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@Rose Lalonde Haha thanks! My wallet hurts, but it was totally worth it 😃 Congrats on the new Marseille deck, it looks really beautiful and it's fun to own limited edition decks. I haven't gotten as far as Marseille interpretations yet on my Tarot journey. That will have to wait for later. I’ve already bothered @DanielJUK with several deck library uploads, you’ll have to get in line 😜

Nice Haul! All of it. Not a dud in the lot. 😉 - I just received the Marseille Tarot by Italian artist Virginia Mori. Love her work. The publisher was meh - typo on "Strenght", one minor has a pink background while all the rest are beige, and the lwb's ink smeared. (Not an error, but the stock is glossy, and I'd prefer matte for this) Still, I love it and am glad I got it. It was the limited ed. with a signed print of the Papess at stay-hop shop that Mori's site linked to. #93 of 100 so presumably not many left, but there are plenty of the non-limited. Shipping surprisingly fast with the cheapest option from Italy. From the second pic, you can tell I'll be bothering @DanielJUK with yet another deck library image. 😅 He's so good to us to maintain that as a volunteer. 🙌

@Tanga I was referencing that deck I had to burn. When I was deeply into Chaos magic, I created a servitor for accurate readings and anchored it to a deck. I didn't use the deck for a while and then when I opened it some time later--I got hit with a blast of stale energy. So I burnt the deck. In a big fire in my backyard firepit.

We cannot verify or confirm this post or the poster. This has been a heated and controversial topic on the forum in the past, so we will leave the thread on the forum as another part of the Chesca/ Greenwood story but close it for discussion. Thanks for your understanding, TT&M Staff

@Marina artwork is a little small with the pocket deck size...the images have quite alot of detail (hence me missing noticing the Gnus at 1st) - but these days I mostly need my glasses for everything anyway. Have you looked on youtube for any flip throughs/reviews of the deck to watch? This is how I mostly check out decks before I buy. *I would post some images, except my laptop is in the hospital presently, & I don't know how to do this on my mobile.

Decks received over the last few days: I am really happy with the Russian Tarot of St. Petersburg deck. It is second-hand, but in great condition. It is printed in Belgium, which means it is a first edition. So for 20 euros, it was a great buy 😊 But I actually posted this mostly to give a heads-up that the early-bird rewards for The Jane Austen Tarot deck (+ book) on Kickstarter are almost gone. So if you are interested in this deck, you need to hurry. This deck could be a great reason to (re)read the books or watch the TV-series this winter.

@Misterei Let be know if you're visiting - we could catch a coffee 🙃.

@Misterei what do you mean "burnt" ????? I am most curious 🙃

For me Empress is one of those cards that relies on context. Well, I suppose all cards rely on context ... Is the question about family dynamics and relationships? Empress is often someone's mom. Literally. Is the couple trying to get pregnant? Empress can show pregnancy [with other cards]. Is the question about business? Empress is often either a creative or an entrepreneur. She's prosperous and creative--although she might go over budget--so gotta watch for the money cards. Health? Empress is often herbal--plant-based medicine. Lifestyle? Empress can mean too much of a good thing. Overindulgence in food, sex, shopping. And for some readings, pregnancy is NOT welcome news. So there's that. Spirituality? Empress is the quintessential Nature Goddess. Fortuna. Mother Nature. Demeter. Fertile gardens and farms from blessed earth. A good haul from fishing. An abundant harvest. She might be a witchy earth mother type of person. The one who feeds all the stray kids and puts out a water bowl for feral cats and stray dogs. She rescues birds and other wildlife. A Fairy Godmother in real life as @Chariot mentions.

@Chariot this is interesting timing as I have been getting Empress + Emperor in readings recently. And have often gotten them together in the past as well. They absolutely DO work together. In so many ways on so many levels. usually when they appear together in a spread as they often do [for me]--it is a matter of balancing the two energies. In my recent self-reading it was about balancing the mars/emperor work of repairs and painting with the venus/empress work of finding a good tenant. Let's just say I was overwhelmed by needing to do these 2 very different tasks at the same time and I needed to balance both activities. It was similar for my client. Client needed to find a balance between being social with co-workers [Empress] yet maintain strong boundaries so as not to get sucked-in to drama [Emperor]. I also get them as a pair for healthy couples. Like even going through a breakup the couple is putting the mother/empress and father/emperor role at the forefront. Or maybe they even stay married until the kids are 18. This is very much empress and emperor working together.

I would love to go. Maybe next year. I live in USA and it would take some major long-term planning to go. Britain seems to have such a vibrant cartomancy scene! Plus I've never visited UK and would like to just do the tourist thing a bit.

I've used all tarots in all sorts of magic--Chaos and otherwise. I wouldn't call them servitors per se--but definitely have used them similar to how I would use a Chaos Magic Sigil. I once charmed a servitor into a deck to get more accurate readings. I don't know how much it helped. What i do know is that I ended up burning the deck some time later as I felt the energy had gone stale. Ouch. It was a pretty valuable deck, too.☹️ Trumps as Tree of Life is one possible method of using them. I agree the Trionfi can operate on a deeper archetypal wavelength than the Minors--they were designed that way by italians in the 1400s. Kabbala got attached to tarot 300 years later in 1700s. Of course in chaos magick--anything goes. It's up to the magician to assign whatever meaning they wish to Trumps vs Minors. Likewise, Kabbala vs. neoplatonism or any other philosophy is all fair game in Chaos magic. I don't think a card itself can be a servitor ??? One might use a card as a physical basis to anchor a servitor--as i did with my poor burnt deck. But a single card itself? To me that functions more like a sigil. A visual image I intentionally plant in my deep mind. Of course ymmv.

For me these 3 cards are distinct as per timing / expectation. Tower and Judgment are often FAST or unexpected. Surprising or shocking. Tower is malefic. Judgement is neutral. We can have good rapid changes or bad ones or neutral ones. Judgement can go either way. Tower is malefic. For me, Tower isn't always external. I have had many INTERNAL Tower experiences where my sense of Self was shattered. I have rolled through many an External Tower experience with my healthy sense of self intact. Divorce, Bankruptcy, loss of home. They were painful but didn't break my sense of self. OTOH I have felt completely undone and destroyed by experiences that are too deeply internal to discuss in a public forum. Suffice it to say there was no "obvious" Tower on the outside of things. One thinks of "Ego Death" as described in some religions and philosophies. But I just call it Tower. Death as an allegorical card is more of an expected change. Part of the natural order. An old phase of your life dies. For the 13 year old, childhood has died. For the employee that gets laid-off, the job has died. For the relationship--Death card indicates at least on some level the client felt a breakup was inevitable. In our modern world actual physical death is often expected. An elderly person goes into hospice for example. But it might be sudden. Accidents, violence, infection, or surgical complications. In such cases i might expect Death + Tower or some other card/s that show the sudden, unexpected nature of the death. As @DanielJUK mentioned, WoF is also a harbinger of change--but as Jupiter's trump it's usually benefic. Fortunes change for the better. OTOH with relationships it's more neutral. Affairs of the heart usually thrive on stability rather than change.

Aha. While I'm waiting for the Fairy Tale Tarot, I also ordered another one ...a totally different sort of deck from those I am usually attracted to. It's the Ferenc Pinter Tarot. I was looking at the flip-through as if I was using the deck for the ISG (Intuitive) reading circle, and realised there is a LOT to work with here. I'm especially intrigued by the strange Court Cards. This will be fun.

Not a deck for the circle-phobics then! I suppose the deck has to make sense according to our inner symbolic language, and this is always a very individual thing. Nevertheless, I may still give this one a chance! One last question: is the artwork clear enough, even in the pocket edition?

Thanks Vesta. It is. I still have some issues with fatigue and right-sided weakness, but otherwise I'm doing well. It's been nice to engage with people again and have meaningful discussions after being away from things for a while.

It's great to hear from you! I hope life is treating you much better these days.

Welcome back @BrightEye 😀

@Moon-Hermit I agree. I think of the various card systems (Tarot, Lenormand, Kipper etc.) as language systems, so the missing cards would be like missing words or concepts. I’m tempted to experiment with this though, to see if the deck finds a way to replace them or “speak” around them. I’ll definitely try get a full copy of the deck though. Gregory’s source also has a little white book with it, which will be helpful for me.

If I were in your situation, I would have found a replacement or recreated the missing cards at least and added them in. I never have and would never read with an incomplete deck. Lenormand is already a perfect system as it is, so even one card missing would ruin the whole balance and it wouldn’t be the Lenormand you’re reading anymore. If the Coffin is missing, what card would come up instead to indicate that something is “ending”? Life is filled with different sorts of endings and they are meant to happen at some point. Imagine it on a mundane level and think you were doing a daily reading; imagine, for instance, you had a Netflix subscription and it was gonna end that day, you had forgotten and the cards wanted to let you know, lol. Moon + Ring + Coffin = subscription ended. I doubt a deck with a missing card number 8 would be able to show it to you that clearly. Same goes with the Scythe, which can act as a warning for danger, sudden mishaps, sharp tools, etc.

Well it WOULD mean you can slip in the missing cards if you want !

@gregory Yes, there are copies that were published in the early 2000s, based on the 1950s deck. I suspect, after researching, that the one I have is reprint rather than a vintage version, though they look well used. Thank you for pm, much appreciated!

I’m in with my newly trimmed Rider-Waite, published by Lo Scarabeo with the centennial images. The reason I trimmed the deck was that this Lo Scarabeo edition had added card names at the top of the card, in addition to the English hand-written ones. I felt it disturbed the visual effect, so I hand-trimmed them off with scissors, together with the borders. The corners are also hand-trimmed. Took me a week, in between household chores and day trips out because it’s summer here and I’m ooff work. Now I need to decide whether I want to keep it in the original box, which is nice, or whether I want a bag, or both. Anyway, I asked what the deck wanted to communicate to me. No positions, but I did consider the base card (Sun) this time. What’s lacking in my life at the moment is that Sun energy, both in terms of light-heartedness and mental clarity. Otherwise, there’s plenty of sun (it’s not rained for many weeks). I’m happiest when I can focus on projects (professional and hobbies), so that’s the 3oW. So I read this to be active as much as I can (Ace) but to be mindful of mental exhaustion and feeling emotionally low with it (3oS). Too much activity is not conducive to my sense of wellbeing at the moment, so maybe to stand back and appreciate what I’ve achieved + plan for the future (rather than being active all the time). Limit my daily activity to certain times. The 3oW also brings to mind T S Eliot’s The Waste Land, which I’ve been rereading. Poetry and its rhythm has always had a regenerative effect on me.

I am unsure of where in the world it would be best to post the following, or who to have this conversation with safely to ensure its moral honesty and integrity. While I have recently read the comments posted during December of 2018 in this community forum relating to the issue of The Greenwood Tarot, and appreciate that the topic had been closed to further replies by the monitor at the time, I cannot conscientiously hold the story of The Greenwood in silence while there is renewed threat of printing and continued confusion. My hope is that the heart of The Greenwood is released, and if Chesca sees the following, her heart is warmed, and all threads of light be blessed! Response to posts I last saw Chesca in the garden of a home we'd been staying at outside London after burning an unopened publication of the Greenwood Tarot in a small firepit. The purpose of burning the deck was to release it from the primordial repression and contemporary curse that had bound the original non-gendered Lovers of the Greenwood, whose imagery embodies deep cultural and spiritual significance rooted in primal symbolism. Three years had passed since the 1996 publication of The Greenwood Tarot to that night in the garden. During that time, the primordial nature inherent in Chesca's original image of the androgynous Lovers blessing the land with their life-giving energy of love through tender hearts had never been discarded or overlooked by her. The Greenwood's deep connection to its primal and spiritual roots reflected Chesca's unwavering dedication. The card of the Two Deer-Headed Lovers was pivotal in awakening the Greenwood's true essence, serving as a catalyst for its spiritual liberation from oppression. Only through tenacity, integrity, and formidable devotion to the underlying mysteries and ethics of The Greenwood were the dormant elements and implicit truth of the cards able to reveal their hidden, profound symbolism, systematically through an extremely significant sequence. Unearthing the fundamental primitive message of The Greenwood began with the card of The Lovers. It ended when Endurance, the final card of The Greenwood to change, became The Gateway some three years after the initial printing and publication of The Greenwood Tarot Pre-Celtic Shamanism of The Mythic Forest. The Ancestor, a reindeer-headed figure and embodiment of gentle wisdom and ancestral memory, appeared, as The Shaman on the back of the cards stood up to take her place on the front of the cards, beating her drum to the soft cosmic rhythm of a heart that exists beyond the limits of persecution, fear, violation, or oppression. The rhythm of The Ancestors' drum lifted the mists from primal trackways, revealing a tangible passage to The Heart of the Greenwood and recognition of a more significant story for humanity. I know this because I walked beside Chesca through those years and witnessed the ancient curse of bondage breaking, as each card in turn revealed its true essence through the profoundly changing story of The Greenwood Tarot. Given how the cards had profoundly shifted in form, reprinting The Greenwood Tarot would have been to misrepresent The Greenwood with distorted imagery and embolden the primordial repression and curse that had bound them. Perpetuating The Greenwood Tarot as it had been published in 1996, after such a significant transformation, would have been irresponsible and misleading, and would have contributed further to the insidious dark tangled threads of ignorance and elusive control that surrounded them. CTao

I probably couldn't make it to one anyway, which is one reason I don't do that - but Brighton is south of London. Coming from where I am that would involve travelling to London and out again.... There's be more scope to attract people from a larger areas if she went north-er or Midlands-ish. Birmingham ? Nottingham ? both more central, good links and a LOT cheaper ! (and for the record, still FAR away from little me !)