Tarot Horticulture & Le Pendu

hills and valleys

The mounds represent Calvary or Golgotha -- possibly, my intuitive response.

I can think of no situation -- I have planted hundreds of trees -- where a tree would be deliberately planted on a mound. A mound would dry out too easily. It may be good to heap up some soil around a young tree after it has been in the ground a while. But trees grow quite naturally on mounds and hilltops, where they are more visible. Trees also grow in valleys and depressions, of course, but that was not chosen for Le Perdu -- so there must be a symbolic reason why the hilltop location was used

feeling like a jinx

This seems like such a lively topic, but I feel like I jumped in too soon. I don't even own the Marseilles deck, but must look at it on the Internet. How about if I just observe for a period of time, and ask others to get this going?

Though symbolic perspective may make of these two mounds hills, and the hollow between a valley, perhaps, even assuming they are living trees, there is a better explanation.

Certainly amongst some locals, certain trees (such as, often, lemon trees) are planted raised a little into the ground, with soil (and grass and other moisture retentive mulch) is further 'raised' around the bottom of the trunk, giving at times an appearance of being planted on their own little 'hills'.

One aspect that is often the case in Marseill depictions is that the mound around the tree-trunks are green, seemingly, then, of grass, rather than newly turned earth.

Yes jmd, they all are green, and that titbit changes my outlook on the depiction. With that in mind I see the the trunks as living, although they won't be for long with that sort of pruning. Helvetica stated in another thread that there are layers of meanings built into the cards, and for the life of me I cannot see what this particular layer means. LOL except in the layering of Tomatos and other strange herbs ~Rosanne