Today’s deck is Goetia: Tarot in darkness.
A fitting name because the-…
…
Oh my God it’s motherfucking-
AHEM…
As I was saying, the name is fitting because the illustrations are styled in such a way that they’re really hard to even parse in the murky darkness, the fact that it uses glossy print doesn’t help.
It’s a shame because I really like the illustrations when you can actually see them.
The Goetia has 72 demons and the Tarot has 78 cards so the parallel isn’t that hard to draw. The deck pads the other 6 by having the aces of each minor arcana be a ritualistic tool representing the suit of cards (The disc, the sword, the wand, and the vessel) plus Lilith (The Lovers) and Lucifer (The Devil).
Speaking of Lilith, the book about Enoch I finished the other day had excerpts from one of the apocryphal books of Adam and Eve an in one of them it tells the story of Lilith (or at least ONE version of it). In it God made Adam and Lilith as equals, but then Lilith wouldn’t submit to Adam because, you know, they were equals. They were both clashing on this until God heard them out and despite both being equal God took Adam’s side which made Lilith utter God’s ineffable name (the bible’s equivalent of The Ultimate Slur) so many times she became a demon. THEN God made Eve from Adam as a subordinate because apparently the lesson is that if you make women equals only conflict happens and you should always take the man’s side.
Here’s a funny bit to consider though: Lilith is equal to Adam, and then Lilith becomes the mother of all demons. Hence demons are just human AND ALTERNATIVELY humans can become demons by saying The Ultimate Cosmic Slur enough times.
Also apparently Adam was still horny for his demon GF that flew away because and man, fuckboys are as ancient as humanity I guess…
Two extra details about that book before I get too derailed.
The first is that it ocurred to me while reading it that women don’t really get a chance to redeem themselves in the bible do they? They’re treated like crap because of Eve, but unlike every other sin there’s never a woman so good they use it as a catalyst to redeem things with Eve. Even with the whole “Jesus died for your sins” bit, it has that “we single out women for the bad but the good is universal” air to it.
The second… the book was WEIRD. It’s supposedly written by a proper theologian and for 90% of it it’s just a transcript of the specific bible books with annotations (which was shockingly pleasant aside from the bits clearly meant for repetitive sermons), and the other 10% involves him commenting that the book of Enoch is proof of the rapture, it mentions how specific bits are used by UFO believers and Hollow Earth theorists, and there’s one apocryphal book that mentions how every part of the body was made by a different angel and there’s an annotation like “maybe humans were made by an ancient lifeform and this is the blueprint?”.
To be fair, it’s presented more as an element of the text rather than “me, the author, believes in this” especially because 90% of the book is not like that but it still leaves you baffled at the tonal whiplash.
Aaaaaaaaaanyway, back to the reading.
Reversed Six of Swords, Reversed Moon, Queen of Wands.
The Six of Swords is that one with the boat and the sad people inside the boat. It’s supposed to mean a painful personal transition, and reversed it might indicate a certain reluctancy towards it or a more private, personal transition.
While I personally don’t think I’m being reluctant to any specific change, I do appreciate that these readings get me to question it at all. Even if I look inside myself and find nothing that’s still a good experience to have confirmed.
Because you know, perhaps there IS a shift I’m not even aware of, so it’s good to remind myself to remain open to the changes.
Perhaps it’s from whatever teethering edge had me ranting the past couple of days.
Regardless of whether it’s in relation to a reluctance or in relation to a more inner and private shift, the cards tell me to remember I’m a corageous person whenever the darkness from that inner shift encroaches me.
Back to the deck for a moment, the Goetia is funny because it’s basically claiming that humans have all these super powerful qualities locked in (the “just 10% of your brain” kind) and the idea is that “summoning” demons allows you to tap into it all.
There’s also like 16 or so demons with some variant of “makes the wenches wet and lets you Fuck”.
And if you’re wondering about today: The day started being very VERY rainy, so I was kinda stuck inside the house. We’re talking Inundation Warning levels of rain. Thankfully I don’t live near flood areas (at least according to the risk assessment when I bought the place).
So to kill time I started checking some decks that I most likely won’t have a chance to talk about later.
So here we go:
Evangelion Tarot Card (Or is it TarotCard?): It’s just the major arcana which is sad because the symbolism and choices are absolutely perfect.
Nijisanji Tarot: I’m not that into Vtubers, everything I know I learned from sitting in the figurative online table right besides the Vtuber people. One of the few names I do know is Tsukino Mito because she plays the same sicko games as me which made me giddy that she was one of the holo cards I got.
…yes, this deck includes three random holo foil cards, that’s how they get you.
On the opposite end of it there’s the Genshin Impact Tarot. Or according to Amazon “Haragami Tarot”.
I say on the opposite end for a couple of reasons. The first is quality. This is as official as half of the playmats I use for my posts (read: barely) but I had to buy two different products, one with the major arcana and one with the minor arcana. and you can literally see on the edge of the cards the difference.
The other reason is that when I say I’m overall allergic to Genshin, I mean it in a surprisingly non personal way. While yes, I clearly remember being DEEPLY annoyed by the first wave of fans when that boom started, that’s evened out enough (read: I’ve blocked most of it all) to not be a problem.
Here’s the thing though, I still have friends into Genshin and also Genshin is one of those Patreon Fodder IPs where 90% of patreon porn artists draw it every month to this day. And despite the sheer volume of it all no character or name has ever stuck with me.
I know there’s a hot witch, I know there’s the purple one that Self-Utenas herself, I know there’s the red bombs girl and that’s about it.
The jarring thing is that I’m not even trying to shut it off as much as before, so you’d think at least a name or two would’ve stuck by now like the Blue Archive ones, but no.
And you might be wondering why I got this deck despite that and the answer is, like always, curiosity.
If I’m ever stuck in a lovecraft situation I’m gonna speedrun going insane lemme tell you.
A. E. Waite Holographic Tarot. It’s literally what it says, the usual Waite tarot with a holo foil.
The Blue Birds Tarot is only major arcana, but it’s also basically a portafolio of sorts for Tadahiko Kawaguchi, an illustrator that’s worked at Bandai Namco as art director (like in Ace Combat 5). Nowadays he works independently, apparently had an exhibit as early as the 10th of last month.
The Animal Tarot is a similar situation with only the major arcana.
As is “Your loose tarot readings help me to heal”. Though this one gives it a bit of a party game flair. The idea is that there is a “client” and at least two fortune tellers. Each one tries to tell the “client” the answer to their question and the client then gives a “star” to whoever answered best. The one with most stars by the end wins.
When the rain finally calmed down I decided to go out because I was really feeling like having Yakiniku.
By the way the MBS building has all these Dandadan stuff on the entrance.
The Yakiniku place I had in mind was Ajiyoshi in Douyamacho, AKA Osaka’s Gay District. And you know you arrived because of all the HIV awareness and bars with everything from transexuals to gays of all parts of the rainbow.
But the Ajiyoshi I wanted to go to? Turned into a different izakaya.
This is such a bummer. It’s not the only Yakiniku place in the area by a long shot but I didn’t feel in the mood of trying a new place, so I went back to the main Umeda area to get Shake Shack and…
I need you to understand the loud gasp I made when I saw this.
I love this burger, this burger is so good that it made me sad last year it didn’t return for the season. I ate it for ONE WEEK STRAIGHT on its last stretch of its run and I still wasn0’t tired by the end of it.
Not getting a stomach full of Yakiniku before I found out this was back on the menu was Meant To Be.