Hallowquest Study Group anyone?

DaisyDragonfly

Morning DaisyDragonfly!
Does that make sense?

Evening, PathWalker! :D

Yes, it makes perfect sense. You're right, of course. Actually, I felt that if I didn't use the cards, my answers were more likely to be shallow, glib. As if I'd just say what I already knew (or thought I knew) without looking deeper, or questioning those assumptions.

In fact, the first card I pulled, I wasn't sure what to do with it. So I closed my eyes and visualized it and just sat with the image; sure enough, I went somewhere I hadn't quite expected. I'm not sure I've gone as deep with it as I could, but that's why I haven't automatically gone onto the next exercise. See if anything else appears...

And this level of commitment is why it won't be something I can do everything evening, or even every week!

Thanks for the encouragement, though, PathWalker :D It helps!
 

DaisyDragonfly

Lesson 2 completed, as far as I can go...

I'll come back to the Seeker, I think, at the end of this journey, meet with him again. Not sure I'm entirely ready to hear the whole of his message yet.

Lesson 3, here I come!
 

Flaxen

Just adding another voice of encouragement. :)

Those early lessons were very interesting and I found that the daily draws with the minors and courts would often reflect my real world in unexpected ways - it wasn't always about the deep archetypal energy. The landscapes are so reflective of places I know and love.

I'm still ploughing my through but in short bursts. I figure I have plenty of time...
 

aduki

restarting

Hi everyone! I want to let you know that I still intend to & recently did restart this course. Last year I did a big part of the Sword Quest & now I 'll start the Quest for the Spear (I did the ritual the 22nd). I also want to redo/review the first 5 lessons, as lots has changed in the meantime.
I decided not to write long updates of my progress, it takes too much energy to translate everything in English, but I will try to write short summarizes or something simple like: I did this lesson.
Who else is still on it? Maybe we can motivate each other.
BB
aduki
 

Chiriku

Question about discrepancies among the books

This deck, which is already in my Top 10 of decks, was my choice for this year's One Deck Wonder. I don't know how long I'll keep it up, but I foresee at least a few months of exclusive use of this deck.

I have not yet launched into the seasonal course and don't know if I plan to do the whole thing as written, anyway.

My question concerns inconsistencies among and even within the books that I have.

I have both versions of the deck (original black-border and reprint/white-border) and the following books:

-- Hallowquest: Tarot Magic and the Arthurian Mysteries (1990 Aquarian; grey/mauve and purple with The Lady of the Lake on the cover)

-- The Arthurian Tarot Course: a Quest for All Seasons (yellow with Sovereignty on the cover)

-- the Little Purple Booklet, 80-pages, (LPB) that came with the white-bordered/reprint deck

So far, I am only working with the first book and the LPB, and these have revealed several internal inconsistencies both between them and within the Tarot Magic book itself, with the LPB identifying certain cards as X character, and the Tarot Magic book identifying them as Y.

For instance, Tarot Magic identifies The Wounded King (XII) as Pelles, the Fisher King, who happens to be Perceval's uncle; the LPB does not name him, which is unfortunate but expected for a much smaller book that can't include all info. Tarot Magic's ambiguous description of the Spear King (King of Wands) seems to suggest that the king is Perceval (the nephew), whereas the LPB identifies this king as Pelles/the Fisher King. That's an actual discrepancy--is it the nephew or the uncle?

Another one: the LPB identifies the Sword King (King of Swords) as Ambrosius, while p. 85 of Tarot Magic is ambiguously worded to suggest this is Arthur (even though he bears no resemblance to the Arthur on the Arthur Trump card) and p. 152 identifies him as Uther. Then within Tarot Magic again, just a few pages later in the book after identifying him as Uther, one of the Court card/suit guided meditations identifies the Sword King as Arthur again.

Which is he: Ambrosius, Arthur, or Uther?

I understand that all three can be linked satisfactorily to the Sword King, but this can be frustrating when trying to mentally correlate each card to memorable story. I just found a sentence in Tarot Magic that supports my observations and points out that even with the same book, there are multiple potential characters assigned to each court card:

The Arthurian correlations are as various as the variants of these family trees, but the following suggested correspondences may be seen as the medieval octaves of the earlier archetypes depicted here. Readers will notice considerable departures between these correspondences and the suggested stories which underlie each of the Court cards on the pages between 76 and 116
-- p. 152

Well, at least I know I'm not imagining it.

And given that the Matthewses point them out themselves, this suggests these are not inconsistencies per se but intended variations--most unusual in a tarot deck or system.

I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that the Arthurian cycle is many centuries old, with each era in time and country/culture adding various elements into the mix, resulting in redundancies, inconsistencies, and overlaps.

Yet, the Matthewses are the ones who made up the Court cards and chose all the stories and correspondences for each card in the deck, so I'm not quite sure why they have intentionally made certain cards variable in their correspondence... Yes, the Arthurian canon is huge, multi-century, multi-culture, and unwieldy, but the authors had the power to choose which stories they matched up to which card, and keep their own system consistent.

Any thoughts?
 

aduki

Hello Chiriku,

I’m sorry nobody answered your question yet. I have no answers either, but I can add my two cents

I’m using yet another book: “HallowQuest: The Arthurian Tarot Course”, which is blue with The Lady of the Lake on the cover,
Hallowquest: the Arthurian Tarot Course doesn't have any new information. What it contains is all of the text of the The Arthurian Tarot Course: a Quest for All Seasons and about 2/3 of the information from Hallowquest: Tarot Magic and the Arthurian Mysteries.
and the LPB.

I didn’t delve into this deck as deep as you have, so I didn’t notice any inconsistencies yet. But I looked up the examples you gave.

This is how I understand it. Each card stands for an archetype. E.g. about the Wounded King: “here we find the part of ourselves which is wounded” (book p. 232)
These archetypes can also be found in the King Arthur stories. But, as you already said in your post, this is not “one story”, but a vast group of stories, myths, legends… that changed over time. So in one story this archetype could be represented by this character, but 100 year later the story could have been changed and now the archetype is represented by another figure.

So I don’t think it was the intention of the Matthewses to relate each card to a particular story or a particular character, but to an archetype, that is expressed differently in the different stories.

For example: about the Spear King is stated: “He is that part of you that is deeply committed to healing that which has been wounded” (p 188). Then book goes on giving EXAMPLES of this archetype in the Arthurian stories, like Bran the Blessed. Then the book goes on: “But perhaps the most famous exemplar of this role is King Pelles …”

Btw: The Wounded King in my book is referred to as: “This card indicates an aspect of Arthur himself as the wounded Grail king, unable to move about his land, dependent on the wise actions of independent questing knights who work without any seeming coordination.”

I hope this helps,
Greetings,

PS And for those who are wondering, I'm still working on this course, but at my own pace, which is very very ;) slow. Actually, at the moment, I’m celebrating my two year anniversary by rereading everything I wrote this far.
 

Chiriku

aduki,

Your response was very welcome. Thank you for taking a crack at my question. You have answered it beyond my expectations.

I know the book you are talking about and yes, I deduced that it contained more or less the same information in the two previously published full-sized companion books (both of which I have), so I chose not to buy it.

So I don’t think it was the intention of the Matthewses to relate each card to a particular story or a particular character, but to an archetype, that is expressed differently in the different stories.

For example: about the Spear King is stated: “He is that part of you that is deeply committed to healing that which has been wounded” (p 188). Then book goes on giving EXAMPLES of this archetype in the Arthurian stories, like Bran the Blessed. Then the book goes on: “But perhaps the most famous exemplar of this role is King Pelles …”

You explained and provided support for this theory very well--I thank you.

I believe where I went astray is that I was thinking of the Court cards in particular from the perspective of the majority of the other "narrative" tarot decks out there (the Mythic, the fairy tale decks, Robert Place's Vampire deck which is based on the life story and works of Bram Stoker, etc). In most such narrative decks, the Courts are firmly assigned to one story, character or personage whom we are meant to conjure up (and relate to that character's traits and life events) when the card comes up in a reading.

And indeed, in most tarot decks--not just narrative ones--none of the Minors including the Courts are really 'archetypal,' not the way the Majors are. The Courts usually represent personality types, but they are still limited to individual people--hence, my instinctive assumption that the Courts in this deck must correlate to specific people.

But as you have shown here, it seems the Matthewses had a different vision for their deck, one where Courts as well as Majors are archetypal.

This is the key to my understanding and being able to let go of the previous "mental dissonance" I experienced when comparing the descriptions within the various companion texts to this deck.

Btw: The Wounded King in my book is referred to as: “This card indicates an aspect of Arthur himself as the wounded Grail king, unable to move about his land, dependent on the wise actions of independent questing knights who work without any seeming coordination.”

Wonderful quote. This adds to my understanding of this crucially important (in my life) archetype.

PS And for those who are wondering, I'm still working on this course, but at my own pace, which is very very ;) slow. Actually, at the moment, I’m celebrating my two year anniversary by rereading everything I wrote this far.

Good on you. As of now, I don't plan on following the seasonal course in a strict sense, and I imagine I too will take a few years to get to everything before all is said and done.
 

PathWalker

Great conversation - aduki managed to put into words what I feel but couldn't express. Because the beginnings of these myths/archetypes is so ancientand widespread, it's as if they have tried to honour the whole of it's history, not take one slice of time and force everything into it.

I'm slightly ashamed as to how long I've been working on the Hallowquest, but yes, I'm still moving along slowly too :)

Pathwalker
 

JenWt43

Thank you everyone, for all of the information. I am waiting for the deck, deck book, and the big blue book to arrive. I stumbled across what seemed to be a good deal on eBay, for the set of three, under $10 US. It looks like this will be a long-term project for me also. :) But I am looking forward to it!
 

aduki

Hello JenWt43, welcome to this Study Group.

You are welcome, Chiriku. And thank you for asking the question. It was only by trying to answer it, that I came to these insights.

PathWalker: Don’t be ashamed, you are my shining example and give me the courage to go on.

I decided to start all over again :) I hope to be able to follow the study program now (one lesson a week), even though it is actually a lot of material to be covered in one week. But, at the moment, I would prefer keeping to this schedule, according to the right time of the year, even if that means skipping task, questions of meditations (preferably the ones I have already done before) or not going into it as deep as I would prefer (which is actually much to deep).
I will try to post an update each week, but I won’t be able to translate everything.

And DaisyDragonfly, thanks for the suggestion to pull cards for each question. It works wonderfully for me.