"These Are the Creatures in Lady Walton's Garden..."

It's impossible to spend much time with the RWS deck without becoming aware of the distinctly horticultural overtones of Pamela Coleman-Smith's illustrations. The artist presents the natural world and its amazing potential and cruel reckonings as a backdrop for all our human struggles, a metaphorically rich landscape from which anyone could glean insight into their feelings, habits, and destiny. This is a common theme in art from the turn of the 20th century, a reaction to the jolting forward momentum of modern civilization.

The art and music of the early 21st century has echoed this era in many ways; we cast a longing glance back over our shoulder to the past even as we hurtle into the future. The new album The Creatures in the Garden of Lady Walton by the band Clogs has been on repeat at my house for most of the spring, inspiring many sketches and card interpretations. The band cites as their chief influence the band cites "the botanical paradise created by Lady Walton (the widow of the late British composer Sir William Walton) on the island of Ischia in Italy's Bay of Naples." William Walton died in 1983, but the music evokes a time much farther beyond the horizon of the 20th century, native to another world entirely.

People create gardens as places to escape into. Rich and poor alike know the need to carve out spaces within their everyday lives where their inner worlds can manifest, to populate these worlds with plants, animals, and sensory experiences. The garden a person tends is a portrait of who they are -- or more importantly, of who they wish they were.



It's amazing to me how many Tarot decks reflect this. Thumb through any of your favorite decks and you're likely to see variations on the same visual motif.

Incidentally, Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond provides vocals for most of the album, including the haunting "Owl of Love", which paints a compelling landscape of the same garden by moonlight.


It's become my favorite track on the album, one that I immediately associated with specific Tarot imagery such as the Moon card in the Fantastic Menagerie deck, the Two of Coins from the Cosmic Tribe deck, and also this painting I recently found online somewhere. (I can't seem to trace its origin, but I believe it's called "Moloch").