Libra8ca said:
It deviates quite a bit from the traditional RWS which makes it a bit difficult to read with especially for a beginner. I have the deck and the booklet says regarding the four of cups:
"The goblets represent the great creating power of the Goddess Tiamat. The fish/spiral shells emphasize her fertility as mother of all. The seagulls symbolize souls ready to be born.
Divinatory meaning: something important is missing from your life but you are unable to determine what it is. You have withdrawn emotionally waiting in a sea of uncertainty."
So this card indicates emotional confusion / uncertainty as opposed to apathy / self-absorption in the traditional system.
Thanks, Libra8ca. I just looked up more info on Tiamat. Tiamat is quite something! A bit scary!
And from the information I found, it would make reading this card even more difficult due to the nature of Tiamat.
From wikipedia:
"In Babylonian mythology[1], Tiamat is a goddess who personifies the sea. Tiamat is considered the monstrous embodiment of primordial chaos.[2] Although there are no early precedents for it, some sources identify her with images of a sea serpent or dragon.[3] In the Enûma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation, she gives birth to the first generation of deities; she later makes war upon them and is killed by the storm-god Marduk. The heavens and the earth are formed from her divided body."
<snip>
"Tiamat was the "shining" personification of salt water who roared and smote in the chaos of original creation. She and Apsu filled the cosmic abyss with the primeval waters. She is "Ummu-Hubur who formed all things".
In the myth recorded on cuneiform tablets, the deity Enki (later Ea) believed correctly that Apsu, upset with the chaos they created, was planning to murder the younger deities; and so slew him. This angered Kingu, their son, who reported the event to Tiamat, whereupon she fashioned monsters to battle the deities in order to avenge Apsu's death. These were her own offspring: giant sea serpents, storm demons, fish-men, scorpion-men and many others.
Tiamat possessed the Tablets of Destiny and in the primordial battle she gave them to Kingu, the god she had chosen as her lover and the leader of her host. The deities gathered in terror, but Anu, (replaced later, first by Enlil and, in the late version that has survived after the First Dynasty of Babylon, by Marduk, the son of Ea), first extracting a promise that he would be revered as "king of the gods", overcame her, armed with the arrows of the winds, a net, a club, and an invincible spear.
And the lord stood upon Tiamat's hinder parts,
And with his merciless club he smashed her skull.
He cut through the channels of her blood,
And he made the North wind bear it away into secret places.
Slicing Tiamat in half, he made from her ribs the vault of heaven and earth. Her weeping eyes became the source of the Tigris and the Euphrates. With the approval of the elder deities, he took from Kingu the Tablets of Destiny, installing himself as the head of the Babylonian pantheon. Kingu was captured and later was slain: his red blood mixed with the red clay of the Earth would make the body of humankind, created to act as the servant of the younger Igigi deities."
