#metaphor tarot

[serotonin-dose]

iii. high priestess

"O souls of the Kings, give me strength!"

[623-74x]

dead man walking

—

or, cyberpunk 2077 tarot (the magician) but it’s ghost

[stealingpotatoes]

some recent OC art that i like so much i'm being brave and actually posting it for once!

[serpentface]

I'm doing Whitecalf OC tarot images now it's happening.

Here's the devil, reimagined as a nude existential crisis.

[deepseaspriteblog]

Happy Friday! Three adopts is a low showing from me I admit, but I'm gonna be completely honest, it's puasa season right now and it's draining both my time and energy, especially with my day job to deal with, and honestly what little free time I have that I don't spend passed out these days is spent on Metaphor Refantazio. I'm not gonna keep falling back on that as an excuse though, I'm hoping to gradually get back into the swing of spriting, but for now have some fruity farrago resprites! All the original sprites are from the farragofiction dollmaker ^^

If you're interested in any of these kids you can buy them from my ko-fi through the links below!

1/2/3

[rthwrms]

said to myself "i decide that i am awake"

asked myself "what do i want?"

immediate answer: i want to be free.

i feel trapped i want to be free.

and i get an intense urge to draw a tarot card.

shuffle and split the deck, the bottom card is the 10 of cups reversed.

asked myself "what comes after the endings of the 10 of cups?"

drew the top card: the Tower reversed.

what comes after the end is total & radical personal transformation. and it does have to be total.

[joleneghoul]

WIP

top 10 countdown of Rooks past fails: ranking at number 1!! becoming a grey warden !!!

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

i love rio's look from the 18th century, it's so much gentler, and i like the contrast between that green and the black she has now bc i expect as death she just reflects how people view her, right? and agatha's view on death is fucking furious, she hates death, so death hates her. she pursues agatha bc agatha runs. agatha does this to herself

[notfleenz]

Was thinking about the tarot motifs/Danandphilcrafts essay earlier. Tarot-oriented people in my life irl are about evenly split between people who only do it recreationally, and people who are into the gnostic interpretation of the art of the old Waite(?) deck type cards.

That is to say, i'm aware that there's some level of further projection/extrapolation possible from what i'm about to say, but damned if i know whether it's appropriate.

but...yeah. Sisyphus. Phil's reaction to the story including the idea of telling stories kind of struck something, because he mentioned ages ago about having read and liked the Dark Materials (series)/Northern Lights (UK title)/Golden Compass (US title) books as a kid.

Because at least one telling of the Sisyphus myth has the harpies being the thing preventing that picnic at the bottom of the mountain, and in the last book of that series, the harpies are what impede the protagonists and their loved ones and eventual followers trying to pass through the world of the dead. The compromise reached when an exit is made, is that the harpies will guide the ghosts out to rejoin the universe, but have the right to demand the stories of the humans that they guide (with limited exceptions) for their sustenance. and to demand the truth of those who refuse to tell it.

Another part of the ending of the series is relating the telling of stories to human consciousness, and there's some exploration of morality without religious/pseudo-religious-style moralising, as such. which can be read as advocating for some of the less selfish forms expressions of love can take, and for the importance of individuals' behaviour in the building and improvement of their communities (worlds, in the framework of the books; building heaven where each person is, because keeping the worlds connected causes insurmountable problems, but keeping the connections they want in favour of an exit for the ghosts is deemed unconscionably selfish).

just for a moment, consider that point about love in terms of how this community talks about how the two of them relate to one another. and then how the point about communities relates to the ending of We're All Doomed.

Because Phil doesn't openly discuss philosophy per se as much as Dan, the fact he reached that conclusion of "telling [] stories" with the Game of Sisyphus is quite interesting, and in context of the earlier comments can seem like an endearing extension of a position adopted innocently as a much younger person. but if it is, the other aspects may imply that they have each come to similar positions about some features of how humans relate to the world and each other via very different paths.

[miirshroom]

Test for Echo, Freud, and Elden Ring (Shadow of the Erdtree)

Thinking about how not all examples of fantasy stories come from books or film, sometimes they are found in song. Thinking about the lyricism of Canadian Progressive Rock band Rush.

If it wasn't obvious - the Shadowlands is a Freudian nightmare. The surrealism of Salvadore Dali was heavily influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis and the cocoon of the empyrean is staged to resemble Dali's work Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man.

Recently released Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon directly has an AC pilot named "Freud" whose emblem is a hand emerging from shadow holding a key (AC unit called "Locksmith").

And as it turns out, Neil Peart - lyricist for Rush - also was drawing inspirations from Freud while writing songs for Test for Echo (1996).

"I've always been curious about all religions, and the Totem idea came from the Freud book 'Totem And Taboo', which I ran across at the Chalet studio where we were working just in the bookshelf in the living room. I had been kind of rediscovering Freud by way of Jung and getting to understand the really deep stuff he was dealing with as opposed to some of the pop psychology that we were fed growing up, and I thought Totem And Taboo was such a beautiful title because it's what we fear and what we worship. Totem being what we worship and Taboo being what we fear. What a beautiful, embracing metaphor. At one time, the song Resist was called 'Taboo' because I wanted to have the two little set pieces of what we fear, and in 'Totem' I was just trying to appropriate all religions because that's what I found looking around at different religions and different systems, is that they all have something good. So I thought why not have them all? The 'Buddha smile' is a nice thing, and I'd like to have 12 Apostles...it's all great. It was really just a kind of tongue and cheek, all the good things of different religions." Neil Peart, Jam! Showbiz, October 16, 1996

The lyrics to the songs can be found here: https://www.rush.com/albums/test-for-echo/

It's a fantasy that people of all religions and esoteric beliefs would get together to craft their perfect god to fear and worship. Fortunately, Elden Ring is a fantasy. From the song "Totem", how many of the faith systems here can you spot represented somewhere in the game?:

I’ve got twelve disciples and a Buddha smile The Garden of Allah – Viking Valhalla A miracle once in a while I’ve got a pantheon of animals in a pagan soul Vishnu and Gaia – Aztec and Maya Dance around my totem pole I believe in what I see I believe in what I hear I believe that what I’m feeling Changes how the world appears Angels and demons dancing in my head Lunatics and monsters underneath my bed Media messiahs preying on my fears Pop culture prophets playing in my ears I’ve got celestial mechanics To synchronize my stars Seasonal migrations – daily variations World of the unlikely and bizarre I’ve got idols and icons, unspoken holy vows Thoughts to keep well-hidden – sacred and forbidden Free to browse among the holy cows That’s why I believe Angels and demons inside of me Saviors and Satans all around me Sweet chariot, swing low, coming for me

And then there's Resist, which has some Miquellian themes:

I can learn to resist Anything but temptation I can learn to co-exist With anything but pain I can learn to compromise Anything but my desires I can learn to get along With all the things I can’t explain I can learn to resist Anything but frustration I can learn to persist With anything but aiming low I can learn to close my eyes To anything but injustice I can learn to get along With all the things I don’t know

But neither of these songs were the tip off for why I thought to look more closely at this album. It was the Crucible Knights and Bloodhound Knights. They've always had the odd quirk of being named for geological periods. That's a lyric from the song Dog Years:

I’d rather be a tortoise from Galapagos Or a span of geological time Than be living in these dog years

Ironic that the tortoises in Elden Ring have no text option allowing them to be labelled appropriately, so the community has decreed them "dog".

There are other songs from this album that I can see represented in Elden Ring. The title song Test for Echo is about how people yearn for connection, but what the mass media landscape delivers is sensationalism and acts of violence around the world. In 30 years this hasn't really improved. A picture of an inunnguaq was selected for the album cover from fascination for the way that the simple stone structure provides evidence of the existence of other humans having travelled before through a desolate landscape. And as I have mentioned before, Radagon's story has hints of Narcissus and Echo.

This is bookended by the final song on the album Carve Away the Stone. The song suggests that like the Greek Sisyphus, all people are eternally rolling their own stones up a hill in the form of emotional baggage or other trauma. But people aren't static like a character from a story - they don't need to carry that weight forever. If you have the opportunity to shape your own destiny, why not take it? This would be related to the way that both Marika and Radagon appear to be carved of stone.

There's also the largely instrumental song that is second to last on the album and titled Limbo. It's implied to be vampire themed by one of the few vocal cut-ins being in a goofy vampire voice ("Whatever happened to my Transylvania twist?"). So like, Messmer the Impaler in the limbo-coded Shadowlands. His allusions to vampirism firstly being an epithet invoking Vlad the Impaler and also he has only false/closed eyes so he can't self reflect (one of the superstitions of vampires being that their reflection won't show up in a mirror because the mirrors in those days were polished silver). The archetype of the vampire in the Shadow is Jungian stuff and like I said - Neil Peart was thinking about depth psychology while writing this album.

For the rest of the songs the potential connections are more vague ("Time and motion / Flesh and blood and fire / Lives connect in webs of gold and razor wire" - Time and Motion) ("Gravity and distance / Change the passage of light / Gravity and distance / Change the color of right" - The Color of Right).

This isn't the only Rush album that I find possibly to have had some influence on the Radagon/Miquella/Mohg portion of Elden Ring. There's also the album 2112 (1976) back in Rush's earlier fantasy/sci-fi era, which introduces the Priests of the Temples of Syrinx - a kind of thought police represented by a red star - and mentions twin moons being in the sky. It was Rush's breakthrough album in America, followed the next year by A Farewell to Kings (1977), for which the notable songs include A Farewell to Kings, Xanadu, and Closer to the Heart. Also the album cover shows a puppet king slumped on a throne in front of a crumbling building. But again like with Test for Echo, one could imagine how all songs on the album might be combined to create an overall sense of time period.

I'm not making a case for FromSoft promoting Freudian pseudopsychology, for the record. All this psychoanalysis stuff is in the Shadowlands and nobody in the Lands Between cares about what's in the Shadowlands. It's in the past, dead and buried. You can no more decide the course of the future by replicating the past than you can create a sustainable global economy by learning economics through playing Elden Ring.

[aesethewitch]

hi aese!! just wanted a general reading, the past month has been pretty blah. Hoping the fatigue leaves you soon and you feel better again. thank you for all you do for the community💕

Hello! Alas, the fatigue is chronic (and peaking right now because of recent, back-to-back, weather-induced migraines), but I'm doing what I can to help myself recover. (:

For you, I drew Ten of Swords.

Speaking of doing what you can...! The "blah" and discomfort will pass, but not on its own. There are a lot of reasons things haven't been great, and each one requires a bit of attention. The good news is that soothing one Sword will soothe others, too, making their removal smoother and less painful. You may never be able to fix it all, but you can do something -- start with the things you're complicit in, the daily hurts that you could resolve or avoid altogether. See how you feel when you pay attention to those things. A thousand papercuts can kill just as surely as a single Sword's blow.

For a free one-card draw today, read the rules and send an ask. Want a guaranteed reading? More cards? In-depth analysis? Commission me here. Enjoy your free pull or my other work? Tip me here.

[goatmilksoda]

I love "This Too Shall Pass" but the thing about it is sometimes shit takes a really long time to pass. Yes "This Too Shall Pass" but can it hurry up a little please? I'm doing all the coping I can but when said problem is supposed to last more than 100 more days and there's nothing I can do to speed it up, it gets kind of hard not to go insane.

[swinging-stars-from-satellites]

.

[bennijie]

The Hermit

[gothicpoem]

„Malédiction”

Swords in spiral,

known as a life agony—

-Unchain my nature!

[nexttrickanvils]

*Looks at the camera like I'm in The Office*