Pyramids

If they are indeed pyramids, then the artwork is exceedingly poor.
Like the rest of you, i'd like to believe they are, and the romantic in
me agrees with you. Why then do they look like mountains? Are we to
assume that Pamela Colman Smith could not draw them correctly? What
would the purpose be in a feeble attempt to mask them as mountains?

Uwe,
I agree with you; they do look more like mountains than actual pyramids. I guess the landscape (dry, no green vegetation) makes us assume they are pyramids. Perhaps she was trying to connect them to the many mountain peaks she had drawn in the deck too? I suppose we'll never really know unless someone can channel Pamela for us .

Bodhran

uwe said:

What
would the purpose be in a feeble attempt to mask them as mountains?

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Well, i don't know...lots of stuff is half-hidden in this deck. Seems par for the course to me.

I think they are either pyramids or sand dunes and meant to be a reference to the two characteristics of the element fire: hot and dry. The salamanders are the elemental of fire. They are circled much like the snake with its tail in its mouth - the uroborous - which signifies eternity. Could this be an oblique reference to reincarnation or the belief in the Egyptian afterlife? Just as a salamander was believed to be able to walk through fire and not get burned, so the spark (fire) of life that is the eternal soul countinues after this life.

Mary

Teheuti said:

Could this be an oblique reference to reincarnation or the belief in the Egyptian afterlife? Just as a salamander was believed to be able to walk through fire and not get burned, so the spark (fire) of life that is the eternal soul countinues after this life.

Mary

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Ah... yes, I think you might be on to something here Mary! Thanks for this insight!

Bodhran

I think one thing we are forgetting is that today we have an endless supply of images, photographs, television documentaries; the web, catalogues from tutankhamun's exhibition..etc, etc,...we all know what the pyramids and the sphinx look like- they are totally familiar landmarks to us all, even if we've never set foot in Egypt.

Pamela, living in England at the tale end of the Victorian era, would have had to have relied upon grainy, black and white photographs, etchings, or hand tinted reproductions- don't forget the Sphinx was almost completely buried in the sands and not fully excavated until about 1936!

Old photos from that time of course are primarily of the sphinx... the pyramids are generally in the background, often partially obscured.

Here are two photographs that would have been of the type she might have seen:

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j284/jaenor363/VictorianGirlsinEgypt.jpg

http://i83.photobucket.com/albums/j284/jaenor363/SailorsandPyramids.jpg

and here is a website with several photos of the Sphinx during the years of excavation:

http://www.egyptvoyager.com/pyramids_giza_sphinxinpicture_1.htm

I think Pamela's (admittedly rather mountain-like pyramids!) are in all honesty quite like how they appear in the photos.

elnor

Thanks for those photos, Elnor. They do help put things in perspective!

Bodhran

Actually, it seems even AE Waite wasn't sure whether Pamela's drawings were pyramids or not. From The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, describing the Knight of Wands:

He is shewn as if upon a journey, armed with a short wand, and although mailed is not on a warlike errand. He is passing mounds or pyramids...

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Elnor said:

Pamela, living in England at the tale end of the Victorian era, would have had to have relied upon grainy, black and white photographs, etchings, or hand tinted reproductions

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Oh boy. That is such an excellent point!

In this deck Wands represents creative energy. To the Golden Dawn and many of their contemporaries the pyramids were considered temples of initiation into the Mysteries, which involved mastery of the creative forces. Whether they were or not is a matter of debate, but this gives us a clue into what might have been on Smith's mind when she created the images.