I saw it on Clive Thompson's blog, and tracking back, it's unclear who the photographer is. If anyone recognizes it, please post in the comments. I'd love to get a print of it.
There are lots of things I dig about it. Owls are fascinating and beautiful, for starters. Also, the photo quality is amazing – are those eyelids?
But what really thrills me about it is how counterintuitive it is. That round feathered body shouldn't be aerodynamic – but it actually is, in the same way a teardrop is. Someone commenting on the photo mentioned that her three-year-old thought it was a fish, which is all kinds of awesome.
Tarot can also be counterintuitive. There are fish-owls to be found on many tarot cards: creatures that are supposed to be one thing, but that leap out at my clients as something else entirely.
Sometimes that happens when a tarot artist messes up: they're trying to draw an underwater owl, so of course it winds up looking like a fish. Or, they just don't draw owls well.
Sometimes the images are deliberately ambiguous. The scarf around a woman's neck looks like a snake. The rocks in the water look like crocodiles lurking below the surface.
And other times, a client will see something in a card that the artist never intended, and that I've never seen there. And there's always meaning to be mined from what they see.
Tarot cards are not inkblots. They're representational drawings (at least in most decks). But our eyes and minds do their own shuffling. It's our uniquely skewed perceptions that really add variety to a tarot reading.
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2 comments:
That is an amazing picture.
This reminded me, I read the boys a book the other day that made me think of you and Tarot. It was called The Animal Hedge I believe and was about the concept of different people seeing what they need out of the same image.
That book sounds cool! I just requested it from the library. Thanks for pointing me to it!
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