Shadow
Love
Love
burns without prior warning
or even
manifests itself just by
finally
locking eyes with the right
one,
however long it takes to find
each
other in this vast ocean of
humanity
– A smile a touch an
accidental
skin brush ignites a spark
momentarily
disintegrating the dark -
As love
grows and comes to fruition
it
becomes our life-long mission to
fight for
it, protect it, embrace it
but
nothing's changed – The world might
feel
liberated from old notions of
biblical
taboos, who to choose -
Connecting
life's clues but we
know the
truth – A smirk, a cutting
remark
made in jest, a social comment
in silent
protest – To truly love is
admittedly
tough, as we valiantly
defend -
Our
shadow love...
Falling in Love Again -- James Christensen
Falling in Love Again -- James Christensen
Christensen employs two tarot cards from the popular "Rider-Waite" deck, "Judgment" and "The Star." "Judgment" was inspired by the Christian notion of Resurrection before the Last Judgment. An angel, probably Gabriel, blows a great trumpet from which hangs a white flag bearing a red cross, like the banner on the Magician's robes. A man, woman, and child of grayish complexion, apparently emerging from crypts or graves, stand with arms spread, looking up at the angel In the background are huge mountains or tidal waves, perhaps a reference to the sea giving up its dead on the day of judgment as described in the Book of Revelation, and the ocean is a recurring symbol thoughout; or they may be echoes of the mountains depicted on the Fool. The symbolism in "The Star" is similar to Temperance, in that they both feature a figure with two cups by a pool, but the contents of the Temperence cups are mixed together. In "The Star" a naked woman kneels at the edge of a small pool, holding two containers of water. One container nourishes the earth and continues the cycle of fertility, represented by the lush greenery; the other one empties onto dry land in five rivulets, representing the senses. The woman has one foot on the ground, representing her practical abilities and good common sense, and the other is on the water without breaking its surface; this represents her intuition and inner resources. Behind her are a large star and seven smaller ones (the chakras), and all the stars have 8 points; since 8=1+7, the stars are associated with the number 17. Eight is Strength. The bird in the tree is the sacred ibis of thought roosting in the tree of the mind.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Rider & Son took over Phillip Wellby's occult publishing house in 1908. Under the editorial direction of Ralph Shirley, they published the popular tarot deck the following year. A. E. Waite was an Anglo-American poet who was the first to attempt a systematic study of the history of Western occultism as a spiritual tradition. His occult rival Aleister Crowley modeled the villainous "Arthwate" after him in his novel "Moonchild" and referred to him as "Dead Waite" in his magazine "Equinox." (And later, H. P. Lovecraft based his evil wizard Ephraim Waite after him in "The Thing on the Doorstep.") Waite joined the Freemasons and the reconstituted Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in 1891 and the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia in 1902. The following year he founded the Independent and Rectified Order R. R. et A. C., whuch included the Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats in its membership for a time; after it disbanded in 1914, he formed the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. As a scholar he wrote about divination, esotericism, Rosicrucianism, Freemasonry, ceremonial magic, Kabbalism, alchemy, and the Holy Grail, translated the French works of Éliphas Lévi (Alphonse Louis Constant), edited "Elfin Music" (an anthology of poetry based on English fairy folklore), and wrote two allegorical fantasy novels, "Prince Starbeam" and "The Quest of the Golden Stairs." His tarot deck was inspired by the 1491 Sola-Busca Tarot, the only previous one to illustrate all 78 cards, not just the 22 major arcana cards, which the British Museum displayed in 1907, and the 15th-century Tarot de Marseille,; he also wrote its companion volume, "Key to the Tarot" (expanded in 1911 as "Pictorial Key to the Tarot"). It was illustrated by another Anglo-American, Pamela Colman Smith, who had earlier provided artwork for "The Illustrated Verses of William Butler Yeats" and Bram Stoker's book on the actress Ellen Terry (Stoker's novel "Dracula" was one of the Rider publications), and who continued her involvement with all three artistic celebrities. Yeats introduced her to the Golden Dawn, which she joined in 1901, and in the process met Waite, who she followed into the Independent and Rectified Order. In 1907, her paintings were the first to be exhibited at Alfred Stieglitz's Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession ("gallery 291") in New York, until then devoted exclusively to the photographic avant-garde. In designing the tarot deck for Waite, she often modeled the figures on her friends (The Queen of Wands was Ellen Terry, and the World was Florence Farr, who had been the head of the Golden Dawn for awhile and had also been George Bernard Shaw's mistress). She completed the entire deck in only six months, probably in pen and ink, possibly over a pencil underdrawing, and then colored with watercolor. While the images are simple, the details and backgrounds feature abundant symbolism, often representing a substantial departure from their predecessors, and were inspired by Lévi.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting Duanne. Thanks for sharing this.
Delete