A Tarot Relic
This is the Queen of Wands from a deck identified as Bembo Bonifacio’s Visconti Tarot. (Click on the image to get a closer look). It is in the collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. The date they have for it is c. 1445. That would make this card 562 years old.
Think about that. A Tarot card that was created and used more than half a millennium ago. It is speculated that this deck was created to celebrate a wedding joining the Visconti and Sforza families of Milan. I’m assuming that’s gold leaf on the card, at least it certainly looks like it. I did a bit of half-hearted googling and was unable to find a description. Perhaps someone with better google-fu than me can find that information.
I saw this link to the online images of these cards on a relatively new forum called Tarot America. It’s a small but growing group of nice folk, where you will find discussions on Cartomancy of all kinds, Runes, the I-Ching and Phenomenology.
You can view the rest of the collection here. You’ll just need to type Tarot in the search field.
Conflict of Queens
Yesterday, I had an interesting experience. I did my usual three-card spread in the morning to understand the major influences for the day. I drew the Five of Swords, the Queen of Cups and the Queen of Wands. But the only thing significant that happened to me yesterday was a major panic attack I had while worrying needlessly about someone I love.
I can have an overactive imagination, and sometimes worries will take absolute control of my thought processes. The worries become stronger than anything, and I cannot seem to prevent them from overriding any rationality or reasoning that I normally use to calm myself. It is like being in a car with no brakes and no steering and going down a steep hill very fast. You can only pray that you don’t crash and burn. I don’t know why I get like this, but I do.
I tend to read the Five of Swords as “cheating” or “gloating after winning”, but sometimes I find it signifies a mental imbalance of some kind. When I pulled the card in the morning with the two Queens I immediately thought that I would have some sort of confrontation with someone who would be the Queen of Wands, and one of us would have a bad attitude about the outcome of the confrontation. When I pull the Queen of Cups I usually think that it is me, as this card tends to signify myself in readings. But I could not determine who the Queen of Wands would be. All the ladies I work with would likely be Queens of Swords, Cups or Pentacles. There is only one co-worker who could be the Queen of Wands I had no confrontations with her that day.
So, in retrospect I think this spread was warning me of my impending panic attack. But I can’t quite figure out how.
It could be that the two Queens were opposing aspects of myself (Cups=Water, Wands=Fire) with the resulting turmoil in my psyche (the Five of Swords) causing the disturbance. I can also note that at certain times of the month I tend more toward panic attacks than at other times. The presence of the two Queens in the spread could certainly point to such a state in my body and mind, with the Five of Swords representing the mental imbalance that can result from that state.
Whatever the meaning and however it might fit the events of the day, I will continue to ponder it. The cards speak clearly, it is just sometimes hard for us to understand what it is they are trying to tell us. This is why a daily spread is such a good learning tool for those who would understand the Tarot. Comparing spreads with the daily events can help us understand how these various elements interrelate, and work together to form a meaning and a message.
