As I don’t seem to have time to draw daily cards at the moment – let alone think or write about them – I thought I’d try this: a 3-card reading for the week ahead which I can think about and write about in dribs and drabs (maybe).
I used the Hudes, which is my Deck of the Month for February. I’m warming to this deck day by day.
1 – Opportunities – 5 of Pentacles
2 – Challenges – Page of Swords
3 – Advice – 9 of Swords
Thoughts on this to follow (hopefully)!
In what will surely become known as “The January of Mad-Crazy Tarot Deck Buying” (see below), I have acquired the Hudes Tarot.
This is a deck I thought I hated and would never own, simply because of the Magician card which “graces” the front of the box. Frankly, it’s an ugly card. The Magician looks old and crabby and snippy whereas in my mind he should be virile and charismatic and crackling with energy. Because of this, I have never really looked any closer at the Hudes (well, that, and the fact that the scans at Aeclectic are truly, truly awful).
Yet, for some unknown reason, I suddenly wanted the Hudes. This has happened before – a strong feeling of suddenly being drawn to a deck I’ve shown no previous interest in – and I’ve learned to just go with it (it’s how I met the Haindl). And guess what? The Hudes is a lovely deck. It’s warm and calm and often very beautiful in a modest way. If the Hudes was a bird, it would be a wren.
As I’ve grown older and more set in my ways, I’ve become less forgiving of tarot decks that don’t align with my own takes on the cards. I rarely buy a deck nowadays that puts Justice at VIII; I avoid decks that cop-out and rename Death; and I almost certainly would poo-poo a deck that used any old circular object to represent the Wheel of Fortune just to make the card fit a theme (okay, that last one is probably still a good reason to avoid a deck).
The tarot world is full of different perspectives – that’s what fascinated me about it in the first place. Yet, lately, I’ve become less willing to experiment and explore. This is a mistake. Instead of looking at the Hudes Magician and thinking “that’s wrong, I don’t like that”, I should think “hmm, what an interesting depiction of the Magician, I wonder why the artist chose to portray him like that – I must investigate further”.
It is perhaps only by approaching new decks in this frame of mind – with open curiosity – that we can continue to learn more and more, to broaden our tarot horizons and keep ourselves from becoming stale. In this way, we are like Fools, and each new deck starts a new journey. Some journeys will be short-lived and take us nowhere (such as the short trip I took with the Tarot of the Secret Forest). Others will take us further than we dreamed possible.
Anyway, this post is my gift to you. Feel free to use it as an excuse to buy a new deck (or more). So far this month I’ve used it as an excuse to buy the Fairytale Tarot, the Hudes, the Truth-Seeker’s Tarot, the New Palladini and the Caring Psychic Family Tarot. 
In my early teens, I went through a phase of wanting to be a cowboy. Which, I’ll readily admit, was a little weird for a middle-class girl from suburban England, but then Young Guns was out and I was easily impressionable.
Anyway… I’d actually forgotten all about that until a couple of days ago when I got a sneak peek at Robin Ator’s new tarot deck. Robin Ator, as I’m sure you know, is the extremely talented person who gave us the International Icon Tarot and the Ator Tarot. This new tarot, however, is something altogether different. I’m going to quote what Robin wrote in his email as it’s far more eloquent a description than I could muster:
“The whole point, for me, has been to do a deck that reflects my own experiences growing up in northern Montana. It was a high-prairie, bare, sparse place, with its old echoes of farmers, cowboys and, of course, the animals and Indians who were there before any of us.
The Prairie Tarot is a very personal deck. It’s made only for myself, really, and is not an attempt to create any sort of universally-accepted canon…It reflects my own experience of the people, and stories of the place I heard and read growing up.”
And here are the images he sent me (which he also kindly permitted me to reproduce here). Quite frankly, they took my breath away:
It may be a personal deck but, from these few images, it’s clear to me that it will be a highly readable deck. A sign of a good deck I think is when you can instantly connect with an image the very first time you see it – when meaning is conveyed through the image, without any need for explanation or deciphering. These images speak to me that way.
The Hierophant, for example, stands as a living example of ages old tradition and wisdom passed down through Native American culture. His clothes and headdress convey a sense of belonging, yet he stands alone, and his face is in shadow, making him seem distant and austere. It’s a very solemn card, but also strangely reassuring.
The Wheel of Fortune, with it’s full spectrum of colour, shows sometimes the wind blows hot and sometimes it blows cold. Sometimes circumstances complement us and sometimes they oppose us. Even in the 21st Century, when we try to manage our lives down to the smallest detail, the weather is a reminder of forces outside our control – that there are things bigger than we are. The power of the wind can be harnessed and bring us good fortune, but it can also flatten houses and destroy crops, making this card a perfect symbol for the Wheel of Fortune.
So, beautiful and meaningful. Suffice to say, I’m very much looking forward to seeing the finished deck.
New Year’s Day is my favourite day of the year. After the excess, pressure, and general mayhem of Christmas, New Year is a welcome relief. Whereas the success of Christmas seems to be all about the various trappings and preparations, New Year requires no special equipment – you just need to keep one ear open for Big Ben. And because it’s so simple and so short a celebration, it’s magical in a way that Christmas can never be.
For me, New Year is a time of great promise, hope, optimism, enthusiasm and joy. I look forward to the long year ahead and believe that I can spend it doing whatever I set my mind to. I always associate the Ace of Swords with New Year – because it’s so bright and pure; because that shining blade pointing north is just like the hands on a clock pointing to midnight; because it symbolises good intentions, fresh ideas and new resolutions; because its crisp clarity is the perfect partner to the cold month of January and because, like New Year, its influence eventually fades. As the year progresses, I seem to get more and more bogged down by bad habits and sidetracked by trivialities but on January 1st, my newly laid plans seem so easily achievable.
My New Year’s wish for 2009 is that I will write more and read more, and relish the time spent doing both.
Happy New Year.
