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IT'S IN THE FEATURED CARDS _______________________________________________________ January 14, 2001 4:02am Sun (Cap)Tri (Vir) Moon As the waning Moon transits from Virgo to Libra all the barriers come down and there is a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment about this day! To provide a degree of piquancy we had this mornings Capricorn Sun interacting with Saturn...just to obfuscate why there is a feeling of accomplishment! Let's take another look at the tarot card most often associated with the planet Saturn, card number 15, the Devil. Yes! The same card that represents the zodiacal sign of Capricorn. Today I have pulled the card from Julia Turk's fascinating "Navigators Tarot of the Mystic Sea". The deck is based upon Crowley's Thoth and follows his pattern in the majors. Turk has written a wondrous book to accompany her deck that details her intuitive creative style of art and gives a full-account of the evolution of the deck. Her cards are unnumbered. She includes a key word or phrase at the top edge of each of the cards and her symbolism is cultural broad and varied. Her art is a sublime combination of fantasy, iconism, animism and totemism. The colours are dark; the overall impression of the deck is of great activity. The cards are slightly larger than a standard poker deck making them easy to handle and to shuffle. The card stock is standard, the finish matte. The Devil card is keynoted as subjugation. The card has numerous layers; the furthest is of a deeply indigo sky in the upper left-hand corner sits Pan playing his pipes as he oversees the dancers seen on the rest of the card. Here, as in Crowley, Pan represents frank, uninhibited sexuality. To the right is the familiar Himalayan goat with long beard, this time wearing a red saddle...and a bridle: signifying the harnessing of the base-self and turning it from master to servant. This goat stands upon a pedestal. Significantly, this pedestal is arising from behind a mounded-earth kiln from which an annealing fire is seen issuing forth. The pedestal is a Corinthian column shaped like the capitol letter i. The emerging I. The furnace in the heart of the kiln dictates the idea that each man IS an island and allows ego to flourish fierily and unrestrained. From this furnace we reap the falsehoods of wisdom and completeness. Where we truly are, in a cosmic sense, according to this card, is delineated by the figure directly in front of the open mouth of the furnace. This figure has assumed an inverted v-position. This shoulder standing spread-legged stance can be seen to represent the dilemma that humans most often find themselves in: Turk describes it as being, "on the horns of a dilemma" and tells us that the "v" stands for the two horns of Typhon (a fertility symbol found in the Egyptian Crocodile god, Sebek or Set). One horn representing our so-called shadow side which in some cosmologies is seen as drawing away from the emanations of the Monad, the opposite horn--that which Leibnitz describes as the indivisible, impenetrable unit of substance viewed as the basic constituent element of physical reality in metaphysics. In the central portion of the card are two fantastical figures entwined. One appears to be female and is a startling shade of green with a headdress of thistles surmounted by a horn of fire. She represents the Siren, Melusina the firehorn is the symbol of the Christian Lucifer, the Light Bearer. The male figure is purple, and entwined as he is, is incapable of ever looking upon the Siren. Thus locked in dance these two forever live in their own worlds, unfulfilled except for the embrace that cannot be broken. Emerging from deep within a cave flies a bat to the left of these figures and below Pan. Metaphorically the tension is broken by this flying mammal. The cave mouth is topped by shards of ice: the chemical marriage of this ice to the fire of the annealing kiln can be seen in the Lover's (card number 6) embrace. In the right foreground crawls a dun-coloured individual whose posture and presence indicates bondage. Hmm, are the chains of bondage or are they links of connection... ...points of view. Are these chains of limitations or are they chain of communication? Are we fettered by others or only by ourselves? A spider web pulls the right side of the card together and provides cohesion within the turmoil. The treads of the web are of great tensile strength. The threads of the forces of life are invisible, but have the same tensile strength. Those threads can weave us together in truth and trust or with lies and fear. __________________________________________________ In The Cards!
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