Bohemian Gothic Study - Page of Pentacles

swimming in tarot

This card has me a little puzzled. It shows a child, a girl, with possibly the most sweet and innocent face in the deck. She has on a rose-pink dress, and holds...blue roses...and a spray of lilacs in a shade of lilac. There is a small spike of white flowers that I don't recognize. She stands in front of a darkly weathered stone wall with an oriole window, stone tracery dividing it into eight segments, and this round window no doubt represents a pentacle. Aside from the blue roses, which is not a colour that nature makes roses in, there is nothing particularly sinister about this card beyond the contrast between the dewy, innocent child and the grimy old wall. I don't even see a whole lot to tie this card to traditional Page of Pentacles meanings.

Can anyone help?
 

LovelyMissAries

swimming in tarot said:
This card has me a little puzzled. It shows a child, a girl, with possibly the most sweet and innocent face in the deck. She has on a rose-pink dress, and holds...blue roses...and a spray of lilacs in a shade of lilac. There is a small spike of white flowers that I don't recognize. She stands in front of a darkly weathered stone wall with an oriole window, stone tracery dividing it into eight segments, and this round window no doubt represents a pentacle. Aside from the blue roses, which is not a colour that nature makes roses in, there is nothing particularly sinister about this card beyond the contrast between the dewy, innocent child and the grimy old wall. I don't even see a whole lot to tie this card to traditional Page of Pentacles meanings.

Can anyone help?

Well, let's look at the picture instead of the overall card meaning first. You described there being a little girl in there holding flowers, having a flowered dress on, and she's in front a grimy stone wall with a window. To me, and correlating this with RW Page of Pentacles, it is a symbolization of having the whole world in your hands. I would also consider this Page to be the youngest out of all the four suits simply because of the picture you described. I think it because even though there's four Pages and traditionally they are all within the same range, the Page of Pentacles (in the RW image) is overall "golden". Now if you relate this back to old times, it's another way of saying "pure".

I don't know if other readers do this (I'm still beginning but this is how I see it now that you got me rambling..)

The Page of Swords has been weathered by the wind, and mental strife, but their mentality is tough, they are ready to handle whatever tricks life throws at them. I would consider these Pages as the oldest, and has the most respect among the other Pages, they're revered because of their knowledge about vast subjects. They are TOUGH because they have learned that emotion is weakness.

The Page of Wands is the second oldest, they're impulsive and have not learned the skill of great timing and swiftness that the Page of Swords have. They are great at starting projects (or learning about them anyway, these are Pages after all.) but fail to finish them. Their priorities are still out of wack, they're more social and less studious than the Page of Swords. But their also more fun because they have not been through what the Page of Swords has.

The Page of Cups is the second youngest, I decided they are "young" per se because they're undoubtedly more emotional (as cups are) than the other Pages. Their feelings are so easily hurt, and they're very gentle. They have not learned to ask for what they want without throwing a tantrum (well, I suppose them AND the Page of Wands, but the Wands recover faster) and may often manipulate people (as in crying, or guilt trips) in order to get their way. However, they're also kind children in the fact that they would offer you a drink if they suspected you were thirsty. They're excellent at buttering people up.

Hmm...well you certainly got me rambling there, hope the part about the Page of Pentacles actually helps clarify this card for you somewhat.
 

Thirteen

I don't think you can trust anything in the BG deck ;) especially not children. Though she seems a sweet and happy child, it's odd that she seems to be in a crypt (? I don't know if it's a crypt, but if it is, it is the King/Pent's crypt?). If she's going to put those flowers down at someone's crypt, why is she smiling? Did she help do them in? If she's just collecting flowers, why from this creepy place? Are they flowers left for the dead?

And what about her. She's so pale and frozen? Almost a statue come to life.

As the Page of Pents, the flowers suit her as does the stone "pentacle" over hear head. Pages are the start of the courts. Of course she'd be into flowers (earth--which relates to that stone wall, too) and pretty things--Pents is the suit of "pretty things.". She is the innocent start of the suit where flowers are enough. Flowers are not enough for the other courts. The Knight must have his trophies, the Queen her artwork and the King his bejeweled crown. There is an implication, at least for me, that this innocent start of gathering flowers to try and make her world beautiful, might well lead to that need to acquire other, more lasting treasures that the Knight/Queen/King display.
 

swimming in tarot

Somehow I think the blue roses are the clue...the need to "improve" on nature. Here begins the long, slow corruption of youth and beauty, and physical nature. A little girl holding a bouquet of flowers: what could be more natural and innocent? Our eyes are drawn to her rather sweet face, but also prominent in the picture are those blue roses, such as nature never made. Soon this girl will be stuffed into a corset and tight shoes, to "improve" her figure; her hair will be crimped and waved and piled on top of her head against gravity; she will be taught to walk a certain unnatural way "like a lady", if the shoes don't make that happen automatically; to eat thus and so but not too much, and certainly none of ______; to smile, but not show her teeth; to laugh on cue, but not too loud; to mould herself into a form and manner pleasing to others, without reference to herself; to keep up an appropriate performance once she has "come out" into society; to make an "appropriate" marriage which may have nothing to do with her inclination...just like her mother, the Queen of Pentacles...the list goes on, I'm sure you are getting the idea! And on it goes throughout her life, until she ends up in the family mausoleum which she is perhaps standing in front of, enbalmed, and decay forestalled; unable to return to the earth from whence she and the flowers sprang, but locked in stone presumably for all time. Deliberately deformed body preserved, but spirit long since dwindled away, perhaps starting shortly after this picture was taken.... Oh, it's not the child herself that I mistrust!

Or: her pale, cut-out appearance that doesn't seem to allow enough room for her not to hit the wall, given how close to it she's standing: she's not actually there. Her body is in the mausoleum, and this is the ghost of the child she was all that time ago, in her Regency dress, when her spirit and soul were still pretty much hers...the photo was taken a little over a lifetime later...with all the foregoing having come to pass in the meantime.

I am getting a much better idea of what this card may represent!
 

olivia1

Even though she is little, to me her face looks mature. She simply reminds me of one of those adorable little kids who remind you of a little adult because they are so precocious. Very *Elisabeth of Hesse and by Rhine. I know its the Bohemian Gothic but it doesn't feel to me like she is standing in front of a crypt. However, if she is indeed standing in front of a crypt, I would imagine its the crypt of someone who she was very close to. And now, even though that person is now dead, they still have that bond. I dont put much stock in her clothes or the flowers because she is a child. Therefore, its likely someone else dressed her and gave her the flowers to hold or take to the crypt.


* from how she sounds by what I have read of her.