Splitting Myself in Two

From The Da Vinci Enigma Tarot, I have drawn Temperance today. At first, it is a little difficult to see what is going on in the picture, but if you look carefully, you can see someone about to whack the living you-know-what out of a small animal. The animal is an ermine. From my understanding, the ermine's coat is a brown colour in the summer, but in Winter, it turns white. It is said that it would rather be captured by humans, as shown here, than seek refuge in a den and muddy it's purity. I am guessing that being captured and killed is some kind of strange middle-ground.

It is not new to find the ermine within the tarot deck. The antique Mantegna deck (from 1460) shows one at the foot of it's Temperance card, inspecting it's own purity in a looking glass. In more recent sets, it can be found as a companion to the angel of Temperance in The Secret Tarot. As far as I am aware, I have not seen it make an appearance in the same trump elsewhere, but it does become a familiar for the Queen of Swords in The Faerie Tarot, plays the part of the Page of Wands in Chesca Potter's Greenwood, and crops up in Lo Scarabeo's own version of the Da Vinci Tarot (it's Queen of Wands is based on the painting of Cecilia Gallerani, cradling a stoat in her arms).

For this draw, Temperance is about finding a balance; I have wanted to do my own thing today, but have been pulled away to help others. My mum wanted to start stripping the wallpaper from the dining room. It didn't come off as easily as she'd have liked, so I felt obliged to join her and help. I have a creative project I am eager to get started on, but had to set it aside to work on the paper. My dad can't really get involved in this kind of thing at the moment, so I took his place and worked in the dining room with her.


It's funny, because the dining room is a little like our ermine. The wallpaper is a sickly, yellowing, floral nightmare, and you only realise just how disgusting it is when you begin to pull it away. Beneath is the pure winter coat of our ermine, like the snow still on the ground outside. Unfortunately, the paper didn't come off so easily, so after hours of scraping, we gave up until tomorrow. This is the mid-point shown in Temperance, as a mixture of both the past and future are combined in the room.




Illustration from The Da Vinci Enigma Tarot by Leonardo Da Vinci, from The Secret Tarot by Marco Nizzoli, and from The Mantegna Tarot by A. Atanassov.