Parrot Tarot: 8, 9, and 10 of Feathers
The difficult Decan of Gemini
I can’t contain my excitement that I have a very big announcement I will share next week. Watch your inbox next Tuesday for some big news!
Ok, now to dive into the 8, 9, and 10 of Feathers (Swords). Y’all, I should have known it was cursed when I finished the cards in record time. As I say with each of these posts, when one creates a Tarot deck, the artist lives every single card as they are made. Intellectually, that makes sense, and I would have nodded in agreement if I had heard this before actually embarking on this journey myself. But exactly how poignantly one lives the cards cannot be overstated. It is unavoidable, despite attempts at avoiding it. Somehow, life’s occurrences and the cards I am currently working on line up, and there is no way around it.
I finished the decan of Gemini, the three cards titled “Interference,” “Cruelty,” and “Ruin” by Crowley in the Thoth deck, in less than a week. The thing about that week was that the eve of my finishing the last card was a super intense solar eclipse. My husband had just come back from being out of town, spending time with his mother as her health quickly declined. See, I decided that in hopes of breaking the spell of this decan, I would do the cards backwards, starting with the 10 and ending on the 8. I thought I was pretty clever and flew threw the design, drawing, inking, and painting of the three images. But the air was very heavy, not only because of the eclipse, but because my husband’s sweet mother was on the verge of dying. She passed peacefully the day after he returned home, the afternoon after the eclipse.
I had found out that I needed surgery for complications with my unwanted and unplanned C-Section, the gift that keeps on giving, this same week, and had the procedure scheduled. There was a lot going on, and then some, with our family, but at least, with those cards done, the worst was over, I kept thinking to myself. About midweek, I was washing my face and had a sudden flash of insight.
“Which Major Arcana card’s corresponding flower did I paint into each of the cards?” I asked myself. Because it’s the decan of Gemini…..Did I paint the correct flowers on all three of the cards?
I gasped. I ran to my portfolio notebook where I keep the finished originals and flipped to the pages and my eyes widened. I grabbed my little rough draft printed copies of the Major Arcana and I got the Lovers card out, the Gemini card, and I got the Magus card out, the Mercury card. Gemini is ruled by Mercury. Somehow, in my haste of blowing through these cards, I painted the Mercury corresponding flower, a Lily of the Valley, instead of the Gemini one, an orchid. I had to redo all three of the cards. At 8-10 hours per card, this was a gut sinking realization. But there was no way around it. It had to be done. Humbled, I began to draw them all again, but this time in the correct order.
8 of Feathers, Interference.
1st decan of Gemini, ruled by Jupiter
I definitely have a different flavor of this card after all these events than I previously did. Like clockwork, I would draw this card when I would have travel delays. Jupiter in Gemini feels like the big picture gets lost in the details and inevitably creates problems. But despite my attempt in creating these cards to lessen their impact, this card about delays reared its ugly head. In the last 6 years of working on Parrot Tarot, I have redone only one other card, the King of Cups. It was so long ago now that I honestly can’t recall why I had to redo it since I was working on the court cards about four years ago. Anything pre-Hawk is a little hazy lol!
This card definitely is a reminder to not skip the big picture or the details and that being thorough requires a wholistic approach to both views.
9 of Feathers, Cruelty
2nd decan of Gemini, ruled by Mars
There’s no way around it. This is a rough card. But it’s difficult because it is pointing out something that we all fall victim to and if we are under its influence, it is somehow even harder to see. That is, this card is about being cruel to ourselves internally. It’s the negative self talk, the internal downplaying of our own worth, the voice that tells us that we are just being “honest” with ourselves.
Mars’ energy and heat get spun about by Mercurial Gemini so much that it gets caught in its own little tornado, keeping all of that energy within itself rather than finding proper outlets for it all. We’ve all been here, and some of us are stuck here more often than we want to be. Drawing this card is a reminder that we are probably being a lot less gentle to ourselves than we ought to be given whatever the circumstances are in our lives, and a little self-compassion could go a long way.
10 of Feathers, Ruin
3rd decan of Gemini, ruled by the Sun
Like the other cards in this decan, this card is difficult because of how it serves the real. You pull this card and whatever you just pulled it for is over. There’s no sugar coating it. It’s done. This is the card in the Rider Waite Smith deck with the guy laying flat on his face with ten swords sticking out of his back. That guy is done. He’s not getting up from that situation, he’s not healing, he’s not making a miraculous recovery. It’s over for him and whatever question you asked the cards, it’s over for that too.
Of course, this is a notoriously difficult card to pull because often this is not the answer we want to hear. However, I find personally, that when I get this card, I find a sense of relief. If something is truly over, I don’t have to worry about it any longer. the finality is actually a bit of a relief in many if not most cases. I can take comfort in the fact that there is nothing left to do.
There is one more thing I have to address. The Death card pretty much never actually means death. I’ve had the Ace of Cups mean death before. But there is no more finality of existence on this plane than dying. My mother in law passed while I was working on these cards. Her memory is a blessing to everyone that knew her and we have just returned from her memorial, which was as much of a celebration of a life than anything I have ever attended. But as everything that happens is a symbol, that meaning has now interwoven itself into this card. It now holds the weight of the final ending.
My newest Youtube video is out on my channel. This is Part 2 of the Color Glazing series in the Mische technique. Color is definitely the hardest part of the technique and I am breaking it down into an in-depth four part series.
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