Sketchbook - Ace of Coins

You're probably wondering if this is my "Happy Squirrel" card. I somehow doubt that it is...

My partner was recently accepted to Harvard Divinity School and spent part of last week touring the campus in MA. The visit was pretty uneventful mostly, but at one point he did call me to complain that at an albino squirrel had just thrown an Easter egg at him.

...Yeah, that's pretty much how I felt when I heard, too.

I guess the squirrel must have found a leftover egg that had been too well hidden. Do squirrels eat hard-boiled eggs, or did it just think this one was pretty? Regardless, Tex was nearly egged by an achromatic (and possibly very unhappy) rodent.

I told him I couldn't help but see that as an omen of some kind, and I admit I thumbed through the index of my Complete Book of Superstition, Prophecy, and Luck to see if there were any insights as to whether it bode well or ill.

I figure that anything the ghostly white hand of providence heaves in one's direction should be accepted as graciously as possible, and so I decided I would honor this strange little incident by reconfiguring it as my Ace of Coins. I am hoping that Tex (and by association, myself) can look forward to a new chapter of health, wealth, vitality, contentment, and generally enriching experiences. Spring, as Easter strives to remind us, contains the potential for all these things.

Maybe your opportunity will be handed to you, maybe it will be hurled at you from the top of a fence-post, or maybe you will have to do a little digging in the newly-soft earth to uncover it. Signs and omens are only as useful as the reactions they inspire in us.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ace Of Coins

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Sketchbook - Ace of Swords

It's late, so I'll keep this brief. The concept for this drawing came to me all at once in a sort of perceptual burst, and I literally stopped whatever else I was doing so I could sit down and start picking away at it. Appropriate, since the Ace of Swords is the go-to card for intellectual hairpin turns that point in unforeseen directions, toward new possibilities.

The symbolism here is pretty straightforward. The suit of Swords is associated with the element of air, hence the feather. It's also associated with awareness and intellect, which makes the peacock's cycloptic plume especially apt.

But what I wanted to do beyond there is show the feather being split in two. I don't know about you, but I can't resist picking things apart -- straws, popsicle sticks, relationships, anything really. So whenever I get my hands on a peacock feather, its hours are numbered. They pull apart so perfectly! The individual barbs peel off into tiny sub-feathers, the shaft splits and unzips into long ribbons. Not even the perfect, iridescent eye, which only an unfeeling psychopath would ever want to put out, escapes mutilation.

The suit of Swords teaches us about the powers of discernment and discrimination, and the Ace is where it all begins: a unified vision, magical in its fleeting wholeness and ripe for shredding into individual thoughts and observations. Eventually even the shreds will be picked to shreds and the suit will have run its course -- at which point there is really nothing to do but throw the whole mess away and look for a new feather.

Hopefully you'll forgive me for starting in on this particular feather, threatening to divide the Ace before you've even had a chance to enjoy its perfection. I shouldn't rush ahead, I know. Considering how hard it was to resist pulling that eye apart into a set of binoculars, you should be quite proud.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ace Of Swords

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Sketchbook - Ace of Cups

I was looking forward to a little more action today, hoping to draw something exciting. Instead I drew my second Ace in a row. I nearly cheated and went with the card beneath it instead, but I decided to sit and think about it for a while first -- and I'm glad I did, because that's when I remembered the pineapple lamp.

I got the pineapple lamp at a flea market in Connecticut. Since I had only a certain amount of cash to spend, I was walking around the market in a sort of panic, afraid that anything I paid for would wind up being trumped by some other treasure a few tables over. Meanwhile, anything I passed on could get snapped up by someone else any moment! It was like being in a dream where everything you want is laid out in front of you, but you can only choose one thing.

When I saw the pineapple lamp, I felt a sort of click in my brain. I knew I wouldn't find anything I wanted more than this. I think my friends thought it was a sort of odd purchase, just sort of a 1950s old-lady's-nightstand kind of lamp. "Wait until you see it in the dark," I told them. And... well, I don't think that changed any minds exactly, but I was convinced and that's all that matters.

The lamp is a kind of creamy white ceramic studded with cracked-glass nodules, and the grooves in its surface are filled in with gold enamel. I think it's supposed to look like the base of a pineapple, but it looks more like those eggs in the Alien movies:

The surface is divided into a geometric pattern that combines with the glowing nodules and creamy, golden background to create a beautifully organic ambient warmth:


Anyhow, this isn't the first time I've associated it with the Ace of Cups. It has the same sort of splendid energy I've seen in other portrayals of this card. For example:


So I decided to see if I could sit down and actually draw the pineapple lamp in a way that would do it any justice. I'm pretty happy with what I ended up with, and surprised that it's at all accurate -- that pattern is pretty intense. I left the lamp in the picture unplugged so you could see that its radiance was not dependent on electricity. The pineapple runs on emotional energy! And the moth is sort of a pun based on the dove you see in the RWS version of the card, in this case seduced into the lamp's bioluminous maw. The moth is also a sort of avatar for myself in this case; I imagine that he and I were both to gaze into the pineapple, we'd each see the same thing.

UPDATE: Just saw this today:

The city of Guzhen, China, will soon be home to a "colossal 833-foot luminaire," Metropolis reports. According to the building's own promotional literature, it will be the "world’s only architecture shaped like a huge Western classical oil lamp."

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ace Of Cups

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Sketchbook - Ace of Wands

Ugh. Well, I'm happy to have moved on to the next sketch, but I have issues with this one.

First of all, when I cut the cards and then drew this one, my first instinct was to pick another one instead. After all, just yesterday I drew the Two of Wands, and I was hoping for a little more variety in my life. So I went ahead and picked the next card from the stack -- and it was the fricking Two of Wands again. So clearly I just needed to stop whining and start drawing.

I was pretty happy with some of the detail here, and while the concept isn't terribly original, I still think it communicates something about the card. Unfortunately all I can see right now is that I have drawn my second disembodied hand in two days. I need to be a little more fearless when it comes to choosing what to portray, lest we end up trapped here:


Just when I became proud of myself for making it look like this new hand was actually supporting the cupcake (I was a little disappointed yesterday that my chopsticks weren't being gripped -- they just sort of dangled there lifelessly), I realized that the hand is still pretty much even in the same position as the one in the Two. As lazy as that may seem, maybe it's also an interesting comment on the relationship between these two cards. The Two takes that burst of energy and potential and does something with it. No major adjustment necessary, it's pure follow-through.

In this case at least, there's way more thematic precedent for the disembodied-hand trick. That's sort of what I was thinking when I started sketching it out. I don't plan to hew very closely to the RWS deck from here on, but in the very beginning I can't help keeping things as simple as possible.

I think I unconsciously hit on the cupcake idea because of this thread on MetaFilter about "cupcakes for men". (Can't get any more phallic than this one, boys!) I left the banner deliberately blank, thinking that it might symbolize all that is unwritten and unforeseen in bold new leap into the future. Looking at the scanned version, however, the whole card seems eerily... empty. I need to get braver about filling in all that space -- it's totally all mine to fill. Like, if someone tells you to blow out the candle and make a wish, you don't wish for all the sorts of things you could obtain pretty easily. You make the biggest, most shameless wish you can imagine!

I guess if nothing else, this page turned out to be a one-card reading about this whole sketchbook thing. Going forward, I'll try to inject more of that Ace intensity into my drawing and get a little messy.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ace of Wands

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"As Reliable As The Numbers From One To A Hundred..."

Maybe everything is a lot easier than we think it is. Maybe there are better ways to do things, keys that unlock the potential hiding just under our surfaces. I was charmed and astounded watching this video of a child solving math problems quickly and accurately using Chisenbop, an form of finger-counting that may date back to the abacus. See if you can figure out how he does it:

Here's a tutorial. Chisenbop has cropped up in American curricula from time to time, but it's largely unheard of here. Why is that? I can understand the need to instill kids with a completely conceptual grasp of how sums and multiplication tables work, but not everyone's minds work the same way. And anyway, this is like walking around with a calculator in your pocket -- bound to come in handy at some point.

The Ace of Swords exists to usher new decisions and perspectives into our lives, pointing ever forward. All we need do is sail on its wind, relaxing our grip on obsolete or irrelevant ideas and embracing progress and self-knowledge. Is there a better way to do something? Then so shall it be done. Is there potential hiding beneath the surface? A series of swift, careful incisions ought to free it.

We are often urged to "know ourselves" and "be ourselves", but there is no knowledge without learning. Study yourself just as ardently as you study your surroundings. In your sharpest moments, your consciousness is a membrane between the inner and outer worlds -- a line carved into the fabric of reality, as thin as the edge of a knife and just as difficult to balance on. The Tarot's suit of Swords describes our attempts to maintain that balance. If the failures seem costly, it's because they are blows against our very identity and sense of purpose; try to keep in mind that equilibrium is only ever achieved through a series of errors and counter-errors. With a little discipline and effort, the contents of your own mind may one day seem as familiar to you as your own hands and fingers, and as reliable as the numbers from one to a hundred. [Via.]

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ace of Swords

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"Strokes Of Genius, Both Grand And Small..."

The scale on this image is a little hard to determine, so this may help: that silver segment on the rocket's body is a keg of beer. And balanced at the very tip of the rocket, just a couple of pixels wide, is a single donut. Does that help?

This is the kind of thing you'll see a lot of in Steve Jurvetson's contributions to the blog Photo Synthesis. He's obsessed with model rocketry writ large -- so large that participants have to schlep their nosecones all the way to the Black Rock desert, where airspace is uncontrolled and civilian rockets can fly as high as they please. The beer-keg pictured above reached a height of over 6,000 feet before parachuting (sort of) to the ground and bouncing to a full stop:

The Ace of Wands is the root of all singularly outrageous strokes of genius, both grand and small; it's the vine that inspiration and experimentation blossom from. Whether they produce any sort of practical or durable results is irrelevant -- the personal momentum that they grant you is all that really matters. Whether you're writing your first novel, discovering a new career opportunity, or burning 60 lbs of Alumaflame solid rocket propellant ("looks like gray styrofoam, but burns in a violet flame") to launch your beer a mile high before you drink it, for one brief and improbable moment you will find yourself no longer bound to the same restrictions that limit everyone else around you. It's fine to strategize as you fly, but don't overthink it or get bogged down asking questions: if you hesitate, this window of opportunity may close in your face.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ace of Wands

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"...The Key That Unlocks A Heavy Door."

According to the Rosetta Project, globalization may eliminate up to 90% of the world’s linguistic diversity within the next century. Rosetta's academics, linguists, and anthropologists have taken on the challenge of creating a low-tech, physical artifact that documents as many of mankind's languages as possible. The result? The Rosetta Disk, a three-inch coin etched with over 13,000 microscopic pages containing the keys to at least 1,500 languages. It's designed to last for 10,000 years, in hopes that our descendants will find it useful. Since the only technology required to use it is simple magnification, it's hard to imagine a civilization incapable of learning to use it. It's easy to imagine that such a record will one day seem to future generations as a sort of magical gift from the aether, which is how the Ace of Coins is commonly depicted. Like any translation device, it is the key that unlocks a heavy door.

Whether you call them Coins, Disks, or Pentacles, the cards in this suit describe creative energy in its ultimate form, in which it finally manifests as physical matter. I guess you could say that the entire suit is a little obsessed with obtaining results -- there is none of the wanderlust or dreaminess that pops up in the other suits. The realms of the mind, heart, and spirit are incredibly subtle and sensitive, and unless matters are tended to in the real world, access to these less tangible areas of ourselves becomes incredibly limited. The Ace promises that certain burdens will be eased and obstacles overturned, allowing you to actually explore and enjoy the garden you've been tending. It portends fortuitous opportunities and nudges one toward an awakening of senses that have long laid dormant.

I find it fascinating that Rosetta Project has resulted in the creation of a sort of Ur-coin. Language itself is considered divine by many cultures (remember how the Old Testament God spoke the world into being?) and now it is manifest in matter. In fact, many of the disk's language samples are passages from the Book of Genesis, which may be attributed to it being one of the most frequently-translated documents in human history. The choice bears additional symbolic weight, however, when you consider the journey that ideas take from conception to execution, from aether to tablet. [Via]

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ace of Coins

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Ace of Wands

1. Strength which is unconquerable
2. Will or intent
3. Renewed strength.

-- David Allen Hulse, The Western Mysteries

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Ace of Cups

1. A vision of love
2. Fertility and productiveness
3. Emotions or feelings.

-- David Allen Hulse, The Western Mysteries

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Ace of Swords

1. New direction in thought
2. An idea, ideal, or truth
3. A calling upon one's strength.

-- David Allen Hulse, The Western Mysteries

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"It's Your Secret Heart, You Own It..."

Whoa, two body-art posts in a row. I must have been a little more inspired by the scar jewelry than I realized...

But in this case, it's my skin. As a 30th birthday present my partner booked tattoo appointments for us, and this is what I got. I'm not overly concerned with the symbolism and meaning behind tattoos (or as my SO put it, "I'm just into putting cool looking shit on my skin") but I saw this as an opportunity to memorialize a time in my life when my attention was focused on one particular philosophical principle that has been a considerable help to my understanding of the Tarot: receptivity.

The outline of the cup is boosted from Salvador Dali's Ace of Cups, which, as you probably noticed, creates the illusion of two people meeting face to face. The cup is usually shown as being full but not to the point of overflowing (though sometimes it is a holy fountain). It is a crucible for the internal transformations which will inevitably manifest in the external world through our words and actions.

I have always been a doer. Every event strikes me as a call to action, and I begin to panic or doubt myself during times when there's nothing to be done. I don't enjoy long vacations -- anything longer than a three-day weekend fills me with existential dread. Working with the Tarot has required me to become more observant, more contemplative, and more patient; for a time, I wouldn't perform any readings at all unless I had a little time beforehand to myself to meditate and turn down the volume in my brain. Meeting someone face to face and creating a temporary zone of communal understanding can be quite difficult, whether you know the person or not -- often we hasten to fill that space with small talk, with conversational asides, with snap judgments, simply to put ourselves at ease. To me, being a good reader means being able to put all that to rest and simply absorb the current moment like a sponge. Otherwise, I'm hardly meeting someone halfway.

Our Western culture does not necessarily encourage us to linger in the antechambers of our unconscious mind. When we do, it's usually as part of an overall strategy, a means to some other end. We want to pray for something, or prepare for something. We want to obtain peace of mind, because we know it will make us happier and more functional. We even prefer our art to be "for" something, or to "mean" something. There's nothing wrong with this, but it places limitations on our ability to know ourselves. We don't meander in and out of those strange mental and emotional landscapes the way we did as children, and all too often we forget what it felt like, how important it was, and how much potential is housed there. The reality we speak and act in is only one part of the story, and without its counterpart it's easily rendered meaningless.

The Ace is a sudden, all-too-real reminder of this, a rare moment of alignment which opens a pathway to your unconscious. A creative burst, a surprising realization, a new vision of yourself and your life. While we can't help but use these moments to drive us forward to the next event or discovery (we'd be fools not to), try to take this opportunity to mark that trail so that you can travel back again whenever you like. It's your secret heart, you own it -- you can visit and explore it as often as you like, and it will grow more fascinating, not less, as you do.

Previously On Arcanalogue: The Ace of Cups

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"Move Forward With Unprecedented Confidence..."

The organization First Book, to which I recently committed all the proceeds I earn from giving Tarot card readings, asks in their slogan, "Do you remember the magic of your first book?" This inspired me to take a look and see what America's first book was; as some might anticipate, it was biblical in nature. Technically entitled The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre, it's generally called the Bay Psalms Book and it was published in Cambridge, MA in 1640.

Books, writing, and learning are often associated with the suit of Swords (though one of my favorite decks, the Victoria Regina Tarot, uses fountain pens to signify the Wands suit instead). The Ace of Swords points taking up a new cause, applying your focus to a new project, or discovering keener judgment or stores of discipline within yourself that have lain dormant. It's the kind of revelation that invites you to see things for what they really are and then move forward with unprecedented confidence.

Not only is this a great symbolic statement for my First Book pledge, it's an interesting lens through which to view the Bay Psalms Book; the Library of Congress page linked above speculates that this "first" wasn't a matter of happenstance, but of conscious choice, noting that "...The same faith that compelled them to leave England and strike out for the New World prompted them to commit this text to print before all others." This card is a not-so-subtle hint that honest declarations of intent will be rewarded quite favorably -- you'll be able to look back one day and recall this as a time when certain ideas were set into motion.

Previously on Arcanalogue...

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The Four Aces

One point I deliberately avoided during my post about the four Queens and the classical elements is the ever-elusive, much-pondered "fifth element," which, as all pop-aficionados know, amounts to "heart" on Captain Planet or Milla Jovovich if you're on some other planet.

The fifth element actually varies from culture to culture, but whatever it is usually exists somewhere beyond the material realm. Spirit, qi, and kia are all terms that have been employed to describe it. "Yes, but none of those things are real," says the exasperated rationalist. That's sort of the point, though. As I pointed out the last time we discussed the elements, "water" doesn't refer to actual water. It refers to the deep symbolic relationship we have with water and the concepts that have become associated with it throughout human civilization. Actual water is merely a vestigial bridge to that concept, and is generally far more useful for drinking, bathing, and putting into balloons to throw at each other. The fifth element is the same -- it just lacks that bridge, daring us to make the leap without one.

We snicker at 15th century humans for doubting there were other continents, but it's not fair to laugh. Without a way to get to them and explore them, they may as well have not existed at all. What difference did it make in the lives of everyday people? No rationalist has the tools to say for sure that "spirit" or "qi" exist, they can merely note the lack of physical evidence or their own lack of interest. What's important for now is that reading Tarot cards doesn't require any particular beliefs; as long as you can muster a poetic appreciation for these concepts, you can use them to understand the cards.

Look at the quartet of cards above. They represent the division of the "world" into five parts, not four. You will find the fifth part in the empty space that separates the cards. That space also connects them. Like the frosting between layers of cake, it surrounds them and allows them to function as a seamless whole. In one sense you are the sum of your parts, but you are also something greater, and so is the world you inhabit.

In a reading, an Ace represents a suit in its purest form -- so pure that it's no longer constrained to familiar elemental concepts. It's a breach in the hull, a brief moment of contact with that mysterious, languageless fifth element. Drawing an Ace is sort of like being told to watch for a bridge suddenly appearing temporarily before you, allowing opportunities or insights that are not ordinarily possible, and the suit just gives hints at what it might lead to. Make the most of this strange bulletin -- you never know when you'll have another chance like this!

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Ace of Cups

You might expect the fundamental card of the entire suit of Cups to practically drown you with opulence -- that's what card illustrations typically show us. However, since this suit overwhelms us from within, via emotions and the less apparent realms of the psyche, I wanted to demonstrate that less is more. You don't need an enormous solid-gold chalice to fill your heart with wonder and love; these qualities are so innate that you can invoke them with a single well-placed dewdrop. Ecstaticist has an entire set of these intimate landscapes for you to wander through, showing the multiplicity of worlds reflected in mere drops of water. Another collection pairs similar shots with a few apt lines of poetry. If "Man's life is like a drop of dew on a leaf," as Socrates says, then we ought at least absorb the beauty of that sentiment as well as its warning.

The Ace of Cups indicates a spring of emotion or unexplainable urges welling up within you -- who knows what form it will take when it reaches the surface? Or to follow the dew metaphor, it is condensing out of the very air around you, covering you like a second skin. The best part about this suit is you don't have to do anything to benefit from its blessings. You simply follow along, like Alice following the white rabbit: shrinking, growing, weeping great salty tears that drown the world, or drinking from a cupped rose petal. You can't help but emerge transformed -- and if you make an effort to remain attuned to the needs and wishes of your innermost self, you may be surprised and delighted to find them fulfilled before your very eyes. [Via]

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Ace of Swords

Obsidian has been used since the Stone Age as a cutting tool; thanks to its lack of crystal structure, shards of this volcanic glass have a cutting edge that makes surgical steel scalpels look like rusty butter-knives, with edges as narrow as 3 nanometers. The art of making blades from stone is called knapping, a craft which still inspires people to this day.

The Ace of Swords wants you to know all this. It wants you to understand the incredible precision our minds are capable of, which at our best moments puts even obsidian to shame. The art of honing in and separating this from that, of striking a devastating blow with the barest touch, will come to anyone whom the Ace favors. But beware-- in undisciplined hands, this skill can result in catastrophe.

If the image above looks a little familiar, then you're already pretty sharp: the suit of Swords in the Tarot corresponds to the suit of Spades in a deck of common playing cards. The Ace of Spades has historically been associated with luck, death, and victory, obviously hearkening to the Swords' original emphasis on gaining a mental edge over your opponent. Just remember when you strike that precision is a mercy you owe your enemy; as doctors have noted, wounds inflicted with keen obsidian blades result in far less tissue inflammation, and leave smaller scars.

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Ace of Coins

Disks, coins, pentacles, pocket-watches, vinyl records, and Communion wafers have more in common than just their basic shape; they are all concrete, physical manifestations of things normally considered insubstantial, such as time, value, music, or even faith. An icon you can actually lay hands on is a constant reminder of how real these things are to us, even though you can't necessarily see or sense them.

Click the link above and you'll be presented with a round, blank space that you can fill with whatever patterns you like. This is a physical act-- you are moving your eyes and fingers to do so, and your brain enjoys playing with patterns. Then click the button marked "2D Rotate" and your pattern springs to life kaleidoscopically. Click "3D Rotate" and it unfolds into a fully spherical configuration, spinning beautifully out of control. You can continue to add more and more layers to the pattern, but by then your mind has been completely distracted from the simple mechanics of pointing and clicking and pattern-making; you've become totally absorbed in manipulating the chaotic, "three-dimensional" microcosmic world that you set into motion.

We spend most of our time like that. The Ace of Coins dispels these flights of fancy in favor of what's immediately possible and worthwhile for its own sake. It draws you back into the rich physical potential of your body and the world around it-- you may discover golden opportunities that you'd have overlooked if you'd kept your head in the clouds. Without a regular reminder of your physical limitations to reset your focus, every other part of your consciousness is forced to fend for itself, resulting in less pleasant reality-checks further down the road. Consider this one a freebie!

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Ace of Wands

Wands, staffs, canes, rods, cocks, stalks, sticks, stems, or pens-- if it's long and strong, someone's used it as a symbol for the potential that drives us forward through life. Every watt of that energy is harnessed within the Ace, but not for long: like a seed cracking open as it sprouts, your old hindrances dissolve, and new opportunities prove to be not only possible, but inevitable.

Artist Jennifer Maestre's sculptures crackle with this energy; each is made out of hundreds of sharp pencils entwined into sensual organic forms that blaze with colorful spines. "We feel push and pull, desire and repulsion," she says in her statement, "Here, these anonymous objects [the pencils ] become the structure. There is true a fragility to the sometimes brutal aspect of the sculptures, vulnerability that is belied by the fearsome texture." If that doesn't sum up the energy that spring puts into our blood, then I don't know what the hell does.

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