Love poems are undoubtedly the hardest for me to write. I have composed only a handful that I consider successful in my life time. Here are three of those, all about the same person ^_^ You may note the ‘marriage’ of medieval mysticism and Pagan Otherworlds.
Poetry is such a meandering thing. I can’t say I’m the sort who works on the art of writing poetry or who reads widely or consistently to better acquaint myself with the source material… at least, I don’t do this with the kind of structure or consistency that makes sense to declare anywhere on the internet! But I care very intensely about developing a style, voice, and a sensory reality.
My sister writes BEAUTIFUL poetry that is much like her dreams – often in the style of epic narrative. With a temporal flow and an arc of completion. She once pointed out that my poetry evokes vignettes of mood and sensory experience. A window into a brief mystical moment. This is incidentally also very much like my dreams (albeit with the added potential for positivity since my dreams are almost exclusively terrible & terrifying… horrific, gothic, sublime.)
I am firmly of the view that poetry should be read aloud. At least, MINE should be… with breaks (or ‘rests’?) only as dictated by punctuation, rather than (GASP! HORROR!) at the end of every line. If you take into consideration that much of what I’ve written has included direct musical reference (in addition to those that can already be achieved through metre and so on), you may see that I *try* to extend the audio-visual to include music and dance.
Thus, in the poem “Untitled (Hazel for a Boy)” the hazel in the palm is a reference to the writings of Julian of Norwich on the nature of love… and I have layered this with a common trad descriptor of young beloveds: (nut) brown boy/girl. One long standing favourite of mine is “Ille Dhuinn, S’ Toigh Leam Thu”
The Scottish Gaelic lyrics are as follows:
’Ille dhuinn, ’s toigh leam thu, ’S toigh leam fhìn thu, laochain; Mas toigh leat mi, is toigh leam thu ‑ ’S gur òg a thug mi gaol dhut.
Dh’fhalbh mi mar a b’ àbhaist dhomh Air sàillibh coimhead chaorach ‑ ’S beag a bha dhem fhor orra, ’S mo leannan air a’ chaolas.
Nuair dhìrich mi suas Criongrabhal, ’S e m’ inntinn nach robh aotrom ‑ Bha ’m bàta mach gu Saighdeanais, ’S i toidhdidh fo cuid aodaich.
’S ann a their mo phàrantan Gur tàmailt leotha m’ fhaoineas ‑ Gum faighinn fear na b’ fheàrr na thu Le bàtaichean ’s le birlinn.
Ged gheibhinn fear na b’ fheàrr na thu Le bàtaichean ’s le birlinn, Gum b’ fheàrr leam fhìn an gille donn Is e gun bhonn dhen t‑saoghal.
Ged gheall mi dhut gun leanainn thu ’S gun dealaichinn ri mo dhaoine, Cha d’ rachainn dha Na Hearadh leat Air cheannachd air an t‑saoghal.
Ged a bhithinn pòsta riut Is còir agam air d’ fhaotainn, Cha b’ fhada bhithinn beò agad ’S an Dòmhnallach às m’ aonais.
In English:
Brown-haired lad, I’m fond of you, I’m really fond of you, boy; If you’re fond of me, I’m fond of you- I’ve loved you since I was young.
I set off as usual to look for the sheep but scant attention gave I to them, knowing my beloved was in the strait.
When I climbed Criongrabhal, my spirits were low – the ship, with well-trimmed sails, was out near Saighdeanais.
My parents say that my foolishness is a source of shame to them – that I could attract a better man than you, an owner of ships and galleys.
Though I could have a better man than you, an owner of ships and galleys, I would much prefer the brown-haired lad though he hadn’t a penny in the world.
Though I promised you I’d follow you and part company from my people, nothing in the world could induce me to go to Harris.
I wouldn’t survive long if married to you, while pining for MacDonald.
Note that in Scottish Gaelic as well as in Irish the manner of describing hair colour is to pair the colour with the type of person directly, e.g. brown boy. The translation above opts for the “brown-haired” descriptor to make it clearer in English.
There are many other examples of songs that make reference to a nut-brown colour (many of which are super cringe tourist favourites here in Ireland) but this is the one that I have most often in mind due to it’s melancholy sound and its emphasis on the difficulties of separation and limited finances. Having formed and kept a bond across the Atlantic … between worlds, over nine waves, across time and space… lends itself quite well to the shared lore of our relationship. Indeed, this kind of poetic layering also lends itself to the spellbound witchy otherworldly quality of being fascinated and devoted to any human person other than myself. <3
Another such colour symbol, of course, is the azure blue… the medieval link with lapiz lazuli and text illuminations. Or the blue-grey/blue green (glás!) of the sea. The list goes ever on and on.
To my chosen person: “I have walked the world to find you. I’ve worn out the soles of three pairs of iron shoes and my hair is no longer red. But I come to claim you…”*
~ Saoirse.
*From “Hans, My Hedgehog” in Jim Henson’s The Storyteller
For the weekend that’s in it (Imbolc), I actually do want to reflect on how the time since Midwinter has progressed. It is not my intention, in general, to force posts that are relevant to each of the quarter and cross-quarter days – or to reflect on quintessentially comtemporary “witchy” themes at those times. If the genuine desire is there and the aims for the post are authentic I will do so, of course, but not otherwise.
Turn of the century fruit relish/ketchupHomemade bread, sauteed kale, & medieval pork loin in spiced wine with brown ale to drink.Gingersnaps and nog with rum and cinnamon, all homemade.Prep, set table, and spiked after-drinks of our Midwinter meal.
The last six weeks can be defined as internally chaotic. Everyone I talk to at the moment seems to be having a similar experience – it’s emotionally intense, it leads to and feeds off of dysregulated behaviours and coping mechanisms. In my case, I am struggling to regulate my time online. For example, I’ve gone down a whole rabbit hole recently by obsessively following commentary on developments in the pop music industry and the ongoing fallout from 2024 (::cough cough:: a-certain-Canadian-rapper-who-I’ve-never-liked’s lawsuits ::cough cough::). It’s not uncharacteristic for me to do this – sudden hyperfixations aren’t new – but it’s leading to far too much screen time, to the detriment of my other passions and pursuits, and I can tell what I’m really doing is running from myself… spending time ‘anywhere but here’.
I AM slowly getting a handle on it. Patience and self-directed kindness are key. These days, being overly punishing or strict in my self-talk feels incredibly puritanical in origin and style. I want to make adjustments because I *want* to, not because I’ve self-flagellated with *false* moralisations** about productivity, worth, and depth.
For the time being, I am not posting on youtube or making any videos. I don’t know when I will come back but I KNOW I need time away… long enough to detox. I’ve always enjoyed making videos but hated the process of having them published. Posting them publicly has always felt like an exercise in waiting for my cookie while talking myself around the possibility that no cookie will be forthcoming, that I don’t even need the cookie, wondering why I’m even seeking a cookie, am I seeking a cookie?, I don’t even like cookies!!!*** … It’s time for a break until I can think more clearly about that.
Instead, I have redesigned this blog to be more in line with the direction I’ve wanted to pursue. I have taken the various gallery pages and poetry pages down because they felt too static. I’m less inspired by presenting my portfolio at the moment and more inspired by working through my personal artistic/conceptual processes in an informal setting. I would like things to emerge more organically and dynamically here… I would like to post when I wish to without having to worry quite so much about polished presentation.
A sketch of a dream/nightmare, August 2024 & my 2024 copy of Benebell Wen’s Metaphysician’s Day Planner. Of COURSE my cover customisation is always extra.
My creative endeavours have been geared towards world building for a long time, obviously, but in the last… hm, more than six months… I have felt the need to buckle down and start sketching, drafting, practicing and looking up techniques, and fleshing out what I mean when I refer to visiting the Otherworld or going into The Labyrinth. My The Labyrinth. I want to practice drawing some of it’s architecture… I want it’s music to be audible, even in paintings or drawings or the clothes I ‘bring back’. I want to develop a stronger more identifiable visual vocabulary to help give form to the way I experience and move through the world(s).
Left to right: Almost finished drawing for Major Arcanum Key 18 (few tweaks left); reproduction printed chintz for next sewing project; a quick journal doodle; two homemade perfume oils; this year’s Metaphysician’s Day Planner 😀
I have rearranged my altar and made (subtle?) adjustments to the visual symbolism around me. My magical practice is shifting (especially in the absence of witchtube and tarottube…which I haven’t followed for some time.) Everything is more organic, more me-ish now. Nothing remarkable or more meritorious than others, just more specific and suited to me than is relevant to most online ‘communities’ or ‘search & discovery’ algorithms.
Recent books have been Jorge Luis Borges’ “Labyrinths”, Terri Windling’s “The Wood Wife”, Peter S Beagle’s “The Last Unicorn” and “In Calabria”, Patricia A. McKillip’s “The Tower at Stonywood”, Ray Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, all of Le Guin’s “Earthsea” materials, Lao Tzu’s “Tao Te Ching” (the Penguin classics translation by D. C. Lau), articles about Alan Garner’s Alderly Edge loose trilogy (I’ve read Weirdstone a few times… not keen on the rest really), more articles on medieval magic, and a bunch of books I’m forgetting at the moment. (Oh, I read all of the Terri Pratchett “Witch” books and several of the “Death” books for the first time.)
Most of the above books are re-reads specifically selected for the post Christmas/New Year ‘season’ but I don’t think it’s insignificant that I finally regained the ability to read last year after ca. 10 years. I’m back to building sensory worlds. I’m back to perceiving and walking through my imagination. I’m back to being able to retain imaginative detail in a way that I haven’t in a long time. At last, my fingers are itching like they used to bring that into creative fruition.
Left to right: Lao Tzu & Borges; a sketch of a childhood nightmare (“Golden Slumbers”) playing around with two point perspective; a raglan jumper I’m knitting for my partner (I found Irish sourced DK wool! … can’t get Shetland wool anymore due to GPSR).
…So to return to this idea of chaos, running from myself, fixating on ‘anywhere but here, in MY life’, I understand it. I can’t speak for everyone but I was raised and socialised to flinch from my self-expression. I am capable of and even prone to terrible potency and it can be scary and destructive. But now I’ve officially**** been a witch for almost 8 years (and I’m 37, not 17). Not a whole lot scares me for long and, of paramount importance, I have learned to turn around and walk straight towards the source of my shadow and fear. Like Sparrowhawk.
In all the heightened emotions, chaos, internal dynamics, and even external gnostic perceptions of the past six weeks, it really does feel like I’m pushing against the inertia of top soil after a long dormant period. Imbolc is the start of Spring here in Ireland and what I love about that is that Spring starts before you can outwardly see it. Change begins before the first translucent shoots appear. Seasons are so liminal and full of process and development. That’s why today’s blog post is to honour and acknowledge the arrival of Imbolc, and the beginning of Spring.
~ Saoirse.
** By which I mean that the knee-jerk assumptions of the social demographic I grew up in are assumptions I disagree with but that are intrusive and persistent in my head regarding ‘how I spend my time’.
*** i.e. The joy of making and wishing to publish videos is a different/separate phenomenon than the experience of ‘being on youtube’. Youtube the platform is increasingly difficult to navigate in a steady manner. It sucks up so much time and energy (to post AND to sift/watch) that is better spent actually sketching or sewing or…literally anything else.
**** By which I mean both that I explicitly converted to a Pagan paradigm and that I adopted the term “witch” (entailing daily acts of witchcraft) just before Lughnasadh of 2017. I had written college papers on the Morrígan, comparative myth, medieval and early modern mysticism, religious commentary, and crafted my life away with art and clothes and fairy wings for YEARS at that point. But in 2017 I stopped running from ‘the label’.
Recently, I have been trying to give form to certain ideas. At a snail’s pace, my kind of speed. One of these ideas has to do with a burgeoning awareness that something I have always been able to feel and certainly always yearned for is taking shape… Simply put, it can be called ‘lifestyle’ or ‘vocation’. It’s about the sensory experience of every day. It’s about how that intermingles with the hopes and dreams of the past. It’s even about certain life goals that have recently become a little more tangible.
It can be glimpsed in my thoughts about ‘between’ spaces. I’ve been calling this place ‘the Labyrinth’.
In the Labyrinth, rooms are often arranged according to discipline or genre. Style of activity. Or by medium. It has places that are dominated by memory. Or by myth. Rooms and halls devoted to presence. It has a rotting fairy Versaille, sidhe mounds lie just beyond the walls of it’s outer gardens. I know what grows in it’s crevices. I know what areas get built vs. which simply materialise and I know why – I know what I’m trying to do there. It can only be entered or exited from this side of reality… on the far side it might be infinite. I have not checked.
Though Hilary’s performance style isn’t my favourite now, her work & THIS ALBUM were deeply formative… This cannot be overstated.
In the Labyrinth are all the scariest saddest most soul crushing things I have ever personally encountered. In the Labyrinth are also the scariest saddest things my loved ones have encountered…
In certain rooms in the Labyrinth, it has windows to Nazi Germany. To two little girls in the rubble of Cologne. In other rooms hang portraits of Sarah Chang, Ani Kavafian, Hilary Hahn, Nathan Milstein, Andrew Manze – the violin room. In another, Carter Brey, Andre Emilianoff, Rostropovich, and Jacqueline Du Pré… though I hasten to say the cello room is much scarier than the violin room. More horror and shadow. In the violin room, baroque music echoes from an old scratched record player that I can’t find. It floats between sage green curtains with gold fringe, it gathers in gusts of dusty leaves strewn along the floor. It’s faded tiles are arranged a little like a chess board (but not quite). The violin room has a fallen wall that leads outside. It’s almost always Autumn from that vantage point.
Imagine… Sibelius echoing through the ghostly gallery of memory.
There is joy in the Labyrinth. Some of the most beautiful sunlit gardens I have ever seen. Bright and fresh of a cool morning. In some parts of it I have lots of little demon fairy friends… absolutely inspired by the work of Brian and Wendy Froud, Jim Henson, and others.
“Step out of the page into the sensual world.” ~ Kate Bush
Many parts of the Labyrinth give me the eerie feeling I have seen them before. If you have seen The Storyteller series with John Hurt (and Brian Henson as his dog!) you’ll recognise much of the look of my Labyrinth – including the way a room filmed from a different angle looks like a different story.
If I have something big and overwhelming to face, I walk the number of steps and turns and corridors and gardens it takes to get there. And then I come back.
And therein lies an important nuance – Big and Overwhelming Things. These are not just bad things. Not just lost things.
Yesterday, I sat down to work on sketching out wardrobe ideas. The goal has been taking shape in my mind for quite some time of what colour palette I want. What silhouettes I like that also work on my body and my sensory preferences. What works where I live and what I can have ethically shipped or acquired? What layering? What technique? What cheeky little references? How shall I paint myself? Where will I hide symbols & sigils? Which tattoos will I allow people to see? How semi-permeable do I want my persona to be? What kind of variations do I want to build into that without always causing getting dressed to be such a cognitive burden (as fun as it ALWAYS is – I even enjoy pjs!)
JEEZUZ! 7 of Cups, this is getting personal!
It’s hard to go from basic learning to a cohesive finished result. I’m convinced a practiced artist is able to make something and 51% of the time say to themselves, “that was deliberate”. >_< In performance, they always said that the true masters spend their whole lives practicing to make the hardest things seem easy. No one wants their audience to wince in anticipation of a famously difficult passage!
But if I have a flare for aesthetics and a knack for getting my hands to make what I envision, that’s all I have. “Flare” and “Knack”. Good fairy names, to be sure… good to have on side, but not synonymous with a finished project. Not yet the bit where I’ve crafted and lived in my visions. Not yet corporeal. And the tension or dissonance of this arises in a few key places:
Clarity of vision requires honing and specification. Decisions in favour of one thing at the expense of another. Do I have ‘talent’ for this kind of executive functioning?
NO. (It’s one of my specific autistic ‘traits’ that I suck at this.) It will not just take practice. It will require a lot of frustration, erasing (::gasp!::), paper with pencil dents in it that won’t erase any more, bad stitching… and quite literal ‘blood, sweat, and tears’ because I really shouldn’t be trusted with so many sharp implements.
Do I know how to manage my fabrics to minimise waste without being over precious?
Ehhhhhhh… always a question, never an answer to that one.
What happens if I change my mind?
What happens if my tastes change?
What if my body changes?
Should I plan contingency into these patterns?
Could I remake them into something else?
Where should I store repair-remnants so they don’t get eaten by moths?
Shit, I ripped something… again.
But if I draw something after a lot of work and swear words (while also being happy and absorbed in the process) and I show that sketch online and “it looks well enough to the untrained eye” (as it has been drawn by an untrained person!) and some people like it… is that ‘talent’? Or is it burgeoning skill. Is it diligence? Or is it bare minimum that I managed to draw it at all…
Found some old stuff!Self-portraits. 2021 & 2023?Experiments – derivative but useful!
What then if the drawings truly do become clothes. (Doesn’t that sound like magic!?) Is THAT talent? Or is it… propensity? Am I pretentious? Am I ‘talented’ or am I just a fucking handful? Who’s gonna hoover up the trail of threads and linen dust…
Maybe I have a talent for being a handful!
If I share process online, who is my audience?
I literally have no idea… but I HAVE always felt that documentaries about creative process, textbooks and lectures about the preparatory sketches and intentional symbolism of art, and old photographs of ‘artist in studio’ were the most magical Otherworldly thing on the planet.
I want to make the clothes I find in The Labyrinth. I want to come back along those corridors still wearing what I saw there. I want to help that stuff cross the divide – not just the clothes but the air quality, the poetry, the paintings, the furnishings, the music, the ideas.
It’s a stormy yellow-green coloured day today. Deeply blustry and misting with rain. I have a massive headache. But I want to build Otherworlds and I want to learn what it takes to do that.
The word ‘talent’ is a value judgement that has no objective significance at all. In my experience, ‘talent’ is a word used to diminish not only the hard work of others but also the reality of what it is to try something and kind of suck at it until you kind of suck a little less! Perhaps people accidentally sabotage themselves in using this word. If it’s always someone else that is so talented… What do we think their talent is? Is it the same as what they want it to be or thought it was? Have we ever seen what their work looked like not just when they started but at every point along the way? Good days? Bad days? Days where they had a dentist appointment and forgot to cover their paints so everything dried up? Days where they’ve LOVED baking until they realised they mis-measured their yeast …or the oven stopped working but the light stayed on? Days where the internet told them they were great but a favourite family member grimaced at their ideas?
What if you’re a 60 year old man who wants to learn to swim after years of being body shamed. What if you used to dream of talking to fish and you want to explore that again in the physical realm? I bet you could become an expert at loving water – not just a ‘talented’ swimmer.
Some people have opportunity, privilege, & support. Too many people don’t. Maybe most people have an incorrigible mix of these things. A pervasive paradox.
Culturally agreed upon standards for what looks like talent totally exist… but they are relative at best. Not very nice and of limited use. Picasso, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and other such humans dwell in the realm of talent and genius only because they deny entry to others. Sabotaging others with jealousy and aggression. Their work is good, just not THAT good. The idea of ‘inherent talent’ (to me) just screams ‘big fish, little pond’.
The concept of ‘perseverance’ exists but I think it gets misapplied to the point of losing a lot of what’s useful about it. Can you persevere at being scatter brained? Do we value that word internally or are we waiting for it to be applied externally?
Play TOTALLY exists. But if ‘play’ is ‘talent’, then can talent be ‘lost’? And if talent can be lost, then I think it must not be inherent. Which, to me, means you could be 96 years old and still decide to redevelop it if you chose… just because you can. That sounds more like curiosity and skill-building! Achievable things! Real magic.
If ‘talent’ exists, then everyone must have it. I think it’s down to the inherent tension and dissonance of asking yourself what yours are… and inventing them when necessary!
~ Saoirse.
P.S. It’s a total joke that I put my own work next to all these amazing true geniuses. I laugh at myself, not them!
I wanted to share some recent moments of simple joy & presence. These photographs were not necessarily taken for the purpose of sharing in a public format. However, I am in the habit of taking constant photos of brambles, for example… Such photos in turn make up a good back catalogue of plant/animal material to from which to practice drawing**, to practice seeing, and to practice layering concepts.
Whether something gets shared or not is rarely planned (at least rarely planned fully) and the follow-through on any such plans also rarely correlates to the intent in taking the photograph. It’s all a bit loosey goosey up in here.
For me, it has become increasingly clear that the intent to share (or not?) is not so binary… Thus, some recent moments of craft, joy, & sensory immersion.
Little doors…“Down among the weeds, down among the thorn” (‘Tam Lin’; Child Ballad 39, Roud Index 35)Looking for Miss Tittlemouse…Tarot decks ‘in sa phub’! (Crystal Tarot, my trusty travel deck.)Salmon Advice cards …not sure this is the correct Vol. box though…The Glamour altar… among other things.A moment of ‘synchronicity’ with a friend 🙂5 am, after nightmares.Colour, texture, & lots of hidden flora & fauna amidst curvilinear existence.
For some context on what I’m doing with the header image, you might like to watch this video of mine on The Hush Tarot & it’s references to Arthur Rackham/the Golden Age of Illustration:
An oldie but a goodie…
~ Saoirse
* A reference to the highly influential (1970s) art historical work of the same name by John Berger. You can watch it for free here. I’ve actually not watched all of it myself yet but the significance of this was two fold – to challenge what was up to that point a more traditionalist method of interpreting art historical work & to introduce the viewing audience to ways of questioning & analysing the art they take in or experience.
** The header image is a composite of my own photography of birch trees and a print I own of “The Fairy Tightrope”/”Fairy Dancing on a Spiderweb” by Arthur Rackham. You can see an early version of this image in a 1912(?) copy for free from the New York Public Library here. I guess you can also be glad I’m not sharing my photographs of dead rats and such 😛
*** Check out the album Child Ballads by Anaïs Mitchell & Jefferson Hamer. It has a *gorgeous* version of Tam Lin that keeps the pregnancy/poison narrative in! …I mean, check out Anaïs Mitchell in general ::drool::
Something that has gripped my imagination my entire life is the idea of ‘Building Other Worlds’. Importantly, I don’t mean only as ‘substance behind narrative genres’. World-building for a fantasy novel or for game play, though deeply interesting, is only one popular iteration of a much broader interdisciplinary creative drive to make and experience other worlds. What of Art? Architecture? Costume? Music? Theatre? Ecological experience? Folklore? What of symbolism or spacial awareness? Where do we get ideas for what our worlds look like and what tools do we use to build them?
I have been wanting to write about this for a long time but have been puzzled about where to start. Do I start by explaining some things about art history? About perspective, image composition, numerology? Do I dig into how tiered worlds in late medieval and renaissance literature make their way into contemporary visual language? What about modern art? What about tarot or oracle? Witchcraft, sewing, or poetry? Would tracing themes of port cities and their proximity to marshland or wetland habitats get the message across? What about folkloric recordings of Victorian vs. Medieval streets in Irish town centres!? Ultimately, I realised I’m going to have to start where I am and, if you wish, you can follow me down each corridor as and when I get there.
Here are some purposefully drawn 18th c. Minchiate cards illustrating how card visuals can help you construct doors to Otherworlds and populate them in turn with architecture, characters, and landscape …with pips for ‘scaffolding’!
Recently, I revisited some books that were instrumental in helping me to identify myself when I was young. These follow very much in a similar vein to other favourites of mine such as Pish Posh, Said Hieronymus Bosch, The Books of Earthsea, The Chronicles of Prydain, The Hounds of the Mórrígan, or Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell… and I took special care to obtain secondhand copies of the specific covers I grew up with as well.
I have yet to re-read The Raven Ring although I know I will love it as I can’t remember how many times I would have read it growing up.
There are five books in all (for now) – each of which features scenes relating to tarot, tarocchi, or otherwise emphasise attention to historical detail within their fictional plots.
* Midnight Magic by Avi (part of a series that didn’t exist yet when I was younger. I won’t talk about this one much because – as it turns out – it wasn’t as good as I remembered and it’s representation of tarot is tangential to the plot and seems fairly ignorant of what tarot is. I still LOVE the cover though!)
* Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman (no, I am not going to watch the new film abomina…I mean, adaptation of this beautiful wonderful highly intelligent book.)
* The Midwife’s Apprentice by Karen Cushman
* I, Coriander by Sally Gardner
* The Raven Ring by Patricia C. Wrede (part of the Lyra series but I have not read any of the others.)
The Midwife’s Apprentice is pictured here with selected plot-relevant cards from Oracle Médiéval et Merveilleux by Gulliver l’Aventurière & Julien Miavril. (No spoilers!)
For one thing, all of these books (except Midnight Magic) were aimed, perhaps, at Young Adult readers generally socialised as feminine but at no point did they talk down to them. They were an excellent foray into how creative and narrative detail coexists wonderfully with good historical enquiry. There is an emphasis on trade and commerce. Some of these feature port cities or otherwise thriving commercial principalities and their conflicts with rural living and tradition. They discuss textiles as if their readers can and will care about how they affect plot. And they treat Otherworlds and/or magic with the same expectation: that readers are curious to know detail and will put in the imaginative effort. To me, this is how the imagination grows.
Catherine, Called Birdy is pictured here with two cards from the Oracle Médiéval et Merveilleux that are… relevant to the story. 😉
Artistically, a glance at these covers will possibly explain a thing or two about my own preference for facial portraiture and the art of the late middle ages and early renaissance. The time periods in the books vary a little more widely than the covers. I, Coriander, for example, is set mostly in Cromwellian England and the time period represented art historically on Catherine, Called Birdy is about 200 years later than the setting of the book (i.e. 15th century visuals [1] vs 1290-1291 book setting.) I was lucky enough, however, to have an aunt who overlooked things like that. For example, she focused instead on showing me how the play in perspective with the rope and bucket and the figural proportions on the cover of Catherine, Called Birdy were all little art historical jokes that the artist had borrowed from real historical painters. The implication was that if I was clever and curious, I could find them out …and I did!
Obviously there is so much to say even just about these books… so for now I will draw a few connections between I, Coriander and a few tarot and oracle decks that I have.
I, Coriander pictured here with selected cards from the Nicoletta Ceccoli Tarot. Once again, the penchant for strange emotionally intelligent portraiture!
In the first place there is reference to a pair of wedding portraits in I, Coriander …a woman in the foreground holding an oak-leaf, a tiny hunting scene nearly hidden in the wooded middle-ground behind her, and a citadel in the distance. Her spouse is positioned in front of a fantastical city with a river or estuary intended (thematically) to mirror his connection with trade and the Thames. But in this city, there are mermaids and fantastical boats in the water among other things… I couldn’t help but picture certain cards from the Trionfi della Luna (paradoxical pictured below.) Or perhaps wander into a landscape just beyond the borders of such a city… might we find the world of the Somnia tarot there? People in old robes and linen shifts wandering in among the wetlands and sedge grasses gazing at the stars or riding silent sad horses?
Cards chosen from the Trionfi della Luna to mirror aspects of the story in I, Coriander… along with various imaginings of my own about the space we inhabit in the Somnia Tarot.
I should note I have also recently read Witchfinders by Malcolm Gaskill and am currently working my way through The Witch: A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present by Ronald Hutton… Of course, in so far as witch hunts in England overlapped with civil war tensions between Royalists and Parliamentarians (and occurred along Puritan vs ‘Popish’ lines), I, Coriander made for an excellent fictional backdrop! Also, I really enjoyed drawing cards from the Oracle of Black Enchantment (also by Deviant Moon Inc.) while reading Witchfinders as a visual processing exercise*.
Pages from Malcolm Gaskill’s Witchfinders featured here with various cards from the Oracle of Black Enchantment (Samhain edition.) Patrick Valenza’s art historical source material (at least in part) should be fairly evident…
Lastly, this emphasis on the detail of Otherworlds – their textiles, buildings, landscapes, emotional experiences, social relationships, flora and fauna etc. – is playing a huge role in my current artistic endeavours. I tend to see pip decks as decks full of concepts/characters (in the majors and courts) and their scaffolding and architectural surroundings (in the pips). Sometimes this visual architecture is metaphorical and sometimes it is fairly literal. It depends on the reading. But it’s also helping me to tease out what it feels like to think of tarot decks in this way and what that might mean for creating a tarot deck of my own. Furthermore, I have been rebuilding a former world of mine and have recently begun sewing some clothing that I envisioned there…
And, of COURSE, the Pagan Otherworlds Tarot… featured here over (deadstock) cognac red crushed velvet ::drool::
Perhaps the act of sewing my own clothes is really the process of bringing fairy clothes over the divide? It would explain the time traveler vibes, don’t you think? 😉
So… this post has mostly been about my own personal explorations and impressions. I plan to return soon, however, with some better grounded and CITED analytical material about art history and technique.
Sincerely,
Saoirse.
* Please note! Literally any deck will aid in visual processing or reinforcing thematic content for literally any book. There is no need to acquire any deck not already within your means or comfort zone. Decks/products/material items are mentioned here for illustrative purposes only! It’s PRAXIS that matters.
** All decks featured here of my own volition and arising from my own use of them. I have neither been invited nor commissioned to do so and I have no affiliation with any of their creators. The TdL (paradoxical) was a private gift from a friend. All others were purchased by me.
[1] See images by artists like Petrus Christus (especially ‘Portrait of a Young Girl’, 1460s) and his contemporaries. The cover here has a very Burgundian look with a single truncated hennin among other distinguishing features…
