The Gothic Tarot by Vargo - Ten of Wands

WolfyJames

A woman here (who looks a lot like the one in Eight Of Wands), wearing a white dress with a candelabrum (three candles) in her right hand, descends a stair, in some gloomy castle. There are ten wands behind her back. At the bottom of the stair on the right, there is a gargoyle, its jaw open, who seems to be growling.

It seems that someone is coming and the woman is going downstair to see who it is, but the gargoyle doesn't want the woman to go further, he's locked her up and made her his prisoner. Maybe she has made him promises but now she regrets them and she can't release herself from them. The wands in her back are the weight of her punishment or the weight of her commitment. She's longing to be free and to be freed.
 

Alissa

This card was one of the ones that spoke to me first, while pawing through my deck for the first time.

Working with the idea of a "burden" from traditional sources, what would this image suggest.

The candlabra ... of course!

In a world lit only by fire, imagine the burden of lighting the candles each night.

True, she's dead. She doesn't even need fire to see by, to exist with. But, do you think she knows it?

So, compound the memory of a lifetime's burden of nightly lighting the castle's many, many candles, the Mistress of the House tends to them now in an eternal cycle of useless burden, endlessly repeating a task neither necessary nor helpful ... just a habit.

The gargoyle suggests a familiar to me, like he's happy to see her approach.

The wands float, disconnected. Again, the suggestion of uselessness, the inability to connect thoughts to actions.
 

Umbrae

Alissa said:
So, compound the memory of a lifetime's burden of nightly lighting the castle's many, many candles, the Mistress of the House tends to them now in an eternal cycle of useless burden, endlessly repeating a task neither necessary nor helpful ... just a habit. …Again, the suggestion of uselessness, the inability to connect thoughts to actions.

I get a completely different hit from this card. I get a ‘welcome home, it’s good to see you at last…’ The travails are over, there a sense of completion…
 

WolfyJames

Vargo's cards were based on earlier works, you can see some of them on his website. This card is called Vigil.
 

mercenary30

Ten of Wands

A curved staircase arches up and to the right disappearing into the darkness. At the top of the stair stand the ten wands. At a pedestal, at the bottom of the stair rail is mounted a gargoyle. This one is very feline in structure with wings in an open position. Its head is turned towards the stair. Coming down the stair is a female spirit (or a vampiress). She is carrying a three light candelabra, the smoke from it lingers and drifts. There is a fog that also loiters at the top of the stairs around the wands that seems to be emanating from the spirit.

Talk about being drained and out of energy! She is dead and gone and still playing the lady of the house. This routine has been ingrained that she even performs the routines in her sleep, her eternal sleep, as the case may be. This is another situation where I wonder if she knows what her condition is, or if her spirit continues on, blissfully unaware of her fate.
 

annik

I didn't see the wands in the same way. I see them as a path that is blocked. She can't turn back. She made a choice and she must follow the path (represented by the stairs). There may be some anxiety. We can't see where the stairs are leading. I see the ghost in a duty call.