This hop was set by Alison Cross… Here’s a list of the Majors, she said…Pick a card…
But, before you jump in and pick your favourite card… you might want to set yourself a bit of a challenge.
So… I thought about it and I don’t really have a favourite card and I don’t really have cards I dislike… I tend to view my cards as and when they fall into my hands as to what have you got to say for yourself and am I in the mood to listen…
So… I decided (if you’ll excuse my pun) to opt for the first card to Cross my path… I sit quietly, I close my eyes and then I play newsfeed I ching ( I have no idea if that name is apt but it works for me in that it fulfills my main criteria, in that it makes me laugh to myself) and plop… I hit a random post and land in The Wheel…
I smile as it just happens to be my Personality card and I ponder as to whether I chose it or it chose me…
I know it’s a card I’ve never really worked on directly in a focused way in a Traditional Tarot Theory studious manner… but it certainly has circled my life in many forms…
Twelve years spent in Casinos has left it’s imprint seared into me…
Say Wheel and this is pretty much the first image that comes into my mind…
Yeah… sad but true… I think at heart I’ll always have a part that is Dolly Dealer… And the Wheel brings to mind all the faces and stories that passed through the Pit… highs and lows, swift reversals of fortunes… the fickle finger of fate tickling and prodding who so ever it fancied…
A couple of years ago, my year card was X so I dipped into my palette to explore its tone…
I painted this, sat on a hot Summer’s day out in my garden… I’d not set out or intended to work with the Wheel… I’d been trying to capture the riots and blazes of colours of the plethora of blooms that had exploded out there… I painted 3 or 4 pictures and was just going to quit for the day and saw how much paint was left on my palette… and I just really can’t bear to waste paint, so I grabbed another canvas board and spent a couple of minutes just meditating on The Wheel and how that was showing up around me…Then I let the colours fly and I not so much paint as just push stuff around until it shouts STOP! so suddenly it felt to be done and yeah… it looked pretty chaotic at first but then my eye kind of sees a rose emerging out of the centre… a budding and blooming in the eye of the storm… yeah… I can live with that…
Currently, I’m indirectly working with a wheel… It’s pretty hush hush for now…
Ooops… I slightly diverted there… ok… back on THE Wheel…
THE Wheel… it shows up in all the great traditions across the world… the Medicine Wheel, Wheel of Life, Wheel of Karma, Wheel of Birth and Death, Wheel of Fate, Wheel of Destiny… and so on ad so on and so on… rolling spoke after spoke…
But what if it spoke? What would it say… A-ha!! At last I find a challenge to bite into…
Mmmm… the same old thing over and over again… variations on a theme… permutations and combinations… the wheel can only be invented once… beyond that you’re just pretty much choosing your tyres…
I guess The Wheel, like Life… is as in Casinos…
You win some… you lose some… the odds may be stacked against you… you may be able to buck the system… it all just keeps carrying on carrying on… as it spins by it can look pretty confusing or meaningless… you can try and spot the patterns, cycles and repeats… try to come up with a game plan…
But really… nothing makes full sense until you get to the end…
Not until everybody has left the building and the final count is done…
GAME OVER
Then you can see who the real winners and losers are…
Is the game over before it even begins…
Who knows…
Place your bets!
Les Jeux Sont Faits…
The pure and blessed way 
What a great painting – I could see the rose straightaway! and I love your version of The Wheel, with all those amazing anagrams….
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Thanks Alison 🙂 I very rarely spot what is in my paintings straightaway… I usually have to wander off and come back with fresh eyes… Anagrams were fun but I had to rein those in or it would have ended up as The Big Wheel! 😀
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“We hurl on toffee”!!!! That is my favorite of all time, I think 😉 Fits very well with “what goes down must come up” (in Wheel-speak, that is)!!
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Lol that one amused me too Olivia…. it seemed just the one to wind you into the centre just to spew you right back out again to the edge 😀
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I saw the rose before you told me about it! Super painting of The Wheel and I love the idea of the roulette wheel as The Wheel of Fortune!
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That rose makes me laugh as if I’d has sat down to paint a rose, odds are it would have ended up looking like a cartwheel… 😀 yeah… I do find it hard not to think of roulette wheels. I think the really addictive thing about them is not so much the wheel but the sounds the ball makes as it travels… it cracks off like a shot from a starting pistol and then you get the doppler effects as speed begins to slow… then the rattle and bounce as it falls from the rim and dances over the hazards then there’s always the sound of baited breath as everyone waits for the silence which declares the result…
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Oh the casino’s roulette wheel is such a great metaphor!
I love your painting of the wheel-rose, absolutely beautiful!
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Thank you! 😀
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LOL A roulette wheel was one of the options I considered for my deck, but didn’t know where to find one, since I don’t go to casinos 😀
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You might have problems with that… I left gaming several years ago so I’m not up to date on rules and regs. Things are pretty tight around that… I know years back camera were banned on the gaming floor… though we did have a photographer come in prior to opening to take photos for an article. Now with mobile phones and cameras everywhere I have no idea if those rules are still in place as they’d be pretty hard to enforce… and it is pretty easy to take a photo on the sly with a phone. Using a big proper camera… you’re going to be very obvious and there are lots of people in Casinos who don’t want anyone to know they are in there… I guess, if you contacted a casino and spoke to management and explained what you were doing, they’d probably allow you in… I think you need to emphasise that it’s gaming equipment that you want to focus on rather than the punters…
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Great creative stuff-stuff, as always, Karen. Also humour. Roses, roulette wheels…no cats in this one? 😉
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Lol Thanks Joanne! No… No cats here… You know what casinos are like with ID and dress codes etc… Though I did manage to coerce Ania into locating one for me to lodge in her Death comments… 😉 hahahahah now there’s a sentence I never would have imagined I’d ever write… 😀
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Haha! I always loved your clever posts…entertaining! “Throne of ewe flu”?!? Too funny.
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Thank you!! Lol yeah… Ewe flu… That’s my prediction for the next pandemic… Sorry can’t come into work… Got Ewe Flu! 😀
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Beautiful painting!! Love the rose in the centre! “We’re of fun hotel” made me think of the song Hotel California… you can check out anytime you like but you can never leeeeeave! 😀
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Nice spin Sharon! Thank you for adding music 😀 I like that! I like that a lot! 😀
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I’m a bit dizzy after that spin on the wheel. Loved it! 😀
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Lol yes… It is a bit dizzying… I kind of enjoyed playing with that… It’s quite fun to read on a handheld device as then you can keep your eyes still and rotate your screen… The upside is that you don’t get dizzy… The downside… It makes you look a bit odd to any casual observers that happen to pass by… Back on the upside again… Yeah that downside… Meh…who cares?! 😀 Thanks for rolling by Arwen! 😀
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I like that your casino association emphasises the ups and the downs. Too often, people seem to say the Wheel is about things getting better, but for me it’s about change, the crazy spins of life. Might get better, might get worse, but at least it’ll be different 😀 At least, that’s how I feel today – and the total opposite of Hotel California!
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Yes… I’ve seen some spectacular ups and downs and reversals of fortunes over the years… At first I found it pretty shocking… but it’s a good lesson. Take things as they come, enjoy your wins, endure your losses and know that both only last as long as they last. The spins of life all add to the fun! I can’t think of anything worse really than every day always the same… Lol though ask me again tomorrow and I may have changed my mind! Nice to see you’re singing… 😀
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Ha ha, I sing every day, but it’s nice to have something other than Old MacDonald in my head for a change 😀
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Oh… The E I E I O years… Yes… I remember those 😀 someone needs to give old man McD a consonant! 😀
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😀 😀
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