Gryphon Tarot
The deck is broken up into two sections, cards major and minor.
The Cards Minor deal with personal concepts,
aspects of peoples lives and behaviors that come into play. These are
specific forces at work in your day-to-day endeavors. The Cards Minor are
designed along an internal framework; this system
is covered later on.
The Cards Major deal with universal concepts, states
of being that are beyond the scope of individual personalities. These
indicate changes and conditions to the world around you, changes that affect
the flow of your life.
The appearance of Majors in a reading tell you that you should be aware
of large scale influences. They indicate the presence of the concept
they represent, regardless of their orientation. When upright, the cards
herald the positive presence of that ideal; when reversed (or contrary),
they signal disruption and negative affects coming from that source.
- Chaos :
lack of structure, freedom, unpredictibility
- Charon :
the ferryman, Death, crossing over, letting go, closing doors
- Chrysalis :
pause, stasis, suspension before or during change
- Daemon :
intuition, spirit guide, voice of the inner self, dark whispers
- Dragon :
power, magic, primal force/energy, breath/chi
- Dream :
hopes, goals, desires, what we wish and strive for
- Gaia :
horizons, expanse, wholeness, unity/gestalt
- Karma :
fate/destiny, luck, life path/mission
- Medicine Wheel :
cyclic continuity, balance, sacred spiral, present/absent
- Pattern :
Law, structure, order, form, predictability
- Phoenix :
rebirth, caamora, resurrection
- Shadow :
alternate possibilities, turns and twists on reality
- Star :
personal growth, advancement, moving to a higher level
- Tao :
Wu Wei, flow/pathway, natural existence, being in the moment
- [blank - white] :
the unknown, the undefined, unanswered silence
- [blank - grey] :
the obscured, blocked and hidden, shadow
- [blank - black] :
the Void, Zen, beyond comprehension, before possibility
The deck was constructed as a system, so that by remembering only a few
things, the general meaning of any of the cards minor could be determined.
Each of the numbered cards has a specific meaning
for that number. Each of the court cards has an icon
which indicates its meaning. Thus, by simply knowing the number or icon and
the color , you can quickly derive the basic concept
which that card refers to.
In addition, the title and the picture were intended to be as descriptive as
possible, thus eliminating the need to memorize the meanings from the book.
In this deck, there are five suits, which are color coded, rather than
symbol-coded as with most tarot decks. This way it is easy to look at any
card and determine which general concept it relates to. It also prevents
the problems that arise when different systems translate a specific element
or symbol to two different meanings.
|
|
Color
|
Concept
|
Element
|
| Silver
| Intellect | Wind/Air |
| Blue
| Emotion | Water |
| Red
| Action | Fire |
| Brown
| Strength | Earth/Stone/Wood |
| Gold
| Money | Metal |
The court cards come in two flavors, personas and paths.
Personas
First, we have the cards which represent personas, actual people who are
coming into play in the reading. The Youth, Man, and
Woman refer to actual people; they may be the querant or refer to
some other person. The male and female aspects refer to people of the
appropriate gender, who are interacting within the domain specified by the
suit. The Youth represents someone of either gender, and may refer to
someone who is physically an adult, but is underdeveloped in the concept
represented by the suit.
The symbols for these cards are fairly universal:
Youth: 
Man: 
Woman: 
The second group of court cards in each suit are the Path cards. These
represent growth in a particular direction, and take the place of many
of the Major Arcana found in traditional Tarot decks. For each suit, there
are two paths. And within each path, two cards which represent Lesser
and Greater advancement within that direction. But part of the nature
of these paths are that they are incomplete; each only covers part of the
domain represented by the suit. Hence there is also a single Master
card for each suit, which refers to someone (of either gender) who has
transcended the Paths and in reached a level of mastery in that suit's
domain. Note that unlike any other cards in the suit, the Master cards have
no other title.
The symbols for these cards are:
Lesser: 
Greater: 
Master: 
Each of these cards have a specific meaning, differing whether the card
appears in the reading upright or reversed.
|
1)
|
Essence
|
(Antithesis)
| | 2) | Exchange, Union
| (lack of..., Bad Intent) |
| 3) | Beginnings
| (False Start) |
| 4) | Balance, Equality
| (Imbalance) |
| 5) | Challenge
| (Deberate Obstacle, Perversion) |
| 6) | Rest
| (lack of...) |
| 7) | Flow, Process
| (lack of..., Stagnation) |
| 8) | Abundance
| (Absence, Overload) |
| 9) | Origin, Source
| (Destruction) |
| 10) | Completion, End
| (Pinnacle, Failure) |
The numbering system is used so that for each suit,
any given number has the same relative meaning within that topic. In other
words, the both the Red two and the Brown two relate to the same concept
of connection, relationship, exchange, pairing; even though the former
relates to action and the latter to thought.
The above work is copyright © 1986, by
Coranth Gryphon.
All rights, including conceptual property rights, are hereby retained.
Permission to use the deck for personal use is freely granted.