Haindl Tarot - Mother of Swords in the South

RedMaple

Necklace of Skulls, Girdle of Hands

prk001 said:
Your description of Nut comes closer to the Indian Goddess Kali. Personally, I have not yet noticed any Mother of Swords card as you described. Thats probably because I just stick with only a few decks. :)
Kali is always shown holding a severed head on one hand and blood dripping from her mouth.
Also, She wears a chain of skulls. Nevertheless she is a protector and a great source of strength as you said about Nut.
Your last line aptly describes the personality of Kali too.

Kali is formidable, but the skull, as Imagemaker says, was the head of a monster she has slain. Kali is the Great Mother and Destroyer, creating and destroying worlds.

The necklace of skulls is to remind us that she is the one from whom we've come and to whome we'll return. The hands are helping humanity - she can be called upon for help in practical matters, artistic matters, all things that humans can do, Kali can aid.

The imagery is frightening, but it is to remind us that she is beyond human. She is terrifying because she is all-encompassing, beyond human categories.

I'm looking forward to hearing that story in more detail, Imagemaker.

RedMaple
 

RedMaple

One More Question

Forgive me for posting so often, but I am full of questions, it seems.

Does anyone else feel uncomfortable with Haindl attributing the South to Swords? I am used to thinking of the East with Swords. He does keep the element air with swords, so why would air be in the south?
 

Imagemaker

Thanks for reminding me. I'd forgotten about finding the story.

Found this concise version online, www.webonautics.com/mythology/shakti3.htm:

Durga assumed the form of a beautiful woman and first enticed the minds of the two demons. . . . Now the two giants, Shambhu and Nishambhu, themselves marched to the Himalayas to capture Durga. These two demons had a general who had a blessing that the drops of blood falling on the ground from his body would create thousands of demons. At last Durga could annihilate him only when Durga's two forms, namely Chandee and Kali, both combined to neutralize this blessing. In the fierce engagement the goddess opened her mouth and drank every drop of blood before it fell on the ground while the other counterpart fought the demons and that general together. Eventually both the giants were killed.
 

Imagemaker

Does anyone else feel uncomfortable with Haindl attributing the South to Swords? I am used to thinking of the East with Swords. He does keep the element air with swords, so why would air be in the south?

I don't know why, but Haindl changes all the direction correspondences: cups - north, wands - east, stones - west, and swords - south.

I don't know if other decks have the Haindl system.
 

inanna_tarot

RedMaple said:
Forgive me for posting so often, but I am full of questions, it seems.

Does anyone else feel uncomfortable with Haindl attributing the South to Swords? I am used to thinking of the East with Swords. He does keep the element air with swords, so why would air be in the south?

havent had a chance to collect my thoughts on this card, but just a quick thought that the swords could be relating to fire, and wands air, which can happen in some decks to swap those two elements, but i've never heard of cups and pentacles swapping cardinal points, does that mean they change elements as well? Pentacles as water seems odd to me, and so does cups as earth.

Any thoughts?
 

Imagemaker

Haindl doesn't swap elements, just directions.

Somewhere I have Pollack's book on the deck, but don't remember reading about this. Another task--will go look later.

(Never time to do it NOW--aargh.)
 

Gardener

Wow, these are such amazing thoughts and dialogues about the Mother of Swords! Thank you, each and every one of you, for participating in this thread.

Marion, I was fascinated by the links you made between Haindl's card and the more traditional Queens of Swords. It has been really confusing me, and I like finding some connections. Although I find myself, in the final analysis, tempted by RedMaple's comment that we regular humans reenact myths and embody divine forces. Heady stuff!
 

Gardener

Why the courts have these attributions

From Rachel:

When Hermann Haindl first thought about the Court cards, he did not want the European ruling class, and he did want to explore four different cultures. He and his wife had lived for quite some time among the American Indians, and knew he wanted to represent their sacred traditions and approaches to life.

For the center, he chose an imaginary point somewhere around the Mediterranean, as being more or less where he was located. The attribution of the directions came partly from symbols and partly from elements. The suit of Cups belongs to the Holy Grail, which as a European object makes Cups his choice for the European suit. To him, Europe is the North.

For the suits generally, he had already settled on the most common elemental attributions: Wands = Fire, Cups = Water, Swords = Air and Stones = Earth.

In his personal philosophy, Earth represents Native America, and Fire signifies India. Therefore, West (America) becomes Stones, while East (India) becomes Wands.

If you draw a line from West to South to North to East, you get a rune which I can't draw, called Eihwaz, signifying the World Tree. This in turn unites the vertical directions of Above and Below with the Center and the horizontals. (Sorry, I don't really understand this, just quoting the book.)

This may help you visualize the rune:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx N xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx E

W xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxxxxx S xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It's a zigzag, starting at W, then S, then N, then E.

Originally Haindl planned to use Israel for the South. His wife and Rachel suggested that India and Israel were both East, and voted for Africa. Haindl picked Egypt as representing an older culture than the Jewish, and one which influenced the Jewish. He found this association further satisfying because the old Egyptian ideas and mythology have greatly influenced the esoteric interpretation of the Tarot.
 

Gardener

I just want to mention that Kali (aka Durga) is the Queen of Wands, and the above discussion between Imagemaker and RedMaple makes me want to post her next, but I'm also feel like I ought to post the rest of the Swords first, so that we can explore the structure within the Suit, the older generation parent gods, then the younger generation parent gods.

Of course, I don't know how important that structure is, because it really only holds up for the Swords suit!

Wow, this is a little confusing. Okay, I'm going with my instincts and posting Kali next, because when I was with the Ottawa Tarot Circle we had a lovely time comparing all the queens. Yes, all of them! We laid out the four queens from each deck that we had brought to Marion's house, must have been at least 40 decks. That's 160 Queens, whole lotta Queens on the table. It was fascinating to see how many different ways artists have approached the idea of the powerful and/or archetypal mother-ruler.
 

Imagemaker

Cool idea, go for the queens :)