Dear reader of signs,
Welcome to the Sunday, the 18th of June’s observation from my daily ‘Reading the Signs’ June challenge, an exercise of paying attention with a focus in mind as the day unfolds.
I shall dispense with the prelude as this day had a strong start, indicating no chit-chat!
The deck I used was the Night Sun Tarot by Fabio Listrani. Since I pulled The Fool — a card I drew just two days earlier — I pulled another card to expand upon that, and it was The Wheel of Fortune. Two major arcanas… not a day to mess about.
I bought this deck on a whim a few years ago, searching for something indefinable. Looking at the images of some of the cards online I thought this would satisfy that vague itch that I needed some other avenue for insight. (While ignoring the piles of decks I already owned.)
Yet when the cards arrived I didn’t feel any grá towards them. I put them away after an inspection, and this is the first time I’ve truly used them. They have an unusual style, manga meets steampunk, but some of the cards are particularly arresting. The concept behind this ‘Night Sun’ is a Jungian interest in the shadow and what it reveals of the personality. This is a deck that shines a dark light upon situations and people.
Notice on The Fool, the alchemical sign for Water and the Hebrew letter Aleph, which is ‘oneness with God’. The accompanying The Wheel of Fortune has the symbol for the planet/God Jupiter and Caph can be ‘threshold’ or even ‘spreading out’.
The Fool — as I mentioned in Friday’s observation — is about forward momentum, springing into the unknown, guided by a gut instinct rather than rational thinking. It can be prone to impulsiveness, but even that has a unfiltered dynamic connection to instinct. One that might be more right than wrong most of the time. What I love about different Tarot decks is how the meaning can be subtly tweaked depending on the artwork. This Fool is wearing a mask (with tiny devilish horns), which is a feature in some very old Tarot decks. He has deliberately blinded himself to consequences. He holds inspiration in his hand and experience over his shoulder and barrels forward, with his hound bounding alongside him (its eyes are fixed on his master’s hand, holding the directional signal).
The Wheel of Fortune also indicates change. It is not always clear if it will be positive or negative, but it suggests a significant shift. This wheel reminds me of the factory machine in which Charlie Chaplin is swallowed during the film Modern Times (1936). Written on this giant cog is contraria sunt complementa, which means ‘opposites are complementary’, and was the moto from of the coat of arms by Niels Bohr, a Danish physicist who made fundamental contributions to the understanding of quantum physics. There are also ribbons of I Ching symbols and the faint imprint of Hebrew text. There’s even more I could go into here, which is what makes these cards interesting to use. Overall the impression is of churn of influences, and the need to keep winding the wheel of change.
I kept both of these powerful indicators in my mind, and didn’t do any Sunday slacking off. Instead I determined to finish sculpting a pitch until it was done, and to submit it that day.
In between I got errands done and wrangled a family visit. It was not a day for rest, it was a day for action.
So I leaped, determined to play the odds, and rode the wheel of destiny.