Cat* said:
Maybe my best bet would indeed be to make a print-out working copy without titles and with backs in a solid color or a less busy design so I can see if it makes any difference.
First to encorage you into making your own version of the deck, here are some scans of mine:
1.
The Shaman
2.
Two of Wands
3.
King of Stones
4.
Three cards
5.
Backs (The first image shows how I turned the back into an additional card, the second is the plain green back I put on my cards.)
As you can see, the colours are slightly different from the original cards - they came out brighter and in particular the blues are much bluer (if that makes sense,
For example.) But all in all it is much nicer to study than the original, though much harder to shuffle (its about the size of the Druidcraft, but much thicker), so for Readings I tend to still use my original.
Cat* said:
My Greenwood is throwing court cards at me these days. I still have a hard time grasping their meaning much of the time.
I believe it's partly because I never saw many of these animals in real life (except maybe in a zoo), so I don't have a well-rounded 'feel' for them. (Today I thought I'd probably find it easier to relate to animals like Crow, Squirrel, or Magpie, as these are animals that drop by very often right around our house and I have an idea of how they behave in their natural environment.) I also have no previous concept of the spiritual/cultural meaning of many of the Greenwood animals because they didn't feature in any of the stories or fairytales I grew up with (or if they did, they obviously didn't stick out enough to remember).
The animals in it and the deck as a whole feels European but not exactly Europe-where-I-live(d) to me. For some reason, this really makes me feel a little distanced from the deck (to be fair: the DruidCraft Tarot and Druid Animal Oracle give me the same feeling; it's just more intense with the Greenwood). I guess it boils down to what we already discussed earlier on: physical location, the Spirits of that Place, and the spiritual/cultural tradition/system we feel connected to. It may be less the fault of any deck, though, and mirror more of my general feeling of not quite having found the spiritual 'tradition' that works for me and the place I grew up in and the place I live in right now.
Not sure if I'm making sense here but I thought I'd throw it out to see if someone else has any helpful ideas/thoughts to add.
(((*sympathetic hug*))) I know exactly what you mean. I have managed to find some connection with all but four of them - Heron, Woodpecker, Kingfisher and Reindeer. And the main reason that these four are so hard, is that no-one has written anything about them. Everytime I look up reindeers as totems/symbols, I get referred to Deer - which is, of course, a different court (I wish they had picked two different animals, rather than two types of the one species.)
Like you I have no knowledge of any of the animals. Sorry, I do know hawks and horses. Oh, and foxes, though the attitudes to them here are not in the least reverential, as they are feral pests that kill the native animals and birds. But the other thirteen animals are completely foreign to me. And when I try to compare them to things I know I end up in more difficulties. I mean why use a snake - to me they are simply highly poisonous reptiles to be avoided at all costs.
It has taken me a few weeks to get some connection with them, and as I said, I am still working on it. I am determined to connect. All I can recommend is reading up about the animals, getting to know where they live and what their habits are and maybe they will, eventually, make sense.
Best wishes for your journey
FS
However, I seem to have an visceral aversion to QBLH, for that reason studying GD-derived decks (especially Thoth) does nothing for me personally. Though Scion would have you believe that the GW is GD-derived. 