Lord have mercy that the tarot card you have been drawing in your birthday isn’t an omen of what’s to come back for the 12 months. As a result of I used to be “known as” to work on the 5 of Swords. Or I used to be “pulled” to, I dunno, I discover all that New Agey jargon a bit fluffy however there it’s. “I used to be known as to” simply means I don’t have a logical clarification for why I did what I did.
The Etteilla 5 of Swords options an engraving of the Roman Emperor Aurelian (214 – 275 AD). Aurelian is finest remembered as a soldier-emperor in the course of the Disaster of the Third Century, a interval of army anarchy, overseas invasions, when Rome confronted financial and political turmoil, who succeeded on the reunification of Rome. He reigned as emperor for about 5 years, between 270 and 275.
Certainly one of his biggest victories was taking again management of Jap Rome and Egypt from Queen Zenobia, a army marketing campaign he began in 271. Septimia Zenobia (240 – 274 AD) was Queen of the Palmyrene Empire (modern-day Syria). She took underneath her management a lot of the Roman East and annexed central Anatolia and Egypt, ruling over one of many wealthiest unbiased albeit short-lived city-states of the Close to East. She goes down in historical past as some of the formidable challengers towards Rome.
In Historia Augusta (circa 4th century), Zenobia is described as being of “darkish complexion, her tooth have been of a pearly whiteness, and her giant black eyes sparkled with unusual hearth, tempered by essentially the most engaging sweetness.”
To reclaim the territories that Queen Zenobia had seized for herself, Emperor Aurelian launched a marketing campaign to reunite the japanese provinces. Zenobia was finally captured by Aurelian and exiled.
Although what she’s carrying in my drawing will not be traditionally correct to queens of that point and area, I’d guess Zenobia was no common girl anyway. She was not more likely to have adopted the norms. In line with historian Al-Tabari (839 – 923 AD), Zenobia was adept at using horses, would march lengthy distances on foot alongside her troops, and will hunt in addition to any man, and will out-drink any man.
So as an alternative of getting simply Aurelian’s mugshot within the decrease third, I illustrated him in a scene, in fight with Zenobia. Thought it’d make for a extra fascinating card.
Then for the decrease third reversed place, I went with Izanami, Shinto deity of creation and dying, of the underworld, of shadow, and of chaos. After dying throughout childbirth, Izanami grew to become a kami and darkish goddess of the underworld. She signifies loss and mortality.
Izanami and her husband Izanagi stirred the seas with a jeweled spear to kind the islands of Japan. She birthed not solely the land itself, but additionally the kami who now occupy that land.
Tragically, Izanami dies whereas birthing the hearth god Kagutsuchi. Enraged from grief, her husband Izanagi kills his new child son together with his sword, the Sword of Heaven (Ame-no-ohabari). Kagutsuchi’s dismembered physique then provides rise to different kami.
Izanami descends to the underworld the place she decays and herself turns into built-in and fused with the land of the useless and of decay. Thus, she is a kami of each life and dying, progress and decay, of creation and destruction. She can be a kami of transformation, as she herself modified from a mom goddess giving beginning to the kami of the world to the ruler of dying itself.
In each the Orsini and Lemarchand texts on Etteilla’s card meanings I’ve been referencing, the reversed 5 of Swords means grief, burial, having to ceremoniously say your goodbyes, however to take coronary heart, as a result of brighter days are forward.
Historically the reversed key phrase needs to be Grief or some variation thereof. And I’d make the case that I did go together with “some variation thereof.” I went with the phrase, “Break the Cycle.” Implied in that phrase is struggling and grief, however I’m giving it a little bit of a carry. =)
What causes grief and what evokes one to say “break the cycle” is a standard root trigger. So I haven’t modified that root which means to the 5 of Swords reversed. I’m simply that root from a unique perspective.
Oh, enjoyable. Within the Tarot Belline, Magus Edmond replicates the key phrases from the Etteilla: Perte within the upright place and Deuil within the reverse.
Etteilla’s affect continues: Waite definitely sourced his interpretation of the 5 of Swords from Etteilla.
In Waite’s Pictorial Key, he says the 5 of Swords means “degradation, destruction, revocation, infamy, dishonour, loss, with the variants and analogues of those” and reversed, it means “the identical; burial and obsequies [funeral rites and rituals].”
Per Crowley, the 5 of Swords is the Lord of Defeat (therefore I went with the narrative illustration that I went with — Queen Zenobia is finally defeated). Within the card meanings pamphlet Crowley revealed in The Equinox, he describes this card as that includes “two Rayed Angelic Palms” every holding two swords and a 3rd hand holding a sword upright within the middle as if disuniting them. Rose petals have been torn asunder and are falling. Key phrases Crowley associates with this card: “Defeat, anxiousness, hassle; loss and vileness of nature.” But there’s a persona implied right here that’s “intelligent and fast in thought and speech.”
My SKT deck was a fusion of Waite and Crowley, advised via the story of Hector, warrior for Troy, who’s aided by Aphrodite, preventing Achilles, aided by Athena, who has despatched her messenger, the owl, to supervise the battle.
My illustration work has improved a lot since drawing the Spirit Keeper’s Tarot. I can management the consistency of the define thickness quite a bit higher now than I might earlier than.
It’s loopy how altering the scale of the digital brush makes such an enormous a distinction. Once I was drawing Aphrodite two or three years in the past, I used to be utilizing measurement 8, which is the thickness you see within the outlines above.
And now my digital brush measurement is 4. Big distinction, proper?
To shut out this replace, listed below are two card I not too long ago labored on that didn’t get a devoted weblog publish, although you’ll discover them on my Instagram:
The tarot awesomeness that’s John Choma identified to me that there’s a key phrases flip-flop discrepancy within the Etteilla Ace of Wands.
Per Choma, in Etteilla’s unique 1789 deck, the key phrase for the upright place was Naissance (Beginning) and Chute (Fall) was the reversed place. Nevertheless, it in some way received flip-flopped in subsequent posthumous iterations of Etteilla’s deck. The following Etteilla II and Etteilla III had the key phrases “unsuitable” or flipped, with Chute within the upright place and Naissance within the reverse. Doh.
I additionally went again to tweak the beforehand accomplished Seven of Swords and Three of Swords, although I believe the Roman Emperor Pertinax within the reverse place of the Three of Swords might use extra touch-ups. I solely drew half of him, after which did the copied mirror picture of the half I drew to create the symmetrical entire, however it’s wanting a bit too apparent and unnatural. I do like my butterflies although. =)
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