of course they are.
Teheuti said:
The figure on his left should is a red star and a moon. The squiggle near the hem is the Hebrew letter Shin. The "sanddollars" are wheels of life with 8 red radii representing the turn of the seasons (quarters + cross-quarters) and the Tetragrammaton + alchemical elements as per the Wheel of Fortune and thus transmutation and rebirth. Among other things . . .
Mary
I'm not very knowledgeable about the hebrew alphabet, but I'm learning from a book by Irene Gad, ( still wondering if people know this book or not 'Tarot and Individuation') and anyway I see that has shin attributed to the fool in a table of the major arcana according to Levi, Papus and Wirth, unlike Waite, who keeps him there at the Aleph(p.19).
(Hang on what's this. This table seems to come from Kaplan, Classical tarot, p.63).
Aany-way, I can well imagine that the shin was put there in accordance with an association with fieryness. Which associates with summer and heat and fruitfulness. I wouldn't be so reductionist as to say that there wasn't a lot of clever symbolism used both strongly and lightly by PCSmith. However the wiggly line I was referring to is not the three pointed black E shape that is shin, but the paler umbilical like lines that wiggle from the bottom of the fruit shape. Or vine like, if you prefer.
There are 5 roundy shapes that are not 'sand dollars' with their rich symbolism, and of the 5 other ones I believe that they all have the same shape in the 1st printing layer (with wiggly bits). the shapes have been coloured differently afterward. Either in drawing or possibly the printing process. It looks to me as though the one in the bottom hemline, has had the red lines put on mistakenly, (because it has the wiggly line and the sprout bit which make it look a lot like a pomegranate not just a round circle), and then perhaps because it was a bit of an anomaly topped with a shin for a satisfactory fiery effect. If I try hard to imagine that I'm PCS being intuitive and listening to music and painting / drawing the first card in the deck, (I'm not certain that it's the first one she drew, just to be clear. Clarity is important isn't it when we're deciphering an intuitive symbolic process?), then I imagine that I'd be quite pleased to discover that I'm creating new symbolism on my shrubbery tunic as I go. I may well be pleased to have left the one on the sleeve blank because it's like a moon. Especially if I'd already finished by the time I'd noticed it.
I think the one on the chest looks a bit like the number three surrounding a red patch, a bit like the kind of colour you'd see on a ripening fruit, or the way one might draw the light on a two dimensional round object to give it three dimensions, like a pomegranate for example. I suspect personally, and speaking only for myself, that the shape that Roseanne has noted as number 2, and the one on the hip, (number 3), have more black around them because they're closer to the edge of the fools outline, and the use of a bit more black ink there gives a more sculptural feeling to the torso and the tunic. I think that PCS would have been pleased to consider that she'd created an oracle manifest in the fool's tunic, that sits in that realm between reading an exact language and deciphering one's own meanings into life's symbolism. I think though that she'd have been equally pleased to think that her pomegranate like shapes were also flames, stars or moons. and that the fool might also be wearing eyeshadow.
but for the record that's just what I think.
