Meanwhile, in the kingdom on the Rhine in a city called Worms, the princess Kriemhild was looking out a window when a great dragon flew down from the sky and took her in its claws. The castle became illuminated as if it were burning – above it in the air flew the great monster with the maiden in it’s grasp, breathing great swathes of fire as it disappeared into the clouds.
Dear (Tarot) Reader,
Just a quick note, this guide/collection of tales/whatever it ends up being is a work in progress. I will be adding sections as I go so there will be a lot of blank chunks and missing parts. Every story now at least has a short summary, all of these will be expanded to full tales as I continue to edit this page.
Essentially, when finished, this should explain the meanings behind each individual card, a piece of folklore, fairy tale, or myth that I have chosen to illustrate as that card, and how the story and the meaning of the card relate. Where possible (largely depending on the public domain) I’ll include versions, extracts, and depictions of those tales from a mix of historical and contemporary sources.
This tarot deck was made possible solely through crowdfunding on kickstarter, if it wasn’t for the generous and (very) patient supporters who took a punt on a lunatics scribbly drawings and ever-bloating stack of stories, this wouldn’t exist. If you are one of those supporters I am eternally grateful. If you have just bought this deck once it already existed, you’re alright too.
Also, in full transparency, there will be a lot of grammatical and spelling errors. I am very dyslexic, trying to do this in whatever time I can carve out, and cannot (currently) afford any kind of professional editor. You can reach out and let me know if and when you spot these errors if you like, but otherwise just hang tight and I’ll get around to it all eventually.
The stories I’ve chosen for these cards are by no means the definitive, exhaustive or really always sensical 78 choices for the 78 tarot cards. They are definitely not fairly weighted, and there are more English tales in here than any others, the reason for that simply being that’s where I was born and still live, nearly all the suggestions I got were UK tales despite several pleas for ANYTHING but. The books I read for the research were hugely skewed by what was accessible and translated into English. I would love for someone to take on a similar project and give the proper respect to all the cultures and tales I missed. If anyone does embark on such a project, please do reach out and let me know!
Ultimately, in a scattergun approach, I chose stories I liked, some of them I found in my reading and some of them were suggested, then I made them fit to card meanings the best I could. I hope you like them.
-N
P.S. If you want to read a long essay about Tarot’s true-and-false origins, how it relates to storytelling and folklore, and a little bit about theatre and therapy, read the introduction, if you want to get to the stories, skip it.
CONTENTS
1, The Magician, Abhartach, Vampyre of Slaghtaverty
2, The High Priestess, Aradia the Demon, Aradia the Just
3, The Empress, Albina, First Queen of Albion
4, The Emperor, Nero Plays the Lyre as Rome Burns*
5, The Hierophant, Huginn and Muninn, Odin’s Ravens
6, The Lovers, Tristan and Isolde
7, The Chariot, The Ríastrad of Cú Chulainn
8, Justice, Kriemhild’s Revenge
9, The Hermit, Vasilisa The Beautiful and Baba Yaga
10, Wheel of Fortune, The Two Brothers
11, Strength, Dull Gret (or Mad Meg)
12, The Hanged Man, Prometheus
13, Death, The Pardoner’s Tale
14, Temperance, The Akelarre of Zugarramurdi (or A Witches Sabbath in the Basque Country)
15, The Devil, The Madonna’s Veil
16, The Tower, The Drowned City of Ys
17, The Star, Sister Alyonushka and Brother Ivanushka
19, The Sun, Tsarevitch Ivan, The Firebird, and the Gray Wolf
20, Judgement, Gogmagog Rises Again!
21, The World, Yggdrasil and the Three Norns
22, Ace of Wands, Herleva’s Dream
23, Two of Wands, The Lambton Worm
25, Four of Wands, Herne the Hunter
26, Five of Wands, A Rat King in Kiel
27, Six of Wands, The Burley Dragon
28, Seven of Wands, Gogmagog, Albion’s Last Giant
29, Eight of Wands, Siegfried Bathes in Dragon’s Blood
30, Nine of Wands, The Blue Light (or The Blue Smoke)
31, Ten of Wands, The Damnable Life and Death of One Peeter Stubbe, Werewolf of BedBurg
32, Page of Wands, The Armless Maiden (or The Girl without Hands)
33, Knight of Wands, The Fairy Aurora
34, Queen of Wands, Queen Medb and the Cattle Raid of Cooley
35, King of wands, Pwyll and Arawn Trade Places for a Year and a Day
36, Ace of Cups, The Fairy Midwife (or The Fairy Ointment)
37, Two of Cups, Iphis and Ianthe
39, Four of Cups, The Cannibal Clan of Sawney Bean
40, Five of Cups, The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry
41, Six of Cups, The Green Children of Woolpit
42, Seven of Cups, Thomas the Rhymer
44, Nine of Cups, Beowulf’s Men Celebrate the Death of Grendel
45, Ten of Cups, The White Nights and the Midnight Sun
47, Knight of Cups, An Old King and His Three Sons in England
48, Queen of Cups, Margaret Finch, “Gypsy Queen of Norwood”
49, King of Cups, The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel
50, Ace of Swords, The Lady of the Lake
52, Three of Swords, Deirdre of Sorrows
53, Four of Swords, Teig O’Kane and the Corpse
54, Five of Swords, The Hand of Glory
55, Six of Swords, Prince Danila Govorila
56, Seven of Swords, Spring-Heeled Jack, Terror of London!
57, Eight of Swords, The Song of the Bloodied Ricotta
59, Ten of Swords, Marya Morevna (or The Death of Koschei the Deathless)
60, Page of Swords, The False Grandmother (or Red Riding Hood)
61, Knight of Swords, The She-Mule of Abbess Sofia
62, Queen of Swords, Melusine the Fair
63, King of Swords, Feng the Kinslayer
64, Ace of Pentacles, Midas Turns Zoë to Gold
65, Two of Pentacles, Robin Goodfellow (or Puck, Hobgoblin and Jester of Oberon’s Court)
66, Three of Pentacles, Meșterul Manole
67, Four of Pentacles, Comte Arnau
68, Five of Pentacles, The Blue Belt
69, Six of Pentacles, An Airship over Clonmacnoise
70, Seven of Pentacles, Arachne and the Tapestry of Godly Sins
71, Eight of Pentacles, Wayland’s Smithy
72, Nine of Pentacles, The Erlking’s Daughter
73, Ten of Pentacles, Diamonds and Toads
74, Page of Pentacles, Puss in Boots
75, Knight of Pentacles, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
77, King of Pentacles, Goldemar, Kobold King of Castle Hardenstein
Barked Up All the Wrong Trees, An Introduction:
Fortune Telling, Storytelling, and all the True-False Histories of The Tarot
“Consistent with other directions of abstract knowledge, the threshold of the occult is the market-place for the charlatan. Coinage is sometimes different — lies have a strange longevity and fecundity — truth becomes buried.” – Austin Osman Spare1
The history of Tarot is something of a runaway train, caught up in its own mysticism and penchant for a good yarn; the tarot community has seemingly conjured up a mysterious origin story for the cards themselves.
Could they be, as Aleister Crowley wrote, a ‘Magical Atlas of the Universe’?2 Maybe they were carried here from the ‘Far East’? Maybe they were unearthed in an Egyptian tomb? Maybe they were given to the ancient Egyptians by even more ancient aliens? Maybe those same ancient aliens helped the ancient Egyptians build the Pyramids?
Maybe, and this is a big one, those ideas are all wrapped up in orientalist mindsets dating back to the 18th and 19th centuries that seemingly spiralled out of control, unchecked, until Indiana Jones was eating monkey brains with the racist caricature Indian villagers in the year of our lord 1984.3
Tarot’s orientalist origins and the name ‘Tarot de Egyptien’, as tarot in general is sometimes known, can be traced back to a single man, Antoine Court de Gebeln, who made these claims in the 1770s and 1780s. Here’s a succinct summary of what happened according to the Warburg Institute’s “Tarot- Origins and Afterlives” exhibition:
“In 1781, in a short but influential essay, the French clergyman, Freemason and scholar Antoine Court de Gébelin asserted that the tarot was not a mere pack of playing cards but a repository of arcane wisdom known as the ‘Book of Thoth’, originating in Ancient Egypt.
In his essay, he recalls a visit to the home of an acquaintance where he saw a group of people playing a game of tarot. Examining the cards one by one, he perceived a deeper significance in their imagery and shared this with those present: ‘In a quarter of an hour, the Pack was explored, explained [and] declared Egyptian.”4
This was then capitalised on by Parisian printseller Jean-Baptiste Alliette,
“better known by the pseudonym ‘Etteilla’ (a reversal of his surname). Having previously written a book on fortune-telling with ordinary playing cards, Etteilla shifted his focus to tarot and, in 1783, published the first of several works outlining his reconstructed method of Egyptian ‘cartonomancie’. Establishing himself as interpreter of the ‘Book of Thoth’, Etteilla founded a society dedicated to its study and subsequently produced his own tarot deck – the first to be explicitly designed for fortune-telling.”5
These claims and schemes probably wouldn’t have amounted to much if it weren’t for the of-the-moment interest in Egyptian excavations at the time and most importantly the rediscovery of the Rosetta stone in 1799. This led to a huge response in Europe for Egypt suddenly being very in vogue and very spooky. The Egyptian backstory bubbled for about a century but is eventually harkened back to, expanded and ‘legitimised’ throughout the British occult revival from the 1880’s to the 1940’s, culminating in Lady Frieda Harris and Aleister Crowley’s Book of Thoth Tarot (the writings and paintings were exhibited in the 1940’s but the actual tarot deck wasn’t released until much later, after both of their deaths).
Tarot vaguely coming from some thousands-year-old crypt in Egypt was a good story and so it ran for 200 years. Now, many tarot enthusiasts still whole-heartedly subscribe to Tarot’s Egyptian origins or else are content with the ambiguously mysterious assertion that “we will never know”.
However, that isn’t exactly true, we do know that the oldest known Tarot Cards are dated between 1440 and 1450, and were found in Milan, Ferrara, Florence and Bologna.6 So it seems to be Northern Italy, not Northern Africa. And is that such a boring beginning that we should bury it and supplant it with something more, dare I say, exotic? Well, that seems to be the verdict. Some though have challenged this willful bending of history and given the Tarot’s European cradle its fair due. The first major figure to see through the occult smokescreen was Gertrude Charlotte Moakley, the first modern tarot historian, who started shifting the narrative in the 1950’s.
The Tarot dropped into Moakley’s lap by chance, originally a librarian tasked with cataloguing books on tarot (and with no serious prior interest or preconceptions to get in the way), she found:
“when I looked into them I was not satisfied with their treatment of the subject. Surely a few weeks of research would uncover a serious book or article on the tarot by some qualified art historian (…) However, the weeks passed and the most thorough digging turned up nothing at all of any worth. (…) At first I barked up all the wrong trees: were they connected with magic? alchemy? witchcraft? Were they some kind of secret code? It gradually became clear to me that they were more related to the literary works of their time than to any of these other things”7
From simple frustration with the obvious nonsense being peddled as Tarot history, Moakley’s research eventually lead to her building the theory that Tarot Trumps originate as illustrations of the figures seen during Italian renaissance victory processions/parades, this idea, which while still in debate itself, began dismantling the legitimacy of the Egyptian Book of Thoth ideas and opening up a new evidence-based discourse of where tarot came from.
Half a century later, Poet and Tarot reader, Enrique Enriquez doubles down on Moakley’s line of discovery in “Peeking Through the Bars of the Tarot’s Occult Prison”, plainly stating:
“The Tarot is a Creation of Christian Medieval Europe (…) It only requires a good look at the Tarot, a single glance empty of ego or personal agendas, to understand that the Tarot comes neither from Egypt, nor from Atlantis, nor from an extinct planet called Krypton. (…) It only takes one sober look to understand that the Tarot comes, as I said before, from Christian Medieval Europe. The Tarot developed there. There is no need to go so far astray to understand its true purpose and meaning.”.8
If I might add to that, Tarot not only developed in Medieval Europe but also emerged from a rich culture of European oral storytelling. Tarot readings are (at their best) an opportunity for collaborative storytelling. The tarot reader interprets the prompts given but cannot do so without a querent to read, though admittedly this can happen with variable success, the reader relies upon the queues of the querent as they react, respond, affirm or reject the cards placed in front of them.
As someone who comes from a background of studying and working in theatre, I think what resonates with me personally about tarot reading is its position as a very unique kind of performance, one where an audience (of one) is both the subject and invited to be a co-creator of the story being told. Somewhere between stand-up comedy audience interaction and a bedtime story, Tarot reading is so strange that there isn’t really a comparable act (pastime? entertainment?) in human culture. Tarot readings are an incredibly intense, personal and often very sincere interaction between two people (often strangers) that takes only a fleetingly short time. The act of talking about one’s life is made into a story that one is being told but also has some power to shape, just as life happens to us but we also have agency within it.
That being said, the Tarot has been distorted by its own mythos, not only in terms of where it came from but also of what it actually is and how it works. Tarot reading as fortune telling, as in the literal use of the cards to predict the future, has murky roots stemming from and playing into the Magical Romani trope, an offshoot of, and often used in conjunction with, the Magical Negro trope.9
Despite its reputation in pop culture, the genesis of tarot reading has less to do with mysterious fortune tellers gifted with paranormal precognition/second sight and is more akin to an early blueprint for modern therapy. Though less exciting and definitely harder to slip into a horror film, if we can for a second put down the macabre kayfabe we can start to dissect the ongoing use of Tarot as something not only interesting but that does have, and always has had, an actual use.
For example, a simple three-card past-present-future spread is essentially an exercise in Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. With the use of specific prompts the querent is invited to consider and speak on an event/emotion/idea/thing from their past (let’s say a card about money), how this has affected them in regards to a current event/emotion/idea/thing (perhaps a card about family), and project how this may eventually lead to an event/emotion/idea/thing (perhaps a card about travel) if certain actions are, or are not, taken.
To break this down further CBT is (very roughly and much too oversimplified here) assessing what a present mental disorder/issue is (ie anxiety), what’s causing it (ie a past trauma), and making a plan of how to deal with that in the future (ie to develop a self-awareness of behaviours as they exhibit and respond accordingly). Here we see the division and dissection of past, present, future, used as a tool for self reflection and improvement, but if it’s 1862 and I’ve never heard of therapy, now I feel better and I guess it was magic wot done it.
With all this in mind, I’ve approached this project intending to celebrate Tarot’s history as a product of and tool used for telling stories. Specifically, I have researched folk tales, myths, fairy tales and scraps of folklore from European history and illustrated them as tarot cards that I think fit or represent themes, ideas, or elements of those stories. These should provide prompts from which Tarot reader and querent can use as springboards with which to build their own stories.
Using cards for writing fiction was also used by Italian author, Italo Calvino, who would describe tarot as a ‘combinatorial narrative machine’10, wherein he would draw tarot spreads and write short stories from the prompts given by them. The use of cards as narrative prompts was an extension of his previous ideas on combinatorial play and its power to generate meaning that “the conscious mind would not have arrived at deliberately”.11 Calvino developed and spoke on these ideas a lot in the 1970’s, and I would bet good money is the main influence on Brian Eno creating his Oblique Strategies (basically the same thing with text prompts) to create music in 1975.
At its begining, my project was inspired by and interested in how the same stories appeared again and again across borders and cultures, changing and assimilating as they went. I was interested in how culture and identity manifested in the stories we tell about ourselves and the places we live. Hypocritically, I’ve been quite damning and dismissive of Tarot’s made-up Egyptian backstory but this project is dedicated to and composed of fantastical lies that slithered into and affected our real histories.
The titular story of this deck, Albion’s Last Giant, the story of Gogmagog, is chosen because of its importance as a cornerstone of the cultural identity and oxymoronic historical-fictitious origin point of Britain, the place I live and was raised in. You can read a lot into the stories we hold about ourselves, in this story the seed (and in its persistent retellings the reinforced legitimacy) of Empire rears its ugly head in Brutus of Troy’s expedition to Albion and eradication of the Giants (the native population) to claim their island as his own (and still be seen as the heroes). It’s essentially a story about ethnic cleansing and colonial violence, and it’s THE first British story. Until relatively recently it was recorded as a historical event at the start of our histories, and it has played a very important role in shaping how Britons have always seen themselves and what they are entitled to.
Alan Moore talks on this in his essay, The True History of What Didn’t Happen:
“It could well be argued that our histories, along with all our current scientific models of reality, are an ingenious fantasy that has been stretched to fit the awkward jutting contours of the world as we now understand it, to provide us with a narrative, a story of our selves that sounds almost believable, and doesn’t have too many yawning inconsistencies. When you get down to it, when you look close enough, our whole existence is made out of only stories.
Fact and fantasy, since our first outing as a species, have been scrambled up together inextricably like a bad day in the matter transmitter. Ancient Greeks believed a number of the competents at the historic siege of Troy to have been second-generation Gods, and even by the 14th century, western astronomers adhered, on threat of burning, to a system where the stars and other planets all revolved around the earth. Until Victorian times historians were impeded by a world barely six-thousand years in age as calculated from the genealogy of Adam. For the greater part of human social evolution we have not been able, or have felt no need to differentiate between the fabulous and the historical, as if we would prefer a shot of each in our cocktail of being.
Perfectly exemplifying our storybook tendencies regarding our matters of chronology, the wildly speculative monk, Geoffry of Monmouth, in 1138, compiled his comprehensive history of the kings of Britain out of very few established facts and a great, undiscriminating avalanche of folklore. Here we learn that Britain was originally “Brutain”, named for Brutus, great-grandson of Aeneas, who’d fought at Troy, and therefore a direct descendant of the Goddess, Venus. Guided to discover Britain by a dream or vision, the globe-trotting Brutus finds a race of giants, ruled by their ferocious king, Goëmageot or sometimes Gogmagog, defeating these by having his best wrestler throw Gogmagog over a cliff, there’s still a cornwall precipice called Gogmagog’s leap. Brutus goes on to found London, which he names as Troia Nova or “New Troy”, rather than Trinovantum after the Trinovante fisherman who were historically its first inhabitants. The deity descended warrior next sires a line of kings, including Bladud, Ludd, Belinus, Shakespeare’s Lear or Leir, and as you might expect, King Arthur with his Devil-fathered court magician, Merlin.
Obviously, none of the above or anything remotely like it ever took place, yet this was the wobbly founding stone of English history.”12
This line of thought on a genealogy of myths changed the way I looked at this project. I thought of these tales originally as parallels but as I read more I think I had misunderstood, the different stories weren’t running parallel to each other (French versions, Italian versions etc.) but they were stemming from each other, branching off and splitting as they went. The stories weren’t separate things but continuations and variants of one great big thing, one great big story spiralling out. Culture as a thing could be viewed as one long story, authored by all the storytellers sitting by all the firesides ever since we learned to grunt. At its genesis, storytelling, more specifically language as entertainment and a way to carry lore, spread like a virus, a parasitic system that co-opted areas of the brain. 13This imagery of a parasite spreading implicates a patient zero which everything else came from.
This motif of that spiral began to bleed (subliminally at first) into the drawings, if you look you will see them.
As I began to endlessly read and draw and think about the folktales and the spiral, I began to think about how the nature of the stories branching off each other implies that there is an origin point, a seed. If all tales are a bastardisation of the last then what would the very first be? The very first folktale told around the very first fire? If I had to hazard a guess as to how it starts I would guess:
Will the sun come back up?
-Noah
THE TALES
0, The Fool, Jean de l‘Ours
Card meaning: The Fool represents new beginnings, new challenges, and the ability to adapt to them. The Fool is innocent and inexperienced but has a thirst for knowledge and a lust for an unknown future.
Upright card: Beginnings, Freedom, Spontaneity, Naivety.
Reversed: Impotency, Regret, Mundanity
Jean, or John the Bear, is a little French half-boy-half-bear that is the result of a, sometimes surprisingly consensual, coupling of a woodcutter’s wife and a bear (shoutout to Marian Engel’s Bear if anyone else has read it). A lot of modern versions assert that the bear isn’t the father and he just came out like that but I mean, come on.
Jean goes on a lot of adventures usually involving love, loss, betrayal, and some kind of trip into the underworld. He usually carries a big metal rod/shepherds hook that he uses as a weapon, most often when victimised by prejudices about him being a (surprisingly sweet) cross-species mutant. He is also often, but not always, linked to the Pyrenees mountains, hence the mountains in the drawing.
I chose Jean for the Fool because he is often portrayed as a young and inexperienced hero at the start of his journey but mainly because Jean or John or any number or bear-boy variants have been adopted across France and Spain and carried over and stuck around after the fall of their colonies and even bled into neighbouring cultures.
There are so many regional differences and changes that Jean’s story, as I’ve drawn him here, really could go in any direction. Just as an example of how wildly the story can differ, in a Catalonian version defeats the God of Fire and then has control of god-like fire powers.
The version I used as a reference for this drawing was The Story of John-of-the-Bear (Soldier’s version), as found in The Borzoi Book of French Folk Tales, selected and edited by Paul Delarue and translated by Austin E. Fife14
Many folktales begin with very specific regional/cultural preludes or intos that set the scene, you will probably know “once upon a time” and “long, long ago and far, far away” for example. I will attempt to include and signpost these where I can (Russian tales, in contrast, excel in outro’s). This version of the tale, popularised amongst the barracks of French soldiers is, in all good tellings, to be started with a call and response between the story-teller and their listeners. In playing along the listeners give proof of their full attention, the call and response goes like this:
The narrator: “Cric!”
Listeners: “Crac!”
The narrator: “Wooden Shoe!”
Listeners: “Spoon in the pot!”
The narrator: “Legging strap!”
Listeners: “Walk with it!”
The narrator: “Walk today, walk tomorrow; by dint of walking you go a long way. I go through a forest where there is no wood, through a river where there is no water, through a village where there is no house. I knock at the door and everybody answers me. The more I tell you, the more I shall lie to you. I’m not paid to tell you the truth.”
The Tale of Jean of the Bear
There was once in the forest of Ardennes a woodcutter who lived peacefully with his wife. He was strong and handsome, she was a pretty country girl, and though they loved each other very much (and very often) they were yet to have a baby, something they both wanted very much.
One day, when the wife was out collecting bundles of wood, she found herself face to face with a great monster of a bear. The bear did not kill her though, as one might expect, it in fact showed no signs of aggression. It took the woman in its colossal arms and carried her away to his lair, a secret cave hidden behind a great boulder that could be lifted by no one save the bear himself.
The bear kept the woman in this strange cell, providing for them both and making sure to place the stone over the entrance when he left to hunt or roam. The woman tried as she might but she could never move the stone an inch and, so trapped, began to adjust to this surreal new life.
–
After five or six months the woman began to show and she knew that she was pregnant. Eventually she gave birth to a boy, but a boy like no other, he was large and hairy all over, he had a head that, while huge like a bear’s, was shaped more like a boy’s, his hands were enormous, paw-like. This boy, strange as he was, was very smiley of an unusually good temperament for a baby, and his mother loved him immensely, she named him Jean. The baby Jean developed impossibly quickly, he grew significantly larger by the day, by three months he could walk, in a year he could run and talk perfectly.
In the heathen world of the cave Jean’s mother raised him a Catholic, and told him of the outside world and of the woodcutter that was her husband and his father. She told Jean that the prison where they lived was not all there was and one day, when he was strong enough, he would move the stone and they would leave together.
That day came when, after years of attempts, Jean moved the stone at age six, and the two disappeared without a trace. The great bear, who in his way loved the woman and loved the boy, returned to the empty cave and wept.
–
Jean and his mother returned to the Woodcutter and he welcomed them home with open arms and his crumpled heart, that had presumed his wife dead, began to painfully stitch itself back together. His wife told him what had happened and that Jean was his son, and the woodcutter who was not a fool but a kind man, said that of course he was. They raised Jean as a normal boy insofar as they could. They sent him to school but the other boys bullied him for how hairy he was and called him “Jean-of-the-bear”, this led to fights that naturally the hugely powerful Jean ended every time. The teachers would not stand for this and he was punished often and soon he told his parents that he did not want to go to school anymore, he wanted to learn a trade.
Jean was set to work as a blacksmith’s apprentice but he was told there was not very good pay for such a job. So Jean proposed a deal that he would work for the blacksmith for only board, no pay, and that when he wanted to leave he was free to do so and could make and take with him from the blacksmiths supplies an iron cane, as large as he could carry away.
To this blacksmith agreed and the two worked happily together for five years, Jean’s immense strength all the while honed by the heavy work. When he told the blacksmith he would be leaving the blacksmith remembered the deal and reminded Jean to make a cane for his travels and that he was welcome to the forge and anything in it for the cane. In the storehouse Jean found eight-hundred pounds of iron and he took this to make the shaft of his cane, then he returned to his master and asked if there was any more iron?
“Yes, there is eight-hundred pounds of iron in the storehouse” replied the master
“Yes, and I have used all that for the shaft and now I must forge the head of the cane” said Jean
“What! What do you mean you have used everything in my store room for one cane? How much more could you possibly need?”
“A little more, around two-hundred pounds?”
“What!”
They rustled up the metal and together forged an enormous hook for the top of the cane and to the disbelief of the blacksmith, just as he said he would, Jean walked away carrying the cane with ease. The blacksmith mourned the loss of his apprentice, who was a good one, but he missed his 1000 pounds of iron more!
–
Jean set off on his travels with nothing much but his cane and some coins in his pocket gifted by his parents. Along the way he met two good companions, a skilled whittler who was making rope from tree bark called Twistoak and a strongman who he found snipping through boulders with pincers called Cutmountain. The three became fast friends and walked together until they came to a thick wood. They walked into the woods for three hours until they all agreed they were quite lost. Twistoak climbed a tree and in the distance saw lights and he threw his hat in its direction so as to not get spun around on his climb down. The friends followed the direction of the hat until they could see the light and eventually the source of the light, a castle, seemingly empty with its drawbridge down and gates open.
In the castle they found a warm fire, three plates set before a bountiful dinner, three pipes set before some excellent Maryland tobacco, and three soft beds. The friends found this all quite confusing and shouted and searched for the castle’s inhabitants but finding none, and after long days of travel out in the wilderness, they warmed themselves by the fire, ate the dinners, smoked the pipes and went to sleep peacefully in the beds. They awoke and still finding themselves alone remarked that the only thing that could make this castle better would be a cooked breakfast. They promptly opened the door to the dining hall and found three plates of hot fried breakfasts. Finding all of this a touch creepy but not entirely unpleasant, the friends settled into this blissful life of wish fulfilment for three days until the boredom ease settled into their bones.
They agreed that one should hold the fort while the other two go hunting. Cutmountain was chosen to watch over the castle while the other two headed out to return when Cutmountain rang the bell for dinner. Simple enough.
–
Jean and Twistoak hunted all day and when the sun started to dip and their stomachs started to rumble they remarked how strange it is that no bell had been rung, surely it was supper time and now they would arrive back after dark, had Cutmountain forgotten his duties?
When they returned they found Cutmountain in bed, they woke him he seemed delirious and made excuses about being very sleepy. They pulled the sheet away from him and found his body badly injured, covered in cuts and bruises, swollen joints and twisted limbs. They tried to inquire about this but he makes slurred excuses about falling down the cellar stairs when going to get the brandy for dinner. Not entirely convinced but hungry for dinner the two leave him and among their wishes for breakfast and tobacco they include a wish that their companion is healed in the morning, and so it was.
The recovered Cutmountain was no less hazy about the events of the previous day but was adamant that he not be left in the house that day and goes on the hunt. Twistoak volunteers and the others leave him alone in the castle. No sooner than the others have left Twistoak sees a small fellow creep out of the chimney and begin to expand to a great stature, and as he did so too did his walking stick grow into a great club. And with this club the strange fellow thrashed and beat Twistoak into a bloody crumpled mess. Twistoak eventually crawled to bed and there his companions found him. His head throbbing tried to think of what had happened, he remembered wood and pain, a stick? A tree? He said he thinks he was collecting firewood and the bundle must have fallen upon his back and he had crawled here to rest, yes, that must be what happened.
On the third day Jean stood guard in the house, and waited by the fireplace with his cane before him and smoking his pipe. As soon as the miniature giant creeped out of the fireplace Jean saw him and picked up his cane. The giant began to grow, but Jean, who could guess where this was going, smacked him with his cane when the giant was still knee high. The giant who has never been caught off guard like this and had never been hit by a cane so heavy and so hard (let us not forget the cane weighs a thousand pounds!), was shocked at receiving such a reward and took Jack Scram as his attorney and ran out of the castle. Upon seeing that Jean was chasing him the giant jumped into the well and as he fell could hear the great cane bouncing off the walls and crushing bricks above him, Jean had thrown it in after him!
Jean’s companions returned, both suspiciously surprised to find him walking around unharmed. Jean explains that he has trapped the giant and surely killed him with his cane which must have struck him on the way to the bottom. They hatch a plan to tie a rope to a basket and send someone down to look, after Cutmountain and Twistoak both attempt the descent but are overcome with fear and call to be pulled back up, Jean is lowered in himself. He found his cane, no dead giant and, strangest of all, daylight. Illuminated before him is a huge expansive and cavernous realm, otherworldly and beautiful.
–
Soon Jean met a nice old woman and asked her if she knew what this place was and where he could find the giant. The woman told him that this was the underworld and that Giant was a known powerful being, and that he held captive the three daughters of the King of Spain. The princesses were separated and held in three castles, one made of steel and guarded by tigers, the second silver and guarded by leopards, and the third gold and guarded by lions. The woman warned Jean this is a deadly dangerous place and seeing that he was a good-hearted boy implored him to climb his rope back to his own world. Jean told her he would not leave without slaying the Giant and rescuing the princesses. She was moved by the unlikely prospect of a hero in the underworld and gives him a magic salve to be used if bitten by the big-cat-protectors of the princesses.
And so one by one Jean stormed the metal castles, hammered the cats (he put his fist through the mouth of one tiger and out the other end and grabbing his tail pulled him inside out like a sock!), and when he was bitten he used the salve and was healed instantly, and when the cats were dead he kissed the princess to wake them and sent them up the rope in the basket to his friends. At last the exhausted Jean flopped himself into the basket and gave a couple of pulls to signal he was ready to be pulled up. After the basket had been pulled for a long time and Jean could see the light of the above world beginning to expand, the rope was cut. Jean fell from a great height back into the underworld and upon smacking back into that hard ground his body was broken badly and he tried to crawl away but his vision went dark and all was black.
–
In the above world Twistoak and Cutmountain had been waiting for Jean and upon having the rope tugged twice (the signal they had agreed upon for his return) they assumed he had found his cane and confirmed the death of the giant (hadn’t it taken him long enough!) and began to pull him back up. However, the creature they pulled out of the well was not Jean, it was an unbelievably beautiful woman! The two men started grabbing at her, and then began to fight each other over ownership of her. The woman, appalled and confused, explained that she was a captured princess of Spain and that as her rescuer, their dear friend Jean, would likely be granted marriage rights by her father, the king of Spain. At this revelation the boyish tussle between the two men turned sour, Twistoak attempted to twist off Cutmountain’s head and Cutmountain tried to cut Twistoak in two! The princess then began to explain, though they had not asked, where their good companion was, for there were her two sisters and all three of them had been held prisoner down in the underworld. This was barely believed until the rope was tugged again and another, even more beautiful woman was pulled out.
The sisters embraced and strangely enough so did the men, they changed their disposition and began to posit, were not all three men rescuers? Would they not still be trapped in the underworld if there were not two strong, honourable men to hoist them up the rope? And should not such heroes be rewarded by a king who will soon have his poor kidnapped daughters returned? For surely Jean, ugly, bear-like Jean, could not marry all three of them! Well exactly, three brides for three rescuers, how fitting they said!
Then the third Princess was pulled out of the well, and she was not only beautiful but angelic, unlike any beauty they had ever seen or heard tell of, and the men were driven mad at the sight of her. The last princess explained that she was rescued by a hero, a strange bear-man and that he was waiting below to be pulled up. Her sisters explained they had had the same experience and all three were exuberant to be reunited with their saviour. Twistoak and Cutmountain boiled blackly with jealousy, they whispered to each other and hatched an ugly plan and grinned ugly grins. They pulled up the basket, which was much heavier now with Jean and his cane in it, and after a long time they could see him faintly in the well, near the top. At this point they cut the rope, and as their friend dropped to his death they turned to the sisters, their daggers still out, and said, “we rescued you from this well didn’t we? And you will tell your father exactly that when we return to him, won’t you? And we will be kings of Spain and you will be our wives, isn’t that right?”.
–
But Jean did not die. He spent a long time recovering, nursed back to health by the kind old woman, who was a witch and with great skill and great patience revived Jean from what would have surely been his doom without her. He slowly got his health back and the witch told him that though rescuing the princesses was an impressive feat, escaping the underworld (without the rope one came in on) was much more difficult. There was, in fact only one way, and that was to ride on the back of an enormous eagle all the way up to the mouth of the well, but there was a catch.
The eagle would squawk every time it was hungry, and if it was not fed it would descend back to the ground, but the hawk would also seemingly not fly if it was loaded with sufficient meat to reach the exit.
Jean carefully packed the eagle with just enough that it would consent to fly, which was: a bull, two calves, four sheep, and himself. Reluctantly the eagle took flight and soon enough he squawked and Jean fed him the bull, and then they flew a little more and the eagle squawked and Jean fed him a calf, and on and on this went until they had very nearly reached the well and the eagle squawked but all the animals were eaten.
The witch had warned Jean that there would be no time to hesitate and no hope in trying to barter or reason with the bird, it responded to one thing and one thing alone; meat. Jean cut a hunk of flesh from his own thigh and threw it into the bird’s beak. They shot through the well-opening and Jean jumped from the eagles back onto the soft grass of the surface world, bleeding and exhausted. He rubbed the magic salve on his thigh and was healed. He headed towards the castle to find his former comrades and get some answers, but the castle was empty, and had seemingly been left empty for a long time. There were no footprints on the dust on the floor but his own, no hand prints on the dusty tables, how long had he been down in the underworld? His only hope was to find the Princesses, and so, following the only lead he had, he set out for Madrid and the king of Spain.
–
Jean arrived in Madrid and learned from an innkeeper that the princesses were returned a year ago by two lauded heroes and for some reason despite the peoples hopes for a royal wedding the eldest had demanded that her sisters would marry the heroes exactly one year after they were returned. The innkeeper said that the townsfolk and village folk had waited begrudgingly but luckily the wedding day was upon us, for it would be tomorrow!
Well, luckier still that Jean was just in time, he exposed the plot to the king, all three daughters admitted to sticking to the villains story as they were scared out of their wits but they now had nothing to fear now as Jean-of-the-Bear, Slayer of Cats was returned. Twistoak and Cutmountain arrived smugly and obliviously on what they thought was their wedding day but found no brides, only the hard smacks of a thousand-pound cane and the fury of their betrayed old friend.
The wedding feast was not in vain however, as that very day Jean was married to the oldest and most beautiful princess. The two cutthroat devils, Twistoak and Cutmountain were hanged from brand new gallows erected outside the cathedral doors that were twenty-five feet high. I leave it to you to imagine what a good time they had at that lovely wedding.
As for me, I wanted to eat a piece bigger than the others, the cook gave such a kick that I was hurled to this very spot, and thus my story ends.
And what became of that size-shifting giant? Well, I forgot all about him and I suppose he is still down there, wondering where his captured princesses went! And maybe next time when I tell this story, if you remind me in time, he will get a proper seeing to!
1, The Magician, Abhartach, Vampyre of Slaghtaverty
Card Meaning: The Magician is someone who always has ‘the right tools for the job’, whether these tools are physical or intellectual, there is no task that cannot be overcome or puzzle too difficult to solve. The card is also connected to leadership, in particular, a figure of notable rhetorical talent.
Upright: Skill, Manipulation, Dexterity, Shaping reality
Reversed Card: Failure to plan, Inadequacy, Pessimism
Abhartach was an Irish petty King, a vampire and wizard. He is also probably a major inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula as this folktale would be known not only throughout Ireland but specifically is set and references landmarks in the region that Stoker’s mother (and her family) were from.
Here’s an extract from Patrick Weston Joyce’s The Origin and History of Irish Names of Places (1870)15 that gives a neat synopsis of the folklore:
“There is a place in the parish of Errigal in Londonderry, called Slaghtaverty, but it ought to have been called Laghtaverty, the laght or sepulchral monument of the ahhartach [avartagh] or dwarf. This dwarf was a magician, and a dreadful tyrant, and after having perpetrated great cruelties on the people he was at last vanquished and slain by a neighbouring chieftain; some say by Finn Mac Cumhail. He was buried in a standing posture, but the very next day he appeared in his old haunts, more cruel and vigorous than ever. And the chief slew him a second time, and buried him as before, but again he escaped from the grave, and spread terror through the whole country.
The chief then consulted a druid, and according to his directions, he slew the dwarf a third time, and buried him in the same place, with his head downwards ; which subdued his magical power, so that he never again appeared on the earth. The laght raised over the dwarf is still there, and you may hear the legend with much detail, from the natives of the place, one of whom told it to me.”
As to why he’s the Magician, there’s the obvious links to wizardry and magic but the Magician is also a figure that has links to all the minor suits as shown by their presence in the Rider Waite Smith version of the card.
In the Abhartach tale he is driven by power/ material wealth and is vilified for his high taxation (PENTACLES), however once he is killed for the first time he demands tributes of CUPS of blood from his subjects. In his undead status it is said that he can only be killed by a SWORD made of wood from a yew tree and a huge stone dolmen must be placed over his grave, which then must have twigs and branches (WANDS) placed over and up against it.
Take note of the sword made of wood, that might be the first use of the wooden stake to kill a vampire in any media.
2, The High Priestess, Aradia the Demon, Aradia the Just
Card Meaning: The High Priestess is thoughtful, secretive, and introspective. A passive witness and advisor on the universe. She is associated with paradoxes, possessing great knowledge but keeping many secrets, often overlooking moral or emotional problems in favour of seeking greater symmetry within the universe.
Upright: Equilibrium, Wisdom, Reason, Mystery
Reversed: Lost spirituality, Lost harmony, Uncertainty, Determinism
Aradia is a figure of Italian folklore that had a resurgence in popularity in American neopaganism due to the 1899 book by folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland, “Aradia, or the Gospel of Witches”.16 Essentially she is a bastardisation of Herodias (via the Italian “Erodiade” which eventually became Aradia). Herodias was the wife of King Herod who requested the head of John the Baptist brought to her on a platter (a request fulfilled by her daughter Salome). According to Tuscan folklore, Herodias lives on to regret this, seemingly denied death and cursed to wander the skies forever, only resting on treetops in the hours before dawn.
Aradia’s lore is, in keeping with the High Priestess, paradoxical and contradictory, she is the child of an unlikely coupling between Lucifer and Diana, spanning Christian and Roman mythologies and inheriting their conflicting ideologies of good and evil/ sun and moon (Lucifer roughly translates as The Morning Star and Diana is a moon goddess).
Some tales tell of Aradia’s redemption arc becoming a sort of folk saint tasked with instructing peasants in witchcraft to the purpose of revolution and rebellion against the Catholic Church and the upper classes. In some tales she is simply a very powerful and evil witch one might have the bad luck of crossing on a dark and windy night.
Some folklorists argue she is also Arada, the Queen of the Fairies (Doamna Zînelor) of Romanian myth but this may just be a nominative coincidence.
for Oscar Wilde’s Salome (play), 1894
My drawing is heavily inspired by Aubrey Beardsley’s Salome works due to it essentially illustrating the same story but I’ve also taken the pillars from the title page of “Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches”.
For a sort of B-side to this tale go to the Knight of Swords for a tale about a warrior nun from Tuscany who fights under the flag of John the Baptist.
3, The Empress, Albina, First Queen of Albion
The Empress signifies a rebirth in all interpretations. It is a card that connotes motherhood, pregnancy and maternal influence. She is someone who makes music or art or generally engages in the pursuit of beauty in just about any way.
Upright: Motherhood, Harvest, Sexuality
Reversed: Barrenness, violence, letting go
“And so long they sallied in a sea, till at last they came & arrived in an isle that was all wilderness. And when dame Albina was come to that land, & all her sister, this Albina went first out of the ship, & said to her other sisters : “for-as-much,” quoth she, ” as I am pe eldest sister of all this companay, & first this land have taken, & for as much as my name is Albina, I will that this land be called Albion, after mine own name;””17– The Brute Chronicle
In the thirteenth century Brute Chronicle this story serves as the prologue to the chronology of English kings. That text neatly summarised the tale as:
“How King Dioclisian wedded his 33 Daughters to 33 Kings whom they afterwards murderd; and how these Widows came to England, & had children by the Giants of the land.”
You should be able to access that version through the footnote but I first came across this tale in Amy Jeff’s Storyland, who I thoroughly recommend and will reference her work several times throughout this collection. Here’s my version:
Albina, The First Queen of Albion
Long, long ago, a Syrian King attempted to catapult his own power with a plan to marry off his 30 tall, strong, beautiful daughters on a single day, and thus garner 30 alliances with powerful suitors from lands and dynasties stretching far and wide.
The King’s plan was a good one, but it hit a snag, his 30 daughters did not want to be married. They were, as I have already said, very tall and very strong, and while they did not put much value in their beauty, they did put a lot of value into the independence that their status and their strength afforded them. They did not want to be separated, they did not want to be housewives, they decided to hatch a plan. Some say the ringleader of this rebellion was the oldest princess, Albina.
The sisters decided that on their shared wedding night they would slit the throats of their 30 husbands and they would face whatever punishment befell them together.
But there was a traitor, the youngest princess was the King’s favourite, and she did not want to disappoint her father, and she did not want to upset him. In secret she went to him and exposed the murder plot.
The King demands the sisters are rounded up and then, heartbroken, exiles them all, but changes his mind, the youngest he pardons, to stay with him.
29 sisters, unrepentant, are shunned off to sea on a ship with no oars, would they have even taken the 30th aboard? And if they did, would she have made it to any shore?
The ship sails and floats and rocks and turns. After many days and nights they beach below great white cliffs, and start to make a home for themselves on the great island. They search and find the land rich and abundant with fauna and flora, water and woods, but no people at all. Lacking any other people the sisters quickly figure out they need to govern the land and themselves and naturally they elect Albina to be their queen, and after her they named the land Albion.
The sisters are very capable and so they start foraging the fruits of the land, and gardening the herbs, and hunting the game, and cutting down trees to make shelters, and fishing the rivers. For a while it seemed that the women had created a utopia, they had their independence, and they wanted for nothing.
But when the nights were long and dark and cold, much colder in this new land than back home, and their dwellings and their beds, much emptier than they had been at home, the women did want for something. They missed the company of men and they filled the monotonous hours of survival with talk of the many kinds of men that they liked. They discussed and debated and sometimes even ranked the kinds of men from all the different lands that they were missing the company of.
On those long, dark, cold nights they made wishes, but this was not something that a woman could pray for of course, so they kept wishing, not praying, but to who they wished they did not know.
One long, autumnal night the Devil and a legion of demons (Or host of incubi) climbed out of hell, took the shapes of various kinds of men and lay with the 29 sisters and after years of wishing and waiting they were greatly satisfied. Afterwards they were not ashamed and did not regret the night, but soon their bellies began to grow, and this made sense, but their bellies continued to grow and grow, grotesquely so, and this did not make sense.
After many months of discomfort turned to horror the women birthed a race of Giants. Did they survive these birthings, did their bellies burst? And who would sew them back up? It is not known.
These Giants begat a long line of Giants who ruled over Albion, until Trojan expedition landed on their shores many years later (see Seven of Wands for that story).
4, Emperor, Nero Plays the Lyre as Rome Burns*
This card suggests the end of an ascent and success realised. After much struggle; recognition, respect, and power are achieved. However, the Emperor is a ruler that prioritizes stability and strength over personal liberties and democracy.
Upright: Leadership, Control, Force
Reversed: Childishness, Tyranny, Deposition
*This tale is usually known as Nero fiddles while Rome burns, but after some surface level research it appears that the fiddle wouldn’t have existed at the time and there’s multiple sources that can place Nero nowhere near Rome as the fire broke out. Either way it’s a good story and one that I will fully write up SOON.
5, Hierophant, Huginn and Muninn, Odin’s Ravens
The Hierophant, or ‘Pope’ card is primarily a figure of religious power and a symbol of law and order. At best the Hierophant is a wise, thoughtful spiritual leader. At worst a bloodthirsty tyrant hiding under a shield of religious justification and legal technicalities.
Upright: Power, Faith, Law and Order
Reversed: Servitude, loss of faith, Godlessness
Huginn and Muninn, representing thought and memory respectively, serve as Odin’s link between the spiritual realm of the Gods and our reality (just as the Hierophant bridges spiritual and physical realms).
6, The Lovers, Tristan and Isolde
The Lovers concern all spheres of romantic love; from love at first sight to marriage. Generally, this card implies that the future is bright for romantic relationships, old and new. The Card is also heavily linked to the importance of a romantic choice that needs to be made, for better or worse, that will seriously affect the relationship.
Upright: New Love, Romantic Love, Sex, Choice
Reversed: Separation, Stagnation, Regret
An Arthurian knight, Tristan is sent to Ireland to collect a bride for his uncle (and adoptive father) the King of Cornwall in hopes of brokering a political aliance between the two nations. However, Tristan, through battle or accident, shipwrecks on the Irish shore and is nursed back to health by the Irish princess he seeks. Before they know each other’s identities, Isolde falls in love with Tristan. After the shock of learning her beloved is the one taking her to marry another, Isolde tricks Tristan into drinking a love potion on their ship crossing to Cornwall (sometimes the potion isn’t present, has nothing to do with Isolde, or it’s sometimes an accident or someone else’s scheming plan).
The two fall deeply in love and though Isolde does marry the king, her and Tristan begin a tumultuous affair that when it is eventually outed causes a small Cornish civil war. The infighting is then taken advantage of by the Irish for an invasion after they consider their truce void after the news spreads of the political marriage being a sham.
After a lot of plot twists and anguish Isolde returns to her lawful husband the king and Tristan is banished (or exiles himself) to Brittany. While in Brittany he saves and begins a slightly sad and cynical relationship with another Isolde, who falls in love with Tristan but is keenly aware of her status as a pale replacement.
A little while later Tristan is wounded and arranges for a message to be sent to Isolde asking to see her one last time. He tells her to come in a ship with white sails if she is coming and to send one with black sails if she is not. Isolde comes in a ship with white sails, as requested, but upon seeing it approach the coast the second Isolde is jealous and tells Tristan it is a ship with black sails. Upon hearing this news Tristan dies on the spot. Isolde eventually gets to him moments too late, lies down on his corpse and dies also.
There are a lot of versions of this tale, I particularly enjoyed the 1981 German film Feuer und Schwert: Die Legende von Tristan und Isolde. 18It looks fantastic with some lovely cinematography and that dark fantasy aesthetic that seems to be very in vogue and is simultaneously being absolutely butchered by worthless AI bullshit videos/images that seem to be cropping up in recent years (why doesn’t someone make an actual dark fantasy movie?). Also, it has a very young Christoph Waltz in, which is fun.
7 Chariot, The Ríastrad of Cú Chulainn
The Chariot is the champion of hard work and resilience. This is a figure who will not stop for anything and never stays down for long. This card denotes setting sights on a goal and seeing it through no matter the cost, personal, physical or otherwise.
Upright: Resilience, Determination, Self-Obsession
Reversed: Giving up, Lack of direction, Cowardice
“The first warp-spasm seized Cúchulainn, and made him into a monstrous thing, hideous and shapeless, unheard of. His shanks and his joints, every knuckle and angle and organ from head to foot, shook like a tree in the flood or a reed in the stream. His body made a furious twist inside his skin, so that his feet and shins switched to the rear and his heels and calves switched to the front… On his head the temple-sinews stretched to the nape of his neck, each mighty, immense, measureless knob as big as the head of a month-old child… he sucked one eye so deep into his head that a wild crane couldn’t probe it onto his cheek out of the depths of his skull; the other eye fell out along his cheek. His mouth weirdly distorted: his cheek peeled back from his jaws until the gullet appeared, his lungs and his liver flapped in his mouth and throat, his lower jaw struck the upper a lion-killing blow, and fiery flakes large as a ram’s fleece reached his mouth from his throat… The hair of his head twisted like the tangle of a red thornbush stuck in a gap; if a royal apple tree with all its kingly fruit were shaken above him, scarce an apple would reach the ground but each would be spiked on a bristle of his hair as it stood up on his scalp with rage.” –The Táin Bó Cuailnge, (Translation, Thomas Kinsella)
Cú Chulainn, an Irish hero and demigod in Irish folklore (roughly analogous to Hercules in popularity/importance/power) is known for riding in a chariot with his faithful charioteer Láeg and horses Liath Macha and Dub Sainglend.
Cú Chulainn is also known for possessing the power/curse of the Ríastrad, a battle rage that warps him into an deformed unkillable monster as you can read in the description above. He used these powers to single-handedly hold back the forces of Queen Medb (The Queen of Wands in this Deck) in the Cattle Raid of Cooley. The Ríastrad essentially plays out as a horrible curse that is sometimes used for good in a very incredible hulk-esque manner and the heroicness of Cú Chulainn essentially depends on whether he is in the right place at the right time (he did kill his son when he turned into the monster one time).
The death of Cú Chulainn is also a great story but perhaps one for another time.
8, Justice, Kriemhild’s Revenge
The Justice card is largely self-explanatory, it refers to people getting what is deserved. Evil is weighed and suitably punished, good is recognised and rewarded. However, the sword of Justice can often be ruthless, and what is fair is not always what is compassionate.
Upright: Justice, Unbiased Evaluation, Punishment.
Reversed: Injustice, Abuse of Power, Imbalance, OR Mercy
Kriemhild, Siegfried’s widow, goes on a rampage of destruction to get justice for his betrayal at the hands of her own family. She also seeks to retrieve the Nibelungen hoard of treasure which is hers by right.
Die Nibelungen, dem Deutschen Volke Wie: Dererzahlt Von Franz Keim. 190719
The quest for justice leads to her demanding the location of the treasure from Siegfried’s killer, Hagen, now her captive, holding the head of her brother as the kingdom she grew up in burns behind her. Hagen tells her the Nibelungen hoard is at the bottom of the Rhine (which it is) and she beheads him with Siegfried’s sword.
The main influence for this is the 1924 film, Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild’s Revenge.20 The film is public domain and very easily found online, make sure you find a version with the wonderful golden light, not the revisionist greyscale versions.
9, The Hermit, Vasilisa The Beautiful and Baba Yaga
The Hermit is essentially a searcher, usually (though not always) depicted as a wise old man making his way through a darkness with a lantern. The Hermit can be found illuminating the dark areas of the physical and intellectual realms. This focus often comes at the cost of comradery and companionship, however admirable or important, the Hermit is at its core a signifier of solitude and loneliness.
Upright: Illumination, Solitude and Knowledge
Reversed Withdrawal, Lack of knowledge, Corruption and secrets
I’m expecting a little bit of pushback for this one, specifically for putting two characters on the Hermit card but I’ll stand by it…
The Baba Yaga, a literal hermit living in the woods in a house on chicken legs, like the hermit of tarot is a very wise but morally ambiguous figure. I would have drawn the card as just the Baba Yaga without Vasilisa but the imagery of her holding the skull lantern is a perfect mirror for the hermit with his lantern in most modern decks (just have a look at Ivan Bilibin’s illustrations).
The Baba Yaga and Vasilisa are essentially two sides of the same coin, both can be found illuminating literal and intellectual dark areas that others would shy away from. They also both carry connotations of solitude and loneliness, the Baba Yaga having the agency to choose isolation and Vasilisa being cast out by her stepmother and sisters.
10, Wheel of Fortune, The Two Brothers
This card depicts a world in constant flux, where luck and destiny can change at any moment. To those graced with happiness and stability, this card predicts a hard fall, but to those down on their luck, it predicts great fortune. However, nothing is permanent, and the wheel will always come back around.
Upright: Change of Luck, Karma, Equilibrium
Reversed: Stagnation, Personal Autonomy, irrevocable change
Grimm’s fairy tales, 1912
The Two Brothers is (I believe) the longest fairy tale collected by the brothers Grimm which probably explains it’s dizzying amount of twists and turns. Essentially it revolves around a set of twin brothers and their constantly changing fortunes.
It leans into themes of rising and falling status as a series of parallels to show how alternate choices can change the fortunes of the identical, or near identical, characters. One twin heads east, one heads west, one becomes a huntsman, one becomes a king, one is tricked by a witch, one shoots the witch, etc. The twins are raised by another set of brothers, a poor broom maker and a rich (but evil) goldsmith. Wealth and money are also very present in the story, even in brief moments of calm the twins fill their time with gambling whatever they have.
The scenery is also rich in these ideas of twinning, the same town is encountered once hung all in black for mourning, and, a year later, hung in red for a wedding. There are two mountains in the story, one has a dragon at the top (death) and on the other is a magical root that brings the dead back to life (resurrection).
In the tale nothing is stable and everything comes round again and even death is reversible. That sounds like a perfect Wheel of Fortune to me.
11, Strength, Dull Gret (or Mad Meg)
The Strength card is the ultimate symbol of Female empowerment in everything from success to sexuality. It asserts the importance of facing one’s fears and signifies the completion of a goal. It also advocates bravery and integrity over physical strength.
Upright: Bravery, Feminine power, Feminine sexuality
Reversed: Subservient femininity, Cowardice, abuse of power, fear
Once upon a time in the Low Countries, a woman was so very angry that she led an army of women to pillage Hell. The tale seemingly originates from the Flemish proverb, “She could plunder in front of hell and return unscathed” but was largely popularised by a 1563 painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
Bruegel’s painting was heavily influenced by Hieronymus Bosch and depicts Dull Gret and her army of women storming the anthropomorphic gaping mouth of Hell, terrorising demons and making off with their loot. My drawing is hugely influenced by the painting, which is spectacular, please do look it up!
12, Hanged Man, Prometheus
The Hanged Man symbolises perspective and intellect. It is about allowing yourself to pause and reflect on previous decisions and experiences to allow yourself to grow and mature materially and spiritually. This card recommends the consideration of events past, present, and future. At the halfway point of the Major Arcana, it also connotes an inherent change from the challenges previously faced to those that will follow.
Upright: New perspective, Reflection, Suspension, Paradox
Reversed: Denial, Selfishness, Indecision.
Prometheus was the Titan who shaped humans out of clay (though sometimes that’s Zeus) and brought them fire in a fennel stalk, acts that would condemn him to an an eternity chained to the Caucasus Mountains having his liver pecked out by an eagle every day only to have it regrow every night in a brutal loop. His only company would be the Oceanids who would come to the nearby rocks of the coast and tell him tales.
The main influences for this were the paintings, Prometheus (1909) by Otto Greiner and Prometheus Bound by Thomas Cole (1847). The main source for the story I was reading was in Greek Myths, a New Retelling by Charlotte Elizabeth Higgins
My drawing depicts Prometheus contemplating his choices and the inevitable consequences.
13 Death, The Pardoner’s Tale
After a period of contemplation with The Hanged Man, Death follows to allow you to let go of previous traumas and anxieties that may be holding you back. It is symbolic of purging, of rebirth, to completely severe the mistakes of the past to allow for significant and permanent change in the future. While this severance can be painful, it should also be viewed as a strengthening of character.
Upright: Transformation, Transition, Rebirth.
Reversed: Stagnation, Reluctance, Inner Turmoil, Indecision.
In Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales21, the Pardoner (a sort of snake-oil-salesman of Christian absolution) tells the tale of a company of Three young men, well practised in follies such as “riot, hazard, styes, and taverns” who are deep into some serious drinking when they hear the death bell of a funeral march go by.
They ask a tavern boy who has died and they are told that the dead man is a friend of theirs, killed by a “privy thief” called Death. They are informed that just nearby Death has killed a whole village; to the last man, woman and child.
The company are enraged by this and head out to this village, to find Death, and kill him.
They eventually find a cloaked, bent old man in the village, torment him a little and ask him why he is not dead and where his friend Death is (for a man this old surely must have befriended death!). He says Death will not take him but he was with him recently and left him last underneath an oak tree. He points the way to it.
Walter Appleton Clark (illustrator), The Canterbury Tales, 1914
Under the tree the men find a huge pile of treasure and quickly forget about their hunt for death. They hatch a plan to wait until nightfall (else they look like plunderers) so they can carry the treasure away and split it between them. They draw straws (well, twigs) for which among them will return to their town for bread and wine, of which the youngest of the three draws the short straw and heads off.
Soon after the departure of the youngest the other two discuss the advantages of splitting the loot between two instead of three and plot to challenge the youngest to a wrestling contest and then stab him in the back when he returns.
Meanwhile the youngest reaches town and heads straight to the apothecary, telling him he needs poison for he has been having problems with large vermin he must get rid of. He gets three bottles of wine and dumps the poison into two.
The youngest returns to the tree, is challenged to a wrestle, stabbed in the back when rolling around amongst the gold pieces and dies. The other two celebrate their murder with a drink of wine, quickly begin to choke on the poison and die.
And so, underneath an oak tree, a company of three found DEATH.
14 Temperance, The Akelarre of Zugarramurdi, or A Witches Sabbath in the Basque Country
Temperance, in line with its namesake the cardinal Virtue, is a symbol of measuredness, moderation and Mercy. In contrast to the Justice card, Temperance is concerned with not what is fair, but what is right, and the unfailing advocate of staying the executioner’s sword in favour of forgiveness. The card is also historically linked to Alchemy and the process of mixing elements together to create new elements.
Upright: Moderation, Restraint, Mercy, Alchemy
Reversed: Decadence, division, Poison
“Ez geala, ba geala,
Hamalau mila hemen geala”
(“We aren’t, we are indeed,
Fourteen thousand here we are”)
-Sogrinak Chant
Zugarramurdi, a town in the Basque Country, is sometimes known as “The Cathedral of the Devil”, it is said that many women did (do they still?) meet in a cave whose entrance is guarded by a great black he-goat. The goat was thought by some to be the devil himself, though the women call the goat Akerbeltz (sometimes an entirely different demon/devil). Some say the women perform the Osculum Infame22 on Akerbeltz to gain entrance into the cave and when the black sabbath begins he leads an unholy sermon before a feast of wine and human flesh (a sort of demonic anti-sacrament). These parties would often be attended by Elves and Lamiaks, duck footed nymphs (not to be confused with LAMIA (singular) – see 9 of swords).
These witches, known as Sorginak, serve and worship the Pagan Basque Goddess, Mari, the Lady of Anboto, who would appear to them as a woman on fire with snakes coiling around her feet and legs, holding a great sickle.
On Friday nights the Sogrinak would gather for Mari’s coupling with her Dragon-God consort, Sugaar, from which they would spawn storms.
Look, there’s a lot to unpack here and a lot of it is very fun but the European Witch Trials were very dark so this is one of the few myths here I think it might be best to dispel a bit (reframe?). In the Basque Witch Trials 1,802 people (largely women) were interrogated and accused of witchcraft, 6 ‘died’ in the interrogation process and 6 repeatedly refused to apologise, confess or ask for mercy. These 12 were burned at the stake, including the 6 already-dead, who were tied to stakes symbolically with the others.
So what was really going on? Were hundreds or maybe thousands of women involved in a goat-demon and pagan-God worshipping cult where they performed dark sorcery? Probably not. Were a lot of women meeting up in secret in the Zugarramurdi caves for big gatherings? Almost definitely.
It seems that the Basque country at this time (the trail was in 1610 for context) was of a culture where most of the men in the community were absent for huge chunks of the year due to a heavy reliance on the whaling trade and the long sea-faring trips required to make that possible.
What men were left in the community then? Apart from the too young and too old, mainly just the catholic church, who, of course, are not to be trusted if you want to have a party. So it seems like the most obvious reason for the clandestine nature of the cave meets was simply not to be watched by the beady little eyes of priests (and I can dig on that to be honest).
The main and most obvious influence of this is Francisco Goya’s paintings “Witches Sabbath” and “Akelarre”, which are these wonderfully sinister atmospheric scenes of essentially the same thing but I wanted my sabbath to look really fun, hopefully I’ve achieved that. My Mari is also almost completely stolen from Céline Sciamma’s film, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which seemed like an obvious reference after reading that she appears as a woman on fire. Robert Eggers’ The Witch (VVitch?) is also referenced with the flying women around Mari’s fire but I was mainly thinking about Black Phillip the whole time reading about Akerbeltz, so there he is being the life of the party in the middle of the drawing.
15, Devil, The Madonna’s Veil
The Devil card represents the seduction and entrapment of carnal pleasures and living to excess. It concerns itself with addiction, temptation, lust and power – and the strangely alluring dangers of following any of these materialistic pursuits to excess.
Upright: Sexuality, Obsession, Restriction, Fear.
Reversed: Freedom from Bondage, Overcoming Addictions, Release, Restoring Balance and Control.
In this Italian fairy tale The Devil calls in his debt on an Italian Princess’ soul. Obviously this story is fitting because it features Old Nick himself but it also touches on a lot of the themes of the Devil card as it’s understood in tarot. Repeatedly the characters come up against different kinds of bondage, wherein they are indebted, enslaved, or literally chained by others. You’ll see this imagery of the devil presiding over two chained up figures in some of the oldest surviving tarot decks and I would say most decks to this day. Themes of addiction can also be read into how one character gambles (and loses) everything only to essentially double down with a satanic deal, similarly all of the petty villains in this tale (not the literal devil) are largely just people that make bad decisions that spiral into worse ones and down into terrible ends (or literal Hell). The protagonist of the story struggles with inward battles of forgiveness and self preservation, duty and independence. Does a good person have to be good all the time and can a bad person be bad all the way through?
This story was originally by Emma Perodi, I’m a little unsure over how much she wrote it and how much it’s more her record of a local folk tale, as a lot of these fairy tale collection projects in Europe were at that time (1893). The reason I can’t find out much about Emma Perodi is mainly because I can’t read Italian and the trail goes a bit cold because of that. As such I read this tale in translation via Cristina Mazzoni’s The Pomegranates and Other Modern Italian Fairy Tales, this was one of a handful of books that inspired this entire folklore tarot project, its literally inspirational and you should get a copy!
I changed a few things, I tried to make the devil a bit less tepid than the original and I made it so our heroine doesn’t marry the boy and live happily ever after (for reasons that you will hopefully come to understand when you read it).
It goes a little like this:
The Madonna’s Veil
Many, many years ago, in a land called Castentino, in the province of Tuscany, a woman called Ginevra returned unexpectedly to the house of her brother, Count Guidi of Poppi. She was alone, exhausted, injured and dressed in rags. She had left a few years prior to be married to a dashing merchant from Florence and the count had not heard from her since. And in her arms was a child, a baby girl wrapped in a lapislazuli veil.
Upon entering the castle courtyard Ginevra fell to her knees and set her brother with a fierce animal stare. For the last time she spoke, “I entrust you with my Daughter. You must never take the Madonna’s blue veil from her!” and with this said, and the child passed from one sibling to another, Ginevra died.
This small, skinny, pale little child was so then held by her uncle, and he felt great shame that his sister should come to such an end as this. And how? And where was he all the time during the events that had led to this? And what were those events? He vowed to do right by her, to do right by the child. Count Guidi took the baby to his wife and they welcomed her into their family as one of their own, and loved her, and named her Lisa.
Little Lisa was as beautiful as an angel and she was loved by everyone in Castentino because she was so good natured, kind and sweet. As she grew so did the Lapislazuli veil, it covered her, no matter how big she got, head to toe. The veil never got dirty, it never got ragged, it never lost its colour. There were never any tears and so never did it need mending.
The people claimed her “the Madonna’s protégée” and that her veil was a miracle relic, they said it was truly the very same veil worn by Christ’s mother, passed down to one worthy, possessing her virtues. People far and wide, high and low flocked to her from all over Tuscany. When doctors were stumped and hope was lost the people turned to Lisa. Just to touch the hem of her veil they came. They said she could cleanse the possessed, heal the sick, and give peace to the deranged. And so they came in droves, the lepers, the untouchables, the insane, the forsaken.
When these pilgrims placed their hands on the veil Lisa recited a prayer, a strange prayer in a strange language (and no one had taught her this!), and they were fully healed of any and all afflictions. It was said too that Lisa could bring rain in a drought and the sun-and-cloudless-sky in the middle of a thunderstorm. All she had to do was lift her veil to the heavens. The count and his wife waited for the day that Lisa came of age so she could marry their eldest son, her own cousin. Well, so it (still) goes amongst the nobility…
One day, when Lisa was fifteen, a stranger rode into town. He was tall and stooped on black horse, from under his dark hood spilled his lank hair and unkept beard.
This stranger was acting shifty and immediately had the eyes of the count’s guards upon him. It wasn’t long before they found this stranger creeping around a restricted area of the castle (was he looking for something?) and arrested him for trespassing. The count went to this stranger as soon as the news came to him. At first he questioned, then beat, then he threatened a long sentence in a dark cell. Finally he promised torture. All the while he drilled the man with the same questions.
“What is your name?”
“Where have you come from?”
“What were you doing in the castle?”
“What do you want?!?”
The count received nothing for all his efforts but the stranger’s all-too-knowing grin. And did his smiling eyes not glint yellow? Did his teeth not look like fangs? That smile frightened Guidi most of all. There were brave men would face torture with a stern face but her had never met one to anticipate it with such a horrible, greedy smile.
“Throw him in the dungeon, and starve him! Perhaps the fast will loosen his tongue” the count barked at his men and quickly left the room while he could still hold his composure.
–
Two days later the guards returned to the cell, carved into rock and with only one entrance and what did they find there? They found this stranger healthy and happy. Did he look stronger? He was certainly more stubborn!
The count questioned and beat and threatened again, still he could not get one word out of the prisoner. He agreed with the guards that the stranger looked too well and they concluded that he must have food secreted away on his person. No resistance was given as they stripped him and riffled through his clothes. They found not a morsel. Out of frustration the count ordered ever seam on every garment cut through but still nothing was found, perhaps he had just eaten it all. They threw him back into the cell naked, “and chain him up!” said the count as an afterthought, that would be the last time this vagrant would make a fool of him, he was sure of it.
The count returned two days later and, after a strictly enforced regime of no food or water, opened the door to his captive, naked still, chained still, but somehow different. The stranger was by all accounts magnificent, handsome and fair, muscled like the statues of old, he was certainly the same man but he was transformed and looked now like an angel fallen from heaven.
“Who has been feeding this prisoner?! Has he been washed? And did someone shave his face?!?”
The men muttered that they didn’t, and one even asked why they would do that, but it was true, the unkept beard was gone, the lank greasy hair now fell in golden curls.
In a low voice the count told his men, “This is witchcraft. There is a spell at work, fetch Lisa and she will undo all that is unholy”.
–
When Lisa entered the room, covered as always in her Lapislazuli veil, the man began to scream, and from his gaping mouth fell a black smoke flecked with hot embers. He writhed in his chains trying to get out and then his eyes melted within their sockets and from those too came the black smoke and glowing sparks. The smoke filled the room and none could see, and when it dissipated the stranger had vanished.
“My daughter”, said Guidi to his niece, “I’m so sorry for bringing you here, I believe that man was the Devil himself.”
“Do you know what he wanted, uncle?” replied Lisa
“That is what concerns me most, for I do not know.”
Lisa fell to her knees and in that same strange healing language began to speak, a prayer but unlike a prayer. The cell and all the men in it fell silent while she spoke, fell silent, spoke again, then waited and so it went like a conversation but with who? What reply could she hear that the rest could not? Finally she rose from this trance state.
She asked for everyone to leave the room except her uncle, and when alone she told him,
“My lord, it is time for me to reveal the mystery of my birth to you. When my mother was married off and shipped off to Florence, so too were three ships sent by my father into the Orient, loaded with a great many treasures that would yield his fortune. On these ships he had gambled his entire wealth and intended to tell his wife of their unforetold riches on their wedding day.
But when my mother arrived to her new husband-to-be, so did the news of all three ships having wrecked and sunk in the deep black ocean. My father hid this from my mother and, on the cusp of ruin, he recklessly spent every last florin on a lavish wedding for his new bride.
The morning after the wedding my father came to the sobering reality of what he had done. He thought about the deception he had done to his new wife. He thought of selling his villa. He spiralled in despair and said aloud to himself, “If Satan came to me now I would sell the life and soul of my firstborn for the return of that fortune. A lifetime of work, at the bottom of the sea! God has forsaken me!”. He put his head in his hands and wept. Something had changed in the room, as if the air had been sucked out. Objects began to float away from the places as if in water. It had grown cold and he felt very alone but when he looked up there was a man in the room.
“Who are you?” demanded my father, but of course he knew.
The stranger, who did not answer questions, simply replied, “Keep your promise and you will be saved.”.
On a tablet of ivory, with ink of blood, a covenant was writ and signed.
My father did not know that I was already, on their wedding night, put in my mothers belly. The months passed and my fathers wealth multiplied tenfold, much greater even than he could have expected from those three sunken ships. On the day of my birth there appeared a shadow at the bedside that did not belong. When my mother held me for the first time the shadow became manifest and there stood the Devil himself, but he made no movements and the room was still. My father who had become the devil’s lowly servant did his unspoken bidding and grabbed at me to turn me over and fulfil his foul promise. My mother, weak as she was from the birth, scratched at his eyes, leaving one ruined and the coward recoiled. With seconds to act and no hope but her own faith she reached for a life-like wooden statue of the Madonna at her bedside and with all her strength ripped away its carved wooden veil. Yet, it was wood no longer, the veil had turned to soft fabric, a wonderful blue! She wrapped me in the veil and said a prayer to the Madonna to always protect me. The devil vanished from sight.
My mutilated father was enraged and terrified of the devil’s revenge, he locked my mother and I in the dungeon and there left us chained up to rot. A year later a faithful friend of my mothers learned of this misdeed and freed us, gave us a little food and money. She told my mother not to run immediately as the hunt for us will be desperate and thorough, but to hide in the caves under the city as long as possible until the search has lost its immediacy.
My poor, poor mother, I’m sure out of fear, took this advice too much to heart, she waited too long. Without food she became weak and wretched, when she left the caves she had the strength and mind of a little girl, all she sought was safety in her father’s arms, though as you know he was already long dead. She made towards her childhood home, she must have thought me a doll. There was no longer any chance of her surviving, she had just the resolve to make it here and when she did arrive she was confused to find you a man grown, and all the years disappeared, and her whole life just make-believe and now fading away.
That prisoner you had in here, that was the Devil. Those chains only held him because that is where he wanted to be. He has found me and he will now lay traps to try and claim me. He was in the castle to catch me unawares and somehow snatch away my veil, for I am protected when I am covered by it, and so can never take it off. He cannot touch the veil himself, he must find a servant to do his bidding to remove it for him.”
And so the tale was told, “But how do you know all this? You would have been an infant when it all happened?” asked the count.
“When I pray I speak to the Madonna, she taught me her language and she offers me counsel and protection. When we speak I see her face, always smiling. She has told me this story so I may fully understand my mother’s sacrifice and why I must forever wear her veil.” replied Lisa.
Uncle and niece agreed to keep this reveal secret and to be extremely vigilant for any further traps.
As time passed, the miraculous nature of Lisa and her veil spread further and further, across all of what is now known as Italy. All kinds of people came to cure their sicknesses or to just pay tribute to the miracle girl, to kiss the lapislazuli veil.
The count did not like anyone touching the veil, he saw the devil in every sick person, in every faithful pilgrim, but Lisa would not hear it, she could not refuse help to those who needed her. One day when walking home from mass two peasants accosted the Count and his family, they seemed desperate, in a cart they carried their friend who lay, covered in sores and breathing ragged breaths. They said they didn’t know where else to turn, they were scared their friend would die. They cried and begged that they needed to find the miracle girl.
The count, countess and all their sons pushed past these revolting peasants, not even bothering to spare an excuse (so called nobles!), but Lisa lingered behind and watched the others walk back to their castle. She knew she had to be careful but she had been helping people her whole life and she knew pain, and she knew fear, and she knew desperation, and she looked in these men’s eyes she could see all these things so believed what they had said must be true.
Lisa went to the cart and there lay the wretched man, she bent over him to lay the veil over his sores, and through the blue fabric she saw his yellow eyes open, and suddenly from behind her the veil was torn away. And Lisa saw the whole world in full colour for the first time, no longer tinted in blue and it was for a second wonderful, and then terrible as the wretched man rose and the sores all over his body pulsated and grew until he was one great uniform red thing, the most red thing she had ever seen, with the most yellow eyes. And from this terrible thing sprouted two great horns and unfurled great beating wings. Lisa turned to run and saw the two peasants weeping and mumbling their apologies, they asked her forgiveness and she understood that they were in pain, and they were scared, and they were desperate. The two accomplices were just more victims in this plot but they had damned themselves, and so the devil opened up two holes in the earth beneath them and let them fall into his realm. Then he took Lisa, his long awaited prey, in her arms and flew off towards the Tuscan Alp of Catenaia.
Il velo della Madonna (The Madonna’s Veil), Ezio Anichini (Illustrator),
From Emma Perodi’s Le novelle della nonna, 1892
–
The Devil set Lisa down in a mountain cave and then rolled a huge boulder over the opening so she could not escape. There in that utter darkness the only light came from those two glowing yellow eyes, and how they watched her. She did not know if he wanted to eat her or worse, but they never ceased watching. Miraculously she found within her hair a torn shred of the veil, she removed it as casually as she could and held it balled in a fist and she spoke to the Madonna, and asked her what to do.
But the devil could understand old languages and this plea made him violent, “Stop that!” his voice echoed through the cave. Luckily the Devil could not hear the Madonna’s reply, she said “You are in grave danger, my child, you will only have one chance to save yourself, do not waste it. You must pray to me, and bring me into the cave in spirit and I will blind the devil for as long as I can. When you see his eyes close you must pull the shred of the veil as hard as you can until it stretches to cover your entire body.”
Well, Lisa began to pray, and that prayer put a fear into the Devil, he hissed and snarled and threatened her to stop, and as she saw those two yellow eyes move towards her in the dark she suddenly felt a third presence in the room, and as predicted like two lamps being snuffed out, those two terrible eyes disappeared. The darkness of the cave was infinite. She heard the devil scream and wail and howl. She heard him thump around the cave, clawing hammering the rock walls and blindly, accidentally, he sounded like he was moving closer. All the while Lisa pulled at the shred of the veil with all her might and it did stretch and just as she was fully covered the eyes opened just before her and… saw nothing. The new veil, stretched from a torn piece of the old, now shielded her from the sight of the devil, he could not see her! He kicked the boulder out of the entrance and looked down the mountain, he looked back into the cave, his eyes passing right over Lisa. He roared out into the mountains and flew out into the sky on his beating red wings.
–
Lisa simply walked out of the cave and headed home, and on that long walk she occasionally stopped and prayed to the Madonna. She prayed for a safe return to her home, but she also thought of the two men that had tricked her on the devils behalf and she forgave them in her heart. She knew they were just scared of the devil and meant her no harm and she prayed for their salvation. From this she considered her own fathers misdeeds and slavery to the Devil. She prayed that he be released from the devil’s bondage, and if he were still living, that he would have the strength to redeem himself and seek his own salvation.
On her walk home Lisa was eventually picked up by the counts men that were galloping towards the mountains where all had heard a great booming roar. They returned Lisa to Castentino and a festival was held for her return. A boar was roasted and much wine was drunk and eventually, with a lot of jostling from his parents, the Count’s eldest son worked up the courage to ask for Lisa’s hand in marriage. She thought on this for a long moment. While it was not unusual to marry one’s first cousin in those days, she could not imagine him in such a way. He was handsome yes, and of course rich, which of course being family so was she, but he would be powerful in ways she could never be. With his position of power and her veil she considered all the good that could be done.
But then was he valiant? Gentle? Kind and sweet? Well, the Count’s men rode towards the devil’s booming mountain-top roar to save her and he was not among them…
And did he stop when a sick man was wheeled up to them? No, he walked past, disgusted, not sparing a word… of course that man did turn out to be the devil himself but neither of them knew that at the time. She finally resolved that while she did not love her cousin romantically, and he had not proved himself an ideal match, not only was she indebted to her uncle and aunt and this would make them very happy, but she believed she could be a serious force for good as a powerful countess.
Lisa accepted the proposal on one condition, she would make her adoptive family happy but first she must do something for herself. She would only be married if her father was in attendance and for this to take place he must be brought to her and she may forgive him and they may make amends. The deal was struck and the wedding was set for one month’s time. A party of riders was sent immediately to Florence to find Lisa’s father, again the groom-to-be was not among this party. The riders returned with grave news. The locals said her father had apparently gone mad after the “disappearance” of his wife, they said he lost an eye the same night and began raving about seeing the devil everywhere he turned. It was not long before he cut out his remaining eye so as to not be cursed with the sight of the devil anymore. He roamed the streets raving, destitute and pitiable. Finally he began raving about yellow eyes in the dark, about seeing again, he cut his own throat. All this happened years ago and the people asked the riders why they had come now? The riders saw no use in spreading sad stories and told them it was of no consequence.
When Lisa heard the news she was crushed, but she kept praying for him. Eventually the Madonna appeared to her, smiling as always, and said, “Beloved daughter, your prayers are useless, your father is now among the damned. He could not free himself from the devils covenant but he would not be his servant and hunt you down for him either. Instead he handicapped himself against finding you and eventually after years of the devils torturing whispers he took his own life. Now he is in Hell amongst the sinners.”
And what of the wedding? Though many did not understand it, Lisa held to her vow and would not be married to anyone unless her father was present and since he never could be she never was. She left her uncle’s house and wandered and healed the sick where she could, cloaked in a lapislazuli veil that made her less and less visible as time went on, until, to the naked eye, she wasn’t there at all.
Fine (The End)
16, Tower, The Drowned City of Ys
The Tower signifies an earth-shattering event. It predicts utter desolation or otherwise irrevocable change. However, it must be acknowledged that hardship is inevitable and no one passes through life unscathed. A smooth sea never made a skilful sailor, and this will be the roughest sea yet.
Upright card: Destruction, Chaos, Purification, Ruin
Reversed card: Averting or Delaying Disaster, Fallout, Rebuilding
In this French folktale a supposedly utopian city hidden out in the ocean off the coast of Brittany is undone by the wanton daughter of a pious king. As always the versions and variants of the story differ but the most common beats are that the city is protected from flooding and destruction only by a great system of dykes and locks that allow the city to exist partially ‘within‘ the sea. Understandably the one entrance and exit to the city allowing ships in and out is incredibly precarious and well guarded. There is in fact only one key and this is held by the King, Gradlon.
Unfortunately for Gradlon, a very good and religious man, the libertarian freedoms of the City of Ys have led to rotten core, something that he is warned will be the doom of Ys, just as it was for the cities of the plain, by his dreams/visions of a Saint (either St. Gwénnolé or St. Corentin depending on the version). These warnings go unheeded as the King is blind to corruption and sin within the city.
Auguste François-Marie Gorguet (artist), 1888
Gradlon’s own daughter, Dahut, who has grown up in and been shaped by the city becomes “shameless” and “wayward”, stealing her fathers key to sneak a new lover into the city every night. However, so she is not discovered for her lust , she gives every lover a black satin mask to wear for the night. At the sound of the first song of meadowlark in the morning the mask tightened on the throat of the lover and suffocated him to death (this is sometimes magic and sometimes like a complicated system of springs). These bodies were then dumped into the sea by either Dahut or a servant of hers.
One night a suitor comes, as usual, but this time he is a knight more tall, handsome, gracious and charming than any other. He is dressed all in red. Dahut takes the knight to her chambers and pulls out a black satin mask but hesitates, such a handsome face to cover up she thinks, such a handsome body to dump into the ocean at the meadowlark’s first song. The knight asks what is the matter but she tells him it is nothing and puts the mask away again not to be used.
Later in the night the King Gradlon is awoken by the Saint who tells him the city is falling into the sea, which cannot be stopped and he is the only person that will survive. The king is mortified and upon thinking that this could only happen if his key was stolen he discovers this is in fact the case.
He ignores the Saint’s warning about him being the only survivor and with his horse begins to ride through the crumbling city looking for his daughter. He finds Dahut, who confesses to nothing and together they ride toward the city gates. The Saint speaks to him and says that he must drop Dahut off the horse or die with her and the rest of the city.
Lost City of Ys, W. Otway Cannell (artist), 1917
This is where the story forks, in some versions he pushes her off the horse, in some she slips off, in some she jumps off to save him. No matter how it happens, Dahut falls from the horse and upon looking back Gradlon catches a last glimpse of his daughter, his city before it collapses entirely and within it, the Devil, dressed all in red, holding his key out, smiling.
17, Star, Sister Alyonushka and Brother Ivanushka
The Star is the beginning of the healing process. The rekindling of hope, and the second chance. To those that had nearly lost hope, the Star appears as inspiration and guide.
Upright card: Newfound Hope, Guidance, Revelation, Healing.
Reversed card: Disorientation, Trauma, Disillusionment
In this Russian Folktale a Brother becomes a Goat, a sister becomes a Queen. Then a witch comes along, ties the sister to a boulder at the bottom of a lake (or sometimes Ocean), uses magic to shapeshift into a copy of her, goes back to the king and tries to convince him to eat the goat. The king says he will eat the Goat in three days, over the course of which the goat keeps leading him to the lake in which the real queen is trapped at the bottom. However the goat cannot explain this because he is a goat and the king becomes frustrated with the strange back-and-forth game and more goat-hungry because of it.
Then by ghost, helpful bird, or underwater singing, Alyonushka manages to expose the plot. Through some miracle Alyonushka is revived (or just survived three days underwater tied to a rock) and the witch-usurper is killed in a horrible way (multiple versions of what this is, all horrible). The goat-boy in some versions is turned back into a boy but in some versions stays a goat and seems very content with this arrangement.
18, Moon, The Wolf-Child
The Moon concerns the affairs of the imagination and the power of the mind to see past the material world. Most often read negatively, this denotes a loss of grip on reality, hallucinations, fear and paranoia. However, taken positively, this card suggests creativity, passionate love and dreams.
Upright card: Imagination, Insanity, Fear, Dreams, Tragedy
Reversed card: Nightmares, Insomnia, Psychological deterioration, Invasive or unpleasant thoughts and fantasies
On the coast of Portugal, a farmer’s baby is given the werewolf’s curse by a witches brand. I found ‘THE WOLF-CHILD’, from Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes (Spanish and Portuguese Folklore), collected and reproduced by Charles Sellers, 1888.23 I will write up a full version of the story when I get a chance but for now you can access Seller’s version via the footnote.
19, Sun, Tsarevitch Ivan, The Firebird, and the Gray Wolf
Perhaps the most positive card in the deck, The Sun foretells unchecked joy and success in all forms. This suggests a lasting period of peace and happiness, where without threat one can bask in sunlight, setting down all cares. The Sun is the master of its own destiny, confident in its abilities and a champion of moral rightness.
Upright card: Happiness, Light, Art, Comedy, Victory
Reversed card: Sorrow, Lack of Clarity, Discontent, Failure.
A young prince sets off to find the Firebird, a mythical creature that has been stealing his father’s apples. Early on on this quest his horse is eaten by a great gray wolf who in compensation for this inconvenience becomes the prince’s new steed and faithful friend. The prince and the wolf get into a twisty narrative as the wild firebird chase continues, and slowly learn not to steal from other kings along the way.
20, Judgement, Gogmagog Rises Again!
Before coming to the end of the Fool’s Journey through the majors, his deeds must be weighed. It is time to answer any questions raised along the way. The card calls for honesty and sincerity, in the face of fair judgement. It connotes a final chance to admit guilt and repent, in the hopes of forgiveness.
Upright card: Resurrection, Redemption, Self-evaluation.
Reversed card: Evasiveness, Burden, Self-doubt
If you want to read the first chronological appearance of Gogmagog, please go to the Seven of Wands, the following story is a sequel of sorts.
Long thought dead, the giant Gogmagog, resurrected by demonic possession at the bottom of the sea, returns to a Britain changed by centuries of progress and decline, invasions and migrations. And though he searches for them, all trace of his race of Giants has disappeared except their secret hoard of treasure (topped by a golden ox, the most prized piece of all). He uses this ancient wealth to build Castell Dinas Bran, a Sodom and Gomorrah-esque city of sin (that you can still visit the ruins of).
He is eventually faced by the young Sir Payn, who despite his inclination to cowardice, withstands a hellish lightning storm centred around the undead giant. Sir Payn nearly flees but thinks of the love of the Virgin Mary for Jesus and with that love in his heart he knows that the giant’s blows will never land on him. Sir Payn slays the Giant for good this time and scourges the evil city.
I first read this tale in Amy Jeff’s Storyland which I highly recommend if you want a full version of the story.
21, World, Yggdrasil and the Three Norns
The World is simultaneously the end of the journey and the herald of a new beginning. A chapter of life is coming to a close in a natural and fulfilling way. Whatever is lost or left behind, though indisputably final, will offer great closure. If The Fool departs in search of knowledge; The World returns to bestow knowledge.
Upright card: Balance, Wholeness, Satisfactory/Happy Endings, Fresh Starts
Reversed card: Refusal to let go, Fragmentation, Inability to start over, Unsatisfactory/Sad endings
Yggdrasil, the world tree of Norse mythology ( similar trees appear over loads of cultures), has obvious links to the World card’s themes of rebirth.
Just like the World card’s themes of endings and beginnings the tree signifies the unstoppable eventuality of the twilight of the Gods (Götterdämmerung) or Ragnarök which will lead to a new world.
There’s a little bit of a where’s wally game of what’s in the drawing and I will write up and talk about all those things soon.
MINOR ARCANA
THE SUIT OF WANDS
22, Ace of Wands, Herleva’s Dream
This card is often linked to fresh drive in the face of a new conquest. Something new is being tackled and done so with the utmost vigour. There are also recurrent views that this card is a symbol of male libido and sexuality, most probably because of its obvious phallic imagery.
Upright: Vitality, New Opportunities, Male sexuality
Reversed: Procrastination, Lethargy, Impotence
Herleva was a tanner’s daughter who caught the eye of Robert the Magnificent, Duke of Normandy.
The Duke demanded she be brought to him as a mistress but Herleva refused to be snuck in the back door of the castle and stated that she will only go to the Duke through the front gate and on horseback.
The Duke agrees to these terms and gifts her a white horse to ride through the gates.
Sometime before or after this encounter (depending on the account) Herleva has a dream in which she is pregnant and from her belly bursts a great tree that grows so large it casts a great shadow across the channel and over England. She awakes not knowing what this means but a little while later she has a child that she names William.
Eventually that child will be known as William the Conqueror.
23, Two of Wands, The Lambton Worm
A figure akin to a tactician, the Two of Wands is concerned with always being several steps ahead of their opponent. They can look at a chessboard and calculate where every piece will fall. Though patient and intelligent, this is not a particularly emotional or sensitive person, who can often be criticized by those around them as cold.
Upright: Planning, Strategy, Prudence
Reversed: Indecision, Unreliability, Spontaneity
Long ago in the North East of England, a young boy, John Lambton skips church one morning to go fishing and while fishing manages to catch only a strange little white weird serpent/worm/eel with nine holes in its neck. He takes the thing back to his village to show it off and is quickly chastised for missing church and told that for doing so he has caught the devil! He is told to cast the worm into a well and be done with it.
Many years pass, John regrets his wild youth and as penance joins a crusade and returns 8 years later as a man grown. Upon his return he learns that a giant wormlike creature has been wreaking havoc across the countryside and knows at once it is the worm he threw down the well. Many knights have tried to kill the monster but all have been crushed to death when the worm wraps its huge coils around them.
John, while researching ways to kill the worm, learns about a family curse when a witch tells him he must kill the first thing he sees after defeating the worm or face dire consequences.
from Joseph Jacobs’ More English Fairy Tales, 1922
John and his father devise a plan to forge a suit of armour that is covered in spikes so when the worm tries to crush him in its coils it kills (or at least badly hurts) itself. After this he will blow a horn and his father will release a hunting hound that will run towards John to be killed and thus stop the curse. The plan works and John kills the worm but after he blows the horn his father is too excited and runs towards him before releasing the hound. As John cannot kill his father his lineage is doomed to never die peacefully in their beds for nine generations.
I really enjoyed the rollercoaster journey of researching this one. I read up on the original tale, and couldn’t help thinking that there’s something very Futurama/Simpsons about how it plays out, especially the start with a boy skipping church, being warned against it, finding something clearly very evil and then just chucking down a well and not thinking about it again until it becomes a huge problem.
I then read the Bram Stoker book “The Lair of the White Worm”, which is definitely not a stone cold masterpiece like Dracula but is in fact kind of trash (but kind of in a good way?). In a nice twist of synchronicity it turns out that the 1911 edition of the Lair of the White Worm was illustrated by Stoker’s friend, Pamela Colman Smith, of which I will attach an example. The illustrations have a lovely 1970’s psychedelic vibe despite coming from half a century earlier.
Pamela Colman Smith (Illustrator),
from Bram Stoker’s The Lair of the White Worm, 1911
To anyone unfamiliar, and to not be an much-too-common tarot gatekeeper, Pamela Coleman Smith (known to her friends as ‘Pixie’) was the artist behind the most popular tarot deck ever made, usually known as the Rider-Waite Tarot (after the two men who took the credit and the profits for the deck but that’s a story for another time). Smith and Stoker were seemingly friends for years, one of her first illustration gigs was for Stoker in 1897 but they also worked together at the Lyceum theatre where she was a a costume/set designer and he was the business manager.
From there I watched the 1988 very loosely adapted film, The Lair of the White Worm which is definitely trash but also definitely in a good way, which I’d absolutely recommend, it’s like a deranged, horny Dr Who episode with 18 year old Hugh Grant and 19 year old Peter Capaldi in.
24, Three of Wands, Moriaen
This card has a grounded focus on looking towards the future. The figure is looking out into an ocean of possibilities, entertaining the possibility of getting on a ship and going on a voyage. This is a symbol of positive change and making active choices to chase a better life. This choice is also a great risk, but ultimately a rejection of mundanity.
Upright: Travel, Adventure, Looking Forward
Reversed: Setbacks, Toil, Stunted Progress, Mundanity
When the 2021 film The Green Knight was released it was met by the now predictable grumblings about the colourblind casting, specifically of Dev Patel’s Sir Gawain. Despite these complaints there does seem to be a shift in historians like David Olusoga reevaluating how diverse British history really was, the answer, though complicated, does seem to be more than people think.
Regardless of the history accuracy, the knights of the round table were relatively diverse in the Arthurian cannon. Though Gawain was not one of them, 3 out of 49 knights of the round table were people of colour, which, while not a lot, does account for 6% (the house of commons is currently estimated at about 10% for context).
In the 13th-century Dutch Romance, Moriaen the titular character is not one of knights of the round table but the bastard son of one, Sir Aglovale, who abandoned his Moorish Princess mother after getting her pregnant and breaking his promise to return and marry her. Seeking either revenge or a father, at 14 years old, Moriaen travels to Avalon, and vows to fight every knight he comes across unless they are Sir Aglovale or can lead him to him. Many twists and turns follow and Moriaen proves himself by a number of feats including going toe to toe with Lancelot. He eventually finds his father and reunites him with his mother for a happy ending where seemingly all is forgiven.
Moriaen might be the first surviving example of a sympathetic black character in western literature but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few issues surrounding the character. Perhaps most jarring of all is the mention that Moriaen holds Christian values instead of the Muslim ones held by most moors despite the story taking place before the creation of Islam. He wears Moorish plate armour which (very probably) is not a real thing and has a (constantly mentioned) very dark skin tone which wouldn’t be characteristic for a Moor. The term “Moor” itself is also an exonym that means basically nothing to anyone that would have been called a moor but that’s a whole different story.
Either way, despite all this, I think the first sympathetic black character in western Literature is probably still worth covering so Moriaen the Three of Wands of this deck.
25, Four of Wands, Herne the Hunter
This card, and often the depictions on the card, are associated with celebrations. More often than not it is taken to insinuate marriage but can be more generally applicable to traditions of carnival and feasts. Particularly in a historical context, these traditions involve elements of subverting social order, where (for a set period) peasants unseat nobles. In some cases, this went as far as anointing a ‘Lord of Misrule’ or ‘Master of Revelries’ to preside over the festival as a Bacchanal figure. As a person, this card could embody this figure.
Upright: Marriage, Revelry, Carnival, Subversion
Reversed: Disappointing celebration, A funeral, Rebellion
The main inspiration of this card was Zoe Gilbert’s book, Mischief Acts, which is one of the best books I read in recent years and all about Herne the Hunter. This might also explain why the centerpiece of this drawing is the Crystal Palace burning down, even though that isn’t traditionally a part of Herne’s story. Gilbert’s Herne inhabits and is very much a part of South London, somewhat in contradiction to Berkshire’s claims on Herne, but as someone that also lives in South London it definitely struck more of a chord with me.
I deliberated over incorporating the more modern take on the story (the Crystal Palace burned down in 1936 and will probably be the most modern thing depicted in the deck), but after researching the Herne myth quite a bit came to the conclusion that the story has been changing rapidly and ceaselessly for about 400 years.
There are plenty of much older parts of the tale in the drawing, Shakespeare’s Fallstaff and the revellers at the bottom (Herne’s first recorded appearance is in the Merry Wives of Windsor). On the left is the intentionally self-styled Christlike visage of Richard II, who Herne was said to be the top hunter of, and who he was protecting when initially gored by a stag. On the right is Bearman, who saved (or cursed) Herne by resurrecting him at the cost of permanently attaching the stag’s antlers to his head and becoming (sometimes) something of a nemesis to Herne.
I also wanted to avoid another literal depiction of a hanging after Yggdrasil, so above Herne, rope-like, is the course of the River Effra, unsuccessfully buried under South London’s streets, (often found to be leaking out the very earth, in places such as West Norwood, where I used to live and was always confused about at the time).
If anyone’s confused as to why this is the four of wands, it’s largely Herne’s position as a lord of misrule, with his strange status as a sort of king of celebrations and the natural world, especially so with his grotesque “crown”.
26, Five of Wands, A Rat King in Kiel
This card is associated with conflict and often carries imagery of physical dispute. However, this conflict is generally frivolous in nature. It is by no means depicting scenes of war or serious violence, but youthful competitive scuffles.
Upright: Strife, quarrel, Physical Aggression
Reversed: Agreement, Reason, truce
A lonely old miser rattles around his empty house frustrated by his squeaky floorboards as he shuffles over them in the long silent night. Later, while sitting by the fire waiting for his kettle to whistle, he hears the floorboards squeak all by themselves…
27, Six of Wands, The Burley Dragon
This card is linked to basking in one’s own success. Specifically, a celebration or event in acknowledgement of one’s accomplishments. For example, some manner of graduation or coming of age ceremony. There is a slight chance this could exceed into the grounds of indulgence or arrogance, but the card is mostly positive.
Upright: Rising Status, Praise, Popularity
Reversed: Disgrace, Notoriety, Shame
Doing this kind of project there are a lot of dragon stories that come up and the broad strokes of many of them are quite similar. I was worried I was already a little dragon-saturated when this was suggested. Occasionally though the weird local twists really make the story and this is what drew me to the Burley (or Bisterne) Dragon.
The tale goes that the Dragon flew every day from its Den in Burley Beacon to Blisterne to receive a daily offering of milk (this sometimes escalates from milk to pigs to people but it’s usually just out for milk). The Dragon due to its awesome form and relatively untaxing demand for milk had never been challenged, and so it goes until the Knight arrives on the scene.
Sir Maurice Berkeley, with no personal motive to kill the dragon other than the sport of it, hatches a plan. He covers himself in a sticky slime (usually tree sap) and shards of broken glass, and then setting out the milk as bait, waits in a hunting hide with his two great English mastiffs (if all this sounds familiar please see the Lambton Worm, the Two of Wands). The Dragon is caught unaware as Berkeley boots the door of the hide open, letting the dogs loose and emerging wielding an axe in one hand and a mace in the other.
The Dragon managed to kill the dogs but their distraction allowed Berkely to badly injure it, as it also injures itself against the broken glass when fighting back. Eventually, after a battle all throughout the forest, the dragon is dealt a fatal blow and flies off to die alone, crash landing outside the village of Lyndhurst, and becoming a hill.
After the dragon’s death Sir Berkeley falls into a depression, his dogs and, with the dragon, his purpose are extinguished in one blow. He does not eat or speak for thirty days, racked with emptiness or regret, while around him the villagers rejoice and celebrate. After this solemn month he walks to the hill made from the dragon’s corpse and at the top he sticks his yew bow in the ground and lays down to die. The yew bow sprouted into a yew tree on top of the hill which became Boltons Bench, and can be seen and visited today.
I like how weird this story is, especially the slime and broken glass armour but most of all the role reversal of the relatively peaceful dragon who just wants to drink milk and the hero-knight who is definitely the aggressor and drives himself to a crushing ending.
28, Seven of Wands, Gogmagog, Albion’s Last Giant
We take the Seven of Wands to mean that, though you are enduring a somewhat tumultuous period, you are handling it in the best manner possible. There will always be hard times, but if you do not let yourself be overcome, and keep rising to the challenges, hard times will pass. This card is symbolic of strength of character in the face of adversary.
Upright: Defence, Hardiness, Perseverance
Reversed: Defeatism, Being Outmatched, Overwhelmed or Outnumbered.
“Brutus & his men anon started up, & his men fought with the Giants, & killed them every one but one Giant, that was Master of them all, that was called Gogmagog, that was stronger & higher than any of the other Giants; & Brutus kept him, & saved his life, for reason that he should wrestle with Coryn, for Coryn was greater & huger than any of Brutus’ men, solid from his belt upwards.
Gogmagog & Coryn undertook to wrestling and so together they wrestled a long a time, but at the last Gogmagog held Coryn so fast that he broke two ribs in his side, wherefore Coryn was sorely aggrieved & grasped Gogmagog between his arms and cast him down upon a rock, so that Gogmagog broke all to pieces & so he died an evil death, & so this place today is called Gogmagog’s leap.” 24
- The Brute Chronicle
In this titular British folktale, the champion of a Trojan expedition defeats England’s last giant in a wrestling match and throws him into the sea off Cornwall.
If you would like to read a prequel to this story about how the race of Giant’s came to be please see Albina, First Queen of Albion (my Empress card).
If you would like to read a sequel to this story please see Gogmagog Rises Again! (my Judgement card).
29, Eight of Wands, Siegfried Bathes in Dragon’s Blood
The Eight of Wands can be understood as an allegory for snowballing progress. Though the message is essentially positive, the reality can be intimidating and overwhelming. With higher achievement comes higher pressure, rising status demands rising levels of responsibility. It advises caution that spiralling success does not spiral out of control.
Upright: Change of Pace, Runaway Success, Movement
Reversed: Lost Momentum, Crashing Breakdown, Patience
The Eight of Wands can be understood as an allegory for snowballing progress and a rising of some kind of status. For the card I’ve illustrated the scene where Siegfried becomes (almost) invincible by bathing in the blood of the dragon he has just killed.
The blood makes his skin impenetrable everywhere except a spot on his back where a stray linden tree leaf fell, essentially becoming his Achilles heel.
The act is transformative both literally and in how it catapults Siegfried from a young adventurer at the start of his journey (akin to the fool) to a legendary hero.
The main source for this illustration was the 1924 film, Die Nibelungen: Siegfried. The film and its follow up Kriemhild’s Revenge are both public domain and can be found in HD remasters very easily online. I couldn’t recommend both films enough, when released they were probably the most impressive films ever made, and they still hold up pretty well for films now 100 years old.
The following text is a mostly faithful adaptation of the Lay of Horn-Skinned Siegfried or (Das Lied vom Hürnen Seyfrid), a ballad originally written in early new high German by an anonymous author. The tale follows the early adventures of the Germanic hero, Siegfried and, while the exact date of it’s composition is unknown (somewhere in 15th or 16th century), the popularity of the story is largely attributed to its proximity in place and time to the invention of the Gutenberg printing press.
I’ve also tacked on the intro from The Nibelungenlied, a much longer, older and less accessible (not-for-common-folk) version of the story, largely so Kriemhild is fleshed out as slightly more of a character than a plot device and so leading more into the story of Kriemhild’s Revenge! (my Justice card).
The Lay of Horn-Skinned Siegfried
First Adventure:
KrIemhild’s Dream
There once grew up in Burgundy
In a city called Worms,
A maid of noble birth.
None fairer on the earth.
Many keen knights longed for her hand
and all paid her homage but
no suitor had yet won her heart.
Hers was a beauty without measure, young then but already eyed as a great prize far-and-wide. Luckily, she was protected by her three brothers: Gunther, Gernot, and Giselher. Worthy knights and heroes, these three princes and she a princess.
The brother-lords reigned over and lived happily among their warriors. The men loved and respected the brothers and every man among them was bold and valiant and battle-tested. Chief among their warriors were grim, one-eyed Hagen and his brother, green-gilled Dankwart. Dankwart was Kriemhild’s most persistent suitor, and though the kingdom believed the young knight would be the one to win the lady’s hand, so too did Hagen’s love for her burn bright and forge-hot in secret…
During this happy time Kriemhild had a dream: that she reared a falcon, beautiful and strong, but this falcon was killed by two great eagles. The dream filled her with dread and sorrow.
She took the dream to her mother, Queen Ute, who, in her famed wisdom, said that she believed that the falcon was her future spouse and this vision foretold his doom. She could not say who or what the eagles were but the birds surely symbolised nobility in their grandness?
But Kriemhild was not engaged to be married! And of her suitors none had won her heart.
She resolved to refuse all suitors, to never marry and so break the prophecy. In doing so she would doom no man to an early death.
And for a long time she closed off her heart to love and was content and even believed she was happy…
Second Adventure:
Siegfried
Likewise, in the Netherland City of Xanten, a prince of noble birth was borne in a lordly castle to King Sigmund and Queen Siegelind.
The boy was unnaturally large and strong and stubborn. He was mischievous also.
And while a stubborn child is certainly an annoyance, a stubborn child with this strength and size became a wild terror throughout the castle and the surrounding lands. The King’s only option was to move Siegfried where he could no longer cause any harm, until he was grown (and could be reasoned with!).
King Sigmund’s advisors began to rivet a plan together: if the young prince would not be tamed, then let him roam, simple as that. “There, unspoilt in the country” they told the king, “he would surely prosper and become a hero.”. Well, the queen wept for her boy but the king did not take much convincing. Off he was sent into the wilds.
Soon young, exiled Siegfried came to a village and there became transfixed with the blacksmith, he watched his great strength, his power over the forge, the ability to melt and bend steel. He respected this man instantly and more than any of his father’s lords, and pledged himself as the man’s apprentice on the spot. The blacksmith, seeing the enormous, sinewy boy was delighted at the proposition and took him on.
The Blacksmith’s delight soon turned to fury however, when the youth hammered a sword into the anvil and the anvil was cleaved in two. The blacksmith began to chastise Siegfried, but the young pampered prince, even with his bad behaviour had never been spoken to like this before. He lashed out and beat the smith! Siegfried soon caught hold of himself and, ashamed of the outburst apologised. The shaken smith accepted the apology and was gracious. He told the boy that it was alright, and though without an anvil there would be no more smithing today he did have one more task that needed doing from his new apprentice.
He sent him on an errand to seek out a charcoal burner in the forest who was camped by a specific linden tree. This charcoal burner had arranged to meet the smith there and give him charcoal for the forge that had already been paid for. If Siegfried would go in his stead, said the smith, then he could get to work on acquiring a new anvil.
The princeling hoped to redeem his outburst and agreed to this, setting off immediately.
And though the smith waved him auf weidersehn, he did not, in fact, believe he would see Siegfried again. For by the linden tree in the forrest was not a charcoal burner’s camp but the lair of a monstrous dragon!
The boy finds the dragon at the foot of the tree and there battles and eventually overcomes the great wyrm, beheading it with the final blow of his sword. But sweet, naïve Siegfried does not understand that he has been tricked, his first concern is for the poor charcoal burner who has surely been run off- or worse yet- killed by the beast! He searched long in the forest and there found a valley where lay many dragons, lindwyrms, toads and adders, more than her had seen in all his days.
A massacre broke out, Siegfried laid the valley to waste, none of the creatures could escape the valley of death as he slayed a great many of them. But still this would not do. He continued his search for the charcoal burner and, though the one he had been searching for was imagined, he did eventually find one in the woods by a stream. He brought this man with him to the valley with his charcoal and his fire, and together they set the valley alight and there burned all the wyrms.
The horned skin of the dead dragons began to melt into a molten slag, and this flowed into a little stream and began to fall, as if a waterfall, into a natural pool.
Siegfried dipped his finger into this stream and found it had become horn-hard. At this he marvelled and ran down to the pool, stripping naked as he went, where he let the slag stream of molten dragon skin shower over him and cover his whole body making his skin hard as horn.
Almost his whole body, that is, for unnoticed by Siegfried or his new friend the charcoal burner, a stray linden leaf had fallen between his shoulders and the molten slag had run over this instead of his skin, leaving this small leaf-shaped spot vulnerable.
Third Adventure:
The Princess Captured!
The dragon carried Kriemhild into the mountains and set her down on a rock a quarter mile long. It forced it’s treasure up the mountain, nudging into her back with its great snout. But because Kriemhild shined so beautifully she was precious to the dragon and in its captivity she wanted for nothing, not food, nor water, nor shelter- all these were provided by the dragon, who all things considered was an attentive host to the kidnapped maiden.
And so like this they lived for four years, and the dragon could not be said to have mistreated Kriemhild, excepting only her imprisonment and on this point too the parameters were murky; she was not in a cage or locked behind a door, she was trapped only by her inability to get down the mountain.
For these four years she saw no human being. She wept for the first twelve weeks and then, in a way, accepted this strange existence. At nights the dragon slept with his head in Kriemhild’s lap.
On the spring equinox of their fourth year on the mountain the dragon, quite without warning, turned into a man. Kriemhild could not help noticing, after quietly growing into womanhood with not another person in sight, that he was a handsome man. She pushed this thought out of her head and did not allow him a chance to speak.
“How badly you have acted towards my poor mother and father,” was her first tact, “that they have been denied any news of their daughter for four long years! Such sorrow, such pain they must feel! However all will be mended if you only turn back into a dragon and fly me home this very solstice so I may be home to celebrate with my kin!”
And then she bargained,
“I mean to say, if you would only let me go home I would simply inform them I am well, and well cared for,” she made a point of mentioning, “and then I would return to this rock that is my home. Grant me only that and by the Gods I will obey, gladly, your every command.”
The monster, now in the shape of a man, said this:
“Your father and mother you shall never see again, nor any creature shall you ever see. With body or with soul, you must go to hell. You beautiful little girl, you need not be ashamed/afeared?? before me. Your body and also your life I do not wish to take from you now. From today-over-five-years I will become a man, not just for a day but always. Then I will take your maidenhood, well-formed girl. Thus you must wait for me five years and one day. When I become a man, you will become a woman.
If you refuse, then will we both walk down to hell’s ground together. And listen to me now as I tell you this last truth; one day in hell lasts a whole year, and there you must remain until your last day.”
She prayed to the Gods for a saviour, a hero…
Fourth Adventure:
Siegfried, Dragonslayer
Over the last four years a troublesome boy had grown into a hard and proud youth that caught lions for sport and hung them in high trees for mockery. His name was Siegfried. And this same Siegfried was out one day hunting with falcon and hounds when suddenly his hounds caught the scent of something and bolted into the forrest following a strange trail that led into the mountains…
He followed this trail for four days into the mountain passes so high until he was newly lost a dark forest where all roads vanished before him. He questioned his dogs, and then his Gods, for what purpose could they possibly have led him here. He saw a great shadow pass over him but when he looked up saw only an empty sky and not what cast it.
Out of the dark forest rode a dwarf called Eugel on a black horse, in a black fur-trimmed cloak and well adorned with gold, his garb was sable-fastened and of splendid retinue. There was never a king so rich. He wore upon his head a crown of a noble kind – such as the world had never seen – on this crown were laid many gemstones – none on earth to match their beauty.
Luckily, Siegfried was a friend of the Dwarves, for in his killing of many dragons in the valley (as you have previously read) – he earned the thanks and respect of their people. As both lovers of gold and treasure the dwarves and dragons were natural enemies. Eugel spoke to the young hero, now lost in the woods, he said, “Tell me good Sir, what brings you to the forest?”
“I am a foreign warrior, lost in the forest woods,” spake Siegfried, “tell me if you can, who is the master of this mountain, or who dwells upon it? For I have seen a great shadow.”
“I know who you are, and I will tell you young Siegfried,” spake the dwarf, “here seated upon the rock is a great monster, a dragon who has taken many women and girls, young maidens, to sorrow. Even now he has a captive. Very noble. Very pure. A king’s fair daughter from Worms on the Rhine. Who the dragon has stolen, and carried to his rock. Without the mercy of the Gods she will never be freed. Kriemhild is her name!”
Siegfried heard this and thrust his sword into the ground and swore on it to the all-father that he may succeed here or die, but not face this struggle with cowardice. But the dwarf began to laugh, “you are still too green for such hard combat. Many a strong hero has lost his life here. If you will not beware, that dragon will find you, and when he does your life is lost. Turn back from here, Siegfried, worthy man. And quickly!”
“Before I ride away from here Kriemhild will be free or I dead.” said the hero.
“If you would do this foolish thing in vain, then grant me leave of this dark valley at once, so that I may not die with you. Even if you had conquered half the world and seventy-two tongues, still would you have to leave the maiden here. IT IS DEATH.” Said the dwarf.
“Small man,” spake the hero, “help me with this lonely maiden or I will strike your head off together with your spiked crown.”
“No one but the Gods can help her!” squealed Eugel. Siegfried seized the dwarf by the beard and slammed him against a wall. The spiked crown fell to the ground and shattered to pieces.
“There is a way…” said the dwarf, cringing, “a secret way. Through a secret door, up a secret stairs, through the mountain all the way to the dragons lair… but-” Siegfried’s fist tightened around the mans beard at this ‘but’ and the hairs grew taut, “BUT, BUT…the key is held by a giant, a treacherous beast called Kuperan. He dwells too in the mountain, come, come I will take thee… hero.”
The dwarf led him to a secret chamber cut out of the mountainside. Here Siegfried stood and called out for Kuperan. A great giant emerged from the darkness of the cave, his shield a barn door, his steel helmet shone like the sun rippling over the rippling sea, his coat of mail pure gold, dipped and hardened in dragons blood. In his huge hand hand he carried a strange weapon, an enormous steel staff, the blade of which cut in four directions, as no weapon had before. He said, “Tell me, small man. What devil led you here?”
30, Nine of Wands, The Blue Light (or The Blue Smoke)
The Nine of Wands is a card that teaches the importance of learning one’s limits. In a way it is a card of defeat, but to be taken in a positive sense. To lose is to learn and to be humbled. Without making mistakes we would never know our boundaries or how hard to push them. Failure can leave us humiliated and sometimes wounded, but these aspects are not only humanizing, but essential life experiences.
Upright: Knowledge in Failure, Humility, Experience
Reversed: Bitterness, Stubbornness, Inability to accept defeat
In this brothers Grimm fairy tale, a German soldier tricks his way into a royal marriage…
31, Ten of Wands, The Damnable Life and Death of One Peeter Stubbe, Werewolf of BedBurg
This card is often interpreted as a person who is overcompensating for others around them who are not pulling their weight. Though selflessness is an admirable quality, it is insinuated here that it is either not necessary or not being appreciated. It can be a hard truth to admit, but sometimes the people who you would do anything for don’t deserve you.
Upright: Burden, Stress, Selflessness
Reversed: Laziness, Manipulation, Taking Advantage
Once upon a time in the 1500’s, in a place that would one day be part of Germany, after a series of children went missing , the trail led to the residence of a man called Peter Stubbe (or Stube, Stübbe or Stumpf depending on the source).
In Peter’s cellar the people of Bedburg find a literal pile of children’s bones and come to the only logical conclusion, not that Old Pete is a serial killer (A term not coined until the 1970’s), but that Peter must surely be turning into a Wolf in the night-time to hunt down and eat their children. As it goes, after some serious bouts of torture, Old Pete confessed to doing just that.
anonymous (1590)
So after being tied to a wheel, having all his limbs broken with hammers and finally decapitated, the people of Bedburg tied Peter’s body to a stake and burned it with his girlfriend and daughter (who unfortunately were still alive and had their heads attached).
They paraded Peter’s head around town with a dead dog that was somehow related on a crazy maypole, and threw a big party. A good time was had by all.
That’s not the end of the story though, the best part of all this is that it happened at the right time and place, relatively close to the invention of the printing press. This chance twist lead to this story becoming one of the first viral news stories ever, as is was translated into multiple languages, illustrated and shipped round Europe.
anonymous (1500’s)
The pamphlet, a surviving German language version is pictured above, was presumably handed to absolutely bemused peasants who tried to make heads or tails of the deranged piece of paper as the Germans told them this is what happened to their mate Pete.
Only a couple of the pamphlets have survived but one is apparently at the Lambeth county archives, and I live in Lambeth, so I’m going to go look at it.
32, Page of Wands, The Armless Maiden or The Girl without Hands
The Page of Wands often refers to receiving some positive information or message. Often this message will take shape in a physical form, as in it is likely to be an actual letter or note. Alternate readings interpret this card as a symbol of male youth.
Upright: Communication, Written Word, Good News, Youth
Reversed: Bad news, Undelivered or mislaid messages, Stunted Development
In Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev’s Russian Fairy Tale, An orphaned brother and sister are left with nothing but each other in the world until the brother becomes a wealthy merchant and finds a wife. As with pretty much all fairy/folktales this sister in law to the main character turns out to be evil. When her husband is away she commits increasingly violent acts to their house, their horse, and finally their child (pretty grisly, look it up if you want), and blames all these things on her husband’s sister.
The brother is forgiving until his child is harmed, at which point he wakes up his sister in the middle of the night and tells her to get dressed to go to mass. She is terrified as it is not a holy day and it’s the middle of the night- they are obviously not going to mass.
They ride out in the carriage and eventually he tells her to get out and part a wall of shrubbery so she can see the church where a mass is supposedly being held. She gets out, puts her hands into a shrub and as she does he chops her hands off with a sword.
He rides off and she wails, lost and distraught she wanders deep into a forest for many years, until she stumbles upon a merchant town…
33, Knight of Wands, The Fairy Aurora
The Knight of Wands is often understood as someone leaving someone else’s life quite suddenly. This movement is generally not something that can be adjusted to but something that will bring a relationship to a permanent or at the very least semi-permanent end. For example, it is not someone moving to another town or city, but to the other side of the world with no intention of coming back. The loss of a relationship is not the cause of the move, but a consequence of it. Whether you are leaving someone behind, or someone is leaving you, the relationship is an unfortunate casualty, but acceptance is the only realistic action.
Upright: Emigration, Parting, Physical Distance
Reversed: Agoraphobia, Staying, Choosing a Person Over an Opportunity
A Romanian Prince travels through different worlds facing eldritch horrors on a quest to retrieve water from the fountain of the Fairy of the Dawn for his father, the Emperor with one eye that laughs and one eye that cries.
The Fairy Aurora, The Violet Fairy Book, Henry Justice Ford (illustrator), 1906
34, Queen of Wands, Queen Medb and the Cattle Raid of Cooley
The Queen of Wands embodies one of the deck’s more modern female mentor figures. Unlike the religious stereotypes of gentle, nurturing mothers and pure, passive, virgins, the Queen of Wands embodies confidence, power, enterprise, passion, sexuality and authority. This figure possibly already exists in your life or is soon to appear, and should help to dispel any sexist myths among other sage advice.
Upright: Feminine Role Model, Humour, Extroversion, Luck
Reversed: Lack of Confidence, Unsavoury Mentorship, Bad Luck
Queen Medb of Connacht is the inciting party of the Cattle Raid of Cooley (or the Táin), probably the most important story in Irish mythology, sometimes called the Irish Iliad. After insisting that she be perfectly equal in wealth to her husband, Ailill, Medb discovers that Ailill owns exactly one prize bull more than her. In all of Ireland however, only one bull is equal to Ailill’s bull, Finnbennach, one named Donn Cúailnge.
Unfortunately, Donn Cúailnge is owned by a Lord under the banner of Medb’s evil ex-husband, high King Conchobar (sometimes he’s a good character, but he’s often popping up in stories treating women horribly (see Diedre of Sorrows, my three of swords)).
Medb offers Donn Cúailnge’s owner land, riches and sexual favours in exchange for the bull. The lord gladly accepts. The buying and selling parties celebrate the deal and all is going well until one of Medb’s men lets slip that the deal was only plan A, and if it was refused they would have simply killed them and taken the bull. All hell breaks loose and Ireland is plunged into a civil war.
The Táin, John Patrick Campbell (Illustrator), 1907
Chief of all Medb’s supporters is Fergus mac Róich, ex-high king and ex-lover to Medb. It is said of Fergus that he betrayed his king Conchobar “because he preferred the buttocks of a woman to his own people”.
It was said of Medb “It took thirty men to satisfy her, or Fergus”. Naturally, all this does make Medb’s actual husband jealous and Ailill does eventually have him killed.
Ireland practically tears itself in two (I’m sure you can see why it’s stayed relevant), heroes rise and fall, and the two bulls end up killing each other.
At the bottom of my drawing are Medb’s seven sons. She had asked a druid which of her sons would kill her evil ex-husband and the druid replied the one named Maine, however, none were named Maine, so, in a bid to cheat the prophecy, she renamed them all. One of them eventually kills the wrong Conchobar, and the prophecy is technically fulfilled just as the name was technically right.
35, King of wands, Pwyll and Arawn Trade Places for a Year and a Day
The King of Wands is seen as a bold leader, who is warm, charming and well-liked. He is a champion of truth and symbol of incorruptibility. Unquestionable righteousness can sometimes waver into the realm of a tedious self-righteousness, however, generally, his heart is in the right place. This figure is also a skilled orator who has the power to inspire those around him.
Upright: Decisiveness, Honesty, Charisma
Reversed: Doubt, Deceit, Social Awkwardness
In this Welsh tale, after some some crossed wires over some poor hunting etiquette, a king from our world (Pwyll) and the Otherworld (Arawn) bury the hatchet by switching lives for a year and a day (with a little magic to disguise them as each other).
The only catch is that in exactly a year another king from the Otherworld will challenge Arawn (or Pwyll disguised as Arawn) in battle for their lands, hence the extra day being thrown into the agreement.
Similarly to the Green Knight this story involves a very long winded game of I-never-said-you-couldn’t-sleep-with-my-wife, which, as always with this particular game, if it feels like a bad idea, that’s because it is.
Pwyll passes the test on both fronts, defeating the rival king and heroically choosing not to sleep with Arawn’s obviously very beautiful wife and is rewarded with a generations-strong alliance with the otherworld and its king.
There are plenty of versions of this tale, I will footnote one from Sidney Lanier’s Knightly legends of Wales.26
THE SUIT OF CUPS
36, Ace of Cups, The Fairy Midwife or The Fairy Ointment
This is a card of contentment and inner peace, and alludes to one who seeks out and is able to find happiness in all things and every corner of existence. In one reading, the Ace of Cups relates to the sensory realm, what can be touched, smelled, seen, heard, and tasted in this world. This could be understood as a focus on beauty, art, food, music, physical intimacy.
Upright: Enthusiasm, Joy, Optimism, Sensory experience
Reversed: Cynicism, Insatiability, Carnal/Base Greed
There are lots of different riffs on the details of this story but the two versions I was mainly looking at were John Rhys’ version in “Celtic-Folklore: Welsh and Manx, Vol 1 (1901)” and it’s retelling “The Dampness is Spreading” by Emma Glass, both of which are published in “Hag, Forgotten Folktales Retold”.
A midwife is called to deliver a baby, she travels to a lavish house/mansion/castle and inside finds a beautiful couple (sometimes a prince and princess). The birth goes smoothly and the new father tells the midwife to take a special ointment and smear it onto the eyes of the new-born baby but is very specific that she does not put it on her own eyes. Either by accident or curiosity the midwife does inevitably get the ointment onto one eye and through that eye can see a different reality. The lavishly furnished home she sees through her other eye she can now see as a dank and dark cave filled with dancing fairies. The mother she recognises as a woman she knows called Eilian, who is missing, and the father is a fairy/goblin. Shaken by the discovery the midwife says nothing and gets out of there as quickly as she can.
A little while later the father/fairy/goblin sees the midwife at the market and thanks her for delivering the baby. Trying to act casual the midwife asks after the baby and then, in a blunder, asks “how is Eilian?”. The fairy replies, “she is well, but with which eye did you see Eilian?”.
Realising that she has been caught out the midwife points to the eye that she had touched with the ointment and tells him, “this one”. The fairy instantly plucks out the eye and walks away.
Here the cup of the ace of the cups is holding the actual ointment, I’ve tried to show the same room through both eyes, and then I’ve circled the whole thing with the plucked eye. I’ve chosen the card due to its links to fertility, birth and midwifery.
37, Two of Cups, Iphis and Ianthe
In many ways a suggestion of the Lovers Card within the Minor Arcana. The Two of Cups cover similar ideas of romance and union but without some of the more serious implications of marriage or any other big decisions. If anything, this card suggests a more passionate, volatile love affair than the Lovers, just a more fleeting one. There is also a slight warning of an overly exclusive pairing, of being so embroiled in a relationship that everyone else is pushed away.
Upright: Romantic Love, Sexual Attraction, Exclusivity
Reversed: Lost Spark, Romantic Dissatisfaction, Prioritization of the Self
There are many retellings of this story, the version I used for reference I found in Charlotte Elizabeth Higgins’ Greek Myths, A New Retelling, which I thoroughly recommend, it’s really lovely.
Long ago, in the city of Phaistos, a woman called Telethusa had become pregnant by her husband Ligdus and this was a happy time until a change began to come over Ligdus. At first he spoke of how he had always wanted a son, soon this turned to anxious grumblings about the cost of a dowry if they were to have a daughter, and, when Telethusa was very close to birth, his words finally soured into ugly things. He told her that if the child was born female he would kill it, scour its existence from his memory, and they would have to try again for a boy. Telthusa tried to reason, tried to bargain, tried to challenge but he would not reason and he would not bargain and he would rise to a challenge, violently.
What could Telethusa do but pray? That is what she did, and miraculously, her prayers were answered. The goddess Isis came to Telethusa in a dream and confirmed that the child would be a girl but told her to disobey her husband and keep the child and trust in her protection over the child’s life.
Telethusa does give birth to a girl and conspires with her nursemaid to call the child Iphis (a gender neutral name) and raise the child as a boy (just like it’s a folklore trope that all step-mothers are bastards, all nursemaids are sound). As Iphis grows she is taught that she must never reveal her secret and that in order to dispel any suspicion she must not only act like a boy but an outstanding one that no one could believe is anything but.
So Iphis starts fighting with the boys until she starts winning the fights, she rides horses until she starts winning the races, and she practises with her bow until she is the best shot. She scrapped and galloped and hunted until her body was hard and lean, she sprouted luckily quite tall and became, in an androgynous kind of way, really very handsome. However, though it was an identity forged out of necessity, one does not grow into such a spectacular boy without drawing some attention.
Ianthe was the most beautiful girl in the city and she had fallen deeply in love with Iphis, and this was not so strange as Iphis was such a spectacular boy (or so thought), strong, talented, gentle, kind, in fact any girl in Phaistos would be lucky to marry him (her).
What was strange, or so Iphis thought but did not admit, was that she felt the same way back, and had already been deeply in love with Ianthe too. Iphis had loved Ianthe long and without hope, as she knew that she could never engage in a relationship without being discovered in her great secret, and besides the world she lived in told her this was an unnatural desire, surely two women cannot love each-other? But they did, and despite Iphis’ attempts to deny her love, the two youths’ feelings soon became known to all, and everyone who knew them rejoiced, what a perfect match, how handsome and how beautiful they said, and what a wedding it would be!
Iphis fretted but in her heart truly did want to marry Ianthe and so let herself be swept up in this talk of weddings and soon it was official, they were to be married and everyone was overjoyed, everyone except Telethusa, who did not take her husband’s grave words lightly. Telethusa tried to delay the wedding more and more but eventually the day loomed near ahead. Surely on the wedding night Ianthe would be horrified Telethusa thought, disgusted by this unnatural love, and she would talk, of course she would, and then the news would spread, slowly but surely until it crept into the ears of her murderous husband. What Iphis’ father would do then she did not want to think about. Teluthusa dragged Iphis to a temple and they prayed to their separate gods (it was a multicultural time), Teluthusa to the Egyptian Isis and Iphis to the Greek Hymen.
Now this is where the versions split, in some retellings the gods answer the prayers and Iphis leaves the temple physically transformed into a man, the wedding goes off without a hitch and everyone lives happily ever after.
In some retellings, Telthusa and Iphis pray but are met with silence (bear in mind up until this point the only godly appearance is in a dream and the only prophetic knowledge passed on is the coin-toss prediction that the baby will be a girl). The two leave the temple despairing and with no magical changes. The wedding eventually comes to pass and on the dreaded wedding night Iphis finally makes her ultimate confession, “I’m a woman.”, she says.
And Ianthe replies, “Yeah, I know.”.
38, Three of Cups, The Iele
The imagery paired to this card often depicts or is evocative of the Three Graces, or Charities, of classical myth. The Graces were said to be Minor Goddesses “created to fill the world with pleasant moments and goodwill”. The Three of Cups is subsequently linked to their respected and shared values. The Graces are linked to three different virtues, Aglaea Goddess of Splendour, Euphrosyne Goddess of Merriness, and Thalia Goddess of the Festival. When reading this card, one should consider not only the associations of the Graces, but their bond with each other.
This card concerns a sphere of female joy, revelry, and relationships, away from the judgement laws or interruption of any patriarchal structure or male gaze.
Upright: Revelry, Splendour, Merriness, Festival, Female Friendship and Empowerment
Reversed: Toxic Festivity, Indulgence, Isolation
The iele are Romanian faeries (or zâne) who dance naked by moonlight in woods, cliffsides, meadows, crossroads and abandoned places. They often wear bells on their ankles and hold candles, seemingly to attract any lost wanderers nearby, who would be driven into a delirium by their hypnotic dance. The iele are fickle and onlookers caught spying on them can expect anything from gifts and seduction to mutilation and death.
The circle in which their dance takes place will become scorched earth where nothing can grow except scant red grass and mushrooms and over which no animal will cross.
I’ve drawn them as the Three of Cups, a bacchanal sisterhood burning a spiral into the ground.
39, Four of Cups, The Cannibal Clan of Sawney Bean
The Four of Cups is a card indicating dangerous listlessness. No matter what is offered it is never enough and never satisfactory. This card is a relatively apt summary of depression, in that in concerns not necessarily an excess negative emotion, but the perceived absence of emotion. In a nightmare opposite of the ace of cups, all senses are rendered useless, the figure sees as if through a murk, all food tastes like ash, every smell has become rancid, all music becomes shapeless noise, human touch becomes corpselike. This loss of grip with the sensory tangible world can be met with apathy or violence wherein one shrinks back from the world they see as meaningless or takes advantage of apparent freedom where they believe nothing to matter.
Upright: Discontent, Depression, Apathy, Disillusionment, Insatiability
Reversed: Rehabilitation, Recovery, Psychological Return, Nourishment
Sawney Bean and his clan of 45 inbred, cave-dwelling degenerates supposedly captured, killed, and ate over a thousand people in just 25 years. Eventually King James VI of Scotland led a posse 400 men strong to put a stop to the carnage. Having tracked the clan to their lair, Snib’s Cave, they descended into a torch-lit hellscape. Pickling in barrels and hung slaughterhouse-style from the walls were cuts of the dismembered corpses.
Amidst the littered piles of discarded bones and jewellery King James’ posse found the clan and, to everyone’s surprise, they surrendered without a fight. The clan was eventually executed without trial, which they were denied as ‘subhumans’. The women and children were tied to stakes and burned. The men had their genitals removed and thrown in a fire before having their hands cut off. After these mutilations and as he was bleeding out, Sawney shouted his dying words: “It isn’t over, it will never be over”.
Is any of that true? We don’t really know, bits and pieces maybe…
40, Five of Cups, The Great Selkie of Sule Skerry
The Five of Cups implores the querent to refocus their attention not on what has been lost, but what still remains. It denotes some manner of consuming loss that is distracting or stealing the light from more important commitments. The most recognisable example is being so affected by grief after losing a loved one, that a person forgets their responsibilities to other loved ones. It could also be understood as great shame prohibiting further progress when someone is unable to bounce back from a mistake.
Upright: Consuming Loss, Misplaced Responsibility, Regret, Shame.
Reversed: Newfound hope, Second Chance, Adjustment
“An eartly nourris sits and sing,
And aye she sings, Ba, lily wean!
Little ken I my bairnis father,
Far less the land that he staps in.
Then ane arose at her bed-fit,
An a grumly guest I’m sure was he:
‘Here am I, thy bairnis father,
Although that I be not comelie.
‘I am a man, upo the lan,
An I am a silkie in the sea;
And when I’m far and far frae lan,
My dwelling is in Sule Skerrie.’
‘It was na weel,’ quo the maiden fair,
‘It was na weel, indeed,’ quo she,
‘That the Great Silkie of Sule Skerrie
Suld hae come and aught a bairn to me.’
Now he has taen a purse of goud,
And he has pat it upo her knee,
Sayin, Gie to me my little young son,
An tak thee up thy nourris-fee.
An it sall come to pass on a simmer’s day,
When the sin shines het on evera stane,
That I will tak my little young son,
An teach him for to swim the faem.
An thu sall marry a proud gunner,
An a proud gunner I’m sure he’ll be,
An the very first schot that ere he schoots,
He’ll schoot baith my young son and me.”
The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry
Communicated by the late Captain F.W.L. Thomas, R.N.; written down by him from the dictation of a venerable lady of Snarra Voe, Shetland, 1852
41, Six of Cups, The Green Children of Woolpit
The Six of Cups is associated with nostalgic regard for one’s own past. Although it also warns of an unrealistic belief in ‘better times’, bolstered by exaggerated or ‘rose-tinted’ memories. There are also connotations of unconditional, uncomplicated, childlike love, which though realistically seems unattainable or naïve, is nonetheless a good sign applicable to romantic readings.
This card can also herald the return of someone from your past, who you had thought wholly lost. For better or worse, it could be an old friend, estranged family member, or ex-lover. This reappearance of a character in your life will often carry with it an opportunity for an apology or a choice for forgiveness and a second chance, or the choice of rebuttal and grudge (both are completely valid).
Upright: Nostalgia, Memory, Childhood, Innocent Love,
Reversed: Disconnect with the Past, Dementia, Reopened Wounds, Old Enemies
This creepy legend from Suffolk tells of two children, a boy and girl, who appeared in the village of Woolpit (a corruption of wolf-pit) in the 12th century. The children had green skin, spoke in an unknown language and ate only raw broad beans.
The children were seemingly in a bad state and fearing for their health (and souls). The villagers hastily baptise the children, after the baptism the boy takes a turn for the worse and dies shortly after. The girl lives, loses her green colour, broadens her appetites to more than just broad beans and eventually learns English.
When the girl had a good enough grasp of English the villagers asked her where she came from. As a few years have passed and she was young when they were found, the memories are hazy and confusing. She says that she and her brother came from a land with no sun where the light is always like twilight. The children were herding their fathers cattle when they were drawn into a cave by a noise (which she later agreed was the bells of Woolpit church) and walked for a long time into the cave until they appeared by one of the namesake wolf-pits of the village.
As the girl grows up the story splinters, some say she was wild and sad, one account writes she was “very wanton and impudent”, other accounts say she married a rich man and lived happily ever after.
The link to the 6 of cups are the presence of the children themselves and the themes of nostalgia, memory and innocence (and the loss of innocence). Hopefully most of the drawing is self explanatory but I’ve also inverted the black water colours (that I use in a lot of these) to try to give a weirdness to the other world the children came from, which is well worth looking at the theories about because they are wild.
42, Seven of Cups, Thomas the Rhymer
This card, referred to by Arthur E. Waite as “Strange Chalices of Vision”, often depicts a shadowy figure contemplating seven cups filled with metaphors for different futures. There is some debate whether this card is an allegory for boundless choice and opportunity, or a warning about lofty, unrealistic goals and the indulgence of playing out fantasy narratives.
The first reading essentially mimics the sentiment that the world is your oyster, wherein whatever can be imagined can be achieved, but a person must actively choose one goal, likely at the sacrifice of others.
The second reading deducts that the multiple paths the querent sees as options are self-indulgent and arrogant. Not only does the figure see themselves as the rightful inheritor of infinite spoils, but they waste their lives running out these scenarios where they are piled with treasures, instead of doing anything to get any closer to achieving these goals. When the figure is forced to return to reality and acknowledge that these dreams will never be realised, it will be bitter to swallow.
Upright: Choice, Sacrifice, Indulgent Fantasies, Disconnect from Reality
Reversed: Loss of Imagination, Running Out of Options, Clarity, Pragmatism, Sobering Up
Thomas the Rhymer is a figure from Scottish Folklore and (kind of) a real guy who prophesied a lot of spooky things that came true. His ballad is long, twisty and exists in many different versions, most commonly in song form, but I’ll try to quickly sum it up here.
Once upon a time when Thomas was lying up against a tree, the Queen of Elfland rode up to him, so fair, so graceful, and so awesome that at first he mistook her for the Virgin Mary. She corrects him and asks that he follow her and, besotted, he does. They ride through a strange river (sometimes a river of blood) and things begin to turn eerie. When riding through a strange grove Thomas states he is hungry and asks to pick an apple from the trees but the Queen of Elfland strongly warns him against, implying or sometimes directly stating these are the forbidden fruit of Eden. She gives him food and tells him not to eat any other than what she gives him here.
The Elf Queen then takes him to a crossroads and there tells him to lay up against her and behold the three marvels: the road to hell, the road to heaven, and the road to Elf-land. She asks him to contemplate which is which: one treacherous and beset with thorns, one fair and lovely with lilies and meadow flowers, and one green and lush with vegetation.
Thomas correctly guesses the lush and green path is the one to Elf-Land but is (sometimes) unsure of the other two and decides not to risk them, to which the Queen confirms the looks are deceiving and the lovely path leads to hell and the thorny path leads to heaven. Thomas asks to be taken to Elf-Land but is told this will only be possible if he dares to kiss the Queen, which he does. They spend 7 years in Elf-Land where Thomas is forbidden to speak the entire time and for this sacrifice upon his return he is gifted “a coat of the even cloth, and a pair of shoes of velvet green” or “tongue that can never lie”. The gift of the unlying tongue is also sometimes attributed to Thomas’ seemingly real power of prophecy, as in, if he says something speculative it cannot be made untrue and therefore he can seemingly steer reality.
43, Eight of Cups, Donkeyskin
This Card is often interpreted as a figure who after investing in something or someone for a long time, has finally accepted it is time to quit trying and move on. The connotations are not as negative as they may first appear, and it is important to learn to let go. Not everything can be fixed, and throwing more energy, money, or time into fixing something unfixable can be heart-breaking. There is no shame in cutting your losses and going out in search of something new.
Upright: Abandonment, Cutting Losses, Starting Anew
Reversed: Return, Compromise, Second Chances
Considering its shocking content, this tale surprisingly pops up all over Europe in different variants (Bad Pumpkin, the Page of Cups in this deck is one such variant). These are the bones of the story:
Once upon a time there was a king who was made very rich because he owned a donkey that shat gold. This king had a beautiful Queen who quite suddenly became very ill and it was clear that she would die. On her deathbed she made her husband promise to only remarry if the new bride were as beautiful or more beautiful than she.
The king mourned for a long time, and as the years passed his daughter began to grow from a child into a woman. The princess bore a strong resemblance to her mother and it was clear that she too would be very beautiful.
More years fell away and eventually the King was persuaded to take a new wife. He began to search far and wide but he could not find anyone to marry and keep his promise. There was no woman as beautiful as his wife in the whole world. None held a candle. Except that wasn’t quite true. An idea wormed it’s way around the black canals of his brain. His daughter had grown into the ghostly visage of her own mother, reborn in her youth and even more beautiful than she ever was.
The King attempts to woo and cajole and bargain and buy and pressure. He makes promises and he makes threats but the princess gives him only her disgust.
The Princess seeks the advice of her Fairy Godmother who tells her that refusal is not enough, the King will have her hand or have her head and his patience is worn deadly thin. Instead the two hatch a plan, that the Princess will accept the proposal but make impossible demands of her father for the wedding day that will eternally delay it. In quick succession she makes demands of three impossible dresses that the King cannot and yet somehow does acquire, one the changing colour of the sky, one the glow of the moon, and one that shines like sunlight.
The Princess scrambles to think of the next impossible dress but the King, having met all the demands and grown tired with this game, tells her that he will honour one more request, but only one.
The princess is horrified, all these impossible feats that would surely have anyone else stumped can all, through burning obsession and infinite wealth, somehow be achieved by the incestous monarch. She resolves to take the wind out of one of those sails and takes a gamble that the money is more important to him than her. Her final demand for the wedding is the hide of his prized donkey, the source of all his wealth.
To everyone’s surprise, he agrees to this final demand, sends for the donkey to be killed and skinned, throws the still bloody hide at her feet and announces that the Royal wedding will be held tomorrow. Returning to her Fairy Godmother that night, desperate and afraid, the princess asks what the next plan is, what actions can be taken to delay the wedding now? The Fairy tells her there are no more plans, and the only action to take is to run. She hands the Princess a chest in which the three dresses have already been packed and tells her she must escape tonight and never return.
The Princess asks how she will escape unnoticed, other than the King she is the most recognisable face in the kingdom. The Fairy agrees that she is too recognisable to risk even a simple disguise, she must become something that would be given a wide berth, that eyes would be averted from, that would not be halted or inspected but moved along and kicked away.
The Fairy Godmother wraps the Princess in the donkey skin, its greasy-grey fur matted with crusted blood, its huge unshapely head lolling, its dead eyes turning milky, stinking pungent and sour.
And so the hide of the poor donkey, who was good natured and did not deserve its part in this story (and did not care or understand the importance of his golden shit), and who once held within it something very precious and now did so again. From then on the Princess was known as only Donkeyskin and she set out into the dark unknown never to return to that dreadful place…
44, Nine of Cups, Beowulf’s Men Celebrate the Death of Grendel
The Nine of Cups signifies victory with a slight tinge of smugness, and celebration slightly tainted by gloating. It echoes similar ideas of sensory pleasure found in the ace of cups, though with slightly less purity. It predicts a revelry tinted with a sinister aura.
This card predicts a singular success and the promise of celebration after but warns the querent to stay grounded, reminding them that haughtiness is an ugly quality, and being a sore winner is just as bad, if not worse, than being a sore loser. Consider this an exclusive gathering of aristocratic young men, toasting to their own brilliance.
Upright: Victory, Gloating, Arrogance
Reversed: Humbleness, modesty, Humility, Sportsmanship
After stripping down naked and discarding his sword (to fight Grendel in a fair fight) Beowulf eventually bests the monster, ripping off its arm and shoulder. Grendel slinks off into the night to bleed out in the marshes. Beowulf nails Grendel’s arm in the drinking hall and the men set to celebrating. Beowulf, revered as a hero, is given his own private lodging and leaves the hall. The men, deep in their revelry and drunkenness are, unbeknownst to them, visited by Grendel’s mother, who spies the arm of her son nailed to the wall as a grisly trophy and knows her child is dead.
Grendel’s mother, a wretched demonic monster (not foxy CGI Angelina Jolie, sadly) is sickened and furious by these scenes. She plots her revenge and returns later the next night to murder the men in their drunken slumber. She does just this, a great fight breaks out, and Beowulf’s best man, Æschere is killed. She escapes after the attack but Beowulf eventually tracks her back to her cave and kills her with a magic sword (classic stuff).
The Nine of Cups is a card about victory but also has warnings about smugness and gloating. Essentially the card is a warning not to be a sore winner and not to count your chickens before they hatch, hence a bunch of drunken lads celebrate defeating a monster while another, possibly worse, monster is waiting to murder them once they pass out.
45, Ten of Cups, The White Nights and the Midnight Sun
The Ten of Cups is one of the most positive cards in the deck. It promises lasting true happiness. It suggests contentment within family, marital, and general home life. It alludes to an Arcadian setting, and the joys of rustic life. This image of the perfect idyll can be taken literally, and suggest an actual beautiful place or retreat that has been or will be encountered.
It can also be understood as an idea or concept, not everyone can live a simple rustic life among nature, but it suggests a tranquil home life nonetheless. Often this place is interpreted as the querent’s home, however to what end ideas of home are being conjured depends on other cards within the spread.
Upright: Familial harmony, Fulfilled Love, Pastoral Idyll, Home
Reversed: Familial Split, Raiding, Urban Dystopia
This is a bit of an amalgamation of Finnish and Swedish folk traditions for the summer solstice or MIDSOMMAR. The two cultures do bleed into each other a lot and some of these, and many other, traditions take place all over Scandinavia and northern/eastern Europe.
Included in the drawing here: maypole dancing, a bonfire at a lake’s edge, the winking sun, a young woman looking into a well to see the face of her future husband, flower wreaths for single women and oak wreaths for single men, a little naughty business in the forest, and some will-o-the-wisps.
46, Page of Cups, Bad Pumpkin
The Page of Cups refers to a passionate and yet somewhat introverted young person. This figure is creative, curious and sincere but not the best at expressing this to others. If the querent sees themselves in this card it reassures that confidence will grow with every small step, but it will not happen without a conscious effort. If it becomes apparent that this person is someone else within the querent’s life it advises patience and support. In a more general sense, the card connotes spoken or written messages of love and is a very positive and exciting card to be dealt.
Upright: Poetry, Declarations of Love, Gentleness, Anxiety
Reversed: Secrets in a Relationship, Declarations of Heartbreak, Going Over Unfulfilled Declarations of Love
Bad Pumpkin is a variant of the Donkeyskin tale (my 8 of cups), wherein a Princess, mortified by the sexual advances and marriage proposals of her own father, a king (sex crimes from a member of the royal family, in what world!), escapes to a new life in a disguise, in this case as a giant pumpkin.
She ends up in the employ of a prince who treats her awfully when she’s a pumpkin but falls in love with her when she comes to his grand balls in wonderful dresses (so it goes). She hides a bunch of the gifts he gives her at the balls in his soups when she’s in her pumpkin disguise (a gold pin in the cup in this drawing). Eventually, he figures it out and they agree to marry despite him outing himself as a classist pig.
The version I’ve used for reference is a translation of Domenico Comparetti’s “Bad Pumpkin” found in Cristina Mazzoni’s “The Pomegranates and Other Modern Italian Fairy Tales”.
47, Knight of Cups, An Old King and His Three Sons of England
The Knight of Cups is a roving romantic, often a beautiful young person (by no means necessarily a man, despite the gender implications of ‘knight’). If the knights are taken as literal knights, then the Knight of Cups is more of a figure of pageantry, unlike the other knights who are militaristic and warlike. This knights armour and sword are ceremonial instead of being battle-ready.
This person is a talented musician, poet, or artist, and like the other knights embarks on quests, but of a much less violent or domineering nature. This knight is less conquistador and more missionary, with an ambition not to conquer peoples but to help and teach them.
However, sometimes there is a degree of superficiality to the talents of the Knight. There is a slight concern here that this figure is a dangerously charming or overly promiscuous person or seductress.
An alternate reading is a combination of the element association of water to cups and travel to knights, simply alluding to some manner of travel on, over, or through a body of water.
Upright: Pageantry, Beauty, Seduction, Journey Over Water
Reversed: Trickery, Concealment of True Self, Masquerade, Inability to Distinguish Truth and Lies
In this Romani Fairy, three Princes set off on a quest to find magical golden apples to cure their dying father, early on the brothers come to a crossroads and go their separate ways. From here the story follows the youngest brother on his weird and twisty adventures as he encounters snakes, lions, bears, giants, dragons, a sleeping beauty and some ugly old men that really want him to cut their heads off…
This is from “In Gypsy Tents”27 or “Gypsy folk-tales”28, by Francis Hindes Groom, where his source was purportedly John Roberts, a Welsh Roma he interviewed and collected stories from. However, the story was arguably popularised by Joseph Jacobs in “More English Fairy Tales”.
Welsh Roma and source for King in England and his Three Sons tale
48, Queen of Cups, Margaret Finch, “Gypsy Queen of Norwood”
In a rare meta turn for tarot, this Queen is something a fortune teller herself. It could be imagined that in the cup she contemplates are tea leaves that she interprets meaning in. She is also a symbol of pure heart, a true believer and advocate of goodness. Though often depicted as beautiful, this is more a translation of her inner beauty, as the Queen of cups is ambivalent to physical attractiveness. Like the other Queens, the Queen of Cups is a maternal character, specifically, she is the vision of maternal advice and wisdom. The other Queens somewhat accentuate and reinforce the divisionary power relationship of mother and child, teacher and student. The Queen of Cups is unique in being a sort of maternal equal, where mutual respect allows for a healthier environment where the child can test their curiosity on a non-judgmental and open-minded mentor. This maternal figure also admits fallibility, offering advice from her own experiences and mistakes, fully rejecting an attitude of ‘follow the rules because I am in charge’.
Upright: Sage Advice, Maternal Respect, Inner Beauty, Good Will
Reversed: Disgrace, Female Perversion, Depravity OR Self Love, Overdue Prioritization of the Self, Personal Time
By the time of her death in 1740, at the age of 108, Margaret “Maggie” Finch could no longer extend out of her bent posture due to the stiffness of her joints which had seemingly locked her in place. For at least a decade she was carried in this position to South London pubs, where she was visited by patrons high and low, her gnarly clawed hands poised to deal and read tarot cards.
They buried her in a square box as they could not straighten out the corpse and paraded it through the streets from London to Kent, in a funeral march described somewhat like a festival for traveller communities far and wide.
I used to live in West Norwood and seem to live most of my life within the borders of what was once the Great North Wood (of which “Norwood” is a bastardisation). The simple past, present and future spread she’s reading are Herne the Hunter (my Four of Wands), herself (Queen of Cups) and Spring Heeled Jack (7 of Swords), all tales that take place at least partly in the Great North Wood.
I was put onto Margaret Finch by a couple of born and bred South Londoners but she also appears in Zoe Gilbert’s Mischief Acts, one of the best books I’ve read in years that goes into the whole history of The Great North Wood and Herne the Hunter.
49, King of Cups, The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel
The gentlest of all the kings in tarot, the King of Cups is sensitive, emotionally mature and perceptive. While still undoubtedly a paternal authority figure, this king is the first to listen to his children and easiest to sway. Above all, he is a champion of compassion and forgiveness. This figure has very close relationships with all his family and believes that fatherhood is a lifetime commitment, not to be taken lightly. This person also struggles with the application of discipline and may have problems juggling respect for his children and the necessity of punishment.
He is also most likely of the kings to fill the role of an adoptive or surrogate father as he is less focused on strict importance of kin and blood ties.
In terms of fatherly duties this figure will emphasize the importance of artistic skill and appreciation over traditional physical masculine values of competitive sport or marketable labour. In a sense the King of Cups is the kind of father who has nurtured the traits of the Page and Knight of Cups. Essentially this person is the perfect tutor for creatives, and probably has a catalogue of experiences and contacts within artistic spheres.
On the downside this father figure is by far the most likely to spoil his children and be taken advantage of. Being so focused on being the ultimate provider, this king runs the risk of raising children that find themselves under-equipped or unenthusiastic when faced with independence. Though the King of Cups is extremely protective over his family, he himself is slightly less equipped to defend them than the King of Swords for example. Despite being more distant to his Children, if crossed, the King of Swords would go out for blood, the King of Cups doesn’t really have this option no matter how much he might want to.
Upright: Sensitive Leader, Patron of the Arts, Emotional rock
Reversed: Volatile Leader, Emotional Manipulation, Fatherly Indifference
This Irish tale from the Ulster cycle is very long and windy so I won’t give a full summary here.
It does culminate with High King Conaire Mór suffering a great thirst after exhausting all his great strength and using all his water to fight his enemies and put out the fires (three times) that are burning down Da Derga’s hostel (The House of the Red God).
Conaire’s friend and champion, Mac Cécht travels all across Ireland trying to fill his cup (and quench his thirst). This becomes a bit of a wild goose chase and when Mac Cécht returns two men are cutting the king’s head off. Mac kills this two men but is too late, he still pours water from the cup into Conaire’s mouth. Somehow there is still a little life in the head, it recites a poem about how it’s okay and how much he respects Mac Cécht, it goes like this:
“A good man Mac cecht! an excellent man Mac cecht!
A good warrior without, good within,
He gives a drink, he saves a king, he doth a deed.
Well he ended the champions I found.
He sent a flagstone on the warriors.
Well he hewed by the door of the Hostel
Fer lé,
So that a spear is against one hip.
Good should I be to far-renowned Mac cecht
If I were alive. A good man!”
There’s also a heavy importance on geasa’s in this story which are unique kinds of curses that exist in Irish folklore that kind of work like D&D stats, where if you follow the rules of the curse you get extra powers/abilities but if you break them you face consequences. Geasa’s are really interesting and pop up in a few of these stories so I’ll try to write more on them later.
THE SUIT OF SWORDS
50, Ace of Swords, The Lady of the Lake
The Ace of Swords is a symbol of clear sight, about being immune to deception. This Sword has the power to cleave through lies, confusion and ambiguity. It is the champion of truth and righteousness. It also suggests a firm groundedness in reality, which can sometimes verge on bluntness but is generally positive. As with all the aces it is ascribed to new beginnings, projects, and ventures, so coupled with its general meaning it can be read as a sign for realistic and well thought through plans.
Upright: Seeing Clearly, Realistic Plans, Inability to Fool
Reversed: To be Hoodwinked, Lofty Plans, Murk
The Lady of the Lake is one of the most iconic figures of Arthurian folklore, and folklore in general. Especially the scene depicted here, wherein a mysterious woman appears from the Lake to gift King Arthur his famed sword, Excalibur, is a cornerstone of western mythology. Also, just to nip this in the bud, Excalibur isn’t the sword in the stone, that’s a different, unnamed sword (except of course when it isn’t and that is Excalibur but Arthur loses or destroys it only to have it returned by the Lady of the Lake (there’s like a million versions of this story)).
From Andrew Lang’s Tales of the Round table; 1908
With all that said, the question of who, or what, is the Lady of the Lake surprisingly confusing. Essentially, this singular character that comes to mind when someone says ‘the Lady of the Lake’ is an early example of a composite character. To cut down the convoluted nature of the story, and its many, often contradictory telling’s, several otherworldly watery women, Fairy godmother types and witchy villains are smushed together into a singular entity, whose characterisation and motives are all over the place as a result. Usually going by some variant of the names Nimue, Ninianne or Viviane, her highlights include, of course, the giving of Excalibur but also she serves as a slightly sinister foster mother to Lancelot, who she raises to be the ultimate warrior her becomes (but also pushes him towards his betrayal of Arthur in his pursuit of Guinevere).
She also captures/entraps/kills Merlin, but only because he’s a sex pest that won’t leave her alone, luckily she has enchanted her own vagina with a spell (curse?) that anyone who touches it either dies or is put into a kind of hyper-sleep. Wild stuff!
51, Two of Swords, Mr Fox
The Two of Swords is about sitting too long on a choice. This figure is trying to hold on to too much and must let go of something and settle on another or risk losing everything. It could signify being split between two conflicting sides, and despite being ambivalent to the conflict in of itself, being forced to choose one.
The Two of Swords can also be read as a nightmarish twin of the High Priestess.
Considering the repeated symbolism of a central woman sitting and the presence of the moon, as well as the cards being the respective twos of their suit, there is definitely grounds for this link. If the High Priestess is seen to be an omniscient figure, who knows and sees all, then the Two of Swords is a twisted opposite, she is blindfolded, seeing and knowing nothing. The Priestess is shown against a luxurious background indicating wealth and safety, pillars and tapestry, however, the Two of Swords is alone and presumably unsafe, a woman in the wilderness at night, alone and blind. Of course, the woman is armed, overly so in fact, and this is part of the problem as previously discussed, she cannot bear the weight of both swords at once, and though she may look intimidating she is weakening herself by the second.
It is also worthwhile considering the different moons, and the symbolism of the Moon in tarot as dreams, nightmares, imagination and psychosis. The Priestess has the moon tethered at her feet, she indulges in the realm of fantasy and madness, but ultimately, she is the master of her own dreams and has a grip on her own mind. Contrasting against this we have the Two of Swords, where the moon is untethered and compositionally dominant in the frame. This implies that the woman here is the whim of her own deteriorating mind and the hallucinatory nightmare realm that she can no longer differentiate from reality, she cannot detect the fantastical or surreal as she is blindfolded, unaware of the domineering power of the moon behind her.
Upright: Between two sides, Pressing Choice, Blindness, Madness, Nightmares, Danger
Reversed: Clear Sight, Playing sides against each other, Return from Limbo, Regained Consciousness
“Like the old tale, my lord: “It is not so nor ‘twas
not so but, indeed, God forbid it should be so.”29
- Benedick, Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare
In this English variant of Bluebeard a severed hand undoes a murderous bridegroom. The main source of this tale was Joseph Jacob’s 1890 retelling in English Fairy Tales30, which is public domain and can be accessed via the footnote. This story appears all over Europe and is generally known as the Robber Bridegroom, though Bluebeard is probably the most famous version.
From Joseph Jacobs’ English Fairy Tales, 1902
The English variant is notably older than Jacob’s version however, its first known mention is in Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing (where the story is quoted in the quote I’ve included above), supposedly written in 1598-1599. The story goes like this:
Mr Fox
Lady Mary was young, and Lady Mary was fair. She had two brothers and more lovers than she could count. Of these many suitors only one had captured her heart, one known as Mr Fox, who was handsome, brave and gallant. She had been introduced to Mr Fox by her father, the two being of a more similar age than he and Mary. She was smitten and before they became better acquainted she asked around to learn everything she could about him. As she pined and inquired she repeatedly and frustratingly came up against a wall, simply no-one knew that much about him.
She asked her father, and he told her “Well, of course, anyone could see he was, of course, very educated, very well mannered and very, very rich.”. And Lady Mary could see it was true, but she when she asked “yes, but how did he make his fortune?”, her father said he didn’t know.
She asked her brothers about him, they told her “Well, anyone can see how strong and courageous he is, he bested one of us in a fencing challenge and the other in wrestling. He certainly is mighty, and chivalrous to boot, he softened our losses with a round of ale! Anyone can see he is a fine man, sister!”, She agreed that he was, but asked if they knew where he learned to use a sword, how he became so strong, they did not know.
Mary found this historical fog around Mr Fox strange, but she could not deny she felt some kind of allure to his mystique. She went to the tavern, and asked the innkeeper, “Innkeeper, what do you know of this Mr Fox?” “Well young lady,” said he, “The generous Mr Fox has been staying with me while he is in this land. What is there to say? Anyone can see that he is well traveled, he has spoken to me about travelling far and wide across distant lands.” “Yes,” said Mary, “but do you know from what land he hails? Where does he live?”. The innkeeper said he had heard rumours of a castle but where it lay, he could not say.
Next she asked the tavern maid about him and she told her, “Well, of course anyone can see how handsome and dashing he is? What else is there to know?” Mary thought on this and asked, “yes, he is handsome and he is dashing! So handsome and dashing in fact that one has to wonder why hasn’t yet found a wife?”.
“Don’t mind that” said the tavern maid, “I suspect he hasn’t found the right girl yet, and I have it on good authority that he has his eye on you!”. This delighted Mary and soon she found herself being courted by this mysterious Mr Fox.
The courtship was swift and sweet, and passed sweetly like a dream. Mr fox was charming and he was respectful, he seemed to be exactly what everyone said he was and, just as the tavernmaid predicted, soon enough he produced a ring. Tears were shed, smiles were shared, the news brightened up the lives of everyone that heard it (even though everyone had been expecting it!). When the date was set, looming nearby ahead of them, Mary asked where they would live. Mr Fox described his castle, how it loomed tall in a wood of tall trees. He talked of high walls and a deep moat. He began to talk of an enormous gate and an inscription above it, but there he trailed off, she would see it soon enough and he would not ruin the surprise.
Mary begged to be taken to the castle but he would not relent until they were married, and she was frustrated but she knew this was because he was chivalrous and he was thinking of her reputation. She then asked if he would take her brothers, so they could all get better acquainted. At this he turned cold, “Not until after the wedding,” and the chill quickly dissipated, he beamed, “for they would ruin the surprise too with their talk, and they might raise your expectations too high for my humble home, I would not have you disappointed when you see it!”. Well, she supposed that made sense…
One day near to the wedding, Mary’s beloved fiance had to leave the region for two days on business. She kissed him goodbye, he rode off, a sight to behold on a beautiful horse, and as soon as he was out of sight Mary started walking. She walked and walked, deep into the woods and after hours of searching, half lost in the falling darkness, she came upon a fine, strong castle, tall amongst the tall trees. She saw the high walls and the deep moat he had spoken of, she walked across the bridge to the enormous gate, and looked above to see an inscription that read:
BE BOLD, BE BOLD.
A strange family motto but she supposed if she was about to be part of the family she didn’t hate it. She opened the gate and walked inside, as she suspected the castle was deserted, she did not expect however how eerie she found this. Eventually she came to a door, above which was another inscription, it read:
BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BUT NOT TOO BOLD.
Stranger still, maybe it was a family joke, she would learn soon enough! She opened the door and crept inside. It was very dark, and this was to be expected as no one was home, why would it be lit. It was no wonder and empty castle had an unnerving atmosphere, still the hairs on her neck prickled, she pushed on! In a dark hall, up a dark stair case, she came to a gallery, in which there was a black door. Above the door was an inscription, it read:
BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BUT NOT TOO BOLD.
LEST THY BLOOD SHOULD RUN COLD.
Shivers up the spinal cord but Mary was a brave one and she opened the door, and what do you think she saw? Abattoir-carnage, black-horror! She saw the limp bodies and raw bloody skeletons of many beautiful young ladies, all in wedding white stained sticky crimson, suspended on hooks, hanging there. Many of the corpses, she noticed, were missing ring fingers or entire left hands, but why? Mary lifted her own hands in front of her face to shield her eyes from this grisly nightmare, and there, through spiralling vertigo, through the shrinking pinholes of her vision, she saw her own engagement ring on her finger. Recoiling back from the scene Mary stumbled backwards and fell, unable even to utter a scream!
She slammed the door shut and crawled on her hands and knees doglike, blubbering, back through the gallery, down the dark staircase, through the dark hall, she opened the Castle door and what did she see out there? Mr fox, luckily with his back to her, dragging something heavy between the gate and the castle door. Mary quietly shut the door. She frantically looked around for somewhere to hide and there found a cask, which she crept behind just in time before the door flung open. She could hear Mr Fox’s laboured breathing as he let his load drop to the ground with a hard thump.
Mary snuck a quick peep and caught a flash of some poor young lady, she looked as though she had fainted but Mary was beginning to think she knew better, she hid herself back and tightened her whole body into held-breath stillness. She heard Mr Fox begin to fumble around with something, she heard him grumble, become frustrated, “bloating already, as usual. No matter,”. Mary did not have time to puzzle that out before she heard the hard crunch and twang of an axe going through meat, bone and finally clanging against a stone floor. Something plopped into her lap. It was a woman’s hand, blood oozing from the fresh cut wrist and on its ring finger a gold band with a diamond set in it. Mary held her screams as Mr Fox paced around the room,
“Where is it?”,
he lowered his body to the floor and she heard his voice shift location,
“Where is it?!”,
he picked up the body and shuffled it about and let it flop down again,
“Where is it?!?”,
he opened the door again and poked his head out,
“did you fall out here?”,
he slammed it shut, his hands began to slap the floor in the difficult to reach places, finally they slapped towards the cask, his voice very close to Mary’s ears now,
“did you crawl back here?”.
His hand fumbled a hairs breadth from Mary’s leg and he finally balled it into a fist, knuckles cracking and said,
“Nevermind, I will look properly this when I’ve dealt with the rest of you.”.
Mary heard the sounds of him picking up the body and dragging it down the dark hall towards the Bloody Chamber, and as he began to make a lot of noise bumping it up the staircase, she gently opened the door, creeped to the gate, snuck back into the forrest, and ran as fast as she could.
Fate would have it that the very next day was to be the signing of the marriage contract between Mr Fox and Lady Mary, and for such an event a luxurious breakfast was held, all fresh fruit and buttered toast, fried eggs and sizzled pork. However Mr Fox had sniffed out something wrong, and as he sat oppisite his bride to be he saw that hers was the only dour face amongst a sea of smiles. “How pale you are this morning, my darling” he said and to this she replied, “Yes, for last night I had horrible, horrible dreams and could not sleep,”
‘Dreams go by contraries,’ said Mr Fox; ‘but tell us your dream, and your sweet voice will make the time pass till the happy hour comes.’
‘In these nightmares,’ said Lady Mary, ‘I dreamed that I went yestermorn to your castle, I was lost in the woods and there I did stumble upon it. High walls. Deep moat… and over the gateway was written:
BE BOLD, BE BOLD’
‘But it is not so, nor ’twas not so,’ said Mr Fox.
Mary continued, ‘And when I came to the doorway, over it was written:
BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BUT NOT TOO BOLD.’
‘It is not so, nor ’twas not so,’ said Mr Fox, nervous now.
But Mary pressed on, ‘And then I went upstairs, and came to a gallery, at the end of which was a door, on which was written:
BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BUT NOT TOO BOLD,
LEST THY BLOOD SHOULD RUN COLD.’
‘It is not so, nor ’twas not so,’ said Mr Fox.
‘And then–and then I opened the door, and the room was filled with butchered carcasses of poor dead women, all slick with blood.’
‘It is not so, nor ’twas not so, but, indeed, God forbid it should be so,’ said Mr Fox, coldly, calculating.
‘I fell backwards trying to get away, I tried to run. I dreamed I ran down the gallery, down a dark staircase, through a dark gallery and when I opened the door and could breath fresh air I saw you. I saw you, Mr Fox, between that gate that was my escape and the door, dragging after you a poor young lady, rich and dead and beautiful. She looked like me. In the dream it looked like you wore a mask, a foxes mask’
‘It is not so, nor ’twas not so. And God forbid it should be so!’ said Mr Fox, something in his facade beginning to crack.
‘I shut out the world, and in that lightless hell I heard my heart thumping, and I looked for a place to hide. A cask, I hid behind a cask and just in time before you, Mr Fox, came in dragging the corpse of that young lady. And, as you passed me, Mr Fox, I saw a Diamond ring glitter, it looked like this ring,” She held up her left hand to show it to the table of guests that had fallen silent listening to her weird tale, “and I saw your black eyes glitter too. It seemed to me then, in my dream you understand, that I heard the hard whack of an axe, as if splitting wood on a block. But it was not wood was it? It was muscle. It was bone. You had chopped off the Lady’s hand to get to her ring. But you did not get it, did you? It flew into the darkness. And in that darkness was I, the unseen dreamer. It plopped into my lap like a strange gift. A gift before my wedding.”
‘It is not so, nor ’twas not so. And God forbid it should be so,’ said Mr Fox, teeth bared, he rose with his hand on his sword hilt, when Lady Mary cried out:
‘But it is so, and it was so. Here’s hand and ring I have to show,’ and pulled out the lady’s hand from her dress, and pointed it straight at Mr Fox.
At once her brothers and her friends drew their swords and cut Mr Fox into a thousand pieces.
THE END
52, Three of Swords, Deirdre of Sorrows
The Three of Swords is the broken heart of the deck. It symbolises a painful romantic split and is more likely to refer to a messy sprawling break up than an amicable divorce. This card is not about falling out of love, but more accurately the paradoxical coexistence of intense love and intense hate for another within a person, and how these incompatible emotions tend to cleave a heart into pieces. This may refer to an inconceivable and unforgivable act committed by an irreplaceable loved one, things done or said that cannot be undone or unsaid. It is a translation of romantic stalemate when you cannot let go and cannot forgive, when you cannot stand to be around someone and yet cannot be without them, what then happens next? Often, it ends in a tumultuous train wreck of conflicting emotions, a series of vicious arguments and passionate reconciliations that can never last.
Upright: Heartbreak, Volatile dispute, Coexistence of Love and Hate
Reversed: Healing, Piecing together the Broken Heart, Love Rekindled, Something that must be said (an elephant in the room)
In this tragic Irish myth the most beautiful woman in the world loses the love of her life…
53, Four of Swords, Teig O’Kane and the Corpse
After the Volatility and Excitement of the Three of Swords, now in the clear light of day the aftermath and fallout are considered in the Four of Swords. After the emotional spikes comes a period of emotional emptiness
The Four of Swords is sometimes read as a cloud of depression descending on a person, in that it is not an abundance of negative emotion, but an absence of emotion, feelings of apathy and nothingness. All of this is very reminiscent of the Four of Cups, in terms of emotional vacancy, however perhaps less of a long-term state of mind, and more a short-term reaction to a specific event.
This is a time to withdraw, contemplate, and reconsider recent events with a cool and clear head. It may be that after such a drawn-out break up where both parties ended up hating each other, now that they find themselves alone, they begin to miss the other again. No matter how venomously a relationship ends, it is nearly inevitable that good memories will begin to creep out of the woodwork when a partner is gone.
Upright: Solitude, Reflection, Regrets, Depression, Happy Memories Unfulfilled
Reversed: Inability to move on, discord between emotional separation and necessity of physical proximity,
In this folktale from Fairy and Folk Tales of the Irish Peasantry,31 a young, handsome and very spoilt grown lad called Teig O’Kane lives only for drink, dancing and women. For a long time Teig has been living off the good graces (and money) of his hardworking and relatively successful father, a farmer. The farmer, as with most people in County Leitrim where this story takes place, turns a blind eye to his sons sloth and mischief, as he is very charming and likeable.
One day however, grave news reaches the ears of Teig’s father, Teig has gotten a local girl, Mary, pregnant and is refusing to have anything to do with her. Teig’s father will stand a lazy son and he will stand a raucous one, but he will not stand for this poor girl to be dishonoured. He sits his son down and lays before him an ultimatum, Teig will get his act together, marry this girl and get to work, if he does he will be the sole inheritor of the farm and the money, however if he does not do these things he will inherit nothing and no longer be welcome in this house.
Teig asks for a night to think it over and this is granted, his father goes to bed early to give him time to think and Teig immediately packs a small bag and walks out the door and into the night.
He walks the country lanes until just after midnight, he hears the commotion of many foot-falls coming towards him, but who could be out walking in such force at such an hour? Soon he hears voices but they are not speaking Irish and they are not speaking English, in fact the language is one that Teig does not recognise, he thinks surely they cannot be frenchmen?
Out of the darkness and into the moonlight emerged 20 little men, around three feet tall and skin grey, some of them impossibly old and gnarled in features and in hand. They carried between them some awkward heavy thing and when they dumped it on the ground before Teig O’Kane’s feet he saw that it was a dead body!
He became as cold as the Death, and there was not a drop of blood running in his veins when an old little grey maneen came up to him and said,
“Isn’t it lucky we met you, Teig O’Kane?”
…
54, Five of Swords, The Hand of Glory
The Five of Swords is first and foremost a card of Betrayal. It tends to signify victory but victory deficient in grace, glory and mercy. This figure wins a battle by switching sides at the last moment, they gloat over defeating an army a tenth their size, refuse to honour surrender. This figure could be understood as a sore winner, a pirate and a reaver, infamous and without honour.
Upright: Betrayal, Infamy, Gloating, A Loathsome Arrogance
Reversed: Reconciliation, False Victory, Fleeting Glory
“Now open lock
To the Dead Man’s knock!
Fly bolt, and bar, and band!
— Nor move, nor swerve
Joint, muscle, or nerve,
At the spell of the Dead Man’s hand!
Sleep all who sleep!– Wake all who wake!–
But be as the Dead for the Dead Man’s sake!!”32
-The Nurses Story, The Ingoldsby Legends, or Mirth and Marvels, Richard Harris Barham
Not exactly a tale but more of a recurring artifact or relic that appears in folklore all across Europe. A Hand of Glory is the severed hand taken from the still suspended hanged corpse of a malefactor or misanthrope.
There seems to be a lot of debate over whether the hand MUST be the right or left hand, I’ve gone for the left as it seems to be the more evidenced and this drawing was inspired by Mariana Enríquez’s book Our Share of Night, wherein a (left) Hand of Glory plays a prominent part and is also wonderfully illustrated.
The right hand of Glory camp is also potentially just an error that J K Rowling made and then doubled down on in them wizard books (ugh).
What a Hand of Glory is for or actually DOES is also contested, sometimes it’s a simple good luck charm akin to a rabbit’s foot, some sources state a power to sort of freeze anyone around the holder in place, and they are also attested to have the power to unlock any door the holder might come across.
I’ve gone for what I think is the most fun version here, in that the fat in the fingers is used as candle tallow and when lit by a burglar in a house they have broken into will keep all the members of the household that are already sleeping, asleep in a state from which they cannot wake. However if one in the household is not already asleep the finger will not light and burglar beware! Likewise if the spell is broken and a sleeper is awakened one of the flames will gutter out.
55, Six of Swords, Prince Danila Govorila
The Six of Swords is about leaving something behind, often something toxic, and usually, this departure is overdue, nevertheless, it is still a difficult and painful decision. In many ways it is a ‘last straw’ card, where the options have run out and every attempt to fix something has been unsuccessful, it has now become apparent not everything can be fixed.
In relationships, this exit also has connotations of permanence and physical distance, whatever has been left behind, is most likely gone for good or at least long enough to change the dynamic forever. Though the split can often be the best course of action, it does not necessarily mean that it was a bad relationship or friendship, but that it has come to a premature end, and the only option moving forward is acceptance.
This is also a card of quiet heroism. An acknowledgement of more understated but nonetheless commendable heroic acts, such as removing a child from a dangerous environment, as often suggested in the artwork. This is not, as seen in the Strength card, a kind of mythical heroicness of taming wild lions, but nonetheless securing the safety of vulnerable people from the more everyday monsters of this world.
Upright: Painful Separation, Escape, Permanent Leaving, Lost Love, Understated Heroism
Reversed: Unsatisfactory Ending, Unpredicted Return, Near Escape, Bystander Effect
In this tale from Alexander Afanasyev’s collected Russian Fairy Tales, two near-identical women escape their respective abusive family members, the incestuous Prince Danila and the Baba Yaga. The two women seemingly have a chance to be happy together before the Princess, Catherine, escapes her own personal horror by replacing herself with the other woman who she dooms to marry the monstrous prince…
56, Seven of Swords, Spring-Heeled Jack, Terror of London!
The Seven of Swords is sometimes renamed the Thief Card. Considering this, an interpretation is relatively straightforward. The Thief refers to dishonest or illegal acts, and charming yet roguish characters. There are also implications of infiltration, disguise and ulterior motives.
The Card is not wholly negative and may to refer to someone resorting to more underhanded methods after playing by the rules for long enough to know that the rules do not work in their favour and the odds are stacked against them. Often what is legal is not what is right, and what is law is not fair. Some readings take into account ideas of imposter syndrome, of feeling like you don’t deserve to be somewhere, or that you are in some way unworthy.
Upright: Thievery, disguise, stealth, Imposter Syndrome
Reversed: Unsuccessful Heist, Being Discovered or Outed, Planting or Secretly Leaving a Material Possession or Object Behind
Spring-Heeled Jack is not so much a cohesive singular folktale but an amalgamation of dozens of wildly contrasting and often conflicting sightings of strange goings on in London and its surrounding areas from the 1830’s to the early 1900’s. My main source on jack was Elizabeth Dearnley’s book, Into the London Fog, Eerie Tales from the Weird City (fantastic, go read it), in which she includes a 1884 article from All Year Round, a weekly periodical newspaper (formed by Charles Dickens) wherein the five decades of Spring-Heeled Jack lore is weighed and discussed. This article is public domain and can be found easily enough if one were interested.
What I was most interested in when researching and working on this drawing, and something the Dearnley and the 1884 article she includes both touch on, is how Jack is so clearly multiple Jacks, even counting for the fantastical elements being disregarded the phenomenon is obviously comprised of more than one person or being. In some witness accounts Jack is a dastardly gentleman prankster and other accounts he’s a terrifying demonic hell monster. I like that these sightings were all painted with the same brush.
A top hat, cape and moustache twirling villain that heckles a woman with lewd insults and vaults over a fence and runs away? That’s Spring-Heeled Jack. A huge molten eyed beast with long sharp claws and blue flames dripping from its mouth bounds through the glass of a third story building and across rooftops into the night? Yeah, that’s Jack too, what of it?
That’s why my illustration has multiple Jacks in their different appearances, surrounded by the terrified hysterical Londoners.
I will add some of these specific accounts soon, they’re very good.
57, Eight of Swords, The Song of the Bloodied Ricotta
The Eight of Swords is about having no easy options but still having to make a choice. Even if every path is less than ideal, refusing to move is not an option, and there is an admirable quality to moving through something despite how painful it may be.
This figure is sometimes referred to as the prisoner, and this can be taken literally and refer to some manner of actual imprisonment, or it can be taken in a more metaphorical sense, regarding feelings of being trapped or acts of entrapment. It could be read that the figure is only a prisoner of their own design, and though they cannot see it, the only thing holding them back is themselves.
Upright: Undesirable choices, Feeling Trapped, Blocking Self Interest, Arrest or Imprisonment
Reversed: Freezing Under Pressure, Choking, Shutting down
One more tale from The Pomegranates and Other Modern Italian Fairy Tales, edited and translated by Cristina Mazzoni. What struck me most about this tale is how poorly it’s aged and how it ends in a grisly horror show that it tries to pass off as a happy ending.
The story repeatedly punches down and seems to hinge on the moral that the poor and the ugly should know their place and any attempt to raise their status will be punished, violently.
Perhaps then it was no surprise to learn, on my second reading, that the author of this story was none other than Gabriele D’Annunzio, renowned poet, infamous sex icon, and arguably the man that invented modern fascism.
The story essentially follows a spoiled bastard of a prince who refuses to marry as there is no woman beautiful enough. His mother calls for all the single women in the realm to present themselves at court but none will suffice for this prince. One day the queen (his mother) is slicing open a fresh ricotta and cuts her finger. The fresh red blood seeps and swirls into the ricotta and the prince says he will only marry a woman with skin as white and red as this ricotta. The queen gives him a new horse and a big bag of gold to go find her, and wraps up the bloodied ricotta so he can explain this quest to everyone he meets. Off he goes and it twists and turns from there.
I will endeavour to write up a version of the whole story, which is well worth a look if you can read the Italian public domain version of get hold of Cristina Mazzoni’s translation, but it ends with a servant girl who tried to trick her way into the royal marriage, bound and forced into a shirt soaked with pitch and then set alight. The prince, his new bride and all their courtiers watch from a balcony and have a long night of celebrations.
The links to the 8 of Swords are mainly the two cases of women as parallel prisoners, the ‘true’ bride is turned into a dove and put in a golden cage and the imposter is captured and burned at the end.
58, Nine of Swords, Lamia
Quite Possibly the worst card in the whole deck, sometimes renamed the Nightmare. Unfortunately, a bad omen in any spread. The Nine of Swords is firstly an indicator of sleep in any negative context, from night terrors to sleep paralysis to insomnia. It is an unfortunate herald of sleepless nights regardless of context.
The Nine of Swords also carries heavy connotations of irrevocable loss, and overwhelming, crushing grief. Whatever has been lost can never be replaced, fixed, or made right again. This grief is claustrophobic, all-consuming and will feel endless. Some interpret this as the loss of a child or miscarriage, as derived from the Smith and Waite artwork and descriptions respectively.
Of course, it is important to state that no matter how terrible feelings of loss and grief may feel, every day passed will get a little easier, and eventually hope will wash in and the broken heart will begin to mend.
Upright: Nightmares, Sleep Paralysis, Insomnia, Overwhelming Loss, Inconsolable Grief, Miscarriage
Reversed: End of a Nightmare, End of Sorrow, Waking Up, Clarity, Moving On
In Greek mythology Lamia was a beautiful Queen of Libya and lover/victim of Zeus. When Zeus’ wife Hera learns of the affair she tricks or brainwashes Lamia into killing her own children.
Upon coming to her senses and realising what she has done Lamia plucks out her own eyes so as to not see it anymore. Zeus, pitying her, gives her the power to reattach and remove her (still working) eyes at will.
Driven insane by the horror of what she has done and devolving into a snake-tailed monster, Lamia begins to kidnap and murder other children seemingly indiscriminately. This is maybe some kind of cracked logic to normalise and equalise her own infanticide as just in her nature.
In this manner Lamia serves as one of the oldest and longest running ‘boogeymen’ in human history, recorded in sources in antiquity as far back as the 6th Century BCE.
Lamia gets a slight makeover from a hideous snake woman that devours lost children into a sultry vampyric seductress/succubus figure as the stories about her move into the middle ages and more northern parts of Europe – The Paintings of J.W. Waterhouse are probably the best example of this.
59, Ten of Swords, Marya Morevna or The Death of Koschei the Deathless
The Ten of Swords refers to a premature or unsatisfactory ending. Something that has not been allowed to run its full course. As a person, this card is someone who has become weary of the tumultuous ups and downs experienced through the suit of swords and has now finally had enough and is putting a stop to it. This is the father who stops children mid-argument, nothing is really resolved, but in the immediate future, nothing gets any worse.
There are also, because of the often grizzly artwork of a corpse impaled with ten swords, bleak connotations of crushing defeat and at worst, a death. There are some interpretations that this is the other side of the coin to the Five of Swords, wherein we see the traitor, now we see the betrayed. Instead of the action, here we are forced to face the consequences.
Upright: Dissatisfying or Sudden Ending, Desolation, Betrayal
Reversed: False Ending, Unwanted Return, Unforgiven, Narrow Escape
I found this tale in Alexander Afanasyev’s collected Russian Fairy Tales, which is wild and I absolutely love how in Russian fairy tales these big characters like Koschei or the Baba Yaga reappear across stories like comic book villains (see the Hermit, Six of Swords). Someone who clearly figured this out before me is Mike Mignola, who has used Koschei in his Hellboy series and definitely served as a big inspiration for this drawing.
As to why this story is the 10 of Swords, there is a lot of imagery that mirrors the Rider-Waite card, with the stale battlefield of corpses all defeated by Marya, and also Koschei chopping Ivan (the main character of the tale) into little pieces. There are also multiple betrayals or backstabbings throughout the story which is generally understood as the main theme of the card.
Marya Morevna, or the Death of Koschei the Deathless
IN A CERTAIN KINGDOM in a certain land lived Prince Ivan. He had three sisters – Princess Marya, Princess Olga, and Princess Anna. When their father and mother died, their final injunction to Ivan was to let the sisters be given to marriage to any man that woos them, for he must not keep them long with him.
On the black day that Ivan dug the graves of his parents, the sky turned blacker still, and as the siblings walked home from that burial place through the green gardens of their youth (that Ivan had spent a lifetime tending), a wild storm broke out. They ran for home and just as soon as they had gotten safely into their castle a lightning bolt struck the roof and it was cut in twain. Through the cracked hole of the roof flew in not just the downpour but an enormous falcon, that on striking the floor turned into a brave knight.
The knight explained that the family had hosted him in this castle before as a guest and fallen in love with Princess Marya, he returned now as an accomplished hero and a suitor to ask her hand in marriage. Ivan, remembering his parents wish, simply said that if Marya consented then it would so. Marya was overjoyed, for she had fallen in love with this same knight when he had been a guest too. The falcon knight married her and on his back he carried her as they flew back to his kingdom.
A year passed, and on the anniversary of their parents death Ivan took his sisters to their parents graves. On their walk home again a great cloud came with whirlwind and lightning! The siblings hurried back to the castle and just as before, when they were safely inside a lightning bolt cracked an enormous hole in the roof. Through the hole flew again a great bird, this time an eagle, and as this bird struck the ground he too turned into a brave knight. “Hail Prince Ivan!” the eagle said. “Formerly I came to your castle as a guest but now I have come as a suitor. This eagle knight had wooed princess Olga, and she happily consented to the marriage and so it was. After the wedding she flew away on the back of the Eagle knight towards his lands.
And there was another year, another walk, another storm, another lightning bolt that cracked the roof in twain, and another colossus of a bird flew through the hole. This bird was a raven, and just like the others it struck the ground and transformed into a brave knight. Ivan, who had by now learned the script (and wished it didn’t involve him repairing a roof every year!) told the knight that he knew him as a guest that had formally stayed in the castle and, cutting straight to the meat of it, asked if he would be interested in marrying his sister. “Why, prince Ivan, that is exactly why I have come! When a guest here I was smitten with your fair sister Anna, but I was then a man of no renown and have now returned as an honoured knight to ask her hand in marriage!”. As it goes Anna had fallen for this knight in turn, and she consented to the marriage, and so it was. After the wedding she flew to the raven knight’s lands upon his back.
Another year passed and this year was very long and very lonely for prince Ivan, and at the end of it he decided to set off and visit his sisters.
–
On Prince Ivan’s travels he one day came upon the carrion luncheon of a fresh battlefield. Strewn across the plain as far as he could see were the piled and devastated remains of soldiers. Seeing no way around the sea of corpses, Ivan began to wade through the bloody, broken, and mutilated wreckage of countless lives. But as Ivan struggled to keep moving in this hellish place he noticed something very strange, the banners and shields of all the dead were the same, if this was a battle then why were there no soldiers of the opposing side? What could explain such a massacre?
Ivan called out to the slain, “If there is any survivor left of this host, answer me. What happened here? What army could wipe out another without losing one man?”
A low and mournful voice returned to him out of the dead, but Ivan could not make out the speaker. It said, “There was no army. There was no man to be lost. All my army, all my comrades were slain by Queen Marya Morevna, both beautiful and terrible.”.
Ivan asked the speaker if he was badly injured, if he needed help? The voice spoke no more. Ivan pushed out of the other end of the field of dead men as the sun started to dip low and on the red horizon he saw the caps of white tents. When he eventually reached these tents Ivan was greeted by an army who, clearly frustrated after marching to battle unneeded, were bloodthirsty and, thinking him a survivor of their enemy host, were excited to cut him to pieces. Just before they set upon him the men were called off by a woman’s voice and slunk away as dogs do.
The woman, as foretold, was beautiful and terrible, she was armoured, smaller than one might expect of a destroyer of armies, and on her dark hair was a crown; Queen Marya Morevna. She told her men that the traveler, though he had come from the battlefield, was not a survivor of the battle, as was plain from his dress (which was not war-like). She said she believed the stranger was in fact a nobleman from his dress, perhaps a prince. Ivan said that he was, in fact, a prince and Marya replied to this, “Hail prince, whither is God taking you? And is it of your own will or by compulsion?”
Ivan answered her: “Brave knights do not travel by compulsion.”
She smirked at this, “And you are a brave knight, is that so?”
Ivan said that he believed that he was but he had not yet, in all honesty, had his mettle tested sufficiently to know.
The Queen told him she believed his mettle would be tested soon enough and said to him, “Well, if you are not in a hurry, rest in my tent tonight and be on your way in the morning”.
But Ivan was not on his way in the morning. The Queen found Prince Ivan to her liking, and Ivan found her to his. She was unlike any woman he had ever heard of, a steel-forged warrior queen, raised to lead an army, trained to decimate others. He was unlike any man she knew, he had spent a lifetime raising three girls (and him half a boy himself), his gentleness and kindness grew with his green gardens. Ivan had none of the bravado or the bloodlust Marya saw in her soldiers, in herself. Marya was the brave knight that Ivan wanted to be so desperately. Ivan had all the soft edges Marya lacked. They evened each other out and from that first night were like two peas in a pod. If any of Marya’s men (who all loved her but in a great swath of different ways) thought the couple an odd match, none ever had the guts to tell the Queen to her face.
The two were married soon thereafter on a midsummers eve in a woodland glade, and returned to Marya’s kingdom as husband and wife, though still as Queen and Prince Regent as Marya would not concede power (Ivan did not care a fig). Here they lived together, very happily, for quite some time.
–
After some time had passed, as was her nature, Marya was itching to make war. She left Ivan in charge of all of her lands and all of her castle. Knowing that warfare was no short affair, she told him to make the most of her kingdom, to explore and enjoy of much of it as he could, from the castle courtyard to the peasant’s inns, the fields, forests, lakes and markets. All of it, except one closet. To this she gave him the key just in case anything should happen to her, but she implored him to never, never open that one closet door. And off she went to wreak havoc on some unsuspecting, faraway land.
But a man’s curiosity is no small thing, soon enough Ivan could not take it any more and unlocked the door to the small closet room. And what did he find there? Just a withered, sorry, old man all chained up. Wrapped around this man- was he dead? – were twelve chains locking his neck, his arms, his legs and his waist all in place, he could barely move a muscle. Ivan approached the skeletal figure slowly and upon hearing a faint whisper from under the long knotted moustaches and was shocked to find this man was in fact still alive. He leaned in closer to hear the weak words, the man said, “Please, please, take pity on me, give me a drink! For ten years I have been tormented here. No food. No Drink. Please, my throat is so parched. I just need water please. Only water…” he trailed off, perhaps falling unconscious.
Horrified, Ivan rushed to find a keg of water and brought it to the prisoner, who drank with great difficulty at first, but soon he drank desperately, greedily. When the whole keg was drunk Ivan tried to ask the man who he was, but his voice was still hoarse, “please, it is not enough, more water, please!”. Another keg of water was fetched and this was drunk not just greedily but with an unnatural speed, how did the water fit inside that boney body? But then again, did he not look healthier already, the eyes brighter, the cheeks less gaunt?
Ivan demanded to know what the man was imprisoned for but he only whined, “Please, just a little more. More water. Ten years with no water. You must help me, you cannot understand the thirst!”. Because Ivan was soft hearted and because ten years without water did sound like an awfully long time, Ivan brought a third keg. This was drunk in a gulp. The man spoke, not hoarsely now, but with a voice laced with icy mirth, “Do you really not know who I am, boy? Could someone really be so naive, so foolish?”
Ivan did not, it seemed he was that naive, that foolish. He shook his head and the man took great pleasure in this reveal, “I am Koschei the Deathless,” with his fully recovered strength he snapped and cracked and shook his chains loose, “and now you will never see Marya Morevna again – not any more than you will see your own ears!”. He pushed Ivan out of the way like a child’s doll and burst out of a window, flying into the night in a raging whirlwind.
The news soon returned to the castle that the Queen had been captured by some unknown demon in a flash of light. Ivan admitted that the demon was Koschei the Deathless and revealed his folly. Well, he may have been prince regent, but he was not very popular in the kingdom after that. Ivan saw no choice but to set out to get his wife back, knowing that it was probably hopeless but that he would be no brave knight at all if he did not attempt a rescue. The only problem was that Ivan had no idea where to start this quest.
Ivan decided to walk to the castle of his brother-in-law, the falcon, and he was warmly received by the Falcon lord and his sister, Marya (other one) but the talk turned grave when Ivan told them of his doomed quest. The Falcon said he had flown far and wide but did not know the location of Koschei’s lair. He directed Ivan to the castle of the Eagle knight, who had flown further and wider than he and may know more. Before he let Ivan go he took him aside and told him that he understood if he must attempt to rescue his wife but that he would surely die, and if he would not give it up would he at least leave a keepsake for his sister to remember him by, an heirloom of sorts? Ivan, who was travelling light, did not have much to give, but parted with a silver spoon and thanked the Falcon for his help.
Three days later Ivan arrived at the Eagles keep, high in the mountains. Just outside the castle, perched in an oak tree was the Eagle Knight himself, who flew down to greet his beloved brother in law. They walked to the keep together and upon reaching the gates Olga flew out at a run and hugged and kissed her brother. The reunion was sweet but the news was dark, and soon Ivan asked the Eagle Lord if he knew where to find Koschei the Deathless. The Eagle knew more than the Falcon but not by much, he had not seen Koschei’s lair but had heard rumours that he dwelled in a region further north-east. Luckily, said the Eagle, I have a friend, a great Raven who also dwells in that region, he will surely know for he flies far and wide. Ivan’s heart swelled, he said that he knew this raven, for he too was a brother in law of his! The Eagle said he would walk the first day of the three day journey there with him, and as they walked he said that he would not ask Ivan to give up on this quest to save his wife, it is the honourable thing to do, but he must surely know the quest is doomed? Ivan relented that he believed that it was. The eagle asked if Ivan had any sort of keepsake he could give to his wife to remember her brother by, and Ivan gave him a silver fork, and thanked him for his help. After a long day’s walk, the knight transformed into an eagle and flew back home in an hour and Ivan thought they should have done that on the way out!
On the edge of a wintery wood Ivan came to the crooked castle of the Raven. The Raven Lord greeted his brother-in-law warmly, the reunion with Anna was sweet, the news was grave. The Raven knew where to find Koschei’s lair and flew Ivan on his back to the boundary of his lands. Dropping him, the Raven asked for a something for his wife to remember him by and Ivan gave him a silver snuff-box and the two said their farewells.
–
Husband and wife were reunited when Ivan found Marya walking the land, the two embraced and strong, war-like Marya weeped and told Ivan it was hopeless, Koschei could not be escaped. Marya asked why Ivan had ignored her instructions and why he had released the monster that was Koschei the Deathless, Ivan simply replied, “I do not recall the past,” and you cannot argue with that I suppose! Ivan learned that Koschei was off hunting and seized the opportunity and ran.
Koschei returned from his hunt and his trusted steed stopped abruptly, swinging her great head around, scanning the land. “Why do you stumble?” asked Koschei to the steed but the steed who was very proud replied, “I do not stumble. Something is afoot. Marya is gone, and the scent of prince Ivan is on the land… And there are tracks, leading this way”.
“Can we overtake them?” asked Koschei.
“I could sow wheat, wait for it to grow, reap it, thresh it, grind it into flour, bake five oven-fuls of bread, eat that bread, then set off, and still overtake them.” replied the steed. The steed, who was not one for idle boasts, overtook Ivan and Marya with ease and Koschei grabbed Marya and threw her on the steed’s back and said to Ivan, “Koschei the Deathless is not known as Koschei the merciful, but you Prince Ivan did once show me kindness in giving me water when I had a great thirst. So too will I show you a kindness, I will not harm you for stealing my property, nor still would I harm you if you were to attempt this a second time, but steal from me a third time and I will cut you into many tiny pieces and dump you deep in the blue sea.”. With that, Koschei rode away with Marya, and Ivan wept.
Of course there was a second attempt and Marya said it was futile and Ivan told her that even if he got to spend two hours on the run with her then it was not futile.
Again Koschei returned, the steed sniffed out the plot and Koschei asked if they could overtake them? The steed replied, “ We could sow barley, wait till it grows, reap and thresh it, brew beer, drink ourselves very drunk, thoroughly sleep off the hangover, and after all that set off and still overtake them.”. The steed once more delivered on her boast and the two runaways were overtaken. Koschei told Ivan, “Did I not tell you that you will not see Marya again just as you will not see the two ears on the side of your head!?! I will show you one last mercy, leave and never return to my lands, for if you do I will cut you into many pieces and cast you into the blue sea!”
But of course Ivan returned, and Marya begged him to leave lest he be cut to pieces, and Ivan told her he could not be without her, and if that meant that he spent the last hours of his life on the run with her then so be it. Koschei eventually overtook them and with his great saber cut Ivan into many pieces. As Ivan lay dying, chopped into countless parts and dashed on the ground, a strange thing happened, he thought he could see his own ears, and then he died. Koschei collected these pieces as Marya wailed, he put them in a barrel as she screamed, he sealed and reinforced the barrel with iron hoops as she cursed him and he eventually, with great power, threw this barrel into the middle of the blue sea.
–
In the houses of the Falcon, the Eagle and the Raven the silver heirlooms blackened. A grave omen! They sought each other out, deduced out what had happened, and hatched a plan. The eagle flew to the blue sea and fetched the, luckily still floating, barrel. The Falcon flew to get the water of life. The Raven flew to get the water of death. Quickly they all reconvened and together carefully took out, washed, and rearranged the pieces of Prince Ivan. The Raven sprinkled the water of death over the puzzled-together corpse and they began to knit themselves back together into a singular body. Then the Falcon sprinkled the water life over the corpse and it was resurrected. Ivan and the birds then hatched another plan.
The bird knights flew to Marya in secret and explained that they were her brothers-in-law and that if she could spy for them and reveal the Koschei’s secrets they would figure out a way to rescue her. She learned of the magical steed he rode, she learned that it was a gift from the Baba Yaga (see the Hermit card or the Six of Swords for more Baba Yaga stories), and she learned that the Baba Yaga lives “beyond thrice nine lands, in the thrice tenth kingdom, beyond a river of fire”. When it came to how the steed came to be given by the Baba Yaga, Koschei was cagier but after a long time she gained his trust. Koschei told her, “I served her for three days as a stableboy, and after three days I managed the impossible task of not letting a single horse go astray and had earned a mare she had promised as a reward. But the Baba Yaga is known to cheat on her deals, and so I did not wait around to be gifted it but took it on the third night and struck out for home.”
“But how did you pass the river of fire?” asked Marya
Koschei waved a strange handkerchief in front of her, “with this magical handkerchief, when I wave it three times in front of my face an immense, otherworldly bridge spans over any expanse before me. When I cross the bridge again I wave it three times again when looking back and the bridge disappears. This I did when the Baba Yaga was hot on my tails and she could not follow.”
Marya reported back, and sent with the birds the recently stolen magic handkerchief. Ivan set off through the thirty kingdoms and eventually came to a river of fire, he waved his handkerchief three times and a great tall bridge spanned high over the licking flames and when he crossed he waved the handkerchief three times and it disappeared. He walked on and he was very hungry, he came to a bird’s nest, and he told the bird that he was so hungry that he would like to eat one of the bird’s eggs, but that as he was now, through his sister’s marriage, family to birds and so he would not. The bird did not understand what this strange human meant by this strange thing he said, but she was grateful that her young were not to be eaten, and so she said she told Ivan that one day she would be of great use to him. Ivan asked how the bird would be of great use, the bird only told him, “I do not yet know, but if an animal tells you they will be of great use to you, do not doubt them!”.
Ivan walked on searching for the Baba Yaga, but now also mainly for something to eat, and came across a lioness sleeping with her cubs. Ivan said, “please lioness may I eat just one of your cubs, you have many and without any food I think I will die?”. The lioness (who could have just torn him to shreds but was feeling kind) said, “you cannot eat one of my cubs, but if you leave us be, there will come a day where I will be of great use to you.”. Well Ivan had remembered his recent advice and walked on, keeled over and starving, but with two promises under his belt. Next Ivan came to a bee hive and he spoke to the queen bee, he said, “please Queen Bee, let me have some of your honey or I will surely die,” but the bee said, “ Ivan, this honey is for us, not you, we made it and we made it for ourselves, but if you leave us alone there will come a day where we will be of great use to you.”
Ivan was so hungry now that he practically crawled onwards, he was delirious, his vision was hazy, he thought he was seeing things. Ahead of him, in the woods, he saw strange things, he saw what looked to be a house (a hut?) walking around on huge chicken legs. In front of the house were twelve pikes and on the pikes were what looked like eleven human heads, just one pike was bare, and why? Ivan’s world began to spin, he heard a voice say “Good day, Prince Ivan!”, and Ivan mumbled, “Good day, Grandmother..” and fainted.
Ivan awoke inside the hut before a plate of cooked meat and a cup of red wine, both were delicious. The Baba Yaga loomed over him and asked, “Why have you come here? Have you come of your own free will or were you forced to come here by some need?”. Ivan told her that he had come to labour for her to earn a steed and the Baba Yaga explained the terms, three days he must work as a herdsman for her mares, but if any day, even one mare should go astray and she would have his head on a pike. The deal was struck.
On the first morning Ivan learned that he had been tricked, as if guided by the devil’s own shepherding the mares scattered in every direction. Try as he might Ivan could not find them and as the sun began to dip he sat upon a stone and wept. His spine went cold when he saw the shadow of the Baba Yaga fall over him and in a furious voice she said, “How did you get all these mares back in the pasture?! Well, no matter, try as you might you won’t manage it again!”. Bewildered, Ivan looked around and saw all the mares accounted for. The Baba Yaga hissed at the mares (intending Ivan not to hear but she was a loud hisser indeed), “Why did you return? I told you to scatter!”. The mares replied that they did scatter but every which way they ran birds blotted out the skies and nearly plucked their eyes out! The Baba Yaga whispered to them (and this part Ivan did not hear) that tomorrow they were not to scatter across the meadows but into the forests, where the birds in the skies would not spot them.
On the second day the mares scattered into the forests, and try as he might, Ivan could not find even one, and he sat on a stone and wept the loss of his head to a pike. The sun began to dip and the mares appeared out of the forests with their tales between their legs and returned one and all to the pasture. When scolded again by the Baba Yaga, they said “we had to return, the forest was alive with great cats that wanted to tear us to shreds”. The Baba Yaga whispered to them that the next day they would swim out into the sea, as this would be expected by no beast great or small. However, as the mares began to swim out to see they heard a great buzzing and soon they were being stung all over by an enormous swarm of bees. They returned and the Baba Yaga was furious with the mares but to Ivan she smiled a wicked smile. She said, “Young prince, you have fulfilled your end of the bargain, at first light I will present you with my finest steed,”.
In the twilight the Queen Bee came to Ivan and told him not to trust the Baba Yaga, who was a trickster and a cheat. If he waited until morning his only gift would be his head on a pike. Instead, at the stroke of midnight, when she will be most deeply asleep, he must steal the mangiest, most deplorable and least guarded horse in her stables and make great haste to cross the river before she awakes and catches up to him. And so, in the middle of the night, on a pile of dung in some forgotten corner of the stables Ivan found a scrawny, sorry excuse of a colt and saddled him and together they rode out into the night. The two had nearly reached the river of fire, for its orange light was already polluting the night sky, when he heard the rhythmic boom of the Baba Yaga’s great pestle as she smashed it through the earth like an oar through the waves, she was making a hot pursuit in the great mortar she rode in. The booming became louder as Ivan and his colt reached the molten rivers shores, he waved the handkerchief three times and the bridge appeared, they hurried quickly and when they had crossed turned and saw the Baba Yaga appearing on the distant shore. Ivan did not however, wave the handkerchief three times and dissolve the bridge, for Ivan was a smarter man than Koschei. Ivan waved the handkerchief two times, and though the bridge looked very thin and very spindly, it still stood. The Baba Yaga made her way half across the river of fire before it collapsed under her weight and the reckless pummeling of her pestle. She fell into that molten doom, and there, in a great fire, died a cruel death.
Ivan, let the horse drink from the fresh water of his own kingdom and it turned into a magnificent stallion. They returned to the Marya, she was overjoyed to see him alive and together they rode off. Later, Koschei returned from a hunt, and his steed this time did stumble, “Why do you stumble?” asked Koschei and the steed replied “Ivan has returned and taken Marya again”
“Impossible, only Koschei is deathless!” replied Koschei.
“Impossible or not, he has done it” stated the horse, plainly.
“Well can we overtake him? Can we sow a field of wheat and eat the bread and over take him? Can we sow the barley and get very drunk and overtake him?”
But the horse told him this was no time for jokes, she said she knew these tracks and she knew this horse, they would be lucky to even catch up to them for this horse was even greater than even she. However, eventually they did catch up to Ivan and Marya after days of sleepless pursuit. Koschei jumped from his steed, pulled out his sharp sabre and began to make a speech about how Ivan and Marya had made this mistake for the last time, but before he could get started Ivan’s new horse kicked him in the head with an incredibly hard back hoof. Koschei screamed for his own horse to help him but Koschei’s horse, who was called Jade, was good friends with Ivan’s horse and wanted to stay out of it. Ivan’s steed smashed Koschei’s head a few more times and as he attempted to crawl away Ivan finished him off with a mace. Marya claimed Koschei’s horse, Jade, and together all four of them burned Koschei’s body and scattered it to the winds.
They went first to see the Raven and Anna, then the Eagle and Olga, then the Falcon and Marya. Everywhere they went feasts were laid out, bells rang and festivals were held. The couple were received with great joy by peasants and lords alike (for everyone hated Koschei) the people all said “”Ah, Prince Ivan, we had given up hope of seeing you again, you truly are the bravest knight in all the lands. Indeed, you have not taken all these pains for nothing; such a beauty as Marya Morevna could be sought throughout the world, but her equal could never be found!”.
In the end they went back to their own kingdom and here they began to live and prosper and drink a lot of mead (Ivan had maintained a close friendship with the bees).
THE END
60, Page of Swords, The False Grandmother or Red Riding Hood
The Page of Swords represents a person who is able to wheedle information out of anyone without revealing anything about themselves. They are a master of secrets and whispers, seemingly all-knowing while remaining themselves wholly unknowable. This figure is often associated with spying and ulterior motives, likely appearing as a warning of a false friend. In terms of the Pages connotations of messages and news, the Page of Swords is an indicator of gossip, lies, and false news, and advises the careful consideration of the legitimacy of spoken and written word.
Upright: Spying, Manipulation, Gossip, Secrets
Reversed: Brutal honesty, Hard truths, Coming Clean
I’m guessing that everyone knows Little Red Riding Hood so I won’t go into the beats of the story but it’s one of those tales that has sort of existed everywhere as long as anyone can remember. The story is so prevalent that it shifts into Grand-Aunt Tiger (instead of grandmother wolf) as you move into Asia.
Wolf tales (big-bad/were) date back at least a thousand years and seem to have maintained a cultural grip for their ability to shift in meaning. The earliest wolf folklore is largely assumed to be literal, as in- don’t wander into the forest because there are wolves in there and they might kill you, but as time goes on the fairy tale wolf becomes a more ambiguous evil.
The popularity of this kind of story seems to have spiked and spread during the werewolf trials in the late middle ages which served roughly a male parallel to the witch trials (not exactly).
A lot of these have been studied retroactively and theorised to be people trying to understand serial killers hundreds of years before that term was even coined. For anyone that’s interested in that look up Peter Stumpp (My Ten of Wands).
In the 17th century, in Charles Perrault’s Red Riding Hood, he explicitly outlines the wolf as a metaphor for sexual predators in his moral (tacked on to the end of the story), where he warns young girls about the ‘many types of wolves”.
The Red Riding Hood tale eventually gets sanitised by the likes of the brothers Grimm and then pulled back into sex and murder by the likes of Angela Carter and on and on and so it goes.
61, Knight of Swords, The She-Mule of Abbess Sofia
This card is a harbinger of substantial change, specifically a change that is taken to with great enthusiasm and positivity. However, there is a slight warning of over-eagerness, of rushing into something without preparing.
In many ways, the Knight of Swords is the archetypal hero, brave, capable and charming. This figure is also tinged with violent and hot-headed traits, and though they are greatly skilled, they are arrogantly self-aware and vain because of it. This person is also a masterful linguist and relishes in any opportunity to debate, argue and perform speeches.
Upright: Bravery, Over-Eagerness, Heroism, Violence
Reversed: Reconsideration of Path, Tentativeness, Cowardice
When the Count of Pratovecchio has two unconventional children, a strong, masculine daughter and gentle, effeminate son he becomes greatly worried about the future and security of his lands. While his daughter learns to hunt, ride, fight and lead, his son seems only interested in gossip and needlework. Though the obvious choice for succession (and though it’s the general wish of everyone) is the sister, Sofia, the times dictate that the male heir will be the next Count and protector of Pratovecchio.
As the Count becomes old and frail Sofia makes him a promise that she will never marry or leave his lands, instead, if he builds her an Abbey she will be sworn in as the Abbess and so always near the castle and ready to protect it. At the proposed site of the new abbey she encounters a She-Mule who appears to be sickly and covered in sores. Everyone else believes the mule will die and pays it little mind but as it begins to snow Sofia orders a shelter built above it and gives it water to drink. The next day the mule appears at the castle gates rejuvenated, the fastest, most powerful steed anyone has ever seen.
Before the abbey is built, Sofia is given a book of saints to choose what will be its patron saint but as she never learned to read (too girlish) she goes off the most striking picture, the bloody severed head of John the Baptist on a platter.
There are plenty more twists and turns as rival lords attempt (and fail) to take their lands and subsequently get defeated by Sofia and/or her mule but that’s the meat of the tale. Well worth a look at the full thing, I found it in The Pomegranates and Other Modern Italian Fairy Tales, edited and translated by Cristina Mazzoni.
If you are interested in a kind of spiritual sister tale to this one, also set in Tuscany and also hinged on John the Baptist, please see Aradia, my High Priestess.
62, Queen of Swords, Melusine the Fair
The Hollow Queen, a card of strange and unpredictable sadness. This figure is decked out with all the robes and jewels, presented with all the pageantry and yet possess no true power. The Queen of Swords gives off connotations of putting on a happy face; of repressed sorrow and the performance of gaiety. This may simply be a perceived impotency, similarly seen in the Seven of Swords with its connotations of imposter syndrome. It may be wholly self-criticism that has deemed this queen unworthy or unfit to rule.
As a mother, this card again suggests a sadness, and a degree of abandonment, not necessarily in a sinister sense but it evokes the widow who has lost a partner and now whose children have grown and left home. She finds herself, for the first time in years, suddenly and completely alone, and cannot help but contemplate what has become of so many selfless years. How does one confront the self after prioritising others for decades? What does one say? What do they do next?
As a female mentor, the Queen of Swords is someone who would never know that they are thought of as a mentor, or even idolised at all. This Queen shares a lot of the nurturing kindness as the Empress, though they would never admit to it. She also differs from the Empress in that she performs this persona with far more dry humour and sharp wit.
She proves herself in actions, and though she may not think of herself as a teacher, those who pay close enough attention will learn a lot in compassion, cultivation, and love.
Upright: Hidden Sorrow, Widowhood, Loneliness, Wit, Compassion, Humour, Absence
Reversed: Malice, Bigotry, Maternal Abandonment, Forgetting
This French tale focuses on two generations of women/nymphs/fays who are punished and exiled for their husbands who break promises to respect their privacy. The story and its many variants across mainland Europe and the British Isles seemingly stem from a desire to reinforce Judeo-Christian ideas on women being ‘unclean’ and kept out of sight after giving birth. Both Melusine and her mother Pressine are banished for being seen by their husbands in this state.
In the context of the story the women are banished because they are serpent/fish monsters (and seen as such in this state), but presumably this is put in the narrative with the intention of highlighting the actual practice of separation of parents after birth in reality.
The story links well to the Queen of Swords not only in its themes of romantic separation/widowhood but also in its meditations on loneliness. Throughout the story Melusine’s actions lead to her loved ones locked in mountains and castles or outright exiling her but she is still a sympathetic character and one worth rooting for.
63, King of Swords, Feng the Kinslayer
The King of Swords is passionate and fierce, a warrior king who inspires these qualities in others. This figure is strong, passionate, and fiercely protective. He is the head of the pride, and to be on the wrong side of his family means desolation. Admired and liked by many, this figure is known intimately by very few. This king would rather lead a battle charge than be confronted with their own psyche.
The King of Swords could be understood as a split between the qualities of the Emperor and Justice. He is perhaps the most powerful of the kings, but also the most terrifying, unlikely to forgive and impatient when it comes to negotiations. His unbreakable ideals make him incorruptible and difficult to manipulate, but they also make him unsympathetic and near impossible to reach a compromise with. As a mentor, he may not always be understanding and his paramount idealism can often drive others away. To this person what has been broken cannot be fixed, and no matter how apologetic or ashamed his loved ones may be about doing him wrong, to this king the deed is done, and nothing can undo it.
It can also be read that the King of Swords is a symbol of adopting new philosophies that will subsequently change one’s own worldview. It could reference a particular event or observation that completely changes a person’s perception of themselves, others, or the world around them.
Upright: Valour, Authority, Idealism, New Theories and Ideas
Reversed: Abuse of Power, Tyrant, Warlord, Sinister Ideals, Suppression of Ideas (in self or others)
Feng, the Kinslayer, or Feng the Brotherless, is the main villain in the Scandinavian legend of Amleth. Amleth is essentially the prototype for Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Feng essentially fills the role of Claudius, the scheming uncle who kills his brother the king to take his wife and lands.
THE SUIT OF PENTACLES
64, Ace of Pentacles, Midas Turns Zoë to Gold
The Ace of Pentacles is a celebration of contentment and humble accomplishment.
This Ace is not about possessing or coming into great wealth in any way, it is simply about being happy with what you have. It certainly implies a degree of stability, implying any seemingly pressing financial troubles may not be as serious as they seem or at least are in the process of being dealt with.
Upright: Financial contentment, Humility, Gratitude
Reversed: Scraping by, Struggling to make ends meet, Being unable to afford the bare essentials
I think generally Midas is viewed as a greedy scumbag but in most versions he’s generous to a fault and gives away more than he can afford to a guest (a secret acolyte of Dionysus) to try and keep up appearances of this ultra-wealthy version of himself that he’s constructed. He gets caught up in becoming his ideal self and botches his life in the process. All understandable, not a bad guy, just some bad choices…
65, Two of Pentacles, Robin Goodfellow or Puck, Hobgoblin and Jester of Oberon’s Court.
The Two of Pentacles is, at a surface level, connected to scenes of performance and revelry and often depicts an entertainer as its central figure. This figure could be understood as more of a court clown, wherein their role as a performer is more of a career than just a personality trait, as in this is not just someone who is confident and funny, but someone who actually makes a living off some kind of comedy or performance art.
There are also connotations of balance, in that the figure is juggling the two pentacles, just as the Two of Swords is struggling to hold up the two swords, so too is that dilemma true of the juggler here. No matter how impressive this split attention is, at some point, a ball will get dropped, and hopefully the other can be caught in time.
Upright: Gaiety, Entertainment, Clowning, Juggling
Reversed: “Forced Fun”, Taking on too much, Losing control
Puck appears across many tales seemingly going back a very long time but is most notably in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was a large inspiration for this (more specifically a series of paintings inspired by it, which I will go into and credit properly soon).
The main influence is the Wychwood Brewery design work of artist Ed Org, notably their flagship ale, Hobgoblin. My dad worked at Wychwood and I grew up around those paintings and absolutely loved them as far back as I can remember. Again, I’ll talk about this in depth and credit the work properly soon, I can only seem to find scraps of that art on Google (also they rebranded all the hobgoblin beer into this kind of microsoft-excel-looking-one-tone-ghost-of-its-former-self version of the artwork and it looks just shite) but I’ll see if I my dad has kept any prints of those original posters and artwork and put it up here if I can.
P.S. The triangle cock and stripey balls are a direct reference to an illustration from 1629 so if anyone wants to come at me with some historical cock-and-balls erasure you are a small minded prude and you can take it elsewhere.
66, Three of Pentacles, Meșterul Manole
The Three of Pentacles is a symbol of skilled labour, often a carpenter, stonemason, or sculptor. This figure is undoubtedly an artist, but what they create is not simply cosmetic or decorative but practical and unpretentious. As with most of the pentacles, there is a financial aspect, the skill referenced here is a marketable tool, not just a hobby. Also, there are connotations of a change from apprentice to journeyman with this card, where an artist has an opportunity to show their quality and newly learned talents to become ‘professional’.
Upright: Craft, Skill, Sculpture, Artistic Breakthrough
Reversed: Mediocrity in work, Cutting corners, Lack of pride
This Romanian folktale serves as an origin myth to The Cathedral of Curtea de Argeș, a 16th century cathedral that still stands.
With hopes of building the most impressive monastery in the land, Prince Radu the Black, founder of Wallachia, employs famed stonemason Master Manole and nine of his men. Manole and his men set to work but find that after several attempts to build the monastery the walls inevitably crumble to nothing. After many excuses and delays Radu the Black is furious, he demands that the monastery be built soon or he will put the masons to death.
After this threat, Manole has a dream that reveals to him that the only way the walls will stand is if a loved one of his or his men is bricked up within the walls forever. He relays the dream to his men and, with heavy hearts, they agree that as they cannot choose who’s loved one will be sacrificed, instead they will leave it to chance, whoever’s wife turns up at the worksite first will be incorporated into the building, bricked in to die.
A short while later Manole see’s his wife walking towards the site with his lunch. He prays to God for rain, hoping she will turn back, it rains but she keeps going. He prays to God for a storm that will turn her back, there is a storm and she pushes through. Eventually she reaches the site and tells him of the rough weather she has had to push through, and that she didn’t turn back because of her love for him. She just wanted to bring her husband his lunch. They brick her into the walls. The beautiful monastery was built.
Upon seeing the fine building and (sometimes secretly) knowing of the sacrifice, Radu the Black asks if they could ever build a greater or more beautiful building. The masons tell the prince that they could and he is horrified that they would presumably make this sacrifice again. He locks them on the roof to die for this sin. The masons attempt to build wings to escape the roof but all plummet to the ground and die.
This tale type floats around most of Eastern Europe and generally follows the same beats. In Serbia, the building of Skadar, the castle of Shkodra in Albania, in Greece the bridge of Arta, in Bulgaria the Selimiye Mosque, the trope even has a variant in Matsue Castle in Japan.
It may be interesting to note that the bricked in wife tale type is essentially just an ancient prototype of the women in refrigerators trope still very prominent today. A woman being sacrificed as a plot device to motivate a male protagonist (especially when he actively sacrifices her and feels really bad about it) is apparently a tale as old as time. Who knew?
67, Four of Pentacles, Comte Arnau
A Strange lesser king within the deck. A miser and who holds on tightly to their meagre wealth with a fierce grip. Though the figure is seen crowned, the title of King seems unworthy and so the card is kept separate from the ‘true’ kings of each suit. There is a slight warning of sitting on money, which is of no use if neither spent nor invested. This figure is unwilling to work for more income or part with a single coin, therefore they find themselves at a stalemate, technically wealthy but with nothing to use. The social consequences of the selfish hoarding of wealth are realised in the poverty and vagrancy of the following card, the Five of Pentacles.
Upright: Hoarding, Misery, Delusions of Grandeur
Reversed: Wanton Generosity, Boundless Charity, Sacrifice, Saving Nothing for Yourself
Comte Arnau, or Count Arnau, is a figure from Spanish folklore and one of the oldest examples of the ‘evil count’ trope. The Story goes that Arnau was a miserly and cruel lord who refused to pay his peasants, undermining the social contract between a lord and the workers on his land who are essentially trading their labour for protection and pay.
The peasants would have turned on Arnau but he was always accompanied by his many dogs, all very vicious and all very loyal. Social tensions are also hot due to the rampant rumours of the Count’s deviant trips to the local abbey under the cover of darkness, where it is said he abuses the nuns. These illicit trips cannot be proven however as the nuns are too ashamed to speak out and though the peasants keep watch of the count’s castle every night and he doesn’t seem to leave.
Eventually, a new, very beautiful Abbess is appointed to the abbey and Arnau becomes obsessed with her. She refuses to let the count into the abbey and tells the nuns to keep the doors locked at night. She soon discovers that Arnau has a secret underground tunnel from his castle to the Abbey, which he then uses to sneak in, kidnap her, and drag her back to his castle. The nuns discover the Abbess missing and the secret tunnel and put two and two together. They raise an uproar with the peasants and a mob turns up at the gates of the castle.
Arnau bursts out of the gates on his great horse with the kidnapped Abbess, accompanied, as always, by his pack of dogs. They ride out into the night but something is wrong, at the stroke of midnight the Count’s loyal pack turns feral, crowding the horse, Count, and Abbess, and tearing them all to shreds.
Rumour has it the devil, as a punishment for his greed and lust, spits the Count out of hell every midnight, on the back of a dead horse, flames streaming from both their eyes and mouths, either leading or chased by a pack of demonic hounds.
68, Five of Pentacles, The Blue Belt
Generally a bleak omen, the Five of Pentacles is often linked to a lack of security and at worse homelessness. This card refers not to the act of charity but to those in need of it. It is also somewhat cynical of charitable organisations and religious morality in action. This card depicts two injured mendicants struggling in a cold night outside the lights of a church window. While it might be expected that the church would care for these people down on their luck, here we see it is apparently not the case. Following this line of thought, it may be a signal to remember the core values at the heart of one’s beliefs and to consider if they have been strayed from.
Upright: Hard Times, Vagrancy, Begging
Reversed: Return of Hope, Romanticised Images of Vagrancy, “Saddle Tramp” figure
In this Norwegian tale from East of the Sun and West of the Moon33, a peasant boy experiences hardship, beauty, loss and betrayal on an epic journey that starts with a magic blue belt and culminates in a quest for his beloved in distant Arabia.
This story is just wonderful, I’ll put together a full version soon.
69, Six of Pentacles, An Airship over Clonmacnoise
The Six of Pentacles offers deliverance from the dire conditions of poverty and need previously seen in the Five of Pentacles. The figure here is a champion of Charity, and patron of those in need. There are implications of great financial success but not greed, as can be seen with the Four of Cups for example. This person does not want to accumulate wealth beyond simply what they need to get by, anything extra is a bonus that can be happily given away. There is also thematic mirroring of the Justice Card, specifically the connotations of the scales as a tool of judgement, however while Justice is generally more concerned with weighing up punishment, the Six of Pentacles is more concerned with weighing up rewards.
Upright: Charity, Gifts, Just Rewards
Reversed: Charity with Ulterior Motive, Hidden Costs, Money Lending
There are many stories of UFO-like ships sailing (flying?) in the sky over Ireland and later over the UK throughout the middle ages. These stories by-and-large seem to stem from an origin point in the 700’s and a Monastery in County Offaly, Ireland.
Though many variations exist, the bones of the tale are that a group of monks at Clonmacnoise abbey see a sailing ship in the sky, the ship’s anchor (or fishing spear) gets somehow stuck in the abbeys belltower (or door), and a sailor jumps overboard and begins to swim, as if he were in the water and not sky, down towards the stuck anchor to free it.
The sailor frees the anchor but is held by the monks attempting to ask him who he is and where he came from.
Both the monks and the sailor become increasingly distressed as the latter begins to thrash around in an attempt to free himself. The head monk (abbot?) arrives on the scene and realises the sailor is drowning, he demands the monks release him and he swims back up to his ship. Neither side really gets an explanation of what the heck just happened.
A wonderful science-fiction story from 1300 years ago, well worth a little extra research for those interested.
70, Seven of Pentacles, Arachne and the Tapestry of Godly Sins
The Seven of Pentacles regards reaping what has been sown and cultivated. Those who have the patience to simply wait will be gifted ripe fruits, yet there is a slight sense that the figure here is somewhat tired of waiting. Perhaps time constraints are wearing patience thin, and the rustic idyll of harvest is now forced to confront the realities of gruelling agricultural toil. There is a warning that those who do all the work can simply be robbed by those with a more ruthless temperament and less patience to wait. It poses the question of why farm all year round to carve a living when one could raid a farm’s stores in a day.
Upright: Cultivation, Toil, Thin Patience
Reversed: Pestilence, Rotten, Soiled or Soured Prospects
The 7 of Pentacles, as I understand it, is a card that depicts someone who’s long laborious hard work is brought into question when measured against the strength of another who can reap or exceed the spoils of said hard work through sheer power/violence.
Arachne and the Tapestry of Godly Sins
Arachne was a spinner, and thought to be the best that lived. Many would often joke that she must have been trained by Athena herself (who invented the loom). Arachne did not like this joke as she saw her talent as the product of her own hard work and, though she begrudged it many years, one day she snapped. When told again that she must have gotten her weaving talents from Athena herself, Arachne replied that her skills are her own and then boasted that her weaving was better than Athena, and should be celebrated in her own right.
Along comes a stranger, a bent old woman in a ragged cloak who chastises Arachne, telling her she can boast that she is better than any mortal but to never boast to be better than the Gods. Arachne brushes the woman off and is told, more seriously now, to apologise. She does not.
The old woman throws off her cloak and before Arachne stands Athena, hugely tall, otherworldly, terrifying. Athena’s shield flashes bright and the bristles of her helmet brush the ceiling of Arachne’s shop.
Athena challenges Arachne to a spinning contest and the two set to their looms to create two wonderful tapestries.
Athena creates a tapestry of Godly opulence, decorated with many scenes of every time a God has challenged her to a contest and how they have all lost to her skill and cunning. Considering all of her victories over Gods, how can this arrogant mortal think to win?
But Arachne’s tapestry is not opulent or godly, it is beautiful, melancholic and the scenes woven into it seem eerily real, as if one could reach in and touch them. Arachne’s tapestry is decorated with scenes of great sins committed by the God’s, (of which there are many but I won’t go into their detail here).
When they are finished the general consensus of the gathering spectators is that Arachne’s tapestry is better, and she is the winner. Athena finds this ridiculous so inspects Arachne’s tapestry and finds to her surprise that there are now flaws in it. She becomes enraged and beats Arachne over the head with her shuttle three times. Arachne, crumpled, crawls out of the jeering crowd on her hands and knees, pointed and laughed and kicked at along the way.
Embarrassed, angry and cheated out of a rightful victory by another God that plays by their own rules, Arachne takes her life.
But Athena is a sore loser (or winner depending on who you listen to), and, when she finds Arachne hanging, decides that she will not let her die. Instead she will transform her into something twisted and horrible, shrinking her down, sprouting more legs from her body and sprouting dark hair from those, dividing her eyes into eight, cracking her jaw into pincers.
Arachne is turned into a spider, forever weaving webs out of some kind of forgotten muscle memory, always a little misshapen, always a little imperfect and full of imperfections.
71, Eight of Pentacles, Wayland’s Smithy
The Eight of Pentacles has similar connotations of craft and trade as the Three of Pentacles but differs in how these connotations are interpreted. While the Three of Pentacles is understood as the first breakthrough of a young and upcoming artist, this is more concerned with a return to quality of an established master. An undeniable skill that has for whatever reason faded in quality or gone out of fashion is now thrust again into the spotlight. This is then a revival or second chance for those fallen from grace, to once more prove their quality.
Another difference is that the Three of Pentacles is producing work for recognition or reward, looking forward to something, but the Eight of Pentacles is looking back. There is a sense that his labour is to make up for something, a kind of penance.
Upright: Mastery, Penance, Revival, Renaissance
Reversed: Wasted Talent, Usury, Outdated Skills
The story of Wayland the smith is, like a lot of these tales, quite garbled and seems to branch into a lot of confusing and contradictory variants so the main source I’ve stuck to for this illustration is Amy Jeff’s retelling in Storyland (a book I highly recommend with its lush linocut illustrations). For a more traditional take on the story Andrew Lang’s 1902 version and it’s wonderful illustrations by Henry Justice Ford are in the public domain and can be found relatively easily online.34
The choice of this as the Eight of Pentacles didn’t really need a second thought, the themes of mastering a craft seemed a perfect fit already but there’s also some nice ideas about looking back and atonement that fit nicely. I won’t go into the full tale here (partly because the ending is quite horrific and Wayland switches from victim to monster in the blink of an eye) but do look it up if you don’t know it.
Squeezed into the drawing is:
-Wayland’s Smithy, which can still be visited in Oxfordshire
-The wedding ring and it’s many (though not quite 900) duplicates
-The skull goblets, eye pendants and teeth broach made from the Kings sons.
-Hervör, the Valkyrie wife who left Wayland, and Böðvild, the Kings daughter who Wayland assaults.
-Wayland himself, hamstrings cut, ankle chains broken, flying away on wings built in his forge.
Wayland the Smith
Wayland was a smith and he was thought to be the best there was. Though he was from Germanic lands and held Germanic Gods, because this was a time of movement, like many of his people he ended up in England. He settled in a place in what is now Oxfordshire and built a great forge and at this forge he worked day and night making beautiful and wondrous things.
Word of Wayland’s creations spread and soon he was making jewellery for noble-women and they showed these pieces to their husbands who wanted swords and they showed these to kings who wanted crowns and the praise of his work spread like wildfire.
And then something strange happened, news of Wayland’s smithy reached the ears of the Valkyries, and they flew down to earth seeking Wayland.
They appeared to him in their gleaming armour and with their golden hair, impossibly tall, unbelievably strong, alien and magnificent. At first Wayland was afraid, not only of the Valkyries themselves but of the challenge of forging metal to fashion and quality of their otherworldly helmets, breastplates, spears, shields and chariots.
But Valkyries where respectful of his very human capabilities and speed in making what they asked for, they were always happy and impressed by what he made for them, and they became very good patrons for the forge.
One of these Valkyries, Hervör, seemed to alway be needing her equipment repaired, or some adjustment made, a sword sharpened, a shield buffed. She came to the forge more often than anyone else and as Wayland bellowed and hammered and drew schematics and sharpened and buffed, the two talked long and openly. And Wayland, who had always been a stern and solitary man, began to make for Hervör softer and more delicate things, bracelets, necklaces, broaches, and then one day he made her a ring. The two were married and lived together happily for seven years.
One day, without much fanfare, Hervör slips off her ring, returns it for Wayland, and with a heavy heart, flies away into the west and the setting sun.
Some say that Hervör, knowing that Valkyries do not age like mortal men do, knew that the good years were coming to an end and could not stand to watch her love whither and die, she preferred to leave him and remember him as he was then, in his prime, with his broad smiths shoulders and broad smiling face, red from the heat of the forge.
Some say that, though she could not explain this to Wayland and that it broke his heart, the time of Valkyries and their Gods was coming to an end, a new religion and a new God was taking root in the land, because of this the Valkyries and their ilk must, diminishing in their power, leave this land to never return.
If those reasons sound familiar, like you have maybe read them in the Lord of the Rings, it’s because these are the kinds of Anglo-Saxon stories Tolkein would have been reading, translating and teaching, it’s no coincidence.
Wayland, with his heart burst, refused to make anything new for anyone, but the forge fires did still glow. He worked ceaselessly making perfect duplicates of the ring that Hervör had returned to him, he hammered them out until he had nine-hundred and then he fell into a great black depression and the forge fires went out. All was quiet from the forge for many years.
But the rumours of his prowess began to spread still, and a new English king, who worshiped the new foretold God, wanted Wayland to make him a great many things and he combed the land until he found him…
When this King did find the smith, Wayland told him that the forge-fires were cold and his days of smithing were done, and he apologised that the King had come all this way but he would not work for him.
The King did not like this one bit, he ordered that Wayland be hamstrung and arranged a system of chains and poles and pulleys from which to keep him suspended and mobile around the workshop. Under threat of death and torture, the forge fires were lit and Wayland was put back to work. From the amassed treasures in the forge, the King stole a crown, his wife, the Queen, stole a necklace, his two spoilt princely sons stole swords, and his daughter, a princess who was not like the others, felt shame and horror at the ordeal.
Henry Justice Ford (Illustrator), 1902
The princess, whose name was Böðvild, told the great smith that she was sorry for what was happening and she felt shame when she saw him chained and hanging, bleeding from his hang-strings, a ragged broken thing and she told him that she would not steal anything from him.
Wayland found some small solace in the kindness of the princess and believed her. And the Princess had meant what she had said, but then she saw something, amongst a pile of 900 identical, beautiful rings there was one that was, though identical, not like the others. It called to her, and though she promised Wayland that she would not take anything, she did in fact take one small thing, and if he did not see her take it, one identical ring from a pile of 900 would surely not be missed?
…
72, Nine of Pentacles, The Erlking’s Daughter
This figure could be understood as an heiress, relishing in the delights of the fruitful garden in her decadent estate. She is a connoisseur of high art, fine food, and all other pleasurable things. While not fully hedonistic, this figure is definitely indulgent when it comes to material joys. This figure is also a patron of the natural world and is an advocate for art in nature.
There are slight connotations that this figure has not earned this money and subsequently does not appreciate the value of it. Often this person is a feminine and aristocratic figure, who in a historical context would have been born or married into money, most likely both. Following this, it can, therefore, be assumed that this person does not have full access to their money either and is in some way dependent on another.
Upright: Luxury, Bounty, Aristocracy, Materialism, Dependency
Reversed: Dissatisfaction with Wealth and Marriage, Money can’t buy happiness, Disinterest in the Natural AND material worlds
The Erl King’s Daughter is a Scandinavian/Germanic story wherein (due to a translation error) he is either an Elf King or a Alder (as in the tree or forest) King. The Erlking himself is outright sinister and seems to want to abduct and/or kill children and there are plenty of stories about him but he’s not really present in this tale. The Erlking’s daughter on the other hand is more of a seductress or spurned lover who somehow curses a man who leaves or rejects her to marry another woman, usually the next morning. However, the man mysteriously dies or is found dead before the wedding can take place.
This narrative of women turning murderous after a man leaves them for another woman pops up everywhere and goes back forever, a personal favourite is the Scottish variant Young Hunting (Nick Cave’s Henry Lee is a version of it). This supposed universality coupled with the creepy eldritch father-in-law setup is probably why the Erlking’s daughter stories seem to be so popular. As always, look it up!
Here’s an English translation of Peder Syv’s “Elveskud” from 1695:
“Many ride tall and red
but in the morning sick and dead.
Sir Olof he rides so far
to his wedding to offer his hand,
and the dance goes so lightly through the grove.
There dance four, and there dance five,
elfking’s daughter reaches out her hand.
“Welcome, Sir Oluf, let thy burdens go,
stay a little, and dance with me.”
“I don’t dare, I may not:
tomorrow I will be wed.”
“Listen, Sir Oluf, dance with me,
two buckskin boots I will give to thee.”
Two buckskin boots, fitting well around the legs,
gilded spurs buckled on.”
Listen, Sir Oluf, dance with me,
a silken shirt I will give to thee.
“A silken shirt so white and fine,
my mother bleached it in the moonshine.”
“I don’t dare, I don’t have to:
tomorrow I will be wed.”
“Listen, Sir Oluf, dance with me,
a lump [lit. “a head”] of gold I will give to thee.”
“A lump of gold I can receive,
but dance with thee I dare not.”
“And if thou wilt not dance with me,
plague and disease will follow thee.”
She struck him between his shoulders,
never had he been hit harder.
She lifted Sir Oluf onto the horse red,
“Ride back to thy betrothed maiden.”
Then he came to his castle gate,
that his mother is resting beside.
“Listen, Sir Oluf, my son,
why are thy cheeks so pale?
“My cheeks are pale,
because I’ve been in the elf-wives’ gate.”
“Listen, Sir Ole, my son so proud,
what should I tell thy young bride?”
“I will say I’m outside in the grove,
to ride my horse, and try my dogs.”
Then in the morning, day it was,
came the bride in her bride-gown.
“They gave me mead, they gave me wine,
where is Sir Ole, my groom?”
“Sir Oluf rode into the grove,
he’s trying his horse, and his dogs.”
She took up the scarlet red,
there lay Oluf, and he was dead.
Early in morning, day it was,
there comes three corpses off Sir Ole’s farm.
Sir Oluf and his bride to be,
his mother died from sorrow.
but the dance goes lightly through the grove.”
73, Ten of Pentacles, Diamonds and Toads
The Ten of Pentacles is an overall good omen associated with good fortune and abundance of wealth. It also suggests a groundedness despite good fortune and implies that money, in this case, has not become an obsession or corruptor. This card also pertains to inheritance, either in the sense that security is assured for future generations or that wealth is being handed down from past generations.
Upright: Lasting Success, Stability, Riches, Inheritance
Reversed: Inheritance Exclusion, Loss of Wealth, Robbery
In this tale two sisters (or step sisters) learn the importance of how they treat strangers wherein a fairy in disguise asks for a drink of water from a well, one sister responds graciously and one curses her out. The fairy enchants the good sister with the ability to vomit out diamonds and jewels, the rude sister on the other hand is cursed to vomit out snakes and toads.
74, Page of Pentacles, Puss in Boots
Like the other pages, the Page of Pentacles is a messenger, in this case, they herald of good news within the sphere of education, knowledge, or learning. There are also recurring page connotations of youth and beginnings, in this case, we could take this as someone on the first step to success, inspired and willing to make something of themselves. This Page is an acknowledgement of aspirational dreams, but not a promise of fulfilment and should not be read as such, however, it does suggest a solid and encouraging start.
Upright: Study, Pursuit of Knowledge, Prospects, Plans, and Good News on Material Matters
Reversed: Selfish Enterprise, Lack of Goals, Prodigality, News of Material Loss
Like Jean de l’Ours (my Fool), Puss in Boots is one of those folktale archetypes that appears all over Europe and while he generally stays the same, the events and directions of the stories he appears in vary quite a bit. The most famous version is probably Charles Perrault’s35, which was my main source.
The general themes of the stories do seem travel more or less the same road though, in that puss helps his master rise from a penniless orphan to a king (or some other high status position) through a snowballing series of lies, each new one relying on the ones that have come before.
Sometimes Puss in Boots faces the consequences and is punished for these lies but more often than not he gets away scot-free and he (and his master) live happily ever after.
Considering how moralistic a lot of fairy tales seem to be it does feel odd that the takeaway from the Puss tale seems to be that it’s absolutely fine to use a web of lies to rise above your social class. Well, fair enough I reckon.
75, Knight of Pentacles, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Knight of Pentacles is a figure that, no matter how long it takes and no matter the cost, will always get what they want. This person is methodical, meticulous and relentless. They are a tracker and a hunter. Patient beyond expectations and dedicated beyond reason. Essentially, this card is about not quitting until the goal is achieved, never cutting corners, wavering in loyalty, or doubting the legitimacy of the cause.
Upright: Loyalty, Dedication, Relentlessness
Reversed: Conservatism, Bias, Ignorance
In this popular Arthurian Legend a Christmas beheading game goes awry at Camelot. This story also features the first use of the word pentacle (or “pentangle”) in the English language.
76, Queen of Pentacles, Rhiannon, Queen from the Otherworld, Accused of Infanticide, Wears the Collar of an Ass in Penance.
The Queen of Pentacles could be understood as the Nine of Pentacles fully matured, an admirer of natural and material beauty, but also someone who can balance these interests amongst a wide array of other interests and commitments.
The Queen of Pentacles is definitely a woman that is dependent on no man and will be accepted as an equal even if that means working ten times as hard. There are also connotations that this woman is a mother but is not necessarily ‘motherly’, she does not and will not let her children or her ability to have children define her. As a maternal figure, this Queen possesses a wealth of intelligence and material bounty but is somewhat more prone to emotional distance than many of the other female mentors of the deck. This is a Mother who is sometimes more appreciated in retrospect, who raises polite, intelligent and independent children, but errs on the side of overly strict.
Upright: Feminine Power, Equality, Admiration for Material and Natural Beauty, Strict Parenting
Reversed: Lack of Empathy, Overt Materialism, Snobbishness, Pretentiousness
After Rhiannon forsakes her life (and a fiancé) in the otherworld to marry her earthly love, King Pwyll (see my King of Wands), the two live happily until the lack of an heir sparks rumours and jokes about the couple’s infertility throughout Wales. Eventually, to great relief from all involved, Rhiannon does conceive and eventually gives birth to a son, Pryderi.
The tension is briefly relieved until one night, as Rhiannon goes to bed entrusting her son to six of her Ladies-in-waiting, one by one they fall asleep. Pryderi has disappeared when they wake up.
Knowing they will face likely execution for allowing the Royal child to go missing on their watch, the Ladies-in-waiting hatch a plan to frame the Queen. They kill a puppy, smear its blood across Rhiannon’s mouth and leave its small bones at the foot of her bed. They raise the alarm and stick to their story that Rhiannon killed and ate her own son while they watched.
Rhiannon awakes to the castle in chaos and the spreading news of her infanticide and cannibalisation of the crown prince. Rather than fight the claims Rhiannon for some reason confesses and is granted mercy by her husband.
In penance she was made to wear the collar of an ass, in which she must greet every traveller that enters the kingdom with the full tale of her crimes and offer to carry their luggage and let them ride her like a donkey.
Eventually a boy is found and everyone agrees that the boy must be the missing prince with seemingly very little evidence and Rhiannon is absolved but that’s a story for another time.
77, King of Pentacles, Goldemar, Kobold King of Castle Hardenstein
The King of Pentacles regards the achievement of success and power, and the acceptance of these mantles with grace. This figure is a symbol of wealth but also of philanthropy, having earned his wealth through grit and determination whilst never stepping on those less fortunate than him in order to succeed.
This King, like the others, is a father figure, however, unlike the others, his protection and provision comes at a price. There is a sort of contractual obligation to being in the care of the King of Pentacles, those who earn their keep will be rewarded tenfold, those who show respect shall receive it back, and those who adhere to his law will benefit from it. However, this king will not stand to be dishonoured or embarrassed and will cast out unworthy and ungrateful children.
Upright: Grace, Betterment, Stern but Fair Parenting,
Reversed: Vice, Exploitation, Perversion
Goldemar, is a German Kobold, which is kind of a poltergeist (nothing like a D&D Kobold) or sometimes Dwarven King.
Becoming a bit of a stock character that appears in many stories told from many storytellers, Goldemar changes drastically from tale to tale.
In some tales Goldemar is simply a magical, invisible and generally affable resident of Castle Hardenstein, where he potters around, plays the harp beautifully, gambles, and occasionally gets up to mischief. Though no one can see him, he lets those who ask touch his hands, which they always describe as cold, soft and frog-like.
Goldemar brings good fortune to the Lord of the castle, Neveling von Hardenberg and his family under the condition that the two share a bed every night and Neveling allows Goldemar to call him his “brother in law”. This relationship sours after Goldemar kills a kitchen boy, cuts him into pieces, roasts, and eats him. The boy had laid ash/flour on the floor to mark Goldemar’s tracks (and so see where he is), this was clearly not well received.
After this roasting incident Goldemar leaves before he is presumably kicked out, leaving a note that the good luck of the castle will leave with him.
There are a few other tales where Goldemar has an underground Kingdom of dwarfs and has stolen a human princess, which while more dramatic, are less interesting than the weird housemate energy of the above version.
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Designed and printed in the UK
Footnotes
- Austin Osman Spare: Ethos – The Magical Writings of Austin Osman Spare ↩︎
- Aleister Crowley, on the THOTH ↩︎
- Credit where credit’s due this is an Eliza Clark gag from Boy Parts ↩︎
- “Tarot Becomes Egyptian”, Warburg Institute, Tarot Origin’s and Afterlives exhibition 2025 ↩︎
- “Tarot Becomes Egyptian”, Warburg Institute, Tarot Origin’s and Afterlives exhibition 2025 ↩︎
- The Sola-Busca tarocchi is the world’s oldest surviving complete tarot deck. Created around 1490, it is named for the family who owned it until 2009, when it became part of the collection of the Pinacoteca di Brera in Milan. ↩︎
- Moakley, Gertrude (1956). “The Tarot Trumps and Petrarch’s Trionfi: Some Suggestions on their Relationship” ↩︎
- Enrique Enriquez, “An Anthology of Writings” – https://archive.org/details/enrique-enriquez-visual-poetry-anthology/page/16/mode/2up ↩︎
- What then complicates this is an extensive history of Romani peoples who do deal tarot cards and do offer fortune tellings and have done so for a long time. What arises is a chicken and egg argument of how to approach a culture that begins to cannibalise itself wherein a stereotype is played up to and performed (usually for financial gain in presenting to an othered community) until it becomes a realised part of that identity.
I’ll go into it a little more when discussing Margeret Finch, my Queen of Cups for this deck, who did seemingly go by and was known as “The Gypsy Queen of Norwood”, and whether to respect that moniker despite the retrospective view on the word “Gypsy” as a racial slur. ↩︎ - The Castle of Crossed Destinies (An exhibition subtitle not his book of the same name), Warburg Institute, Tarot Origin’s and Afterlives exhibition 2025 ↩︎
- Said in a 1967 Lecture titled, ‘Cybernetics and Ghosts’, which can be found in full here: https://www.jfki.fu-berlin.de/academics/SummerSchool/Dateien2011/Reading_Assignments/iuli_reader2.pdf ↩︎
- Alan Moore, ‘The True History of What Didn’t Happen’, and afterword essay to The Great When, A Long London Novel (2024). Unfortunately, this essay is only available in audio format as it was only included in the audible version of the book (as far as I can tell, at the time of writing this), if that changes I will include a link to the full written essay if possible. ↩︎
- ― I’m essentially paraphrasing ideas presented in Cormac McCarthy’s Stella Maris (2023) here, which has some wonderful chunks of dialogue on the topic, for example, “The arrival of language was like the invasion of a parasitic system. Co-opting those areas of the brain that were the least dedicated. The most susceptible to appropriation.” ↩︎
- Paul Delarue and Austin E. Fife,The Borzoi Book of French Folk Tales (1956). https://archive.org/details/borzoibookoffren00dela/page/45/mode/1up?view=theater ↩︎
- The Origin and History of Irish Names of Places, Patrick Weston Joyce (1870)
https://archive.org/details/originhistoryofi00joyc/page/319/mode/1up ↩︎ - Charles Godfrey Leland, “Aradia, or the Gospel of Witches” (1899) https://archive.org/details/aradiaorgospelw00lelagoog/mode/2up ↩︎
- The Brut, or The Chronicles of England, 13th Century, Anonymous,
I used the following version as reference, Edited by Friedrich W. D. Brie, (1906) https://archive.org/details/brutorchronicles00brieuoft/page/1/mode/1up?view=theater
-This link is to the text in Middle English (Later Middle English, maybe? I’m no expert on this stuff), if anyone wants to give it a go, please do. It will seem impenetrable at a glance, but with a little perseverance you should be able make sense of about 80% of what’s going on. The best tips I have for cracking it are to literally sound out the words as you read them (out loud) until they start to make sense and that “þ” (thorn) symbol is the “th” sound (so þey = they, for example). Good luck.
-I did search hard for a free-to-access modern english translation and came up short.
↩︎ - Dir. Veith von Fürstenberg, Fire and Sword (German: Feuer und Schwert: Die Legende von Tristan und Isolde) (1981)
https://archive.org/details/tristan-isolde-feuer-und-schwert-english
This free-to-view version does occasionally flip from English to German and back again but it’s easy enough to follow. ↩︎ - Die Nibelungen, dem Deutschen Volke Wie: Dererzahlt Von Franz Keim. 1907
https://archive.org/details/dienibelungendem00vien/page/38/mode/1up ↩︎ - Dir. Fritz Lang (1924)
https://archive.org/details/silent-die-nibelungen-kriemhilds-revenge
This version I’ve linked has no sound (yes, I know, it’s a silent movie, a lot of versions are put to music) but it’s the highest quality version I’ve found. That being said, don’t just watch this in utter silence like a creep, you’re smarter than that, just put on some music to go with it. These weird, old, silent fantasy films pair especially well with dungeon synth and if you need a recommendation on where to start with that Dungeontroll’s Labyrinth of the Golden Princess is a nice entry point to the genre (found on lots of platforms but I’ll link the bandcamp page bellow)
https://dungeontroll.bandcamp.com/ ↩︎ - Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (1400).
https://archive.org/details/canterburytaleso00chauuoft/page/n9/mode/2up ↩︎ - “The Kiss of Shame”, wherin witches would kiss the arsehole of the devil (or lesser demons) in a supposed display of subservience and/or sexual act, illustrated here in the Compendium maleficarum:
https://archive.org/details/image4995MiscellaneaOpal/page/n86/mode/1up ↩︎ - Charles Sellers, “THE WOLF-CHILD”, Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes (Spanish and Portuguese Folklore) (1888) https://archive.org/details/talesfromlandsof00selluoft/mode/2up ↩︎
- The Brut, or The Chronicles of England, 13th Century, Anonymous,
I used the following version as reference, Edited by Friedrich W. D. Brie, (1906)
https://archive.org/details/brutorchronicles00brieuoft/page/10/mode/1up?view=theater
(For tips on reading middle English, see footnote 16)
↩︎ - Will Vesper, E. R. Vogenauer, Die Nibelungen-Sage, 1921
https://archive.org/details/dienibelungensag00vesp/page/32/mode/2up ↩︎ - Sidney Lanier, Knightly legends of Wales or, The boy’s Mabinogion, being the earliest Welsh tales of King Arthur in the famous Red book of Hergest, 1905
https://archive.org/details/knightlylegendso00lani/page/168/mode/2up ↩︎ - Francis Hindes Groom, In Gypsy Tents (1880)
https://archive.org/details/cu31924028693632/page/n321/mode/2up
↩︎ - Francis Hindes Groome, Gypsy Folk Tales (1899)
https://archive.org/details/gypsyfolktales00groogoog/page/n308/mode/2up?q=englandhttps://archive.org/details/gypsyfolktales00groogoog/page/n308/mode/2up?q=england
↩︎ - William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, Act 1, scene 1
https://shakespeare.mit.edu/much_ado/much_ado.1.1.html
↩︎ - Joseph Jacobs, English Fairy Tales, 1890, https://archive.org/details/englishfairytale1902jaco/page/n3/mode/2up
↩︎ - William Butler Yeats, Fairy and folk tales of the Irish peasantry (1890)
https://archive.org/details/fairyfolktalesof00yeat/page/16/mode/2up ↩︎ - Richard Harris Barham, ‘The Nurses Story’, The Ingoldsby Legends, or Mirth and Marvels (1907)
https://archive.org/details/endsingoldsbyleg00ingorich ↩︎ - Peter Christen Asbjørnsen, East of the sun and west of the moon : old tales from the North, (1922?)
https://archive.org/details/eastofsunwestofm00asbj/page/n7/mode/2up ↩︎ - Andrew Lang, Henry Justice Ford, The Book of Romance, 1902
https://archive.org/details/bookofromance00lang/page/n322/mode/1up ↩︎ - Charles Perrault, The fairy tales of Charles Perrault (1922)
https://archive.org/details/fairytalesofchar00perr/page/68/mode/2up ↩︎
