The past couple of weeks, I’ve been finding comfort in my Haindl and instead of wildly posting here every single tarot thought that comes to mind (or at least, trying to), I’m enjoying some quiet contemplation here.
It’s a bit too quiet though…apparently, I one day I got a record TWO visitors. If you like the Haindl and would like to make my contemplation a little less quiet, please come visit. 
Of all the Fools in all the decks, I love this one the most.
The Haindl Fool possesses such purity and grace. His expression conveys both sadness and wonder, such aching joy for all that the world holds – from the blood pulsing beneath a swan’s white feathers, to the slow invisible movement of planets in the sky. And here he stands before it, inadequate in his patchwork and bells, with the realisation that he is small, human, humble and nothing - in the face of the incomprehensible beauty of everything.
I am a fool, he says, for believing I knew anything.
Long story short: Gone off tarot lately so thought I would start drawing a daily card from the Haindl to try and get back in the swing of things.
Today’s card is XVIII, the Moon:
Unlike many tarot decks in which the Moon is often one of the most beautiful major arcana cards, Haindl’s Moon is quite unsettling. Central to the image is the head of a unicorn, but there is no body; instead, the head appears to grow out of a pillar of stone. And the unicorn’s horn is very large, reminiscent almost of a clown’s hat. Combined, these evoke a twisted image of childhood, as if the unicorn head is some sort of nightmare hobby horse.
The Moon was one of those cards which I never used to draw. Over the last month or so, however, it has come up several times in readings for myself and others. It is clear why*. Like the Wheel of Fortune I wrote about in my last post, the Moon’s pull is affecting my life in a big way at the moment. Everything may seem the same on the surface, but there are strong undercurrents at work - maybe even dangerous undercurrents - that threaten to cast me adrift. (Does all this talk of water sound familiar?)
Funnily enough, today I find myself looking back at a reading I did for someone else in April. In that reading, the Moon appeared in the position of “what you can do”. Its message seems relevant for me today:
“It refers to unfamiliar territory – not just physical territory but also psychological and emotional. It can signal a period of great confusion where each step you take is filled with trepidation. It sounds terrible(!) but it doesn’t have to be. Attitude is very important when this card appears. We humans tend to be creatures of comfort – we like the familiar and the safe, it makes us feel secure. When the Moon appears, and we are called to – or forced to – venture outside our comfort zone, it can be frightening and stressful.
The key here is to decide how you will deal with this uncertainty. Will you tremble and hesitate and let fear and doubt consume you? Or will you (to coin a phrase) “boldly go” where you haven’t been before, trusting that nothing can be as bad as you imagine and that you will be able to deal with whatever you encounter? Basically, in answer to the question “what you can do”, this card tells you to embrace the unknown. Things rarely turn out to be as bad as we fear.”
*Apologies for the veiled references to what’s going on in my life. It is too soon to talk about but all will be revealed in time. I guarantee, however, that when I tell you it won’t be anywhere near as exciting as what you’ve been imagining.
This post carries on from my Thoughts on the Ace of Cups.
In the Haindl, the suit of swords is associated with the South, Egypt and the element of Air. Rachel Pollack writes that this card depicts the Egyptian creation myth. The water represents the female Nun and the mound is the male Atum. According to my quite hefty Encyclopedia of World Mythology, Nun was the “personification of the watery abyss that existed at the beginning of time and which contained the potential for all life.” Strangely, there doesn’t seem to be an entry for Atum so either he wasn’t very popular or he didn’t really do anything except be a mound.
Rachel Pollack explains that Haindl’s addition of the sword represents “the divine mind activating nature, a scene similar to the Michelangelo painting in the Sistine Chapel, where a spark leaps from the fingertip of God to the finger of Adam.” So there is a strong link in this card to creation and animation, perhaps even fertilization.
The card shows a double-edged sword descending from the sky, amidst thick cloud and swirling waves. The tip of the sword connects with a small mound, a hill, which is clearly seen through a break in the waves. It is as if the sword has cleared the way.
Most decks I own depict the sword pointing up – a symbol of truth, righteousness and justice. In those decks the clean, pure element of air is emphasised. In the Haindl, the sword points down and connects with the earth. It is also surrounded by water. The element of the card is air but there is also water in the waves and earth in the mound. There is red around the base of the mound which could indicate fire. There is a sense of the water and the earth receiving the sword.
To me, there is something biblical about this image – a mighty sword descends from heaven and parts the waters, like the parting of the Red Sea. One word or command can make the impossible possible.
Some possible interpretations:
- Finding peace/stillness/clarity amongst noise/chaos
- Illumination, shining a light on something, highlighting
- Pinpoint precision, clarity
- Intelligence applied to some particular “earthly” situation
- Pure thought, higher ideals applied to daily life
- Rationality amidst confusion/illogic
- Mighty power, influence
- Cutting through/piercing/penetrating
- Activating something dormant, sparking off something new
At my favourite tarot forum, we have just started a new study, sharing our thoughts on each card as we move through the deck. We’ve started with the Ace of Cups, and I thought I’d post my thoughts here as well. I’m studying the Haindl (no surprise there).
In the Haindl Tarot, the suit of Cups is associated with the North, Europe and the element of Water. The Ace of Cups represents the Holy Grail. This theme is repeated later in the suit, when Parsival adopts the role of the Son of Cups (similar to the Knight).
The cup seems to be forming before our eyes, with golden light and water spiralling upwards into the shape of a cup. Rachel Pollack says this symbolizes evolution, “the spirit rising through its experiences to a higher level”. As the Holy Grail, the Ace of Cups seems to me to represent both the end point as well as the beginning. It is both the thing that we seek and the call to seek it. It calls us to begin our own personal Grail quest.
Rachel Pollack goes on to say: “As the Grail turns, it gives off water mixed with light. This too symbolizes the idea of development. The emotions – water – become “enlightened”. A personal Grail quest shows us the truth in our lives.” In the Grail Legend, Parsival has to go through many trials before he can achieve the grail – when he first encounters it, he’s not ready because he hasn’t experienced enough for his spirit to have risen to a higher level.
I haven’t yet had much contact with this card – it hasn’t come up in any readings I’ve done. I think it is a thing of beauty, and it strikes me as very spiritual – very pure and holy (which of course, as the Holy Grail, it is). The cup seems like a vision, somehow not real. I imagine that if I could reach into the card and try to hold it, my hand would go straight through it. I can’t just take love (in the broadest sense of the word) for granted. I can’t expect to take it when I please. A true awareness of love comes only through sadness, loneliness, loss, friendship, joy – all the things found in the other cards of the suit which must be experienced first.
A couple of weeks ago, I asked the question, “How can I make the readings I do more meaningful and beneficial to both myself and others?” I drew three cards from the Haindl, in a variation on the basic 3-card situation-advice-outcome spread. (This is a spread I am using more and more as it seems to make a reading less one-sided, and more like a conversation.)
1. Commentary – What do I need to understand?
DAUGHTER OF SWORDS IN THE SOUTH
2. Message – What do I need to hear?
2 OF SWORDS (PEACE)
3. Vision – What do I need to envision?
8 OF SWORDS (INTERFERENCE)
In the first card, Isis wears a headband decorated with doorways. Rachel Pollack explains the significance of painted doors: “Since they were not real they could not open; only the dead spirits or the astral bodies of initiates could pass them.” This could suggest psychic development, or the kind of secret language that is involved in reading tarot. My first thought was, “doorways into the mind”. Isis has an open expression and she looks out of the card, towards some unseeable other. She listens rather than speaks; learns, rather than teaches. Without judgment or prejudice, she accepts the knowledge of others, soaks it up like a sponge. In the background of the card is Hathor. Rachel Pollack mentions how the Egyptians “tended to merge older deities into the current favourites, and some of Hathor’s attributes became associated with Isis.” This again could be seen as learning from those who have gone before and who have valuable experience. The equivalent of this card in conventional decks is the Page of Swords.
As Commentary, this card touches on several aspects. First, it shows that it is important to approach each reading (and tarot in general) with an open mind. It is not helpful to go into a reading with any pre-conceived ideas; it is far better to be a sponge or a blank slate, ready to receive the messages in the cards whatever they may be. Second, with Isis looking out of the card, it suggests the idea of an “other” which, in a reading, would be the querent. It is important therefore to listen to the querent, and to understand that any concept I have of what might be ”meaningful and beneficial” isn’t necessarily the same as what will be meaningful and beneficial to the querent. Finally, the card tells me it’s important to keep learning about the cards, from books, from other readers, and from ”older deities” whose experience and wisdom can help me grow. (I was going to add Rachel Pollack’s name as an example of an older deity but didn’t want to insult her by calling her old! Clearly though, the tarot world is full of these older deities, who have been reading and studying tarot for years longer than I have and from whom I can learn.)
The second card is the 2 of Swords, which in the Haindl Tarot is given the title ‘Peace’. I talked a little about this card in an earlier post. The position it occupies in this spread is “Message – What do I need to hear?” I think the answer is very simple: when I read for others or for myself I need to hear nothing or, rather, I need peace. It is no good finishing work and then doing a reading straight away. My mind needs time to find stillness, to quiet down. Likewise, I know there are many readers who can whip out their cards, give them a quick shuffle, get their answer and put them away again, all in the space of two minutes, but I’m not one of them. I need time and space to consider the cards, to let the reading come together as a whole.
I have done many readings over the last few years which have been meaningful and beneficial, but I have done many more which have been meaningless. Usually, those are the readings I rushed, or that I did when my mind was distracted by other things. It will help me to take time to do readings properly, to find a quiet space where I won’t be interrupted and take a few moments to calm my mind. Whatever is going on in my life has to be put aside - suspended like the swords in this card – so I can better achieve the ‘blank slate’ openness of the first card.
The final card is the 8 of Swords, titled ‘Interference’. It answers the question, “What do I need to envision?” The card shows the trunk of a tree, its branches stunted, with 8 swords criss-crossed in front and behind. It seems as if the swords are the reason for the tree’s restricted growth. The I Ching hexagram on this card resembles a mouth “biting through” the strong line in the middle. The hexagram can refer to the dogged persistance needed to get to the bare bones of a situation and also to reform. I believe (not being much of a gardener myself) that pruning some plants helps to shape or reform their growth. So the effect of the swords (and therefore the “interference) shown in this card could be beneficial as well as being restrictive. The card shows a difficult situation: too much interference can do more damage than good and kill the tree; not enough may lead to failure.
Tarot readers do quite a bit of interfering in the business of others so I think this card is reminding me to take care in this respect. Often those I’m reading for are complete strangers and I don’t know how they will be affected by what I tell them. I should make sure my words (swords) are beneficial rather than damaging. After opening my mind as shown by Isis, and finding the peace and stillness of the 2 of Swords, I must then “bite through” to get to the bare bones of the reading and use precision and careful judgement when explaining the messages of the cards. I need to envision myself in each reading helping the querent to reform their life – not through unnatural restriction of their free will to grow as they please but by pruning, shaping and guiding the growth in the direction they wish it to go.
This morning I walked our dog in a winter wonderland. In the park near where we live, every tree, stone, and blade of grass was coated in sparkling white frost. It was beautiful and still and very, very cold. As I walked, I was reminded of the Haindl 2 of Swords:
The keyword for this card is Peace. The I Ching Hexagram is made equally of dark (broken) lines and light (unbroken) lines. As the lines in a hexagram are seen to be moving, this hexagram is seen as a perfect moment of stillness and balance. It is usually associated with the Spring equinox, when the hours of light and darkness are equal. The idea is that the peace won’t last: the light will grow stronger and the darkness will recede. In the park this morning, I experienced the same sort of peace for a few moments.
The 2 of Swords is one of my favourite tarot cards in any deck. We live in a noisy, busy, demanding world; finding that perfect moment of stillness is a rare thing. In Haindl’s card, the two swords hang in the air between two rock formations. The image is like the space between breaths - which can seem like an eternity if you listen for it - or the hanging pause between slow ticking seconds. We are granted an inordinate amount of time, yet most of it passes by unchecked.
While I was walking this morning, it began to snow. For a moment, before the first flakes spiralled to the ground, everything fell silent, as though the earth was holding its breath. In Mary Oliver’s latest book, Thirst, there is a poem called ‘Walking Home from Oak-Head’ which contains these lines:
“or wander on slowly
like the still unhurried wind,
waiting,
as for a gift,
for the snow to begin
which it does
at first casually,
then, irrepressibly.”
In a few days it will be Christmas, but it’s New Year that I look forward to the most. If I could wish for anything in 2008, it would be for more 2 of Swords moments like this.
I have ordered the Haindl Rune Oracle and, what’s more, I didn’t pay £132 for it.
I’ve never really got on with oracles before. Well, perhaps that’s an overstatement - the only one I’ve ever owned is Froud’s Faeries Oracle and I just didn’t get it. But I haven’t bought the Haindl Rune Oracle to use – just to try and get a better feel for the rune meanings in the Haindl Tarot. Oh, and because it’s lovely:
I also have The Forest of Souls on the way, and I’m looking forward very much to reading it.
This is the 5 of Swords from the Haindl:
On the US Games version, the keyword for this card is ‘Defeat’. On my new German version, the keyword is ‘Sinnloser Streit’ which, if Google Translate is to be trusted, means ‘Senseless Dispute’. The painting used in the card shows a dying unicorn with five broken swords falling about its head. The card features Hexagram 47 of the I Ching; it describes a situation in which you are powerless and – as Sarah Dening writes in The Everyday I Ching – “life appears to be conspiring against you.” The advice given is both frustrating and hopeful: ”There is nothing you can do at this point to change things for the better. The situation will improve in due course.”
In the last week, I’ve read three separate stories which all seemed to have something to say on the theme of defeat and which have taught me to look at this card in a new way.
The bible story of the trials of Job (which I read this weekend in the excellent The Mythic Journey by Liz Green and Juliet Sharman-Burke) relates very closely to the message of the card. Job was a very prosperous man, “the greatest of all the men of the East”. But then – for no understandable reason – his animals are stolen or killed, his servants and his ten children are killed, his home is destroyed, and he is afflicted with terrible disease. Despite all this, he refuses to curse God for his misfortune. When his wife confronts him about this, he simply replies: “Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and not suffering as well?” Job’s friends are convinced he must have unwittingly committed some terrible sin to have such punishment inflicted upon him but in truth (despite being filthy rich) Job was a really good person.
The commentary following this story explains: “Outside the world of Walt Disney, the evil often go unpunished, and the good are unfairly struck down. Young, talented, fine people die of horrible diseases, yet ruthless dictators, responsible for thousands of murders, live to ripe old ages and die comfortably in their beds.” It goes on to say: “…sooner or later life’s unfairness will touch us, and we will feel pain which is unmerited, and suffer losses which we have done nothing to deserve. “
Back to The Everyday I Ching and Hexagram 47: “Do not allow yourself to be dragged down by circumstances or wallow in self-pity. Life is not always fair. Yet the show must go on…..Fight your negative thoughts and feelings tooth and nail. Anybody can be optimistic when things are going well. (Sounds a bit like what Job said to his wife.) It takes considerably more effort to stay positive in difficult times like these. But if you succeed, you will gain immensely in terms of your inner strength and self-confidence.”
Eventually, things did improve for Job and he lived a long and (mostly) happy life. But what if there is no happy ending?
In the African-American folktale ‘Ole Sis Goose’ (from Outfoxing Fear by Kathleen Ragan), the defeat is absolute. Ole Sis Goose is swimming on a lake when she is pounced on by Br’er Fox, who was hiding in the weeds. Br’er Fox threatens to break her neck and pick the flesh from her bones but Ole Sis Goose defends her right to swim in the lake and insists that they go to the courthouse to sort it out:
“And so dey went to cote, and when dey got dere, de sheriff, he wus er fox, en de judge, he wus er fox, and der tourneys, dey wus foxes, en all de jurrymen, dey was foxes, too. En dey tried ole Sis Goose, en dey ‘victed her and dey ’scuted her, and dey picked her bones.”
This tale makes an important point about the defeat shown in the 5 of Swords: It often stems from an inbalance of power, and the ones with the power are not necessarily the ones in the right. The tale concludes:
“Now, my chilluns, listen to me, when all de folks in de cotehouse is foxes, and you is des’ er common goose, der ain’t gwine to be much jestice for you.”
In the RWS 5 of Swords, a smirking man is shown holding all the swords while two others walk away, defeated. In this situation, it doesn’t matter who’s wrong or who’s right, or what’s fair. The only thing that matters is who has the power.
The tale of Ole Sis Goose is understandably bleak. But does the fact that the courthouse was full of foxes mean that Ole Sis Goose should have shut up and let those foxes push her around? Just because your words fall on deaf ears, does that mean you shouldn’t speak them? As Firefly’s Captain Mal Reynolds said: “May have been the losing side. Still not convinced it was the wrong one.”
The very next tale in Outfoxing Fear is from Afghanistan, entitled ‘The Tale of Emir’s Sword’. In this story, a man is sentenced to death for stealing a sword. Though he is due to be executed in only a few hours, he refuses to send for help from his tribe when one of the tribal leaders passes by where he is tied to the gun that will execute him. Rather than tell the truth, Amin Khan tells the tribal leader: “I am committing an impropriety with this unspeakable gun, which has blasted the lives of many Afghans. I am busy. Go your way. I will follow you soon.”
Later, after Amin Khan has been saved from certain death in the nick of time, another tribal leader calls him foolish for not sending word that his life was in danger, and asks why he told the other leader such nonsense. Amin replied: “Khan, have you forgotten the old Pushtu verse which runs,
Let me be buried in an unknown grave
But never let men think I was not brave…?
I did not wish Agha Jan, whose family has a longstanding fued with mine, to be able to boast that he had saved my life. I preferred, O my Father, death to such a fate as that.”
Unlike Ole Sis Goose, Amin Khan knew what fate awaited him. Yet he chose to accept his death in the face of what – for him – would be a greater defeat. There are some things that are worse than death.
In the film Braveheart, William Wallace was eventually defeated and executed. But even in death he refused to lose faith – his cries of ‘Freedom!’ were heard by all. He knew that his death was not the end and though he may have lost that one battle, his followers had not lost the war.
Sinnloser Streit – Senseless Dispute. Some battles are not worth fighting and some cannot be won. But if you hold fast to your principles – even through times of defeat – your time of victory will come. In the Haindl 5 of Swords, the dying unicorn has its eyes open. It sees the broken swords; it knows its fate. But, in fact, it is looking beyond the swords, beyond this defeat, to a time when ‘right’ will gain victory over ‘might’.
I have two new tarot totes (I know…it’s becoming an addiction). Both arrived today and both have ended up gracing decks other than those I bought them for.
The first I bought for the Mythic, but it’s completely wrong for the strong colours of that deck. Fortunately, it is the PERFECT match for the Universal Fantasy:
The second tote I bought for my Transformational but they didn’t even get to meet. Instead, it was a case of love at first sight for my large Haindl:
