favorite card and why?

(I searched and couldn't find a thread that already posed this question.)

I was wondering if you have a favorite card or two, and why its your favorite.




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One of my favorite cards is the King of Diamonds from the Universal Dali tarot.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cv6LHftbFAA/S_FsOCw5CzI/AAAAAAAAANE/VGMgfGTlVgo/s1600/Rey+de+Oros.jpg

I like this card so much when I noticed Dali's fingerprints on the card. 5 distinct fingers; I can imagine him dipping his fingers in the mixed brown and black paint that he used to paint the bull in the dream, and carefully pressing the finger tip of his left pinky, followed by each fingertip in succession onto the card, until he ended with his thumb.

This symbol made me understand about the word manifestation, "mani-" is latin for hand, and how our bodies are fractals. How we filter inspiration through our head and throat to our heart where we then can choose to branch out into the material world and turn our ideas into physical reality.

The five fingertips is the perfect symbol for physical manifestation, man as both created by god in god's own image, and almost like gods in our ablity to manifest physical realities from mere ideas, figments of our imagination and dreams.

figure8 said:

(I searched and couldn't find a thread that already posed this question.)

Click to expand...

<grin> But I's seen dozens of threads like this over the last few years, a couple just recently. Never mind.

I was wondering if you have a favorite card or two, and why its your favorite.

Click to expand...

I respond well to all Tarot cards, even the so-called "negative" ones. They are all delightful, in their different and sometimes troublesome ways.

Individually, I might respond better to some cards in a deck than others, but that is purely on artistic grounds and not on Tarot-symbolism grounds. For example, in some decks I really like the Hermit (Cosmic, Granny Jones, 7th World). In others, I really dislike the Hermit (RW, Haindl).

But this is not based on the card itself. This is based entirely on my artistic taste, not symbolism.

Thanks Nisaba!

The cards are always fascinating and sometimes troublesome, as you say.

You're right about how important the artistic style can be. How can anyone not respond to the artistic style of the cards, as well as the symbol? After all they are pictures by an artist, and an expression of their life experience. So many layers and depth of information in each card.

My favorite card is Temperance, not in the sense of moderation, but as in the tempering of steel with fire and water. It is the alchemical marriage of the sun (fire, consciousness) and moon (water, the unconscious). Carl Jung had another word for this process: individuation. He wrote a book about it from an alchemical perspective: Mysterium Coniunctionis. William Blake wrote wrote an allegory about it in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

The B.O.T.A. card shows the angel dripping fire onto the watery Scorpio eagle and pouring water on the fiery Leo lion. In this process, the metaphorical fire and water are not exactly antagonistic, they are being synthesized into something else.

My favorite card is strength, for obvious reasons, I guess. Stregth is a good thing I have a lot of strength, I need a lot of strength, I like people with a lot of strength, and I like strong emotions, too

Aside from that, I love the image of it, too. The lovely woman with the lion.

Thank you LRichard,

That is fascinating!

What you wrote reminds me of a documentary series that i only saw a snippet of and have never figured out what the title was. But it was sort of like Billy Moyers or Joseph Campbell series, but anyway that was in the first episode -- the documentary talked about alchemy of creating steel.

So that is what the sun and moon represent?

That is one of my favorite symbols too, although I don't know why, I just think of it as man and woman, yin and yang. Alchemy uses astrology symbols too?

I so want to learn more, where is a good place to start?

Thank you Phoenix55,

Hmm I wonder if you are a Leo? (because you said your interest is obvious and the card pictures a lion.)

A gentle woman taming the wild beast?

Nowadays with our consciousness of how humans are trying to control the earth, our deforestation, suburban sprawl, nuclear power plants, oil fields and fracking, factory farms, zoos and magic virility powders made from horns and fins. The reality that humans are much more wild and cruel, than the beasts of the wild could ever be? So who is the real beast? Interesting card, yes.

figure8 said:

......So that is what the sun and moon represent?

That is one of my favorite symbols too, although I don't know why, I just think of it as man and woman, yin and yang. Alchemy uses astrology symbols too?

I so want to learn more, where is a good place to start?

Click to expand...

Yes, the sun and moon are the masculine and feminine principles. The androgyne symbolizes the harmonious incorporation of both yin and yang in a single entity. A. E. Waite makes a big deal out of the Temperance angel being neither male nor female (acrually it is both/and, i.e., androgynous). In the Crowley Thoth deck, the angel in Trump 14 is replaced by an androgynous Rebis, pouring fire and water into a cauldron.

The sun and moon are prominent in alchemy, but not so much astrology in general, as I recall. The fixed signs of the zodiac represent the four elements.

I don't know a good place to start in on alchemy. I've absorbed a little by osmosis (or some such process) over the years.

LRichard,

Your posts are very helpful.

I guess I did know the conscious/fire/sun/son and unconscious/water/moon/womb-man symbolism, but it sounded new when I read your post.

The tempering of fire and water making something new is a new way of understanding those cards and I didn't realize it was the fixed signs that represent the elements.

Thank you again.

p.s. searching for documentaries about tempering steel, it was probably a BBC series from the 70s:
Kenneth Clark's Civilisation (1969)
Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man (1973)
John Berger's Way of Seeing (1972)