stink-eye though. I’m not altogether unconvinced there isn’t a gnome living under the top step. I just happened to step on his roof at the exact moment he decided to pop up to go investigate the cat’s food dishes downstairs.

So in closing, with tarot symbolism I like the fact that even when you’re looking at something that should make you shudder, there is a place to drag some hope from it. So always keep a stiff upper lip and stay positive. Life is about ups and downs, bumps and bruises, and maybe, like me, when something so horrible happens a little of the brightness comes in with how those around you circle and show how much they care. And with that, I’m back to regular updates again. Hopefully! I’m still half blind at the moment, so screen time is off and on. I hope you’re all well!