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<strong>GLR</strong><br />
<strong>CARDS</strong><br />
A Journey to your Whole Being<br />
Nathalie Pilard
ISBN:<br />
© Nathalie Pilard<br />
All rightsof reproduction, adaptation and translation, in whole or in part, reserved for all<br />
countries.<br />
The author isthe sole owner of the rightsand responsible for the content of this book.
TABLE<br />
• Goal of the cards and presentation of the author 4<br />
• How to read the cards 5<br />
• The cards of Structure, or the Kantian cards 8<br />
• The cards of the Journey, or the trump cards 16<br />
• Examples of reading 24<br />
-3-
GOAL OF THE <strong>CARDS</strong> AND<br />
PRESENTATION OF THE AUTHOR<br />
The set would be composed of a deck of the 39 <strong>GLR</strong> cards and of the book of their<br />
hermeneutics. It aims at revealing one’s personality as a whole. The <strong>GLR</strong> cards can<br />
lead the readers towards the parts of themselves that might be left behind because<br />
of life or because of one’s own self-saboteur. Lacanians and Freudians would say<br />
that this person in us has to do with our polymorphous superego. By fear, by<br />
shyness, or by caution, the parts of personality in question are not revealed to<br />
oneself. The result is viable, yet the person is not a whole being. Do you remember<br />
the last time you had an artistic shock? At that moment, you killed the self-saboteur,<br />
thus gaining free access to your soul. That was one decisive step towards your whole<br />
being. Humanistic psychology’s goal is to reach that wholeness. Jungians call this<br />
journey individuation. Letus walk together with the <strong>GLR</strong> cards.<br />
My name is Nathalie Pilard. I am a scholar in Religious<br />
Studies. I am expert in Psychology and Religion, which I<br />
teach, and in the history of Esotericism. My latest book is<br />
Jung and Intuition. Despite my lifelong interest in cards, I<br />
became a specialist of Tarot cards by chance. As I was<br />
working on my PhD, I had the occasion to give a paper in<br />
one of the Vatican museums. Having been raised as a<br />
Catholic, this meant much to me. I decided to write a paper<br />
on ... the Popess. Each woman is the feminist that she has<br />
the opportunity to be. The Popess is one trump card of a<br />
Tarot deck. I soon discovered that my figurative collages<br />
represented trump cards.<br />
My name as a visual artist is Giselle Lila-René, <strong>GLR</strong> is my signature. I am French.<br />
I started making figurative collages in France as I decided to go back to university.<br />
My two activities, intellectual and artistic, are inseparable. It took me a long time<br />
to understand and accept it because Giselle is sheer intuition and absolutely free.<br />
My academic research led me to the UK, in beautiful Scotland. Once there,<br />
because I changed language, my collages became abstract. Back in France, black<br />
and white oil pastels expressed my soul in symbols, then came colour and finally<br />
painting.<br />
I have a secret name, aptly used as electronic password. That which this name<br />
stands for I will not tell, but it is part of me, of my past and perhaps of my future.<br />
On my (unfinished) journey to my whole being, I have had to put names on the<br />
various living parts that animated my soul and life. Nobody has to do that. But we<br />
all have several parts of our selves, just like we have several first names, nick<br />
names, spouse names, etc. I believe that gaining awareness of the various parts of<br />
one’s personality is a chance notto be missed.<br />
-4-
THE READING<br />
There can be two ways of interpreting the hand gesture of picking a card among<br />
other returned cards in a deck. It is chance. It is fate. I propose a third way, that of<br />
the unconscious. As it picks one card rather than another one, the hand either<br />
commits a faulty action or is guided by the unconscious. For the psychologist,<br />
consciousness could be like a returned card, the immersed part of the iceberg to use<br />
a famous analogy. The other side of the card could represent the unconscious with<br />
its loads of potentialities. The <strong>GLR</strong> cards are saturated with symbols. They are like<br />
snapshots of changing dreams, bits of unconscious, representing a totality in the<br />
structure of a system, the game, itself the mirror of the world andits soul.<br />
Be it by fate, chance, or unconscious, once the picked card stands in front of our<br />
eyes, we become responsible for its interpretation. The readers need to be aware of<br />
the central and most interesting fact that most of what they will see in the card will<br />
be the result of their own projection on it. This is precisely that which is interesting<br />
in the reading and where the readers will have the opportunity to learn the more on<br />
them. The <strong>GLR</strong> cards do not tell the future. They inform the readers on their state of<br />
mind, on their wishes, on their aspirations and consequently on their possible<br />
psychological and spiritual progress. If a hidden part of your personality is present<br />
in your life, it will probably appear in your reading of the cards. Your job is to<br />
recognize it andto transform it into a life opportunity, into a new awareness.<br />
There is not a single method of reading the <strong>GLR</strong> cards, but as many ways as there<br />
are readers. I consider this moment one of peculiar intimacy and I use the cards to<br />
better analyse my dreams, or each time I feel any psychological movement. Isolated<br />
and calm, I shuffle the deck and cut it. The card on the top of the pile is my card.<br />
Some consider the unconscious to be their soul and therefore the reading of cards as<br />
a ritualized and regular meeting. Some others start their day with a reading. There<br />
are no rules. As well, I put emphasis on the first picked card, often limiting my<br />
reading to this single card. My rule is that I spend the longest time possible on the<br />
card to attempt to exhaust its meaning. If I am not satisfied with a single card, I seek<br />
for further enlightenment with another card, etc. But a person can decide to pick up<br />
four cards from the start, for instance, or to decide with two cards that one card<br />
represents someone and the other card someone else (the reader’s representation of<br />
this person), with three cards that one is the past, the other the present and the last<br />
one the future (again, the reader’s representation of the future). To me, the simpler<br />
the better, for the <strong>GLR</strong> cards are rich in symbols and a symbol from the unconscious<br />
is a giftnot to be ruined.<br />
-5-
TYPE OF <strong>CARDS</strong><br />
The composition of the <strong>GLR</strong> cards is simple. There are the cards that represent<br />
structure – the Kantian cards – and those who represent the journey –the trump<br />
cards. All cards will be detailed one by one. But the golden rule remains to follow<br />
one’s own prehension andapprehension of the cardabove all explanation.<br />
Cards of Structure<br />
First motivated by that which we could unfairly call technical issues – the scandal of<br />
the contradiction of Reason with itself – Immanuel Kant wrote between 1771 and<br />
1781 his first “Critique”, the Critique of Pure Reason. Was he aware then that he<br />
had created a system, the categories, that would become a centrepiece of western<br />
philosophy and the inevitable authority on matters of human capacity of<br />
comprehension?<br />
Kant’s philosophy calls forth the human limits. Reason evolves in the boundary of<br />
four categories: quantity, quality, relation, and modality. Concretely, one cannot<br />
think outside of the frame of time and space. One cannot think either without one’s<br />
own mind and that of any other on earth. Kant’s categories thus represent the<br />
structures of consciousness.<br />
• “Time” belongs to the category of quantity, itisour first four-card Structure section.<br />
• “Space” belongs to the category of quality, itisour second four-card Structure section.<br />
• “The other” belongs to the category of relation, itisour third four -card Structure section.<br />
• “Oneself” belongs to the category of modality,itisour fourth four -card Structure section.<br />
To articulatethose four notions, wewill describe one card from each category.<br />
Cards of The Journey,or Trump Cards<br />
The tradition has made the trump cards of a Tarot deck a spiritual journey of<br />
initiation. They first represented the art gallery of rich North-Italian families, who<br />
had chosen the most renowned artists to make cards instead of paintings on their<br />
walls. The political and religious message of the families was strong. In their cards<br />
they clearly fought the power of the Vatican. Milan was painted as nothing but the<br />
Celestial Jerusalem, the last card of “Accomplishment”, Number 21; the Catholic<br />
“Pope”, Number 5, ... had a wife, the “Popess”, Number 2. With time the card would<br />
ironically become that of a valued high priestess. Traditions oppose each other.<br />
Tradition evolves.<br />
The initiation of the trump cards is that of the readers, it is their journey. With the<br />
Structure cards they explore their limits. With the Journey cards they go in the<br />
foreign countries of their soul, full of light and shadow. The <strong>GLR</strong> trump cards are<br />
replete with symbols. They require the readers the most careful attention. Each card<br />
needs to be meditated for its significations will never appear at first sight but with<br />
time. And never more than with the trump cards the golden rule applies that one<br />
card in one context can mean something utterly different than the same card in<br />
anothercontext.<br />
-6-
TYPE OF <strong>CARDS</strong><br />
-7-
EVENING<br />
STRUCTURE / TIME<br />
Colours are the most dominant element of the EVENING card. Orange and red are<br />
the colours of the evening sunset, of autumn, which is the third season of the year<br />
just like EVENING is the third card of the TIME section (composed of MORNING,<br />
NOON, EVENING, andNIGHT).<br />
Harmony and peace also seem present inside the orange circle. Evening could be<br />
the right moment for rest... or for love, if we observe the two loving birds in their<br />
cocoon likeout of sight. Religiously, EVENING can be seen as a protective circle.<br />
What is the EVENING of the readers? What kind of time applies to their situation<br />
when they read the card? Above all, what is their first impression when they see it<br />
beyond any other consideration? I painted birds, but other forms can be seen, the<br />
curve of a “C”, why not? Anything. The imagination of the readers is always a<br />
priority for they read the cards to understand their own state of mind and the<br />
contentof their unconscious projections.<br />
-8-
EVENING<br />
-9-
INTERIOR COLLECTIVE<br />
STRUCTURE / SPACE<br />
The original collage of the card INTERIOR COLLECTIVE is called “Loft” as it<br />
abstractedly represents a beautiful apartment seen from above, or from an internal<br />
balcony. This is my unconscious projection of a perfectly abstract construction. The<br />
reader has not to see a flat but to follow his/her own impression. I will repeat this<br />
incessantly.<br />
INTERIOR COLLECTIVE is the first card of the four SPACE cards section, which<br />
comprises INTERIOR PERSONAL, EXTERNAL COLLECTIVE, and EXTERNAL<br />
PERSONAL. Seen literally, INTERIOR COLLECTIVE can represent a person whose<br />
house is full, that is, who would be married and have children, for instance. On a<br />
more symbolical level, the interior can represent the inner self, and the collective<br />
the fact that some still unconscious aspect of the personality desires to express itself.<br />
Which element of the collage couldbe this aspect, which form, whichcolour?<br />
-10-
INTERIOR COLLECTIVE<br />
-11-
THE BEST ME<br />
STRUCTURE / ONESELF<br />
Among the four ONESELF cards, THE BEST ME, THE PAST, THE HIDDEN ME,<br />
and THE SOUL, I chose the collage “White Hub” that illustrates my book Jung and<br />
Intuition. Surely I (unconsciously then) wanted to show on this cover that which I<br />
considered my best me. This consideration, this gap, is the Kantian modality of the<br />
self. The card will never represent the ego itself but our representation of it. We are<br />
in a dialogue with ourselves.<br />
THE BEST ME is well-balanced, its colours are complementary and soft, the central<br />
hub is luminous. Its white can represent the potential blank page of a future work.<br />
The tracing paper, which is present in the four ONESELF cards, aims at<br />
emphasizing an area of the collage, here, the luminous centre. What is your<br />
luminous centre?<br />
-12-
THE BEST ME<br />
-13-
TRANSITION<br />
STRUCTURE / THE OTHER<br />
The original oil pastel of the TRANSITION card is called “Neck”. I see indeed in it<br />
the back of the neck of a red haired woman. This back is bathed in light. The<br />
sensation of the sun here is delightful. Some see a baby with blond hair on the<br />
bottom. Others see a tree with red leaves. All those elements carry strong<br />
symbolism.<br />
The neck is the part of the body which is the passage of the conceptual to the real,<br />
the physical way from the mind to the active organs. THE OTHER here can literally<br />
mean someone else and thus TRANSITION could express a will, a readiness to go<br />
toward that person. THE OTHER can also stand for the worldand TRANSITION for<br />
the birth of a so far project in real life.<br />
The four cards of THE OTHER speak of how we can engage in relationship, the<br />
Kantian category of relation. TRANSITION stands next to DEPARTURE, PEACE,<br />
andSEDUCTION.<br />
-14-
TRANSITION<br />
-15-
THE FOOL<br />
JOURNEY / THE CARD WITHOUT NUMBER<br />
That the FOOL has no number makes him the person that is not entirely part of the<br />
game. Like the joker of traditional card games, he has got some strange power, or<br />
rather the power of the stranger. As such he can see better than anybody else, for he<br />
has gotthe benefit of insight. But he is awarethat hewill remain the stranger.<br />
The <strong>GLR</strong> FOOL is a hunter, busy with a hare. In the distance is the city. Does he<br />
protect it with his shotgun or is he solely far from it, hunting? Between the two<br />
places, there is a way, a difficult one (followed by Lot and his daughters, by Dürer).<br />
Above the hunter in the blue sky stands a protective wing. Mary appears on it, da<br />
Messina’s Virgin Annunciate, whose hands here seem to warn the man against<br />
some danger. Our hunter is Velasquez’s Philip IV of Spain. King Philip considered<br />
the inheritance of a large empire an inevitable condition. Historians still debate on<br />
him being or not a good king. Did our Philip the hunter feel a stranger to his people<br />
or was he a strong protector, like the lion on his gun, of his empire? Trump FOOLS<br />
might not be those to be trusted, this is not their role, but they possess a knowledge<br />
that nobody has.<br />
Do the readers feel that they are the FOOL themselves, in a retirement of some sort<br />
and from which they could learn by benefiting from a privileged point of view on a<br />
distant situation? Do they think they have to deal with a FOOL and recognize<br />
him/heras such? Is there some FOOL in them, craving from freedom or trying to be<br />
protective? From Mary in the sky, to the king in the front, Lot and his daughters on<br />
the way, to the people in the valley, the FOOL reminds us that distance puts things<br />
into perspective but alsothat the unconscious is full of dark shadows.<br />
-16-
THE FOOL<br />
-17-
THE POPE<br />
JOURNEY / CARD NUMBER 5<br />
The anonymous Gentleman immortalized by El Greco has become our POPE. El<br />
Greco’s portraits are known for their ethereal aspect. The man is here, fixing us with<br />
the deepest gaze, and yet we know how much farther than us this gaze can go.<br />
Watching the POPE card is like a privilege. With him, we are inspired to do our best<br />
under his auspices. Forhimperhaps.<br />
The colours of the collage from the red at the bottom to the blue at the top represent<br />
the intermediary status of the POPE, who is suspended between earth and heaven.<br />
A mechanism of a watch in earth tones is situated on the POPE’s heart to remind us<br />
of his human condition, just like the broken piano. By contrast, his divine aspect<br />
appears on his triple crown adorned with the divinities of Classical mythology (a<br />
crown in fact composed of the original frontal plan of the Coliseum). Because Tarot<br />
tradition has allowed a woman to live next to the POPE, I have imagined a feminine<br />
presence in the back of his head. On the top left of the card, a white bosom is visible.<br />
It can be that of Sophia, the Wisdom of many religions, and God’s companion for<br />
some.<br />
This description of the card cannot be other than full of emotions. They are only<br />
mine. When I see an extraordinary softness, intelligence, and depth in this POPE,<br />
you can feel otherwise. And most importantly you and I have changing impressions.<br />
Sometimes the POPE’s grandeur does not bring me protection advises me instead<br />
not to be too cerebral at the moment of the reading. Sometimes too, I focus on a<br />
single part of the collage. What does it mean, for instance, that which looks like<br />
flames at the top of the POPE’s crown?<br />
-18-
THE POPE<br />
-19-
JUSTICE<br />
JOURNEY / CARD NUMBER 8<br />
The keywords associated with the traditional trump card JUSTICE are justice,<br />
balance, and truth. The <strong>GLR</strong> JUSTICE card links those terms to the relationship<br />
that can exist between consciousnessandthe unconscious.<br />
Watch the two characters of the card, both three-quarter portraits with a curtain on<br />
the right. At the bottom left, and proportionally representing one twelfth of the<br />
collage, stands Richelieu. In the middle of the collage, at least three times bigger<br />
than the dignitary stands the young Maja from the Maja and Celestina on a<br />
Balcony by Goya. This represents the right proportion between consciousness<br />
(Richelieu) and the unconscious (Maja). The JUSTICE card urges the readers to<br />
regain some balance between unconscious drives and potentialities and a<br />
consciousnessthat might be too self-repressive of the formers.<br />
Maja’s balcony stands between two solid domes, those of the Palais Brongniart, or<br />
else the Parisian Bourse. Richelieu’s palace is no less concrete: he stands in front of<br />
the Palais-Royal, but its proportion on the card is less important than the palace of<br />
Maja. I, too, associate Richelieu with the Sorbonne that he renovated, because<br />
university is an important part of my consciousness. In the Palais-Royal is located<br />
the Conseil d’Etat, which is the French supreme court for justice. The justice of<br />
consciousness is that of reality, nobody escapes it. But truth and balance are never<br />
given but to be sought for in the depth of our true aspirations, with the aeriality of<br />
Maja’s angels and with the confidence and softness of her gaze. Which Richelieu is<br />
that of the readers: a man of power, a religious man? Which vital sap nourishes<br />
their Maja?<br />
-20-
JUSTICE<br />
-21-
THE STAR<br />
JOURNEY / CARD NUMBER 17<br />
The <strong>GLR</strong> STAR card is that, logically, of the Parisian Place de l’Etoile (“étoile”<br />
means “star”), at the top of the Champs-Elysées. On this Place one can see the Arc<br />
de Triomphe, as in the card. The original collage is named “Triumph” after the arc. I<br />
chose this name long after I made the collage as a result of that which this collage<br />
meant to me. The traditional trump card of the STAR is the card of liberation,<br />
revelation, and imagination. “Triumph” is the first collage that I made. It definitely<br />
represents all that for me now. The <strong>GLR</strong> STAR card is also the card of the artist. The<br />
artists know of liberation, revelation, and imagination. The <strong>GLR</strong> STAR card can be<br />
the card of vocation andcalling.<br />
Historically, the STAR card was linked to that of the MOON (Number 18) and that<br />
of the SUN (Number 19) as astrological representations. The birth of Tarot cards is<br />
interestingly situated between late medieval times and early Renaissance. The<br />
astrological representations belong to the latter both artistically and religiously as<br />
an emancipation of traditional Catholic images. Just like the North Italian families<br />
fought traditions, the <strong>GLR</strong> STAR card is iconoclast. It exhibits three naked women,<br />
three apparently immovable manikins wrapped with ribbon and wearing Breton<br />
hats, yet moved to the top of the Arc of Triumph and of a Parisian building which<br />
seems to dominate the Arc itself. At a distance, the Eiffel Tower is no longer a<br />
phallic symbol but like the fourth sister of the “Three Graces” as indicated on the<br />
street lamproad sign.<br />
Surely traditional representations are disturbed on the <strong>GLR</strong> STAR card. Yet the eye<br />
instantly catches the inner balance of the composition. Pure imagination, liberation,<br />
and revelation have got room in consciousness. Do you give enough credence to<br />
your imagination? Followyour luckystar.<br />
-22-
THE STAR<br />
-23-
FIRST EXAMPLE OF READING:<br />
IN LOVE WITH LOVE<br />
A four-card reading needs four pages of explanation. Observation and meditation<br />
take time and mental space. Those are lines of approach that unite several kinds of<br />
<strong>GLR</strong> cards to see how one person can articulate the various and varying meanings of<br />
a reading.<br />
The person who made the reading had chosen to pick four cards but as she returned<br />
the first one, a big smile came to her face. She was a woman in her forties. Four<br />
years ago she had divorced and had, since then, lived a difficult life. Her first<br />
impression of the first card was the passion (red and orange) of the loving birds. For<br />
the first time after four years, she had a glance at the possibility of love. We can read<br />
this modality of the “possible” in the type of the first card: STRUCTURE/TIME. The<br />
reading takes place in summer and the EVENING card represents autumn. This is a<br />
coming season. Thisis the timing of that which emerges.<br />
Her vision of “love” is reinforced by the three other cards. The fourth<br />
STRUCTURE/THE OTHER card is that of SEDUCTION. On the card, she sees the<br />
silhouette of a woman in a sexy blue and red dress. Her relationship with the other<br />
in this situation of love is that of seduction. She is ready for that emerging state of<br />
mind andmode of action.<br />
The third STRUCTURE/SPACE card is that of EXTERNAL COLLECTIVE. Her mind<br />
is directed outward, in the world. Her mind also sees this world with other people<br />
than herself. This card confirms again that the love that she reads in the first card is<br />
one that takes place in reality (EXTERNAL) andis one to be shared(COLLECTIVE).<br />
Now the second card is more complex. The JOURNEY card of the FOOL invites a<br />
first literal reading. The love in question has got an object: a potential man. Surely<br />
we cannot miss that positive reading. Yet the FOOL is not any man. As an internal<br />
part of the woman, it stands in this circumstance for a craving for freedom, for a<br />
relief of the too heavy burden of a life of responsibilities without real joy. It<br />
represents a past and a present that is still here despite the aspect of “potential”<br />
seen in the three other cards. Those three cards are STRUCTURE cards, the state of<br />
mind of the reader is clear. She is ready. The FOOL is a JOURNEY card. Right now,<br />
in her psychological and spiritual journey, the woman is still at a distance of that<br />
which she aspires to. But the fact that she becomes aware of it thanks to the FOOL<br />
card can make things change.<br />
-24-
SECOND EXAMPLE OF READING:<br />
ACTIVE SOUL<br />
The person who made the reading did not know from the start how many cards she<br />
would pick and felt satisfied after the reading of the fourth one. She consequently<br />
read the cards one after the other with no knowledge of the nextone.<br />
As she picked the first card, the woman wore a frown. The reading had taken place<br />
in winter and clearly love was neither in her mind nor in her life. What then those<br />
“not” loving birds of autumn could have anything to do with her?<br />
She did not wait too long to pick a second card. The POPE. Now the reading could<br />
make sense. She symbolically was one bird and the POPE was the other one, both<br />
protected by the red circle of the first card. The woman had entered a dialogue with<br />
her masculine soul. The woman was in her forties, and the POPE was obviously not<br />
an equal, a soul mate, but it embodied in her view her deepest intellectual and<br />
spiritual aspirations. Why would she need such a discussion in her JOURNEY, at<br />
the time of the reading?<br />
She picked a third card: the STAR, another card of JOURNEY. How was her mind<br />
occupied with imagination? She had indeed several projects in progress that<br />
required imagination, and imagination too had always been a close friend of the<br />
reader. But the card also carried for her the idea of emancipation. Did the woman<br />
have to strip as naked as the three Graces of the card? We have seen how the POPE<br />
was clearly inside the reader’s mind and inside the protective circle of the first<br />
EVENING card. The STAR started to open the reader to the external world.<br />
The fourth card confirmed this outward direction with the STRUCTURE/THE<br />
OTHER card of TRANSITION. The neck of the oil pastel indicated the movement<br />
from the cerebral - the project(s) in question - to its realisation in the world,<br />
symbolically to the moving organs of the body. The two last cards of both JOURNEY<br />
and STRUCTURE thus indicated a movement. But unlike the one that we saw in the<br />
preceding reading which indicated a readiness of action, the timing of this reading<br />
was slower. The woman was in a middle-term motion, which was indicated by the<br />
timing of the STRUCTURE/TIME card: from winter (the season of the reading) to<br />
autumn (the season of EVENING). Three seasons could be necessary to transform<br />
the project(s) into a living realisation. Symbolically three seasons represent a<br />
woman’s pregnancy.<br />
-25-