strange days

Weird stuff today today. Decided to read for February, and for some reason got out my old Marseilles-style cards instead of my own.

 My Marseilles-style deck is actually a Besançon tarot, from the town of Besançon in the south of La France, which means it's not an orthodox deck. The cardmaker replaced two of the traditional images in order to keep the Church authorities off his back. The local archbishop said two trumps, the pope, and the female pope, were blasphemous abominations & c., so the printer, Renault, swapped them out for Roman gods, Jupiter and Juno.

 A while back I decided I could read with this lovely vintage deck of cards, but that either of the two "fake" tarot trumps showing up in a reading would void it. The old cards didn't feel right when I was shuffling them. They're five inches long and 2-3/4 wide (my cards are 4" x 3"), and felt eerie and unfamiliar passing through the hand. And sure enough, Juno turned up, so scratch that one.

I went back to my own cards, which have become so easy to read, and drew three cards for the month of February, a balanced reading with a pip, a face card, and a trump.

The pip, nine diamonds, is straight forward enough, signifying the end of a way of making money, but I already knew my teaching days are behind me.

The Queen of Spades, Lady Hortensia, is self-mastery. At my age and in my circumstances, what else is there?

The beautiful star is hope. It may be irrational as hell, but without it we're sunk.

A picture of the spread will follow.

--30--