Today I am begin a week of work with the self published Twisted Tales Tarot, a deck conceived and illustrated by the team of Christine Aguiar and James Battersby.
I am using my faithful standby New Deck Interview spread by FireRaven found on the now read only Aeclectic Tarot Forum.
The first position reads, “Tell me about yourself. What is your most important characteristic?” The Page of Swords answers in a robotic tone, “I expose the faulty thought patterns that lead to the breakdown of intelligent systems.” The artist seems focused on the aspect of the Page of Swords that is often depicted as a young spying person, someone with wit and intelligence but lacking in compassion and emotional maturity. I can expect blunt answers given without pretty window dressing around them.
The second position asks, “What are your strengths as a deck?” “Ma’am, I don’t know much about this world but I do know we come into it naked without a cent to our name and we leave the same.” The Eight of Cups is often read as abandonment of a hopeless situation, and this grim image takes it to the extreme. A poker game gone wrong, and all those dollars and coins left on the table. This deck is good at stripping away false idols.
The third card will describe “What are your limitations as a deck?” The Knight of Swords brashly declares, “I go where I want and I do what I want.” This deck has already described itself as brash and non-sentimental, and just to make sure I really understand that the slight maturation of the Page from the opening question has appeared to emphasize the point. This card is a depiction of Jeff the Killer, by the way.
The fourth card asks, “What do you bring to the table- What are you here to teach me?” In response, the Queen of Wands lets loose a single arrow, not meant to main or kill, but to get my attention. In my own personal mythology, Medusa is rage made flesh, wreaking revenge on those who would defile the beauty and soul of another person for their own selfish pleasures. In my personal landscape of allegory, snakes are the most terrifying thing I could encounter, yet the gorgon lives contentedly with hers. That which I fear is the source of immense power.
Card number five reveals, “How can I best learn from and collaborate with you?” The Fool, who I assume is me, is being invited and cajoled with sweets. I already know this deck will not be the kind to sugar coat things, but maybe I want to think it will, and maybe that is okay for now. Once I have seen a thing I can’t unsee it, so whatever it takes to get me to look may be justified. I have to be willing to sit with the discomfort of not really knowing where I am going with the deck, and with not being promised reassuring answers, but that doesn’t mean what I learn won’t be for my highest good, even if it doesn’t come in a pretty love and light box with a bow.
The final card addresses, “What is the potential outcome of our working relationship?” The Tower, my long nemesis, here depicted as a nuclear cooling tower. The creator describes The Tower as unsettling revelations and , destruction of established ideals, patterns of behavior, long held beliefs, and relationships. For someone as deeply connected to routine and as afraid of change, which in my life has usually meant for the worse, as myself, the Tower is a terrifying card. Yet this time, I welcome it. I am feeling a bit stale and am ready for some shakeups. I would prefer they weren’t on the level of nuclear meltdown, but while we can control some aspects of life, the Tower usually comes into play wild and out of control.
From this New Deck Interview, I am anticipating that this deck will give me a week of frank and to the point readings, often revealing truth that I was not prepared to face, but need to. This is disconcerting, but I would always rather know the truth than be trying to work with a lie.
I have been experiencing a long dark night of the tarot soul, well maybe just my human soul, for a while now. My days and nights are passing in almost a fugue state. I have been deliberately not looking at my life objectively, feeling powerless to change some things that are making me deeply unhappy, and sometimes I wonder what right I even have to be so unhappy. I live in a warm and safe home with a husband who loves me, my one child left at home, a trio of happy doggos, and the granddaughter whom I adore. We can pay our bills and afford a few small luxuries. My discontent seems a radically selfish thing to me, and yet, it exists. It’s there. This doesn’t have anything to do with the reading, or maybe it has everything to do with the reading, I don’t know. But I feel like I am walking through water, and it is making every task in life about 800 times harder than it needs to be. My lifelong loves, tarot, reading, and writing, have fallen to the wayside. It seems too hard, too much effort, to shuffle, to type, to digest the words. Even typing that brings the sharp pinprick of tears in my eyes, because these things have always been my touchstone, my port in any storm, and to feel stripped of them now is a deep sorrow to me.
78 Whispers In My Ear 