Leo62
Here's the image:
http://www.llewellyn.com/tarot/images/le_shields5.jpg
And here's the earlier thread on the Fives:
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=34757
What an eloquently desolate landscape; a ruined castle in the mists, dead or blighted trees, the skeleton of a horse being stripped by crows. In the foreground are two figures that I at first took to be travellers through the landscape. But...on closer examination, they are dead and rotting, like everything else here
My first thought when I looked at this card, was that this was the aftermath of the scene in the Death card. Gwynn ap Nudd and his Wild Hunt have passed by, and this is the scorched landscape they have left behind (the same castle ruins can be seen in both cards).
It's hard not to be reminded of Eliot's famous poem:
"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water."
The crux of this card is, for me: the Wasteland is a place that sometimes has to be crossed, but not a place to get stuck in.
One of the key phrases in "A Keeper of Words" is:
"Moving on in search of nourishment."
Sometimes the Waste land cannot be avoided, it must be traversed, but one must keep moving, keep looking for nourishment and not fall into stagnation and decay. It's like the process of grieving or psychological death - the horrible barrenness, the despair, has to be gone through, has to be felt, without sure knowledge of light and life at the other side. An act of trust.
The Fisher King's wound, in a way, is capitulation to despair. The land is blighted through lack of hope and faith and compassion. It is dry - the water element is lacking and the land cannot be nourished.
Healing comes through Percivale's (or Galahad's, depending on which version of the story you follow) offering of compassion through asking the right question. But what's the point of waiting around for some rescuing knight to appear? We have to learn to ask the right question of ourselves...
http://www.llewellyn.com/tarot/images/le_shields5.jpg
And here's the earlier thread on the Fives:
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=34757
What an eloquently desolate landscape; a ruined castle in the mists, dead or blighted trees, the skeleton of a horse being stripped by crows. In the foreground are two figures that I at first took to be travellers through the landscape. But...on closer examination, they are dead and rotting, like everything else here
My first thought when I looked at this card, was that this was the aftermath of the scene in the Death card. Gwynn ap Nudd and his Wild Hunt have passed by, and this is the scorched landscape they have left behind (the same castle ruins can be seen in both cards).
It's hard not to be reminded of Eliot's famous poem:
"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water."
The crux of this card is, for me: the Wasteland is a place that sometimes has to be crossed, but not a place to get stuck in.
One of the key phrases in "A Keeper of Words" is:
"Moving on in search of nourishment."
Sometimes the Waste land cannot be avoided, it must be traversed, but one must keep moving, keep looking for nourishment and not fall into stagnation and decay. It's like the process of grieving or psychological death - the horrible barrenness, the despair, has to be gone through, has to be felt, without sure knowledge of light and life at the other side. An act of trust.
The Fisher King's wound, in a way, is capitulation to despair. The land is blighted through lack of hope and faith and compassion. It is dry - the water element is lacking and the land cannot be nourished.
Healing comes through Percivale's (or Galahad's, depending on which version of the story you follow) offering of compassion through asking the right question. But what's the point of waiting around for some rescuing knight to appear? We have to learn to ask the right question of ourselves...