Hopping blogs and anomalous animals
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I'm taking part in the Tarot Blog Hop for the first time, in which many wonderful tarot bloggers post their take on a set topic. Karen from Pure and Blessed Tarot has set the topic this time, that of oracular anomalies. Apart from being a fabulous phrase which is fun to say, oracular anomalies are cards that twist your brain, that challenge your expectations, that pull you up short and make you wonder....unusual card designs, out of place cards.
As soon as I read the topic I knew what I wanted to write about, because there's a set of anomalous cards I've been wanting to investigate a little more deeply for a long time. They are the court cards of the Wildwood tarot. Like the Greenwood tarot from which the Wildwood takes its inspiration, the court cards are all animals, and for me some of the animals in the Wildwood courts just don't fit. I'm not sure if its because I have had the Greenwood tarot for a good few years now - I use it regularly, and its one of the decks I resonate with most deeply. I was lucky to score a Greenwood deck on ebay before they got really expensive, and I was pleased when the Wildwood came out, thinking it would have similar energies without being so rare and difficult to obtain. And there is much that I love about the Wildwood, I have several decks drawn by Will Worthington and his artwork is always beautiful. But maybe I've always seen it as a kind of second best, and there are certain cards which just don't fit for me, especially among the courts.
Part of the problem is that animals familiar from the Greenwood court are present in the Wildwood court, but as a different card. The Wolf is King of Stones in the Wildwood, but Knight of Stones in the Greenwood. The Heron is King of Vessels in the Wildwood, and Queen of Cups in the Greenwood. In both cases the Greenwood attributions make the most sense to me, intuitively speaking - but is this simply familiarity or something deeper? The one that sticks out the most though, is the Lynx - King of Arrows in the Greenwood, but Page of Stones in the Wildwood. Which seems like an awfully big shift for me, one that I couldn't get my head around at all. So for this post I've delved a little deeper, meditated on the Wildwood Lynx, to see if I can finally make a connection with this card.
When I meditate on a card I use it as a doorway, stepping into the image as a kind of pathworking. Stepping into the Wildwood Page of Stones, I found myself high in the branches of a tree, in fact I had to leap across a gap to get to them. It took a few minutes to find my footing, and only then did I become aware of the whole of the tree, of the ground far below. The tree was the World Tree of the Wildwood, and as I became aware of the lynx moving around, behind, above and below me the phrase "I am a prowler in the World Tree" came into my mind. This was a confident energy, sure of itself, and as I finally came face to face with the lynx it leapt over me, drawing blood as it went - definitely more King of Arrows than Page of Stones (while I was meeting lynx in meditation, my ever demanding tabby was clawing at my lap in the mundane world, reminding me of the sharp claws of the feline). I shifted my perspective to focus on the lynx as the Page of Stones, and met a female lynx, curled with her family in a spiral around the trunk of the tree. The female lynx used her extra acute senses both for hunting and for protecting her family, and I think those keen senses are truly Page of Stones energy.
And so this card does seem less anomalous for me now, I have a way into interpreting it and understanding why the lynx is the Page of Stones, with her extra acute hearing, sight and sense of smell. But this still feels like too confident an energy to be a Page, which I have tended to consider as having young, childlike energies. Perhaps I am being too limited in my interpretation of the Pages this way - these animal court cards are messengers between matter and spirit, having a kind of liminal awareness. The lynx makes more sense to me in this context, with those acute senses picking up all kinds of detail from the spiritual realm as well as the material.
Ultimately, oracular anomalies are perhaps cards which don't fit, at least initially, with our intuitive sense of the cards meaning. Tarot meanings are not fixed and can be strongly subjective - when giving readings, I often find myself interpreting a card in a way which doesn't necessarily fit with the "book" meaning, and these are often the interpretations that the querent resonates with most strongly. In looking more deeply into the Wildwood Page of Stones, I've come to a new understanding of the Page of Pentacles, and explored an animal energy which is also new to me. Perhaps for this deck especially, I needed a few cards which just didn't "feel" right, so that I could move my connection to the Wildwood out of the shadow of my connection to the Greenwood. When I get a chance I'm going to do similar meditations for the other Wildwood cards which feel anomalous to me, because as with most things in life, when something pushes your buttons, it usually has something important to teach you.
Big thanks to fellow blog hoppers and readers, I've really enjoyed my first hop and hope there will be lots more in the future. Onwards you go to;
Previous blog / Master list / Next blog
I'm taking part in the Tarot Blog Hop for the first time, in which many wonderful tarot bloggers post their take on a set topic. Karen from Pure and Blessed Tarot has set the topic this time, that of oracular anomalies. Apart from being a fabulous phrase which is fun to say, oracular anomalies are cards that twist your brain, that challenge your expectations, that pull you up short and make you wonder....unusual card designs, out of place cards.
As soon as I read the topic I knew what I wanted to write about, because there's a set of anomalous cards I've been wanting to investigate a little more deeply for a long time. They are the court cards of the Wildwood tarot. Like the Greenwood tarot from which the Wildwood takes its inspiration, the court cards are all animals, and for me some of the animals in the Wildwood courts just don't fit. I'm not sure if its because I have had the Greenwood tarot for a good few years now - I use it regularly, and its one of the decks I resonate with most deeply. I was lucky to score a Greenwood deck on ebay before they got really expensive, and I was pleased when the Wildwood came out, thinking it would have similar energies without being so rare and difficult to obtain. And there is much that I love about the Wildwood, I have several decks drawn by Will Worthington and his artwork is always beautiful. But maybe I've always seen it as a kind of second best, and there are certain cards which just don't fit for me, especially among the courts.
When I meditate on a card I use it as a doorway, stepping into the image as a kind of pathworking. Stepping into the Wildwood Page of Stones, I found myself high in the branches of a tree, in fact I had to leap across a gap to get to them. It took a few minutes to find my footing, and only then did I become aware of the whole of the tree, of the ground far below. The tree was the World Tree of the Wildwood, and as I became aware of the lynx moving around, behind, above and below me the phrase "I am a prowler in the World Tree" came into my mind. This was a confident energy, sure of itself, and as I finally came face to face with the lynx it leapt over me, drawing blood as it went - definitely more King of Arrows than Page of Stones (while I was meeting lynx in meditation, my ever demanding tabby was clawing at my lap in the mundane world, reminding me of the sharp claws of the feline). I shifted my perspective to focus on the lynx as the Page of Stones, and met a female lynx, curled with her family in a spiral around the trunk of the tree. The female lynx used her extra acute senses both for hunting and for protecting her family, and I think those keen senses are truly Page of Stones energy.
Ultimately, oracular anomalies are perhaps cards which don't fit, at least initially, with our intuitive sense of the cards meaning. Tarot meanings are not fixed and can be strongly subjective - when giving readings, I often find myself interpreting a card in a way which doesn't necessarily fit with the "book" meaning, and these are often the interpretations that the querent resonates with most strongly. In looking more deeply into the Wildwood Page of Stones, I've come to a new understanding of the Page of Pentacles, and explored an animal energy which is also new to me. Perhaps for this deck especially, I needed a few cards which just didn't "feel" right, so that I could move my connection to the Wildwood out of the shadow of my connection to the Greenwood. When I get a chance I'm going to do similar meditations for the other Wildwood cards which feel anomalous to me, because as with most things in life, when something pushes your buttons, it usually has something important to teach you.
Big thanks to fellow blog hoppers and readers, I've really enjoyed my first hop and hope there will be lots more in the future. Onwards you go to;
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