Blake Tarot - Two of Painting - Balance

Buryn's keywords for this card are choice, negotiation, duality, change... The two poetic figures, Dante and Virgil, represent imagination; the giant, Antaeus, represents materialism.

The image was painted for Canto 31 - the Giants in the Inferno, the first third of the Divine Comedy. Interestingly, the DC is interpreted as the soul's journey to God. The poets must pass through Hell and give up on "Error" (sin) to move on. In this canto, Dante and Virgil reach the 9th and final circle of Hell. Antaeus lifts them down to the Ice Lake and to the center where Satan is and must be passed to ascend to Purgatory. (The teachers in Catholic school used to scare the c**p out of us with Purgatory.)

Many of the giants are divine beings thrown into Hell for opposing Jupiter/Jove (Gk. Zeus). They represent error and are all chained except for Antaeus.

Antaeus was the son of Poseidon and Gaia, and he was defeated by Herakles (Gk. Hercules). The giant would go around challenging warriors for no good reason, simply to defeat and kill them and collect their skulls to build a temple to his father. He challenged Herakles. In the fight Herakles would throw Antaeus to the ground and every time he would seem to come back, fully restored. H. figured out that it was his connection to Earth (through his mother Gaia) from which he gained his strength. So H. picked him up and and as A. weakened H. was able to crush his ribs and kill him. Because Antaeus was not a part of the rebellion on the Gods of Olympus, he is not chained like the other Giants.

In the Inferno, Virgil must negotiate with Antaeus to convince him to help Virgil down to the 9th circle of Hell. The choice is left to Dante as to whether he will grab onto Virgil and join him on the ice lake.

That Antaeus' power comes from the Earth is significant in that he is manifested Earth and therefore material. His assistance is required to transform the imagination of the poets into form.

This is one of the cards I am most struck by in the deck.

It came up in a reading I did once in an ISG and there is a strange sense of safety in the strength of the giant and the swirling of the environment around him. The painting feels contradictory, dual. The violence of the Giant's fame and the delicateness with which he handles the poets:

...as he bent down; while I with heart and soul
wished we had gone some other way, but gently
he set us down in the final hole
from the Inferno trans. John Ciardi - lines 142 to 144

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Buryn says a few things in the companion book about the suit of Painting, in general, that I find interesting and I resonate with in relation to this card:

The true painter-artisan-manifester gives form to what he or she 'sees' in the external world of the imagination, not to what is mechanically perceied in the created world.

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The suit is associated with Clouds:

Formed of water (matter), the body gives the illusion of substance but is vapourous, readily evaporates and blocks vision of the intimate.

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Several days before I picked up this card to study it, I had a dream:

I was standing at the side of a bridge, watching an old steamship pass, a steamship I had been stalking with my camera throughout the dream. It was very early spring and most of the snow was gone. Suddenly, the landscape behind the ship became radically interesting. The melting snow caught in the curves of the landscape began to take on strange colours and forms. I lifted my camera to capture what I was seeing, but, in my frustration, no matter how I set the exposure, the photo would only burn out nearly white! As I struggled with the camera, the landscape began to transform and transform again until it was plain and suddenly the camera was catching the right exposure. My camera had been useless in capturing the vision of this seemingly dull, late winter landscape that had become something only I could see.

I was not conscious enough in the dream to think I had imagined it. I SAW it and yet, it was only for my eyes. A visionary landscape, not for the camera or anything else of matter...

I am a realist painter, I'll let you draw your own conclusions!