Today there’s another curious deck: El Gran Tarot Mistico.
If you’ve ever played Persona 5’s sequels, this is where The Councillor social link (or however they were called in P5) comes from.
In fact, here’s a funny detail: There’s TWO Councillor cards. El Consultante replacing The Magician and La Consultante replacing the High Priestess. Which might be one of the odd cases where a language not being gendered means a detail is lost.
Making this specific change is interesting because thematically the High Priestess is parallel to both The Magician and The Hierophant. With the first it’s the difference between mysteries of the physical world vs mysteries of the spiritual one, and with the latter it’s the difference between the inherent wish for spiritualism vs spiritualism through dogma.
The main thing is that despite looking straight out of the 1400s with its Marseilles-esque style, this deck was actually produced in the 70s, long after the Universal Waite deck and even the Thot Tarot deck were established. You can actually see this in how the minor arcana, while not having individual illustrations, do reflect the elements associated with each suit.
Other changes include:
- The Hierophant is now El Maestro (the teacher)
- The Lovers is now Los Dos Caminos (the two paths)
- The Chariot is now El Carro de Hermes (Hermes’ chariot)
- Strength is now La Fortaleza but that’s a translation nuance because basically it’s now “Fortitude” rather than the usual Fuerza.
- The Hermit is now El Anciano (the old man)
- The Hanged Man is now La Picota (The Pike, as in the kind where you put heads on)
- Death, though nameless as usual is apparently La Inmortalidad (the immortality)
- The Devil is now Aker, the Egyptian deity of the horizon… fitting with the cards that follow The Devil
- The Star is now El Astro (star but as in Astral Body)
- And Judgement is now El Ciclo (The Cycle)
Maritxu Erlantz Guller, the author of this deck actually made two other decks and looking for them led me to Mercari and Rakuten instead of Amazon which tells me they’re not that common.
Researching that led me to looking up the Basque mythology and… I only have time for one rabbit hole today, maybe on the weekend I’ll indulge.
For the sake of my sanity, as usual, I’ll use the names and meaning from the Waite deck.
The Chariot is the main one because it fell while I was checking the deck, and from it come Strength and The Hanged Man.
I try to run refreshers with these readings and in today’s I was reminded that The Chariot, more than just drive to push ahead is meant to mean that you have the reins of the situation. The main problem was that that reading of “Willpower” overlapped in my brain with Strength.
Funnily enough they’re kinda opposite in that The Chariot suggests things already in motion while Strength would imply that you could stop those two sphinxes with massive milkers if you wanted.
And today’s reading has both plus The Hanged Man (kinda) which actually creates a super interesting reading.
“Though you’re pushing ahead, remember that you also have the power to Stop.”
I often think about having chances to smell the flowers, as it were. Whenever I go to the chiropractor, there’s a part of me that enjoys just Stopping for about an hour, it gives me time to assess what I have to do next.
So the main thing today is that I actually went back to Banpakukinen Koen, and as planned I didn’t come back alone.
I haven’t introduced her in this blog until now, but this is Midori, she was my first Dollfie. I actually saw her head in a Mandarake and just… fell in love and subsequently bought a body for her.
She hasn’t been featured as much lately for two reasons. The first one is that she was stuck in a spot with clutter on the way until recently. But the second one is that… honestly she’s too precious to me.
2020 was a rough year for everyone, for me it was also the year where the isolation in this country was starting to truly hit me. I tried desperately to try and cheer myself up, I remember making plans for having a nice dinner or literally anything else to feel less lonely, but it was harder and harder.
Enter stage left that one ex-friend I’ve brought up in the past.
They were going through a breakup or something, I don’t know, it was never clear to me what the hell happened (and for reasons that should be clear in a second I’d rather never know, in fact, fuck knowing) and I sure never found out because said person, on New Year’s Eve, as I was trying so desperately to push away those feelings of loneliness and was just trying to be supportive with someone I considered a dear friend and was going through a rough time, told me:
“I don’t wanna talk about it with someone with no romantic experience”
I need you to understand: I spent the first week of 2021 crying and barely eating because I was so miserable. At a low point where I was trying to cheer myself up the only way I knew back then how (trying to support someone else), I was told something that targeted every single bit of myself that was about to crumble.
And it wasn’t my lowest point yet. That wouldn’t come until a couple of weeks later. Thankfully things went up from there.
Now, I don’t tell this story to garner pity, I’ve talked in the past about how I HATE being pitied. This is just context.
In 2021 was when I started taking doll pics, more specifically I started in March 15 2021 with an Azone doll, Fuko, and tried out different scales and such through the year.
Cut to New Year’s Eve 2021, I’m in Odaiba because I almost went to Comiket before deciding I was having more fun Not Doing That, and I’m taking photos with Midori and… yeah, having fun.
I went to sleep early instead of waiting for any countdown, woke up early, and went back out to take more pictures.
In one year I went from feeling so miserable I couldn’t leave my house for basically a week, to having so much fun that I slept early because I was tired from walking so much. From what’s one of the lowest points of my life to this day to one of the best moments yet. From feeling lonely and having that loneliness further rubbed in my face, to having fun on my own.
This is part of why this girl means so much to me, why these girls mean so much to me.
Back to today, since it had been a while since the last time I took Midori out, during one of the photos I kinda imagined her saying “We met on fall! Remember?” And that got me a bit emotional.
Then I checked my archives and it was December, not November, so I felt slightly silly for some reason. It was a bit like “Ah yes I remember that November” “It was in December” “Was it? Oops.”
To be fair, that’s pretty much Midori’s personality in my mind, so…
So while this is all going through my head I’m also exploring more of the park and there was a section that felt like a Dark Souls level, apparently it was some country’s pavillion but they let nature take over it after the world fair ended so there’s just like a half castle with some water flowing and vegetation.
Really good photo spot too.
Some of the girls have a “trademark pose” of sorts that’s either on purpose or just something that naturally becomes recurrent. Midori’s is her holding her face with both hands, and just for fun, here’s a comparison of pics with that pose from 2021, then January 2022, then today.
Even outside the technical camerawork part evolving, there’s a lot of miniscule adjustments that have added up. The funny thing is that I wouldn’t even say the older pics are bad, in fact I’m shocked at how good they still are, but there’s definitely an improvement nonetheless.
Between the outings and other stuff I’ve been doing, I finished the first volume of Titan Sinking, a trilogy of books about WWE from 1995 to 1997. It took an embarrasing amount of time to realize that the “Titan” in the name was a reference to Titan Sports Inc. and that the book is about the fall of THAT Titan.
Next volume is the Montreal Screwjob Volume so yay!
By the way, I’m posting this one after taking a 4 hour nap and HOPEFULLY me being sleepy as hell as I publish this means I’ll be able to sleep the other 4 hours at the very least.