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memories of my ghost sista

~ the dead are never satisfied

memories of my ghost sista

Category Archives: tarot

and now …

08 Tuesday Nov 2022

Posted by babylon crashing in Illustration and art, tarot, Tarot

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onsale, Syssk, Tarot, Tarot of Syssk

Tarot deck based on the fine art of, “Sibylline Xenomorphia;” featuring Syssk, an Alien marooned in Japan’s Warring States era; mapping out her attempts to pass in the bewildering and often contrary world of strife, chaos and fabulous kimonos.

Syssk Online Shop Space.

A free guide book written in Armenian and Galactic Basic (Syssk’s native tongue) for the deck, translated by Lilit “Baba” Yagian, can be found here at my favorite Internet lending library:

TAROT of SYSSK [4th edition] : Lilit “Baba” Yagian : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

A translation in English is in the works. The colorized editions (at this point just curiosities) date back to earlier versions of the deck which were never published.

The Emperor

29 Monday Aug 2022

Posted by babylon crashing in Illustration and art, tarot

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Emperor, Syssk, Tarot, Tarot of Syssk

The Empress

29 Monday Aug 2022

Posted by babylon crashing in Illustration and art, tarot

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Empress, Syssk, Tarot, Tarot of Syssk

The High Priestess

29 Monday Aug 2022

Posted by babylon crashing in Illustration and art, tarot

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high priestess, Syssk, Tarot, Tarot of Syssk

The Witch: Onibaba

29 Monday Aug 2022

Posted by babylon crashing in Illustration and art, tarot

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my art, Syssk, Tarot, Tarot of Syssk

The Fool

29 Monday Aug 2022

Posted by babylon crashing in tarot, Illustration and art

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Syssk, Tarot, Tarot of Syssk, the fool

amazonomachy: the knight of swords

17 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by babylon crashing in Illustration and art, tarot

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amazonomachy, art, Knight of Swords, Tarot

amazonomachy

amazonomachy

amazonomachy

Sometimes I like making cards for imaginary Tarot decks that no one else will ever see. According to Rider-Waite the Knight of Swords is associated with, among other things, war and wrath. I just love the expression on her face.

the tiburon tarot: the fool

03 Saturday Aug 2013

Posted by babylon crashing in Illustration and art, tarot

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art, on the road to find out, shark, spirit guide, taking the first step, Tarot, the fool, the sea, tiburón

tiburon tarot the fool

THE FOOL:

I have been working on an ocean-based Tarot deck for a while (at first I was calling it “La Mer,” an older French term for the ocean, until a friend pointed out calling your deck “Lamer” might not work out so well). The first card in the deck is The Fool, which represents taking the first step in the path you are following. The Rider-Waite deck shows a young man, his head in the air, walking toward the brink of a cliff, while a small dog barks to get his attention to what is about to happen.

In this version, a woman takes her first step into the sea with her spirit guide, in this case a spirit shark, glides silently by her side. The kelp part as they pass through, since once you know the language of the sea it will do anything for you. Because she is new to all this she must keep her head out of the water in order to breath; until she can master her fear of the unknown and begin swimming she will not be able to go very far, which is true with all of us when encountering something as vast and supernatural as the ocean for the first time.

um tarot suja: the fool

22 Friday Feb 2013

Posted by babylon crashing in Erotic, Illustration and art, tarot

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cat spirit, fox spirit, spirit guide, Tarot, the fool, um tarot suja, universe

Um Tarot Suja: Fool [final draft]

Um Tarot Suja: Fool [final draft]

Um Tarot Suja: Fool [rough draft #1]

Um Tarot Suja: Fool [rough draft #1]

Um Tarot Suja: Fool [rough draft #2]

Um Tarot Suja: Fool [rough draft #2]

I had been working on a tarot deck a couple of years ago, Um Tarot Suja, a sex magic deck (or at least that was the idea going into the project). I wanted to stay relatively faithful to the Rider-Waite deck. So, as they say in The Sound of Music, we’ll start at the beginning.

It helps me, at least, to think of the tarot as a narration of a spiritual journey, each card progressing down the path, as it were. The first card, The Fool, has a care-free youth starting out with his/her head in the sky, not paying attention to the abyss at they are about to plunge into. At their feet is a small animal (usually a yapping dog) which tries to get the Fool’s attention. We’ve all been there, starting out on a project full of excitement and idealism, having no idea what is in store for us.

My first two attempts (the bottom two cards) had the Fool stepping out into the (literal) darkness of the unknown. There isn’t a cliff, just the nothingness of the unknown, stepping into a blackness that has no form or shape. In the two cards both women have their hands stretched out to their spirit guides, a cat and a fox (what can I say? I like cats and foxes) and while technically either card to constitute as a Fool, neither really satisfied.

The final draft has the Fool transported to a unpleasant, godforsaken alien landscape (Utah) and the abyss, the start of our journey, is a stairway to (wait for it) the heavens. The Fool must take her first step up the stairs and into the unknown, accompanied by her guide, but once she does she can go anywhere in the universe she wishes, both literally and metaphorically.

um tarot suja — the shaman

18 Monday Jul 2011

Posted by babylon crashing in Erotic, tarot

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Tarot

Once we have agreed upon to start our journey the first card we come to is that of the Magician, and just like the Fool, the character in the card is young and just beginning to open their eyes to the world around them. In truth, though, the word is misleading. The figure in robes is more like an Apprentice, for the he or she is just beginning to learn their craft. In the original Rider-Waite deck the Magician learned his art from the Greek sun god, Apollo, though the Egyptian Ra or Isis, the Chinese god Taiyang Shen, or even the Aztec’s Tonatiuh — solar deities all — could teach us as well. It was to the sun the ancients of the world first turned to for warmth and wisdom — the “magic” that so many look for and so little find — and so it will be for us.

The young Magician stands before a table that contains his tools of the trade; the chalice and pentagram as well as the ceremonial knives. At his feet is a garden of herbs and flowers, for the Root Witches of Europe had knowledge over the world and knew how to cure and curse in equal measures back before the patriarchal religions rose to power. Above the Magician’s head is the ancient symbol of eternity, while in his right hand is a wand raised towards the sky, the element known as “æther,” and his left hand points to the ground, allowing him to be the conduit that combines heaven and earth.

I have never liked the word Magician, to be honest. Partly because the word is so overused in Hollywood that it has lost all meaning to me and we could be talking about a stage illusionist hired to entertain children or some farcical, Middle Earth geriatric who sneezes lightning and talks like a Shakespearean reject on the Gong Show. To me, the problem with the Magician is that he isn’t part of any community. He don’t use his skills to help others, he is simply a self-serving individual with nothing more up his sleeve than a desperate need for money and attention. Isis would not approve.

This is why I use the term Shaman in this deck, because by the very definition of a Shaman she is part of something larger than just herself and her needs. This is what separates in my mind a Shaman from a Magician or an Illusionist, though I’ve heard a lot of people call themselves Shamans, though usually at Pagan Festivals and usually in an attempt by lonely older men to get laid. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to get laid, it’s the driving force of most of Western culture, it’s why college freshmen claim to read Charles Bukowski (hurrah for virgins!) but I’d be wary of anyone who tells you that being a Shaman is difficult, or that it takes years of concentration, that there are secrets given only to a select few, yadda yadda yadda. Learning to play the oboe takes years of practice. Learning to perform brain surgery talks years of study. Learning to do what a Shaman does — i.e., leave your body and enter into the Spirit world — is frightfully easy. I would go so far as to say it is mind-bogglingly easy. Anyone can do it, right now in fact, if you’re in the mood.

That’s the key word, “in the mood.” For we are all sexual creatures with erotic cores, but if you are unwilling to tap into your ecstatic nature then you might as well go back to drinking tequila and eating peyote and sitting in the desert at midnight, trying to avoid getting stung by scorpions, for that’s about as far as you’re going to get on your shamanic journey. The reason projecting outside your own body is so simple is that we do it every time we have an orgasm. In fact, I’d go so far to say that the orgasm is the shaman’s only true tool they need.

I don’t say this lightly: the orgasm is our doorway to the divine. It opens us up, allows us to leave our ego-based Id behind for a moment and step outside of our own consciousness. It’s why people are relaxed after an orgasm, blissful, at peace. But this experience isn’t only a sexual one. The same thing happens in the creative process. The poet John Keats called it “negative ecstasy,” the process of allowing ideas bigger than himself in. It is also what we experience in meditation and prayer when we are no longer part of our body. St. John called it “the dark night of the soul” and St. Therese of Lisieux described it as “transverberation.” But whatever word you use, opening yourself up to the universe, leaving your carnal body behind and taking part in something bigger than yourself, is what a Shaman does on their spiritual journey.

So far I’ve designed three different cards, each one having elements of what I’m trying to say in them (I’ll get the combination right, sooner or later)

All three cards contain the same element: the first thing we do when we discover we have a sexual side to ourselves is to masturbate. We are amazed that there are powers in our body not always under our control. Puberty is also a shamanic journey. Some of us feel frightened because of this. Some of us are made to feel guilty or ashamed as well. Perhaps this is what those PaganFest shamans were talking about when they said “that it takes years of concentration,” that they had been so emotionally damaged by adults who hate sexuality that they’d forgotten all about the power of the orgasm? Perhaps. Healing comes in many different forms and who am I to judge the path of another?

The reason that I say what separates a Shaman from a Magician is community is that traditionally the Shaman undertook her journey on the behalf of her community. The Inuit Shamans would swim to the bottom of the ocean to beg Sedna, the personification of the raging Arctic storms, for fish for the year to come. Since Sedna had no hands they would comb out her hair and out of her tangles and bloody stumps flowed all the marine life the villagers would need. When I first started learning about Tarot I didn’t have anyone I could turn to. The Spirit world is a scary place. Bad things happen there. I got a lot of ideas from books and since I adore books I was fine with that. I was, as they say, a solitary practitioner. However, claiming I didn’t have a community wasn’t really true. I had family and friends, I had people I worked with, neighbors, schoolmates, lovers and drinking buddies. In short, everyone around me was, in one way or another, part of my community, even if to them the idea of orgasms and Shamans was silly or foolish or something nice people never talked about. In a very real way that you, reading this, are now part of my community as well. When I ask a question to the deck it helps me ground that question by asking how it will effect those around me as well as just myself. There is no crime in having a little humility, just as there is no crime in daily ecstasy. Once we feel comfortable leaving our egos behind, even for only a moment, so we can hear what this ecstatic universe is trying to tell us, then we can call ourselves Shamans as well.

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