I’m not sure if it’s a good idea sleep-wise, but I’ve gotten into the habit of drawing a new Tarot card at random the night before making each card/collage.

Interesting to note, I have yet to pull a single Cup or Major Arcana card, even though those two groupings take up nearly half the deck. I’m sure there’s something that can be read into that.

Anyway, last night I drew the Ten of Pentacles, and today I woke up thinking about the critters at Cascade Trail — especially the deer, turkeys, and foxes that I was able to photograph over the years, although most were not as close-up as this little one …

It also helped that I went to bed with book words in my head …

• 78 Degrees: “the hidden experience of ordinary things … established home, the good life … the Kabbalistic Tree of Life … we all take the universe for granted simply because it works so well … [we] create in ourselves the ability to recognize and receive the blessings in the world around [us] … in nature … that wild vibrant universe existing in the very center of the ordinary”

• Kitchen Table Tarot: “emotional and spiritual wealth … abundance … family legacy … patterns in your life”

• The Creative Tarot: “this is a card of community and generosity … of attention, of assistance … a group of people who offer support …in our age of online communities … it makes the process of creative work much less lonely”

Which is to say, for me the Ten of Pentacles is about being aware of the good-ness in one’s own backyard (paging Dorothy Gale).

Having already chosen the critters for the card/collage, it only remained to select a book cover. This one illustrated with a 1932 painting by Paul Klee, seemed just right …

And with the exception of virtually melding the critters into a single image, the composition was (and is) very simple, both images fitting together without any tweaking needed …

P.S. For those who are Tarot aficionados, the deer and the turkey are slated to be the Empress and Emperor when I finally get to the Major Arcana.

A favorite part of my process in putting together the Texas Tarot is doing the research. On the one hand, reading the descriptions of card interpretations from multiple sources. On the other, researching the flora and fauna that will inhabit each card/collage.

Because I’ve chosen wildflowers to illustrate Wands, I’m revisiting my old friend the Native Plants Database at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center (and how lucky are we to be a mere ten minutes down the road in our new home!)

Having drawn the Two of Wands, it was a quick mental leap for me to choose Dayflower as the anchor, with its two brilliant blue petals.

The Native Plants Database notes that dayflowers “grow upright only if supported by other plants” and that each bloom lasts but a single day. Somehow, in the crazy place that is my imagining, that seemed to fit the drift of the Tarot books …

78 Degrees: “a man … holds the world in his hands, yet the card does not carry the same contentment … weariness … one person stands alone, walled in by his success”

Kitchen Table Tarot: “he’s holding a globe … yet he doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere anytime soon”

The Creative Tarot “a great card to pull for a creative project … you’ve progressed in your abilities … assess where you have come from and where you still want to go … find new sources of inspiration and inspire others with your work … this is a card that feels really good …. use it well”

Okay then, I decided I could take this card where I wanted. I started by looking through my book covers with “the world” on my mind and found this …

with credit to …

and which I promptly turned on end (not quite the world turned upside down, but close) …

I knew I had some dayflower pictures from the blog …

but I also have this book illustration, from here, that I absolutely love …

and then there’s the world that I created for Moon Myth (I know, I know … when will that project ever get done?) …

As I looked at the components, it occurred to me that I could scan everything and digitally collage it, then print out the resulting image …

But the scan was actually too good, picking up the pixilation of the printing process used to create both the book cover and the book image. So I went back to my usual modus operandi of cutting and pasting by hand.

Here’s where that effort ended up …

Since each one had a unique look and feel, I decided to keep both …

Because “two” … right?

Okay, I couldn’t resist the post title since the next randomly-dawn card for the Texas Tarot is the Knight of Swords, which is called the Prince of Swords in the Cosmic Tarot because it’s a Thoth-inspired deck.

Ummm … okay, not totally up on that part. But I think I’m safe in saying that the Prince of Swords is roughly equivalent to the Knight of Swords in Tarot-speak.

Onward.

Swords cards are associated with the element of air and with intellect … not an emotional thing to be found there. In my Texas Tarot imaginings, I am assigning the Sword Court cards (Page, Knight, Queen and King) to what I’m calling ‘Birds of the Air’ (as supposed to the Cups Court cards, which will be assigned ‘Birds of the Sea’).

The card/collage I came up with …

is composed of a cover from a book on witchcraft, overlaid by a open-book image from another bookcover, a monotone version of my WORDS collage created during Acey’s January challenge, and a caracara photo-image clipped from a wildlife guidebook which is being sacrificed for the greater good of the Texas Tarot.

Caracara, you ask? Yes, well … also known as the Mexican Eagle, the caracara is only found in the most southern portions of the US. It seemed a good fit for this particular card as it is known to be a daring critter, up to challenging vultures for their spoils, but also a small game hunter in its own right. We used to see caracaras in the trees at the edge of the floodplain in the Hill Country … they’re amazing!

As for the books, this is what they say about the Knight of Swords …

78 Degrees: “brave, skillful, strong, yet he tends also towards wildness … strong belief in himself”

Kitchen Table Tarot: “challenging himself and others … high in the air … flashy robe … intellect here, but not so much forethought … confidence … and a wee bit vain … strong and smart and makes things happen … he wants, he takes”

The Creative Tarot: “uses his words to fight his battles … exists entirely in the present tense … Swords are words and thoughts … sees the dragon as a dragon”

Which, by the way, is why I left a small lozenge with what appears to be a dragon-rider showing on the background. Cool, huh?