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XVII - THE STAR The Three Star Spread is based on this picture. One woman stands on iron ore and watches a basket star swimming in the sea. Another woman stands on fossil crinoids (relatives of the sea star) and watches a falling iron meteor. Each woman tries to attract the other's attention, though they do not look at each other. A single glowing eye unites the women, their visions, and the ground they stand on. This layout is used to clarify a relationship between two people. Odd numbers represent one person, even numbers represent the other. Card 9 unites the two. Try reading both sides for each person. The spread can also be read for one person: Odd numbers represent what you think and do in the world and how others see you. Even numbers represent the subconscious, the imagination, and how you see yourself. Card 9 balances the two.
Cards 1&2: The ground that each person stands on: home and work, responsibilities, and
the past as it affects the current situation. |
| Five of Spikes: Cut nails strike a flint fossil sea urchin, but no fire is born - the nails must be polished free of firescale and the weathered flint must be broken to reveal the fresh spark-producing black core. The creative spark gutters only in the wind of fear that it will catch fire and burn. |
| Ore of Coils - Goethite: A coiled fountain holds the shell of a paper nautilus (Argonauta argo) over bubbly-looking goethite. Water unites the fragile white shell and the dark sturdy stone in a self-renewing shower of empathy. Goethite is brown metallic "bog ore" found in sedimentary rocks, often crystallizing out of groundwater. It is the mineral pigments raw sienna and brown ochre. |
| XIII - Death: A mask of rusty iron weeping salt crystals - the shocking decay of what seems imperishable. A skull dissolves, its phosphate combining with iron to form vivianite crystals in an unexpected and mysterious transformation that carries no trace of the original bone. |
| Shaman of Bells: Fire of Earth. A turkey vulture journeys while playing the bones, gourd and pomegranate rattles, bells forged from her feathers, and a tambourine. Her skull is an egg hatching a baby vulture shaman. She is the psychopomp who guides the dead to the Otherworld and the living through the maze of grief or transformation. |
| Five of Bells: The heat from newly-forged flower bells causes a sacred datura flower to unfurl in a swirl of perfume. When strength and creative work fails, return to the earth and be open to the comfort of unexpected wonders. |
| Apprentice of Spikes: Earth of Fire. With sweetgrass in her wild hair, she makes fire for camp and forge with flint and a steel tent stake. Fire separates her from the jaguar but attracts domestic cats. It demystifies night terrors like the eye-winged moth. Restless and independent, she seeks the spark of new adventures. |
| XVI - The Tower: The three fuels of blacksmithing burn in a wildfire, creating toxic smoke: charcoal crumbles in a torching fir tree, coal outcrops explode in a creek, and oil burns in a calcite geode. The smith's work loses meaning and she is powerless. Falling without wings brings release. A door opens in the air, and something new and strange may appear in the ashes. |
| IV - The Anvil (The Emperor): The blacksmith's tool, world axis, sacred symbol, workbench, altar, source of authority, and deity. It holds the solidity of the earth's core and the tension of growing tree roots, and imposes sacred order, stability, and focus. |
| Nine of Blades: A raven mask glares at staring-eyed tri-blade arrowheads - is she their sender or their target? In such a complex situation, only the movement has meaning, since it makes the eyes on the arrows sing with whistling noises - a fearful or exultant sound. |
All artwork, electronic images, and text are copyright ©2001-2004 by Lorena Babcock Moore. Script copyright ©2004 by Daniel Moore.