Sota de Bastos

This dandy irritates. Is that a smirk on this Page of Wands' face? Tarot Universal Dali appears to pull this from a prior century's advertisement for foppish men's wear. Yet Rachel Pollack in Salvador Dali's Tarot (the preeminent authority on Tarot Universal Dali) seems pleased with the elegance and pleasure inherent in the card, the framing in bright lights, the gentleness with which the master handles the masculine Wands with both the page and queen.


Yet that smokiness in the lower right -- a woman? a butterfly? a bird? That ectoplasmic green growth and red life blood -- that is connected to the fire around the sota. There is much unformed around this page.


The Pages of the four suits of the minor arcana represent the "simplest state," in Pollack's words taken from her Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom. In readings and divinations the page is the child, the childlike state, the beginnings, the young student.
And the wands are fire -- fire of imagination, fire of life, the core energy. Tarot Universal Dali shows the fiery leaves on the wand, fire's fuel. Wands are the spark, the ignition.
And Tarot Universal Dali honors that beginning, ignition, flash of a starting point by turning from the pattern of plucking images from past masterpieces and starting afresh. This card, among but a handful, is attributed directly to the artist Dali in Gala's Grail by Kora Silver -- another remarkable study of Tarot Universal Dali.
Comment: Embrace the child. Do not drape the genuine wonderment of the childishness of beginning with a cloak of sophistication. Embrace the efforts of this Sota de Bastos to cloak what is yet undeveloped within inside something larger, older. Not the foppish clothing but the light of life that surrounds us all. And then step beyond the bright light of imagination and make real what is now only an ember. Turn it to fire, inspiration, great and mature life.

XVI - La Torre

The Tower. La Torre. So soon. In merely the passing through Aquarius. Already, all falls apart.

And another Number Seven – from the one plus six of this XVI of the Major Arcana – Seven – Seven which demands opening, experimenting, risk.

Tarot Universal Dali offers no new twist on Le Torre. The Tower represents that made from human hands. Tarot Universal Dali repeats the truth that all so wrought will crumble. Is crumbling.
All that is known, has been known, all that held true, all that has been safe for what seems so long as to be our own personal forever – but it is not, Our Time is only a piece of this short spell called Lifetime – all of this, all of what we hold will shatter. We will fall from our towers. We are falling.

“This is the tower of ambition,” writes Eden Gray.

But it is not only that. Resurrection requires death. For when all crumbles and disintegrates, something is born anew. The Tower counsels passive acceptance of the flimsy material foundations, acceptance of resurrection anew.

Tarot Universal Dali takes first from the master himself – The Tower itself is snatched from Suburbs of a Paranoiac-Critical Town Afternoon on the Outskirts of European History (1936) and allows that almost all of that elaborate and complicated scene of a world facing the Spanish Civil War has already lost root and all that still stands is the small central tower, and it has lost its grounding. The snatching left Gala behind, Tarot Universal Dali instead centering the crutch which Dali used to prop up reality, one world midst another.

And also falling through those clouds is the pinnacle feat of America ripped from Dali’s own, Poetry of America (Cosmic Athletes) (1943). There is always falling. Failure. Loss. Disintegration. Decay.

There is no way to prepare. There is only willingly accepted defeat, true manly beauty shining forth through passive, even ecstatic response to martyrdom – as Dali believed of his revered St. Sebastian. And there, falling with all the rest of the material world, is St. Sebastian, from Pietro Perugino, perhaps inspired from Madonna and Child Enthroned with .St. John the Baptist and St. Sebastian (1493).

Tarot Universal Dali reminds us, as with the better known Christian resurrection story, that St. Sebastian promises Good News emerging from the shattering of what was known and believed before.

Comment: Dedicate this week to search for the core of life, the kernel inside that is true. Feel the prodding of the sharp Seven of Swords that led to The Tower. Accept La Luna guidance and dig below the conventional and consciousness. Trust that the duality of the Two of Cups exists even within a single heart.

Remember. Aquarius began with hard struggle. And now, all that has been clutched and carried forth shall be loosed. Enter Pisces swimming in a new element, unfettered and free.

Siete de Espadas

Siete de Espadas -- a very sneaky card -- Tarot Universal Dali follows Rider tradition again -- plucking the coy "Diane Chasseresse" from the School of Fontainebleau and pasting her into the sky. Why should the Roman virgin huntress throw such a coy look out to you? Why does she echo the man stealthily carrying-off five of Rider's seven swords?

Seven seven seven -- how could such a good luck number turn so devious?
Seven is the card of wisdom, of cycles and completion: seven days in a week; astrology's seven personal planets, there are seven virtues, vices and sins. Juliet Sharman-Burke of The Center for Psychological Astrology
www.cpalondon.com/staff/juliet.html writes, "Inherent in this number is a sense of completion of a phase."

Old divinatory readings speak of New Plans; Wishes nearing Fulfillment; Confidence and Endeavor. Old divination also demands Reverse Readings meaning the Seven of Swords also carries Arguments. Quarrels and Uncertain counsel.

And that is where it gets sneaky -- in the blending with the swords -- Swords, Epees, Espadas -- they are all Air. Swords is not the suit of action, the cards do not denote clashes of metal upon metal, skin or bone. Do not think clashing swords and clinking battle. Do not think of sound at all. Think silently of the Air swooshing invisible and mute. Think of the Swords as slicing and slashing the air into curls and eddies all about you and through you..

Think M.C. Esher's "Bond of Union."

Think of Salvador's "Raphaelesque Head Exploding."

Think. Think. Think. The message of the Swords is Cerebral. Go forward but beware uncertain counsel. The Tarot Universal Dali offers the ectoplasmic woman of fire and blood, tiptoeing out of this frame, gesturing for you to follow. Can this possibly be safe?

Comment: Cerebral action as Aquarius enters its cusp with Pisces. Fire and Water ahead. Whether this coming week's flight is wrapped in Wisdom or Ignominy all is entangled and full of complicated strategy and perhaps even duplicitous diplomacy.
Beware, warns Diane, of that uncertain counsel nagging over your shoulder. Beware as Tarot Universal Dali draws you with heat and passion from this certain frame and into the Air.

XVIII - La Luna

Midstream in the great celestial sea of Aquarius a postcard-arrives of New York, Night from O’Keeffe’s urban period. Randomly selected but inevitably drawn from the Tarot Universal Dali is La Luna of the same skyline. Different perspective.

O’Keeffe’s black city fills her painting, close buildings warmly and modestly lit, set on terra firma no doubt.

Klieg lighting makes void and vacant La Luna’s distant city, not even fully skeletal, spindly, disintegrating roots, themselves already overtaken by the ectoplasmic claw overshadowing the skyline.

Ectoplasm (from the Greek ektos, "outside", + plasma, "something formed or molded") is a term coined by Charles Richet to denote a substance or spiritual energy "exteriorized" by physical mediums. (sayeth Hellboy Wiki.)

Undercurrents and crustaceans, baying hound and wolf, even the crescent moon links La Luna to the traditions of Card XVIII of the Major Arcana. But Tarot Universal Dali puts an angry, startled face inside the crescent making a full moon at full powers. And the gateway is not merely fraught with baying canines, but blocked by the great ectoplasmic claw climbing out of the subterranean.

Tarot Universal Dali’s La Luna is simply too much. It is more than the indication of an awakening into the subconscious – for that is who the Moon is. She is not rationale, she does not see this world or any other in the light of Sun. It can be no other way for the creator of the Paranoiac-Critical Method which demands drawing forth the Subconscious.

Comment: La Luna is the card of letting go, embracing all that is unseen but must be embraced; Accept this night that there exists no road map for your journey. Embrace the scuttling of your dreams and your denials. Claw beyond the baying at the gates of and even above all that is organized and well lit.

Moon time.