Thirteen
I just went through the list and realized we were missing a lot of Majors--including three of my favorites. The Magician, the HPS and the Moon! How can we not have touched on this given the "gothic" aspect of this deck? So I figure I'll get the ball rolling on both. Let's start with the Magician:
In an utterly fantastic and airy palace room, our Magician performs, well, magic! He is a very flamboyant figure in traditional red and white, with gold trim. Can anyone's magnifying glass make out the pattern on either side of his red coat? What is perhaps most interesting about our magician are his spidery hands. No human has hands with fingers so long and claw-like. Our Magician isn't human, or perhaps no longer human.
His colors may be traditional for the Magician, but the tools on his table are not--sword excepted. there is a skull, a candelabra, an hour-glass and...I'm not exactly sure what that is! A crystal ball, perhaps? Or maybe an incense censer? The Swords is swords, obviously, but what about the other items? The candelabra I'd say was wands, the hour-glass cups and the skull pentacles?
Whatever the last item is, he has brought something to life within it--or thanks to it. That something is sizzling and smoking and sulfurously rising out like a genie let loose from a bottle. Even our Magician looks alarmed by what he's done. But it's too late now. Which, in a way, is the traditional meaning of the card, yes? The Magician is all about that first step in transforming an idea into reality. Of summoning something into being.
I do love how we've come in right at the climax of this scary story, right at the point where imaginations can run wild. Which is another aspect of the Magician card--urging us to be creative and imagining all sorts of things. Something is about to manifest itself. But what? We can envision anything we like.
In an utterly fantastic and airy palace room, our Magician performs, well, magic! He is a very flamboyant figure in traditional red and white, with gold trim. Can anyone's magnifying glass make out the pattern on either side of his red coat? What is perhaps most interesting about our magician are his spidery hands. No human has hands with fingers so long and claw-like. Our Magician isn't human, or perhaps no longer human.
His colors may be traditional for the Magician, but the tools on his table are not--sword excepted. there is a skull, a candelabra, an hour-glass and...I'm not exactly sure what that is! A crystal ball, perhaps? Or maybe an incense censer? The Swords is swords, obviously, but what about the other items? The candelabra I'd say was wands, the hour-glass cups and the skull pentacles?
Whatever the last item is, he has brought something to life within it--or thanks to it. That something is sizzling and smoking and sulfurously rising out like a genie let loose from a bottle. Even our Magician looks alarmed by what he's done. But it's too late now. Which, in a way, is the traditional meaning of the card, yes? The Magician is all about that first step in transforming an idea into reality. Of summoning something into being.
I do love how we've come in right at the climax of this scary story, right at the point where imaginations can run wild. Which is another aspect of the Magician card--urging us to be creative and imagining all sorts of things. Something is about to manifest itself. But what? We can envision anything we like.