Onyx
LWB: “Small actions can engender great change. Responsibility, vision, decision.”
Card Image: On a table in the foreground sits a small wooden box and on the corner a small golden cup. Standing over the cup is a veiled woman. She is pouring a small bit of liquid into the cup from a vial that she held in her sleeve. She hides this action with her cloak. In the background, a man sleeps. He is dressed in a pope’s robes; his hat sits on a table beside the bed under a crucifix posted on the wall. Behind the bed and leaning on the headboard is an ornate shepherd’s staff.
Interpretation: This card does not fit my personal, established meaning for the 7 of Chalices. I normally relate the cards with the idea of fantasy, overactive imagination, or the emotional inability to choose. The image so clearly conveys the idea of poisoning and by extension murder that it must dominate the meaning.
If we accept the aphorism as the dictating element to the understanding of the card, I can begin to see how the act of murder is a moment of vision and imagination. This act puts into effect the dream or hope of how the world would be different without that person in the world. It is a horrifying idea to consider that an act of murder is considered an act of vision. That being secretly poisoned is associated with responsibility. Is it a righteous killing? Is it euthanasia? (I connect this card with its obvious brother the King of Chalices which rules out the possibility that the liquid is medicine.)
This deck has a different mind than many traditional decks. The idea expressed in the LWB for this card is clear. A small amount of liquid in the right cup can be a beginning of a big change. I have questions if she is an agent of some greater group or movement or if she is acting on her own behalf to right some past injustice?
Onyx.
Card Image: On a table in the foreground sits a small wooden box and on the corner a small golden cup. Standing over the cup is a veiled woman. She is pouring a small bit of liquid into the cup from a vial that she held in her sleeve. She hides this action with her cloak. In the background, a man sleeps. He is dressed in a pope’s robes; his hat sits on a table beside the bed under a crucifix posted on the wall. Behind the bed and leaning on the headboard is an ornate shepherd’s staff.
Interpretation: This card does not fit my personal, established meaning for the 7 of Chalices. I normally relate the cards with the idea of fantasy, overactive imagination, or the emotional inability to choose. The image so clearly conveys the idea of poisoning and by extension murder that it must dominate the meaning.
If we accept the aphorism as the dictating element to the understanding of the card, I can begin to see how the act of murder is a moment of vision and imagination. This act puts into effect the dream or hope of how the world would be different without that person in the world. It is a horrifying idea to consider that an act of murder is considered an act of vision. That being secretly poisoned is associated with responsibility. Is it a righteous killing? Is it euthanasia? (I connect this card with its obvious brother the King of Chalices which rules out the possibility that the liquid is medicine.)
This deck has a different mind than many traditional decks. The idea expressed in the LWB for this card is clear. A small amount of liquid in the right cup can be a beginning of a big change. I have questions if she is an agent of some greater group or movement or if she is acting on her own behalf to right some past injustice?
Onyx.
