nisaba
I've been subconsciously putting this one off because I simply don't actually get on all that well with Kings Cups types of people. I don't dislike them - I'm just a bit distant because I don't understand them, they are on a pretty strange wavelength to my way of thinking. Still, the ole shuffle-cut method of picking cards has confronted me with him, so here we go. At this stage I really have *no* idea what I'm about to say.
We see a card in a lovely blue-indigo shade for the most part, fading to a hint of green around the edges. The bottom of the card, despite the evident lack of gravity, has water lying around and rippling slightly as if it were subjected to earthlike gravity. One of the Cups we have seen elsewhere has been partly submerged in the centre of the card, hiding its stem and making it look more like an eerie glass pillar rising from the water - the archaeological remains, perhaps, of a long-gone crystal society, leaving behind their houses and their temples years ago when the water level rose to cover their town? Layered behind everything, a round-faced man looks calmly over our left shoulders as we look at him, a Mona-Lisa smile hinted at on his lips. Through it all, above the water where his head-shape but no features are reflected in the same blue, are uncountable stars (okay okay, I *know* someone is going to go off and count 'em to prove me wrong!).
I am fascinated by the subtitle given to this card: Ophiuchus. A Greek mythological figure I haven't heard of? Wonderful. I'll have research to do later, but that's beside the point now. Scientifically, we are looking at a constellation containing the second-closest star to us. "Associated with Aesclepius"? Student? Nother name for? Biographer? Associated with him, he may have taken on his qualities if not his persona. Aesculepius was originally a historical man who became deified over the centuries: he believed that washing battle wounds was important (although he did it for spiritual reasons, not reasons of hygiene - germs were unknown at the time), and he was aware of the therapeutic power of some plants, particularly parsley and garlic. In fact, to him is credited the coining of the expression "in need of parsley" as a euphemism for being so close to death's door that only the strongest remedies you have at your disposal could possibly help.
I already am starting to like this card - I think I can live with Kings of Cups as symbols of healers. Incidentally, the concept of a healer who is accompanied by a snake or snakes reminds me strongly of Vonda N. McIntyre's short story from years ago "Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand" concerning a shamanic woman who used chemically altered snake venom as a curative agent. She later expanded it into a full-length novel that I have around the house here somewhere, but the title of which eludes me for the moment. Snakes have mastery over death, which obviously implies that they can grant life, too.
We see a card in a lovely blue-indigo shade for the most part, fading to a hint of green around the edges. The bottom of the card, despite the evident lack of gravity, has water lying around and rippling slightly as if it were subjected to earthlike gravity. One of the Cups we have seen elsewhere has been partly submerged in the centre of the card, hiding its stem and making it look more like an eerie glass pillar rising from the water - the archaeological remains, perhaps, of a long-gone crystal society, leaving behind their houses and their temples years ago when the water level rose to cover their town? Layered behind everything, a round-faced man looks calmly over our left shoulders as we look at him, a Mona-Lisa smile hinted at on his lips. Through it all, above the water where his head-shape but no features are reflected in the same blue, are uncountable stars (okay okay, I *know* someone is going to go off and count 'em to prove me wrong!).
I am fascinated by the subtitle given to this card: Ophiuchus. A Greek mythological figure I haven't heard of? Wonderful. I'll have research to do later, but that's beside the point now. Scientifically, we are looking at a constellation containing the second-closest star to us. "Associated with Aesclepius"? Student? Nother name for? Biographer? Associated with him, he may have taken on his qualities if not his persona. Aesculepius was originally a historical man who became deified over the centuries: he believed that washing battle wounds was important (although he did it for spiritual reasons, not reasons of hygiene - germs were unknown at the time), and he was aware of the therapeutic power of some plants, particularly parsley and garlic. In fact, to him is credited the coining of the expression "in need of parsley" as a euphemism for being so close to death's door that only the strongest remedies you have at your disposal could possibly help.
I already am starting to like this card - I think I can live with Kings of Cups as symbols of healers. Incidentally, the concept of a healer who is accompanied by a snake or snakes reminds me strongly of Vonda N. McIntyre's short story from years ago "Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand" concerning a shamanic woman who used chemically altered snake venom as a curative agent. She later expanded it into a full-length novel that I have around the house here somewhere, but the title of which eludes me for the moment. Snakes have mastery over death, which obviously implies that they can grant life, too.