Date: Sun, 26 Mar 2000 01:54:00 +0200
TRACK 1: I was working on my ManinniIII Page of Wands. I had done quite a lot of work, taken photos and tried to make my ideas manifest. I was really interested in making my hair into flames, and was doing a pretty good job. Then I saw a picture in Focus magazine, in an article about hair. The picture was an old Hindu woman whose hair was so long that she had to stand on a wall to show it at its full length. She hadn't had a haircut in 78 YEARS! That seemed significant, and the orange robe and trident fit right in. But my ego really wanted to appear on this card, so I was stalled. (I think the ego will have to wait for the Tennessee Tarot.)
TRACK 2: I went in Franz Carl Weber (I think FAO Schwartz used to work there) to buy a Christmas present, and at the check-out counter there was a playmobil display. I bought one right away. I took it out of its box on the way home, and threw the LCC (little color catalog) into my bag. Then, last weekend, I finally cleaned out my bag. I looked through the catalog and was amazed at the Tarot images I saw there.
TRACK 3: While working on the playmobil
tarot, I found a great Page of Wands. The more I look at it, the more
I like it. It has all the elements (to my mind). My husband has been
criticizing me, saying it's extremely 'disrespectful' to make
playmobil tarot. I think it's fun. If my husband says that, I'm sure
there are others who would feel the same. I'm not going to explain
anything about it right now. Just look at the image . . . and think
about it.
TRACK 4: Still to come . . .
One Love All Love,
Moonchild
Date: Mon, 10 Apr 2000 21:33:12 +0200
TRACK 4: After seeing Tom's Prince of Cups, I felt bad about taking the cheesy easy way out with the playmobil page. I really wanted to DO something with this card, but it hadn't worked out. So I started my fourth Page of Wands card, and worked on it all day today at work. Half of it looks great, but the other half has too many 'or's right now. (Basically, a busier background looks nice and fills the space, but the one object in that space clashes with the better background. If I can solve that, I'm done.)
TRACK 5: Today is "Sechseläuten" in Zurich. All the guilds, some dating back to the late 1300's, hold this event together. All the quarters of the city are connected to different guilds, and they have symbols and flags, etc. Kind of like the contradas of Siena. First, they have a parade through the city. Everyone wears old costumes, and walks or rides a horse or buggy. The costumes this year were mostly from around 1780-1840. When I saw the shoemakers in their aprons, I couldn't help but think of the Freemasons. Lots of guilds wore old soldiers' uniforms, and many others wore top hat and tails. Women wore 'tracts' (traditional Swiss dresses), hoop skirts and bonnets.
There were flowers *everywhere*! People wore them on every part of their bodies, carried them, shared them, hauled them in wagons. Spectators would come from the crowd to give flowers to people in the parade. If you're not in a guild, you can still get invited to be in the parade. Ruth Metzler, the youngest female parliment member, walked with the fisherman's guild. She had so many flowers she could hardly walk. Two girls had to pull wagons behind her to carry the rest.
"Sechseläuten" means "six-o'clock ringing" and comes from the guilds' agreement in the early 1800's that from this day until autumn, they would quit working when the bells of St. Peter's rang six. Naturally, there is a pagan ritual involved in the six-o'clock ringing.
In a large green behind the opera house, they pile up wood and straw about 20-25 feet high. On the top, they place the Böög. This is a 7-ft snowman (usually with top hat and broom, but this year with apple and crossbow--against strong protests) stuffed with sawdust and fireworks. When the bells start ringing, they put a torch to it. Groups of guild horsemen take turns riding around it. The length of time it takes until the Böög's head explodes (or is separated from his body) determines how long bad weather will overshadow the summer. In other words, if he burns fast, it will be a great summer. The longest recorded time is 40 minutes, and I think the shortest was somewhere around 11 minutes.
So, they lit the fire and it was pretty weak. After 10 minutes, it hadn't even gone halfway up the pile. Suddenly, flames started coming out the top! It was burning on the inside! Straight up his back to his neck the fire leaped. The background was filled with smoke. His face blackened and flames danced along his shoulders . . . then . . . ka-BOOM- Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom! It was fabulous! Sixteen and a half minutes. (More or less. Sorry, I didn't have my Omega.)
I hope there's a good picture of it in the paper tomorrow. We could have a new Page of Wands.
One Love All Love,
Moonchild
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 23:37:46 +0200
I'm just looking at the print copy I have, and I have to laugh so hard, because I just realized that I *did* manage to get fireworks in it.
One of my very first thoughts about this card, which I used in the first version, was to use a firework rocket as a wand. About a year and a half ago, I got hit with one (straight on). I was on fire. Even though I would call it a Tower experience, it's funny how it worked into this card.
I dug out my list of notes from when I was assigned this card. It says:
Earth of Fire--fuel for the fire
Euro fire salamander
Tiger (Bengal's pants)
Messenger, gift bringer
Pyramids
rocket/arrow
hair as fire
?Schmetterling
?Camaro
The Schmetterling and the Camaro didn't make it. The Schmetterling is what I have on my nose on my picture in the Tarot-L Photo Album. The Camaro was my first car, a '69, M&M orange with black stripes.
The pyramids are a nod to RW and Palladini, and also represent the passion of mystery. Unanswerable questions generate far more enthusiasm than ones that are answered . . . and stop being questions. The tiger (a la Thoth, GD) has always been my totem animal. The name of my band was Tygress of Euphrates. I love this tiger, because his posture is similar to the Sphinx. Except, of course, that he's looking at ME! (Ego wins! Yay! . . . Hey, it was that or playmobil.) You might also recognize the lizards from the RW. I don't know if they're salamanders or not. Bob? The first time I ever saw a European fire salamander was at 3 a.m., and he was coming out of a crack in the sidewalk *backwards* i.e. tail first, and I thought Cthulhu was coming. Freaked me right out.
The Böögg you know. I think the picture worked out pretty good. One newpaper had two pictures, same size and angle, before and after (or should I say, "during"?). I put one on top of the other and reduced the opacity so the fire (or should I say, "explosion"?) would come through. The fire picture was actually after his head exploded, and the fire got to his heart, where the real bangs were. I couldn't ignore the symbolic significance.
The Böögg graciously provided both the fireworks *and* an arrow, along with some cultural baggage. This is actually a multi-cultural card, with the Swiss Böögg, the Egyptian pyramids, the Bengal tiger and the Florida rocker. The picture of me is from backstage at the University of Florida O'Connell Center (a.k.a. O Dome) before a show. It's interesting too that I had a Guild brand guitar, and the Böögg is built by the guilds of Zurich. It's just a shame that you can't see the huge pile he was up on. It was a pyramid in itself.
Anything else on the card is stray flotsam from the explosion.
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