WalesWoman
This card definately has a Gothic feel to it, from the trusses in the timbers to the gray dark brick, and the leafless branches and bare roots of the tree that is framed by the alter. The only light comes from the golden candle on the alter and the lightning bolt seen behind the clawed hand. The beams in the ceiling almost create the pattern of a bat's wing, just like a demon/scary night creature. This is so different from the usual turning your back and leaving something behind of the RWS. This one makes me think of the robot in Lost in Space, yelling "Danger! Danger!" I want to run away as fast as I can when I see this card, wild horses wouldn't be able to drag me back.
But I got this card twice this week and it wasn't the DM that grabbed my attention, but the first sentence in the descriptive story for Castle perilous...that black hand reaching into the santuary and extinguishes the light. The lifeless tree encased in the alter...like the body in a coffin, the flame of life being snuffed out. The Chapel also made me think of the Temple of God within our bodies, that this one is empty, just a shell housing the light of life and nothing more.
The lightening behind the hand reminds me of the Tower, the illumination that breaks and burns the foundation, leaving ashes, the sudden and unpredicable quality of natural forces to strike when and where it pleases. That there is no sanctuary and no protection from it, you can run but you can't hide, you have to brave the storm and from that come the peace to continue this ride. We can fear it, we can avoid it, but there really is no real escape sometimes, but to leave that chapel, that sanctuary, the Inner Sanctum behind.
I'd never thought of this card as meaning an actual physical death, but it did. Those natural unpredicable forces of nature beyond all control as the disease that this Knight was powerless against. Cancer the claw that snuffed out the light and left this world a darker place tonight. The storm is over now, gentle rain running down my face in the moonlight.
Look up in the sky tonight where you can see them, I think the Northern Lights will be dancing with his energy.
Farewell Kevin...it's so hard to let go, but I know we will cross paths again.
But I got this card twice this week and it wasn't the DM that grabbed my attention, but the first sentence in the descriptive story for Castle perilous...that black hand reaching into the santuary and extinguishes the light. The lifeless tree encased in the alter...like the body in a coffin, the flame of life being snuffed out. The Chapel also made me think of the Temple of God within our bodies, that this one is empty, just a shell housing the light of life and nothing more.
The lightening behind the hand reminds me of the Tower, the illumination that breaks and burns the foundation, leaving ashes, the sudden and unpredicable quality of natural forces to strike when and where it pleases. That there is no sanctuary and no protection from it, you can run but you can't hide, you have to brave the storm and from that come the peace to continue this ride. We can fear it, we can avoid it, but there really is no real escape sometimes, but to leave that chapel, that sanctuary, the Inner Sanctum behind.
I'd never thought of this card as meaning an actual physical death, but it did. Those natural unpredicable forces of nature beyond all control as the disease that this Knight was powerless against. Cancer the claw that snuffed out the light and left this world a darker place tonight. The storm is over now, gentle rain running down my face in the moonlight.
Look up in the sky tonight where you can see them, I think the Northern Lights will be dancing with his energy.
Farewell Kevin...it's so hard to let go, but I know we will cross paths again.