JOY, Suit of the Wet Moon
The card represents experiencing a profound sense of peace and connection-especially emotional-with the universe. I’d had this image in my head, of lying in water with the stars reflected around you, so you feel like you’re floating in the sky, for some time before I first drew this back in 1993. It was because I’d spent a lovely summer evening swimming in Lake Champlain and had had this experience. In 1994 the movie Immortal Beloved came out. I didn’t see the movie, but did see the trailer, and a very similar image is in it.
I think this card is very Galen.
BIRTH, Suit of the Grass Clock
This card represents birth in one or several of its many aspects–a deeply evolutionary and creative moment, a dawning of new possibilities, and metamorphosis.
The person who inspired the card was also my first friend to have a baby, and while I’d started the deck before she got pregnant, over time it all made more and more sense.
Another good friend of mine commented that her experience of giving birth was solitary. Not having gone through the process of giving birth that had not occurred to me. It was a lovely and profound insight. It also supported my decision to remove the other people’s hands out of both DEATH and BIRTH.
As Lily Tomlin said, “We’re all in this alone.”
DESIGN, Suit of the Grass Clock
This card represents the ability to plan and then to bring those plans into fruition, also to be able to use resources for the most appropriate, useful, and beautiful end.
This card is really one of my all-time favorites. To me it is the difference between Art and Design, in that most Design has a long-term plan. Or perhaps it’s how I like to make things, thinking of how they’ll grow and mutate (or not). I like all the iterations of the drawing, as well.
A good illustration of what this card is about lies in a story I heard about a certain cathedral that was built in the early middle ages. The builders, knowing that eventually the wood beams would need to be replaced, planted trees near the cathedral so that in 100 years the beams would be available. THAT is good design.
CREATION, Suit of the Wet Moon
This card shows how intense emotion can erupt into an intense creative force. If allowed to flow freely, pent up emotions can create oceans. This card also shows that sorrow and grief can create beauty and power, when expression is allowed.
This is one of my favorites and may end up as a photo collage later (if Judy will oblige). The story in my head is that her tears are creating the ocean, that her sorrow is creating life.
SOLDIER, Suit of the Warm Wall
This card represents victory with a cost, whether to other people or your own safety and integrity. As you appreciate your gain, also be careful to appreciate what has been lost or compromised.
This card changed a lot over time. It was a harder card to begin with, being more about strategy, the general in a tent moving pieces around a board, possibly forgetting they are human. It was originally “The General”. Then we went to war (several times) and I began to have friends who were soldiers, and their experience gave me a different focus, and so it ended up being more about the cost of war, rather than the intention.
I have always been surprised that this card came out of Galen’s charts, as he is one of the most peaceful people I’ve ever met.
TAKING, Suit of the Winged Path
This card represents taking something with you even when you abandon a place, something that may grow and bear fruit in your new life.
This one was originally called “leaving”. I played with the name for awhile. It was also “the immigrant”. It’s not meant to be taking something in a negative light, but as in taking what can be salvaged. It’s related to Koshen, who is an immigrant in a number of senses. I have a lot of immigrants in the family, and so this was an important one for me. Also, I’ve moved a heck of a lot, often not by choice.
Bringing something from your old life to inform the new.
RELEASE, The Priestess of the Suit of the Winged Path
This card represents the need to express internal creativity on a profound level.
This card has pretty much always been the same and I don’t know where the image came from (why the stomach?) but I think it’s very much related to Growing. Life taking a new form.
NAVIGATION, Suit of the Winged Path
This card represents the need to make decisions while being unsure of the consequences. Making a choice from the options available.
I had trouble with this one. Maybe I should have stuck with the first version. The second looks too much like a tree to me. I like the final–more variation amongst the paths, but not so much that the choice is obvious.
STRUGGLE, Suit of the Wet Moon
This card represents the need, and the ability, to push forward regardless of immense obstacles.
This card is about trying to swim against the current and is directly inspired not only by the charts of the person who is connected with it but by something she said. Skye and I might still have been in college when she said that she felt like she was constantly struggling to move forward, swimming up a river against rocks and rapids, while most people walked alongside on a smooth path, wondering what she was complaining about. It always stuck in my head, because I know the feeling, and ended up here.
I think it is also very much about endurance. Not something I thought about much when I started this deck but very much a part of my life as I get older. A true test of strength. Skye certainly has endurance.
The UNICORN, Suit of the Warm Wall
This card represents the opportunity to change bondage into freedom, to take a leap into your dreams.
So this is really one of the first ones I thought about, and it really hasn’t changed at all. This one is very Mom (Jane).
Instead of catching the unicorn, she runs off with it, alluding those who meant to use her as a tool. I had a hard time naming this one, actually, though the final name is a bit of a “duh”! I always suspected that some of the Virgins in the tales of the Unicorn may have taken advantage of a rare opportunity. I’ve heard that the original sense of the word “virgin” was about purity of spirit, of courage, rather than referring to a physical state.
