CompassRose
I need to talk about this card because of the title.
When I got the deck, I called my mother (who's German), just to ask her what a few words meant. ("What's a 'kelche'?" "It's ...eh... a fancy kind of ... cup." "Oh. Oh. Of course. Silly!" said I, writing down 'chalice' in my notebook next to 'kelche', where it sat there looking perfectly obvious.) Anyway. One of the words I wanted to know was Grenzgängerin. I knew the card was Temperance, but the word looked interesting.
"Woman border-walker. No, woman-taking-chances. No. No, what's this card called in English?"
"Temperance," I said.
"Temperance?" I can hear that she doesn't quite understand what this means. My mother doesn't know much about Tarot, though she knows how to play Tarocchi.
"It's - oh, there's something special this word means, Grenzgänger, in German. Grenzgängerin, the '-in', means it's a woman. But this word is a particular thing, people do. Borders. Is there another word for 'border'?"
"Boundary... um, frontier..."
"No... no, let me look it up." I can hear my mother breathing as she takes the mobile phone over to the dictionary shelf, then comes back into the dining-room with the book. Pages turning. "Grenzgänger. Ah. Someone who often illegally crosses the border."
"Like, like a Mexican, what do they call them, wetbacks? Those people who go over illegally to the States?"
"Yes, yes... oh, or something else, here, someone who lives on one side of the border, and works on the other side. Not illegally."
"Oh! Oh, that makes sense."
"It does? What's on this card?"
I describe it to her. "Hm," she says. "You could bring it, these cards, when you come. I'd like to see them."
As for what the book says, I didn't ask my mother to translate the whole thing (it was late, and I had to leave at 7 the next morning to run a 5K race). Instead, just now, I plugged it into three different online translators, and here is my clunky fusion of the result:
You are fire and water.
Cosmic blender.
Agent between the individual and the higher realms.
Rainbow body.
Transform the seven poisons into the seven wisdoms.
Cleansed, you stand between Death and Devil - and represent the knowledge of measurement and time.
Vessel and contents are the constantly changing river of life energy.
The card shows a woman who is clearly the agent of transformation, pouring light from her left hand into a dark place with a river running under a waning moon, water from her right onto the dry earth and stones of a desert under a brilliant sun. The rainbow passes through her body and divides the two countries. Woman-taking-chances, she is the border, both dividing and uniting.
Okay, enough from me. What do you see in this card?
When I got the deck, I called my mother (who's German), just to ask her what a few words meant. ("What's a 'kelche'?" "It's ...eh... a fancy kind of ... cup." "Oh. Oh. Of course. Silly!" said I, writing down 'chalice' in my notebook next to 'kelche', where it sat there looking perfectly obvious.) Anyway. One of the words I wanted to know was Grenzgängerin. I knew the card was Temperance, but the word looked interesting.
"Woman border-walker. No, woman-taking-chances. No. No, what's this card called in English?"
"Temperance," I said.
"Temperance?" I can hear that she doesn't quite understand what this means. My mother doesn't know much about Tarot, though she knows how to play Tarocchi.
"It's - oh, there's something special this word means, Grenzgänger, in German. Grenzgängerin, the '-in', means it's a woman. But this word is a particular thing, people do. Borders. Is there another word for 'border'?"
"Boundary... um, frontier..."
"No... no, let me look it up." I can hear my mother breathing as she takes the mobile phone over to the dictionary shelf, then comes back into the dining-room with the book. Pages turning. "Grenzgänger. Ah. Someone who often illegally crosses the border."
"Like, like a Mexican, what do they call them, wetbacks? Those people who go over illegally to the States?"
"Yes, yes... oh, or something else, here, someone who lives on one side of the border, and works on the other side. Not illegally."
"Oh! Oh, that makes sense."
"It does? What's on this card?"
I describe it to her. "Hm," she says. "You could bring it, these cards, when you come. I'd like to see them."
As for what the book says, I didn't ask my mother to translate the whole thing (it was late, and I had to leave at 7 the next morning to run a 5K race). Instead, just now, I plugged it into three different online translators, and here is my clunky fusion of the result:
You are fire and water.
Cosmic blender.
Agent between the individual and the higher realms.
Rainbow body.
Transform the seven poisons into the seven wisdoms.
Cleansed, you stand between Death and Devil - and represent the knowledge of measurement and time.
Vessel and contents are the constantly changing river of life energy.
The card shows a woman who is clearly the agent of transformation, pouring light from her left hand into a dark place with a river running under a waning moon, water from her right onto the dry earth and stones of a desert under a brilliant sun. The rainbow passes through her body and divides the two countries. Woman-taking-chances, she is the border, both dividing and uniting.
Okay, enough from me. What do you see in this card?