The Gothic Tarot by Vargo - Seven Of Pentacles

WolfyJames

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

A dark and foggy manor stands in the back, no light is lit. Up front is a valet, dressed in back with a black cape and a black hat. His left arm shows the way, through the opened gate, to the manor's door. The gate is all made of metal, and seven pentacles are part of the intricate design of the gate. On the right, there is a gargoyle, standing on a stony pillar, who looks to the man. A dead tree is partially showed on the right.

Even though the lights of the manor are not lit, the man on the card seems to invite you to go forwards. Is it an invitation or something you just gained access to, after a long walk in the fog? We might be contemplenting what we just earned, maybe it is also an invitation to rest inside in the warmth of the manor.
 

contrascarpe

Well I guess this is as good a point as any to jump in ......

This is definitely a card where the viewer is the main focal point. The man (an undertaker?) is directing his action toward you. Even the statue seems to be looking toward where you are heading.

The gates themselves are not really open but more broken. When you advance, you are doing so through the fog.

I see this as an entrance to the unknown reaches of your unconcious. Shelter looms but what dangers lie on the path to your destination. It seems safe, doesn't it? Yes, you have to explore your inner psyche or you will never know what lies beneath the fog. I feel this is a "go for it" card.

Hmm, this deck IS deeper than I first suspected. Looks like I will be here more often :)

Dan
 

Alissa

I love this card. I'm weird, but to me it feels like I'm being welcomed home.

I feel like I'm leaving the mist, and the caretaker of my beloved decrepid mansion, the one I've dreamed of often with lots of secret passageways and hidden doors, is ushering me back inside.

If the house is the symbol of the Self, it seems solid to me. Permanent.

I hope you do post more here contra!
 

Kath

I feel that this card is an invitation. You can see a big mansion and know that it has dozens of rooms to explore, and who knows what treasures (or terrors) you may find. The gate keeper is showing you that the gate is open just enough for you to go through. It isn’t open all the way, extending a warm welcome, more like ‘here is the entrance, we are expecting you, but it’s up to you to take the next step’. The gate keeper, to me, looks like the silent type, kind of like Lurch from the Addams family. He’ll let you in, but he won’t say a word to you, you have to figure it out yourself.
 

silk_selen

I know I'm a little late but...

This card seems to me to be a warning about a dubious invitation. A word of caution before accepting this man's invitation to venture into the unknown, dark, mansion.
 

mj07

Alissa said:
I love this card. I'm weird, but to me it feels like I'm being welcomed home.

I feel like I'm leaving the mist, and the caretaker of my beloved decrepid mansion, the one I've dreamed of often with lots of secret passageways and hidden doors, is ushering me back inside.

aHA! Alissa, that's what I was thinking, too! At first, since the gates are broken down, I thought it was a dubious invitation. But the more I thought about it, my perspective changed. Perhaps this is the home you've worked hard to acheive. Or, you've been working hard outside the home, you've returned to the fruits of your labors and your "butler" welcomes you at the gate. If all the characters in the deck are vampires, ghouls, demons, gargoyles, etc. who's to say that you, the querent, are not also of the same mettle??
 

Annwyn

At the very first glance, you do get a sense of a dubious invitation.
Walk through and possible danger awaits.

But I too love the feel of this card. The dead tree and the dead guy out the front extending his hand to enter are outside the gate. There is a heavy fog yes. But look at that big beautiful mansion. It is SOLID
I cannot see anything wrong with it on the outside. It does appear the ghost is inviting the viewer in, this is all yours, this is your place. This could be your home. So infront of the gates, (where only the left side appears broken) is dead, bleak but step beyond, look past your current state of mind of doom and gloom
look at this big beautiful house, that is YOU, step within and explore......I really adore this card.

Also does anyone else feel like if you look really hard into any of the windows of the mansion, someone might be staring back at you? LOL and do you feel that if you accepted the invitation, then suddenly its surrounds might turn green and fertile and sunny and beautiful again? Make it come alive!


If this card is relevant to money, materialistic matters as pentacles refer to. Then perhaps this card says, it just needs the right person to come through the gates and make this place alive again?

Im thinking aloud....and probably not making much sense...going to ponder this card some more.
 

Alissa

Annwyn said:
Also does anyone else feel like if you look really hard into any of the windows of the mansion, someone might be staring back at you?
:eek: *Very* strange you should say that~! A few weeks or so ago I remember this card came up for me as a daily, and I wrote a smidgen about it in the daily card thread. While focusing on the card, I distinctly remember my gaze was drawn to the windows, and I felt... ummm... disappointed that I didn't see anyone there. That's the best word I can find, like a strange, subterranean melancholy, without knowing who or what should be there, but isn't.

I noted, with a sense of resignation, there were no candles lit for me, the windows were black. And I "told" my caretaker it was alright, I noticed the absense of light, but didn't mind. (I don't think he was expecting me back so soon ;) )

LOL and do you feel that if you accepted the invitation, then suddenly its surrounds might turn green and fertile and sunny and beautiful again? Make it come alive!
Oh god I hope not... then it'd just be another Tuilleries garden or another happy-pretty place full of... emptiness. No mystery. Nothing to find.

:D That reminds me of the end of Beauty and Beast, when the terrible ending happens, and he turns into that cute, jock-looking prince... and that wonderful, ferocious, tempermental, passionate beast disappears. Sooooo sad....
 

Alissa

From the mouths of babes

My three year old son loves this image. He's used to seeing it as the cover of Joseph Vargo's Nox Arcana "Darklore Manor" cd.

In the car just the other day, while the cd was playing, I hear his voice pipe up from the back seat. "Mommy? I wanna see the picture of the man... at night time... and he's the one with the Big House."

I smile and hand him the cd cover, which is this card. After a few seconds of contemplation, he says to me, "I think it's a magic castle...."

"You do? What do they do inside?"

"I don't know..." he said. "What do they do inside?" Leave it to a three-year-old to turn my psychologically probing question back on me.

"I don't know," I said. We refrain from discussing the house's actual history. ;)

Somehow, it really tickles me pink that both my son and I love the image of this manor house, whose legacy is really so tragic and spooky. But even still, I don't care. It looks like a magic castle to me too. My kinda home.

Anyone wanna come pick wildflowers in the cemetary out back with me?
 

mercenary30

Seven of Pentacles

A large estate can be seen in the background. The view you see is from behind the decrepit entrance gate. The left gate is open and sits on an angle that makes it look like either the hinges are bent or the pillar that it is attached to is leaning badly. The right gate remains closed, but even that one sits at a funny angle. Three pentacles adorn the top arch of the left gate and four are on the right one. Upon the pillar holding the right gate is a statue of a perched griffin. Its wings are out and the head points to the gated entrance. Just to the right and barely in the scene is a tree bereft of its leaves. Crawling vines have found a hold on the whole fence line here. The sky is full of dark billowing clouds, and the ground is covered in a similar fog. A ghostly servant stands outside the gate in greeting. He is decked out in a top hat and a formal black shoulder cape. His left arm, palm up is raised out to the side, beckoning you to enter….

You want to know about the shadowy, haunted mansion? No one lives there; not any more. The legend has it that after it was built, four generations of the family lived and thrived on that estate. When the plague swept through the land, the place was locked up tight as a casket to keep death from entering through the gates, but that did not save them. First the livestock started to die off. The lord had all the animals slaughtered, including his prized horses. The grounds servants were also sent away; locked outside of the gates because they were exposed to the animals. When the lord’s eldest daughter fell ill and died, the lord lost his wits. He beat a housemaid nearly to death when he found she had let his daughter visit the horses, even though he forbade his children from leaving the house. He then evicted everyone from the home who wasn’t family, and then they locked themselves off from the rest of the world. Years later when a distant family member came calling, the home was found to be empty and there was no evidence as to what had befallen them. The estate has been renovated and occupied a number of times over the years, but each time strange occurrences and stranger deaths have plagued the manor and driven all away. So no one lives in that haunted place any more. All who enter find themselves cursed or doomed…….