Golden Tarot by Kat Black Study Group

jema

Death of course!

I find this deck to have one of the most beautiful death cards ever!!
 

retrokat

LOL. Yeah, I KNEW you guys would go for the as-far-from-RWS-as-possibles first! I'm glad you liked the card, though.

Of all my cards, this is one where I can't explain it without discussing my beliefs, since that's why I changed it so much from the RWS original.

Death is one of the few RWS cards that's never really spoken to me. With other cards, even when what's in the card doesn't tie up with my interpretation of the meaning of the card, it's still an OK springboard to trigger my intuition- but the apocolyptic horseman of the RWS death card has always seemed cold and without compassion to me.

Although there's much debate over whether the Death card ever means physical death, I think that it's a possibility. But even if it's not, if it's just the "massive upheaval and change" more commonly suggested, then that can involve some grief as well. And in my experience, grief needs to be met with compassion every time.

I've lost a few loved ones over the past decade, from my four month old nephew (crib death) to my paternal grandmother (who died in a very poor Nursing Home with gangrene). The former made me a right mess for months, and the latter made me feel so guilty (I lived interstate) that I moved back to my hometown to make sure that my maternal grandmother got better care.

I'm not a Christian. Much as I would LIKE to believe in heaven, a benevolent God etc, I simply can't. But one thing I do believe is that death can be a relief, an escape from pain, from fear. It can be a gracious thing, a mercy. So, when I saw Konrad Von Soest's "Death of Mary" it immediately grabbed me as being the basis for my card.

As some people know, this was the one card where I handed over two alternate versions to the publishers:

http://www.goldentarot.com/madeat.htm

In the version that made it to print (my preferred), I did use the van Eyck arching skeleton too, as a number of people had commented on how much they liked it in my old Death card, and it was at least a small nod to the skeletal horseman of the RWS version.

The other one had a hooded Grim Reaper type skeleton instead of the arched one. He was much more menacing and dominant of the scene so I didn't like it as much, but I felt it was closer to the RWS card. I was very happy when USGS chose the other one, though.

The other thing that I believe about death (although it sounds a bit corny) is that someone never really dies if they were loved. I still drive past where my grandmother lived when I was a kid and feel her prescence in a warm, palpable way. My kitchen is full of her "depressionware" and my two brothers say that coming to my place is like going to Nans. I wanted the card to show that, that although things change, they never really end. We all leave our mark, even if it's just in the minds of the people who are left behind.
 

LindaG

Death Card

I`m a Christian, a mystic one .....and believe in the soul and the after-life but I also really like your death card :)
It can mean death physically for sure. So far in any readings I`ve done, thankfully, it`s been a death in the past tense.

Linda
 

retrokat

Thanks Linda, I really appreciate that :)
 

LindaG

The PERFECT Tower

I was so pleased when I saw how the Tower card was done.
Whenever this card has come up it`s always been anything from a small unexpected or sudden change to a very large one.
The people in this card show an assortment of emotions....how interesting! A different emotion for each different Tower effect!
All it leaves is what exactly the tower effect will be and which emotion one will have LOL.

Linda
 

retrokat

The Tower

The Tower, as I think I may have mentioned in the LBB (little blue book), was the hardest card for me to work on when I rebuilt the publishable version of the deck.

I had the old version on my desktop on Sept 11th, and as the events unfolded on the TV that day, it seemed like an apocolypse. All Man's creations could indeed crumble, and I was worried that a Muslim/Christian war was now a real possibility.

Old version: http://www.goldentarot.com/v1matowe.htm

When I worked on making the deck publishable about 6 months later, my self-imposed goal was to make all of the cards as RWS-like as possible unless I had a good reason to do otherwise. Looking at the RWS version of the Tower, the falling people, the fire, the arrow from the sky and the toppling crown (no offence, but the rest of the world often sees the US as self-proclaimed King of The World) - I really pushed myself to make my old card show all of those elements that I had ignored in my first hurried (hobby) version, but I found it so difficult. I felt sick the whole time I worked on it, those images of people jumping to their deaths rather than burning kept haunting me.

It's interesting what you said about people's reactions varying so much. Judy Sidonie Tillinger, the fan who started the campaign to get the deck published, had asked me earlier if I'd consider publication, but her campaign cranked up in earnest post Sept 11th. She's an amazing woman, and her accounts of those months living in NY after Sept 11th moved me deeply. Her photographs and personal accounts of what it was like to live under such a shadow of collective grief were just heart-wrenching. I also really valued her compassion, her humanity and forgiveness. In a time of wide-ranging reactions (including a lot of irrational anti-Muslim venom), hers was a view of sadness, but of hope.

I don't think she'd mind my sharing with you her email and photos from that time, as posted on my retrokat site (katty b is me):

http://www.retrokat.com/peso02.htm

Also, her new site. She doesn't say much in words here, but I think her pictures show a lot of that same depth of humanity and compassion:

http://www.pbase.com/magpiejst/

Am I getting a bit off topic here? I find it difficult to see this card as anything other than the WTC now, even though it's not that different to my pre-Sept 11th version.
 

LindaG

Off topic Tower

Thanks for answering Kat.
Yes I remember hearing it on the radio and then rushing to see it unbelievably on the tv. Though not in America we are close by.
It was heartbreaking and shocking.

I read your post at the site you gave. It made my stomach turn to read all those horrors that occurred ...are still ocurring in this world.......why why why.

Linda
 

SongDeva

I'm in for the study group.
Not as interested in RW-ness as intuitive impressions of each card.
 

lark

Kat I love the 3 of coins.
It tells such a story!
Any insight into the making of that card for us?
 

magpiejst

golden

kat, you sweetie. I was curious about the study group and
all of a sudden there's my name! and my link!
I'm flattered and embarrased all at once whenever you give me so much credit for getting the deck on its way. If I was anything I was simply its vehicle.

I love the in depth descriptions you're contributing here and, natch, i looooooove the deck.

jst