catlin
magpie9 said:
Good point, magpie but there is also a darker side to Cerunnos (which is often split up in the image of Annwn or Gwynn up Nud), the leader of the Wild Hunt.
Where O where has the Devil gone?
Good point, magpie but there is also a darker side to Cerunnos (which is often split up in the image of Annwn or Gwynn up Nud), the leader of the Wild Hunt.
magpie9
catlin said:
You're right! What was I thinking? The next thing you know, I'll be attempting to introduce "Bambi" as a nature documentary, LOL! I think it's very easy for us city dwellers to forget the dark side of nature--and as a desert city dweller I have this idea of deep forest trees, all that, as simply idyllically magical. Mesa, cactus, tumbleweeds are just ordinary-- dust-dry rivers and all. Masses of green trees give me the Ahhh's and Ohhh's, and pretty much suspend logical thought.
magpie9
aibhlin said:
This really connects for me with the devil in the "Spiral Tarot"--he has a mirror and is holding it up to the face of a woman who really really doesn't want to look into it! For me, that is probably the scariest devil I've seen--'tho the devil in the Greenwood is a close second!
The message for me there is that I had better do my shadow work conciously, before it unconciously trips me up! And, of course, a reminder (gaurdianship?) to look at what I'm doing--or thinking of doing--again.
So it's looking to me like the current tarot devils play 3 roles: Gaurdian, Tempter and Shadow self.
magpie9
To me, this sounds just like the Dalai Lama...and I'm not even Buddhist. If the Heads of churches were (and had been) more like him, we would live in a vastly better world than this.Finalsilence said:
Sorry all, I've slipped off-topic here--I was just so struck with the resemblance I saw between Finalsilence's words and the DL. But it does bring ZaZen's feelings about the Heirophant as devil to my attention--and I too did do years where I too saw the Hiero that way. But I think that's material for another thread!
Shall we start one on the Hierophant?
aibhlin
magpie9 said:
He's the reincarnated boddhisattva of mercy, if we were all enlightened I suppose the world would be better indeed... Though personally I think I'd find it rather dull.
aibhlin
magpie9 said:
Oh and I find the gaurdian bit interesting though I don't know if I can relate, could you elaborate on that?
Sophie
Not being a neo-pagan, I wouldn't really know about that. I am no doubt heavily influenced by 19th C. Romanticism, however. But I was referring more to imagery that came about long before the tarot, that has its roots - and even some of its look - in pre-Christian Europe and the Middle East, was then co-opted by early Christians as demons. The Devil as the image of Evil (as opposed to nature demons) has an interesting history in European art, and quite a bit later than I thought - have a look at Robert Muchenbled's Damned, an Illustrated History of the Devil 12th-20th Centuries. He shows how the Devil really took off as a subject of art in the 16th Century, though images of demons existed before. The Tarot borrowed many images from popular culture, not only for that card - I don't think that cardmakers were consciously turning Cernunnos into Satan/Devil and having a go at paganism - simply reusing iconography that was current as symbols of what "The Devil" looked like to them and their potential buyers.kwaw said:
In Catholic Europe, yes - though only in aristocratic and educated circles, which were a tiny minority. But by the mid-16th Century, the battle for souls had shifted again: the Protestants, and more particularly their puritanical fringe, which you might have found in my home city of Geneva and many other places in Europe, saw with a very jaundiced eye any kind of pagan AND "idolatrous" representation - images of Greeks gods and of the Virgin Mary were equally rejected as "creatures of the Devil". Anything that looked like their idea of idolatry was banned (that included theatre). I think you are also skating over the role of folk magic and the very strong survivances of pagan traditions (as folk magic and other customs) throughout Europe. The Tarot - as represented by the TdM and its woodcut predecessors - was a popular, tavern-based game, and played by many of the same people that also still practiced a number of rituals both Protestants and the Counter-Reformation Catholic clergy considered pagan and idolatrous.kwaw said:
In that context of Protestant vs Catholic propaganda wars (which frequently degenerated into real wars), Protestant vs pagan survivances and Counter-Reformation Catholics vs pagan survivances, anything vaguely pagan was rooted out and fingered as the work of the "devil" (see what the Puritans did to the May Day or Yule traditions in England). The 17th Century Protestants tried more witches than all the Church courts of all the centuries before put together.
That might be one of the demonisation occuring - yes, without doubt it was - but see my remarks higher up about the Protestant/Catholic conflict, and the attempt by both Protestants and Counter-Reformation Catholics to do away with pagan survivances, particularly in working and peasant-class settings, light-years away from the palaces of the aristocracy where you might find elegant paintings of Venus and Pan playing across the ceilings.kwaw said:
I think the demonisation of Judaism (by Protestants and Catholics) is one element - but not the whole story. Where it is most disturbing is in the association of Jews/Money/Devil - an association that is still current in modern anti-semitism, as we saw at work in the torture and death of Ilan Halimi a few weeks ago.
Yes! And no doubt the image entered European iconography through that door - many centuries before the Tarot. By the time the early Tarot first started showing the Devil (and remember we don't even know if the Visconti even had a Devil!), it had become one of the images of what a "demon" looks like.magpie9 said:
Either way, because of the association between demons and the old nature gods and goddesses, it was inevitable that when neo-pagans became interested in the tarot, they would rehabilitate the Devil, and start drawing out his positive side - his Cernunnos/Pan/Ishtar-Lilith side. Personally, I consider they have done us all a huge favour. I don't have much sympathy for the puritanical rejection of matter, of the body and of all things physical.
Alissa
Happy Squirrel, anyone? Seriously, the tongue-in-cheek aspect of the "Happy Squirrel" card is one modern answer to the dilemma you pose, magpie. Not that I have any decks with a HS card, but yea... that's one way to build back in "the Big Bad One" in your deck.
Personally, I'm sick of educated Tarot folks who shy from "scary" cards... it's one thing if we're working with someone who has no Tarot background, and/or superstitous, and/or ignorant on metaphysical theory. But Tarot deck creators who go out of their way to make their deck "less scary" aren't doing a reader like myself any favors (which is why I don't buy airy-fairy decks, I guess... Shapeshifter is the airy-fairiest I can get).
Ever wonder why there are cuss words in any language? Because there aren't enough words to express the true depths of human rage, frustration, anger, deceit and shame... so we make more up that carry more weight - and then they become taboo, forbidden.
To me, the same reason we need cuss words in any language (even if they're not used in polite company) is the same reason we need a Real Devil (not a airy-fairy Pan figure) in a Tarot deck. Sometimes, the sh!t goes down, and we need a strong enough, dark enough metaphor to express what's happening around us (see? I just did it, I used a cuss word to convey a different shade of meaning. Like a Real Devil card, it carries with it a sense of taboo, as well as an additional emotional impact that the word "stuff" wouldn't have done).
For me, my eating disorder was my Devil who held my chains and kept me bound for many years until I realized I could slip the noose free all along. And my eating disorder was NOT a Pan, or any other "mischievous and/or sensual" entity... it was a cold-hearted liar son of a bitch, who enjoyed watching me suffer and laughed as I begged for mercy. Putting a pretty face on Him wouldn't have changed who and what he was in my life... and I feel those who hide behind such imagery are just hiding from the darker aspects of the human incarnation.
Personally, I'm sick of educated Tarot folks who shy from "scary" cards... it's one thing if we're working with someone who has no Tarot background, and/or superstitous, and/or ignorant on metaphysical theory. But Tarot deck creators who go out of their way to make their deck "less scary" aren't doing a reader like myself any favors (which is why I don't buy airy-fairy decks, I guess... Shapeshifter is the airy-fairiest I can get).
Ever wonder why there are cuss words in any language? Because there aren't enough words to express the true depths of human rage, frustration, anger, deceit and shame... so we make more up that carry more weight - and then they become taboo, forbidden.
To me, the same reason we need cuss words in any language (even if they're not used in polite company) is the same reason we need a Real Devil (not a airy-fairy Pan figure) in a Tarot deck. Sometimes, the sh!t goes down, and we need a strong enough, dark enough metaphor to express what's happening around us (see? I just did it, I used a cuss word to convey a different shade of meaning. Like a Real Devil card, it carries with it a sense of taboo, as well as an additional emotional impact that the word "stuff" wouldn't have done).
For me, my eating disorder was my Devil who held my chains and kept me bound for many years until I realized I could slip the noose free all along. And my eating disorder was NOT a Pan, or any other "mischievous and/or sensual" entity... it was a cold-hearted liar son of a bitch, who enjoyed watching me suffer and laughed as I begged for mercy. Putting a pretty face on Him wouldn't have changed who and what he was in my life... and I feel those who hide behind such imagery are just hiding from the darker aspects of the human incarnation.
Sophie
Airy-fairy PAN??? Surely you jest, Alissa!Alissa said:
Here's Pan, in all his 19th Century Romantic glory:
What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river. ^
He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.
High on the shore sat the great god Pan
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.
He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.
"This is the way," laughed the great god Pan
(Laughed while he sat by the river),
"The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed."
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.
Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.
Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, --
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.
(Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
Sweet? Airy-fairy? No darkness? Hmmm...
Give me a medieval devil anytime - Pan is the really scary one - something of the Piper of Hamlin about him - and can you think of a better image of seductiveness, of beautiful, dangerous nature? Swear words don't even come near the richness and depths of him.
But remember - in most languages, most swear words are sexual. They are that because sex has been made into a taboo. That is exactly what the Devil seeks to free us from. The reed of the Great God Pan is a call for sexual liberation and the freedom from one's demons - a call that Elizabeth Barrett Browning knew all too well, having been sexually repressed by her times, which led her to become an opium addict and an anorexic. Only love and sex - the encounter with the delicious seductiveness of Pan, facing down her demons, and emerging as a fully sexual woman and artist - was to free her.
Taboo test: ****, ****. Ah - it seems Aeclectic, in common with most of us, hasn't faced down its own taboos - hasn't met The Great God Pan by the river (for those who wondered what I typed, it was two old English words, one meaning the female pudendum, the other, the act of sexual intercourse). We still have a way to go.
Alissa
As for Pan, all true, Helvetica - but still not the correct image for me, just personal preference.
With swear words, they also discuss scat, and other defecation issues. Sex is not the only common social taboo, and others are far less "seductive" than Pan's realm of forbidden carnal desires.
With swear words, they also discuss scat, and other defecation issues. Sex is not the only common social taboo, and others are far less "seductive" than Pan's realm of forbidden carnal desires.
