Sylvia Gainsford

As you would expect from a Wicca-centric Tarot, it’s more Northern and with a hint of the primitive, and rather medieval, I guess like most decks, and less Mediterranean and biblical/cabalistic than the classic deck. (Someone should just decide to stop the last names controversy and just decide to call it ‘the classic Tarot’, you know.) I can’t remember if I was a (liberal) Christian when I first briefly toyed with this deck before discarding it, but I guess I probably was, because I thought that the ‘softening’ if you like, of several of the ‘unlucky’ cards was a little childish. I guess as a Christian, you get used to the ‘hard(-ass) sayings’, you know, and you’re like, Sure, there’s the Negative out there—give me the Warning of the Negative, right! But the ‘devil’ isn’t actually a Wiccan concept, and numerous people out there think that Wiccans are devils, so they had to rename it: that card is “Temptation” in this deck. It shows a possible couple or possible couple-to-be alone in the forest looking uneasy, like they’re thinking of betraying a mutual friend or something, and there’s this Psycho Fox standing beside them. (It has weird eyes.) It’s still pretty tame compared to the classic devil card, but I guess there’s no need to overplay it. I’ve come to see it as perfectly adequate. I also like how they rename the Moon card “Illusions” which is very insightful from a witchy perspective, since witches love the Moon, but the Moon card in Tarot is often (albeit slightly melodramatically, but not totally meaninglessly) associated with “enemies” and illusions and bad or unreliable things, so I think they kinda put you on alert that this is not the goddess that’s your earthy loving mom, so to speak. It’s the dark face of the lady, basically. It’s illusion.

So yeah, those are two of the most different cards, but I’m not going to try to consciously go through and pick out the most different cards to comment on—I’m going to do, not a reading exactly, but I’ll pick a few random cards and discuss how divergent they are from the standard.

(random number generator) Nine. I’ll pick nine cards for you guys.

…. Again: this is not me doing a normal reading for myself; this is me asking the deck about itself:

(1) XIV The Guide:
This is a relatively different card. It has the angel/spirit and the cups like Temperance, but it also has a man carrying an unconscious woman—conscious/unconscious minds, I guess—and the Lady and the Horned One silhouetted in the sky.

(2) Nine of Swords:
Different but similar. A man with his hands tied in front of his face so you can’t see his face, instead of a woman on her bed.

(3) Five of Rods:
Although one of the fighters is a woman and another is a guy in a jester outfit, this is basically the same Five of Wands cards known to all who know Tarot-land.

(4) X Wheel of Fortune:
Interesting symbolism I’m not going to try to describe—basically a ‘the whole world and everything’ vibe, but really the same idea. The figure in the middle is a nude woman. There’s more nudity in the Tarot of the Old Path than in the classic deck, although it is of a symbolic rather than erotic character, just like in the classic deck from 1909.

(5) Eight of Rods:
A witch about to go flying, lol!

(6) Queen of Swords:
A proud-looking woman, dignified. All Alice, not Bella, lol.

(7) Eight of Pentacles:
They look like they’re made out of either rope or wheat, lol. And there’s an Eight of Pentacles Man, chilling.

(8) II The High Priestess:
This card is completely different. She’s a witch-priestess straight outta da forest, no chaste, pure Temple of Solomon vibes for her. Plenty of nature friends though.

(9) Five of Pentacles:
Same basic idea without the church. The woman’s crying, head in hands, and the guy’s hands are bleeding and bandaged. He looks like somebody killed his cat.

…. One last word about the Little White Book: I won’t throw it out, as people do sometimes, even though it would be grossly inadequate if you had no background in Tarot at all, you know. (And the Tarot of the Old Path book is out of print, so I might not find out what all those plants and such are. Well, I know what oak leaves look like, but….) But the Little White Book is okay for sometimes at least providing a decent primer on the way the Tarot of the Old Path meanings differ from the classic deck— Two of Swords is ‘stalemate’ for example, which I’ve never heard before, but which is very Tarot-of-the-Old-Path-Two-of-Swords….

…. After-word: Incidentally I got rid of the little white book because I was moving around and rearranging decks, boxes, and the crystals I put in with them, and I had to get everything to fit.

But yeah, my original take on the reading was way too ‘objective’; I didn’t get a ‘feel’ for the deck, right. I was like, I want a Wiccan tarot deck: here it is!…. But going through the Mythic tarot, which is taking a long time because it comes with a long book, filled with prolific if long-winded Jungian brilliance, right, and eventually going over that deck I figured out that I don’t like all decks equally, any more than I would “read” all my books again, even if time weren’t an issue, right…. Like, some decks are interesting to go through to learn about how people think, but then, at the end of the day: just not so much, right.

I’m glad I record some important readings now, because it’s obvious that sometimes I miss…. Most of it, right.

I mean, I don’t think it’s ~terrible~, necessarily; the Mythic Tarot more seems like it made some choices that are not thought out well, or kinda calculated and rationalized until they got silly, you know: but this just seems like…. Questionable taste, you know. I mean, the thing that strikes you is the nudity. I don’t think sex is bad or that all decks have to go full-on Hanson-Robert’s kindergarten class, you know: cover up the Star, right…. I mean, it would be good for children…. But yeah: like, sometimes it was like, (throws up hands) All the girls are naked!…. “Why’s this one naked?”, ~Just think how nice it would be….! ~And while a third of the girls are nude, most of the serious people are men, right…. The High Priest is stern; Justice is a stern man…. I don’t know, give the deck credit for implying that we’re not supposed to work together, right…. I don’t mean to be unbearable about sex, like we’ve all got to be clean little computer chips, and read the news every day because yesterday’s news is already over, even though it’s the same damn news again, although none of it was important!…. Yeah…. But I don’t like to think that I don’t have sufficient grounding in subtler things than the naked priestess, right…. And something about the High Priestess in this card doesn’t appeal to me…. Like that’s not what Trump II is to me, right: like I’m gonna invite her out on a black tie date and she’s gonna show up like this…. Not especially pretty and trying too hard, right…. And the Wheel of Fortune? Why is ups-and-downs-card a naked woman? ALL the fucking ups and downs are being in somebody’s bed?….!

But yeah: the cards that seem “too vanilla”, stereotypical witchcraft: 8 of Rods, I mean, c’mon—flying on broomsticks!—and 8 of Pentacles, just kinda phoning in the work, right…. And The Guide, ‘save the girl stereotype’, right: which doesn’t really do it for me; I want a strong bitch who can shake up the fucking world and brag on her queen-ship, not a fainting girl who will collapse in your arms and blame you for how you didn’t carry her right, you know…. And the nudity…. And then the High Priestess and Wheel of Fortune, which I already talked about, the two big cards I didn’t like, maybe…. And especially the priestess, from sheer lack of…. Coolness, you know. I’m sorry, I was French once, in my past life…. I was a 20th century Frenchman…. Fully a third of the nine cards are general anathemas/warnings, almost: not that something ‘bad’ would happen like in a horror movie, but we might never get rid of the psychic dust and do good work together, you know: Nine of swords; five of wands; five of pentacles. Yeah: crazy shit…. Incidentally I didn’t put the cards together in a spread; I just picked a random number from random.org from 3-11, and then drew nine random cards—the random number—so now I’m kinda logically organizing them; there was no ‘spread’ in the regular sense…. Yeah: and the queen of Swords, a boss card. Some of the cards are good: two of cauldrons; two of swords; IV the Emperor; six of Swords; XX Karma; three of Swords; I the Magician; seven of Pentacles—eight solidly above average cards in all, about a talented tenth, I guess, although many are rather ordinary and kinda boring, the main theme being an unexceptional medievalism…. And a medievalism with knights-without-horses, you know.

But I don’t mean to beat a horseless knight, lol. It’s just sad, you know. It’s a lot.

Two additional random cards:

XII The Lone Man, reversed
VII Mastery, reversed

The Lone Man seems very weird and jokey and just…. Totally lame to me, you know. I think I was meaning to highlight it as an example of a bad Old Path card and forgot, you know. Although I guess also the people who put it together had a certain different sense of levity than me. I’m full of levity—except for when I’m not. I hate stuffiness and legal thinking and conformist thinking and robotic modes of expression, but although sometimes I let myself ‘go have fun’ in my mind, so to speak, and actively try to be spontaneous in my writing, if nowhere else, (I can actually be quite schedule-driven, even though it’s all self-imposed, no ‘golden handcuffs’, yet)…. I also like things to fucking make sense, you know. I dislike things not making sense….

And Mastery reversed—a combination of thinking that the deck was a good idea but not being impressed by the execution, like this card, not thinking that it’s a master-work, not thinking that it was intended as a master-work, (and having a distinct if not an outraged triggered classics professor point of view on that), and just…. Not wanting to be in control, like so many of the men in this deck present themselves as being. I want to have agency; I don’t want to be limited; I want to expand…. But I don’t want to have to project that ‘in control’ thing, you know.

But yeah: I’ll have to get a replacement Wiccan deck, and then I can discard this one. (I’ll keep the box and the crystals, obviously.) I need to spend my tax refund before the government thinks I’m not in need of benefits; the local magic shop is having a moving sale: it’s perfect. Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow.… (more)