by Kate Elliott
Meaning: Fruition and ripening; but also separation.
6. HUNTER’S RUN
Letter: W
Season: The Long Heat
Picture: A group of hunters hunts a stag (if one looks closely, it can be seen to be a man wearing a deerhide and antlers).
Meaning: Sacrifice; uncertain rewards; fear and the implacability of Death; but also the hope of harvesting all one has striven for.
7. HARVEST FAIRE
Letter: I
Season: Autumn Equinox
Picture: A young man and woman, the woman with a tiny babe in arms, seated at the assembly of the fruits of the harvest.
Meaning: Harvest, thanksgiving, joy; plenty balanced against barrenness to come; the ability to sustain oneself through difficult times; the seeds from which the next year’s growth will spring.
8. LORD DEATH’S PROGRESS
Letter: U
Season: The Freeze
Picture: Lord Death, mounted on a stallion, leads the parade of the doomed: a weeping woman holding a child in her arms walks beside him, one hand gripping the trailing end of his fine robe; others walk behind her, each closer to death than the last until, at the end, walks a bleached skeleton.
Meaning: Death, but also conception; a sundering from old ways, but also the beginning of new; barrenness, but also the suspended power of growth.
III. THE MONTHS OF THE YEAR
THE MONTHS OF THE year equate to the Journey—moving from the small self-absorbed circle of The Hut (the child’s self) to the larger circle of the Village (the family), breaking away by means of The Road that leads to The Town Square (provincial life), through stages of introspection—The Temple representing collective, guided study, often of a religious bent, and The Tower true introspection, self examination in an isolated place or state, meditative and illuminating. Such study allows the traveller to then take leave of old boundaries, by way of The Harbor, for new horizons, represented by The City, where larger possibilities for social interaction and endeavors are available (The Hall). One still can separate oneself out, to contemplate in The Garden, but such contemplation leads to study of the deeper mysteries, which demands a descent through The Barrow, the separation of life from death, into the Labyrinth, the place of mysteries from which none emerges unchanged and in which many become irretrievably lost. It is here, if one survives the perils of the journey, that one can find The Castle, the center, or the heart, of life.
1. The Hut/The Meadow B
2. The Village/The Forest L
3. The Road/The River N
4. The Town Square/The Lake F
5. The Temple/The Marsh S
6. The Tower/The Mountain H
7. The Harbor/The Sea D
8. The City/The Shore T
9. The Hall/The Fields K
10. The Garden/The Waste M
11. The Barrow/The Ravine G
12. The Labyrinth/The Cave P
13. The Castle/The Spring R
IV. THE DAYS OF THE MONTH
1. THE MIDWIFE
Letter: A
Element: Earth
Direction: East
Rank: Queen
Animal: Snake
Plant: Mandrake
Picture: A mature woman in a wimple stands holding a newborn. Behind her we see part of a chamber with a window and part or all of a bed or birthing chair.
Meaning: Birth, creation; bringing something into being; a new direction, goal, endeavor; a propitious time to begin (a new venture, turn a new leaf).
2. THE HEIRESS
Letter: B
Element: Earth
Direction: South
Rank: Queen
Animal: Pig(s)
Plant: Climbing rose
Picture: A young woman sits at a dressing table, examining herself in a mirror, various bits of jewelry and makeup jars on the table before her. Reflected in the mirror, one can see doors opening to a balcony on which is a climbing rose.
Meaning: The mirror of knowledge; the heiress represents the priestess (the adept) who, seeing herself, sees knowledge—who knows herself; but also, worldly vanity; material fixations; love of luxury; prideful love of self; stagnation in selfishness and self absorption.
3. THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN
Letter: R
Element: Earth
Direction: Heaven
Rank: Queen
Animal: Bull
Plant: Lily
Picture: On a throne suspended in the air sits the crowned Queen of Heaven. Her expression is detached, her eyes raised to something beyond her, one hand across her chest, the other trailing down. At the hem of her voluminous skirts crouch three tiny supplicants—one man, one woman, and a calf.
Meaning: Forgiveness; selflessness—giving of one’s substance to succor others; also, detachment.
4. THE EMPRESS OF BOUNTY
Letter:
Element: Earth
Direction: Center
Rank: Queen
Animal: Cockatrice (basilisk)
Plant: Wheat
Picture: A richly robed matron with long, luxurious hair sits at a loom. At her feet sit four wild animals: a mouse, a wren, a toad, and a lizard. Around and beside her, the fruits of the earth.
Meaning: Plenty; mother of All Things; the bountiful.
5. THE DREAMER
Letter: P
Element: Earth
Direction: Underworld
Rank: Queen
Animal: Mare
Plant: Belladonna
Picture: A blindfolded young woman dressed only in a simple shift runs wildly through a forest of horrors: spiders, bugs, and weirdling creatures populate the branches. As she runs, she is (accidently) stepping on a snake.
Meaning: Unreasoning fear, terror, nightmare, lack of control, brutality; imagination, also its dark side; magnification of what you are at this moment—whether for good or bad; ability to harness the sheer power of the unconscious.
6. THE ARCHER
Letter: L
Element: Earth
Direction: North
Rank: Queen
Animal: Stag
Plant: Hemlock
Picture: In a winter forest, a naked woman draws her bow, aiming at an unseen target.
Meaning: Revenge; fixed unalterable purpose—purpose which must be carried out; justice; the “furies.”
7. THE GATEKEEPER
Letter: E
Element: Earth
Direction: West
Rank: Queen
Animal: Worm
Plant: Dill
Picture: An old woman sits beside a stone archway. In her hands she holds knitting. At her feet sits a lantern.
Meaning: Knowledge of life and death, of passage from one state to another; wisdom of life and its processes; knowledge of the future.
8. THE TUTOR
Letter: J
Element: Air
Direction: East
Rank: King
Animal: Hawk
Plant: Fennel
Picture: In a library a man holds a book. He could be either offering it or receiving it.
Meaning: The dissemination of learning; the beginning of self-knowledge; curiosity about one’s own inner processes.
9. THE PHILOSOPHER
Letter: F
Element: Air
Direction: South
Rank: King
Animal: Swan(s)
Plant: Pansy
Picture: In a marketplace, a man holds forth to a collection of listeners (male and female).
Meaning: Exchange of ideas, cross-fertilization of ideas on the stage of the marketplace, the square; stagnant, monopolizing pontificating.
10. THE PHYSICIAN
Letter: K
Element: Air
Direction: Heaven
Rank: King
Animal: Eagle
Plant: Foxglove
Picture: A robed man seated at a table holds the tools of a physician; behind him one sees the paraphernal
ia of the alchemist.
Meaning: Healing; the use of thought and rationality to have an impact on the material; helping others with no thought of one’s own gain.
11. THE EMPEROR OF ORDER
Letter: —
Element: Air
Direction: Center
Rank: King
Animal: Gryphon
Plant: Iris
Picture: A man seated on a throne carved of living wood. His crown is vines and leaves. In one hand he holds a staff, in the other a flower.
Meaning: The melding of culture and nature; rationality, but also too much rationality, to the exclusion of mystery; the triumph of reason; necessity of order, but also, ordering without imagination or flexibility.
12. THE PRISONER
Letter: S
Element: Air
Direction: Underworld
Rank: King
Animal: Raven
Plant: Rue
Picture: A man in ragged clothing sits slumped in a cell. He is chained to a large block of stone, a tiny, barred window above him.
Meaning: Imprisonment; being caught in a closed place, idea, goal; being chained to a person, place, concept; prejudice; bias to a view that lacks perspective.
13. THE BEGGAR
Letter:
Element: Air
Direction: North
Rank: King
Animal: Owl
Plant: Thistle
Picture: A thin, old man sits beneath a leafless tree, an empty bowl at his right knee, a lit lantern hung on the branches above him.
Meaning: Freedom from material burdens; wisdom brought by self-imposed isolation; self-knowledge, enlightenment, asceticism; without either home or possessions, a state either blessed or damned.
14: THE HUNTER
Letter: W
Element: Air
Direction: West
Rank: King
Animal: Kite
Plant: Mistletoe
Picture: Through late-summer woods runs a loinclothed hunter with a spear, dogs at his heels. What he pursues cannot be seen.
Meaning: Death, cruelty, fixed purpose without reason; when you are marked by the Hunter there is no recourse—unlike the Archer, he is not motivated by revenge or justice, but is rather on the blind scent of blood—no emotion is linked with the hunt except that it is inevitable and unstoppable.
15. THE PAGE
Letter: AE
Element: Water
Direction: East
Rank: Knight
Animal: Salmon
Plant: Daisy
Picture: In a room a boy is being fitted in new armor. Behind him the door opens to reveal a landscape beyond.
Meaning: Beginning of knowledge of the world, of life outside of oneself; beginning of independence; exploring, curiosity, initiative.
16: THE CRUSADER
Letter: D
Element: Water
Direction: South
Rank: Knight
Animal: Porpoise(s)
Plant: Laurel
Picture: A young man, mounted and in armor, armed with a lance, sword and shield hung from his saddle, leads the charge at an unseen target. Others follow him.
Meaning: Being on “crusade”: some larger purpose, outside of oneself, directing and informing one’s actions—often with a group; can lead to prejudice; lending oneself as a participant in another’s goals, ideas; being controlled by someone else’s goals, opinions, or biases.
17: THE PALADIN
Letter: M
Element: Water
Direction: Heaven
Rank: Knight
Animal: Newt
Plant: Olive branch
Picture: Through a wasteland a young man rides, armed, his eyes uplifted to the sky in which shines a single, brilliant star.
Meaning: The noble quest; purpose—to aid others and deny oneself, usually undertaken as a solitary task; purity of purpose.
18: THE MASTER OF WATERS
Letter:
Element: Water
Direction: Center
Rank: Knight
Animal: Sea-serpent
Plant: Vine
Picture: A naked man rises from the waves, in one hand a trident, in the other a twining snake. He is crowned by seaweed.
Meaning: Mutability; can change to fit any space, container; ability to adapt; master of the ever-changing processes of life.
19: THE MADMAN
Letter: G
Element: Water
Direction: Underworld.
Rank: Knight
Animal: Frog
Plant: Henbane
Picture: In an ominous forest, a man clothed only in tattered rags roams, obviously mad.
Meaning: Insanity; twisting of purpose; lack of control; madness.
20: THE WANDERER
Letter: N
Element: Water
Direction: North
Rank: Knight
Animal: Seal
Plant: Columbine
Picture: On a field of ice and snow, a hooded man lies half frozen, obscured by drifting snow.
Meaning: Lost purpose; wandering in circles; life’s goals, purpose, frozen in indecision or from lack of goals; to try one thing after another with no set purpose.
21: THE DROWNED MAN
Letter: I
Element: Water
Direction: West
Rank: Knight
Animal: Crab
Plant: Water lily
Picture: On a shore, a dead man lies half in, half out of the surf.
Meaning: Dissolution; death; change from one state to another.
22: THE LOVER
Letter: O
Element: Fire
Direction: East
Rank: Magi
Animal: Salamander
Plant: Myrtle
Picture: In the window of a tower a girl leans out. Her hair is unbound. Far below stands the figure of a young man.
Meaning: Beginnings of desire, of interest in other people; infatuation; passage from child to adult, with adult’s passions.
23: THE MERCHANT
Letter: T
Element: Fire
Direction: South
Rank: Magi
Animal: Fox(es)
Plant: Marigold
Picture: In a market stall stands the proprietor, a woman with carefully coiffed hair, displaying her wares.
Meaning: Desire for wealth and material goods; trading of all sorts, physical wants, economic, artistic, cultural, political; bargaining; cheating; competence, but also incompetence; deviousness.
24: THE MAGE
Letter: C
Element: Fire
Direction: Heaven
Rank: Magi
Animal: Lion
Plant: Vervain
Picture: A woman levitating.
Meaning: The serene levitator; nobility of desire, control of desire leads to mastery of the subject at hand; serenity; vanquishing of desires and emotional turmoil; mastery of one’s profession.
25: THE ANGEL OF WAR
Letter: +
Element: Fire
Direction: Center
Rank: Magi
Animal: Dragon
Plant: Cinquefoil
Picture: An armed woman advancing to battle. Light blazes around her.
Meaning: Purity of desire, but also lust; violence; the conquest of passion; the power of pure emotion; all-out assault.
26: THE INVALID
Letter:
Element: Fire
Direction: Underworld
Rank: Magi
Animal: Cat
Plant: Poppy
Picture: On a couch in a shuttered room, a woman lies, passive, clearly ill, one hand cast up over her eyes, the other hanging limp, a book lying open on the floor.
Meaning: Passivity, debilitation; the diseased decay of inward-turned desire; wasting, usually from the inside out; helplessness, or not bestirring oneself to make any effort.
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7: THE SEEKER
Letter: H
Element: Fire
Direction: North
Bank: Magi
Animal: White wolf
Plant: Heather
Picture: A cloaked figure turns away from the gates of a lighted city—it is dusk—about to take the road that leads into the mountains. High in the mountains one can see the suggestion of a dark castle.
Meaning: Desire for knowledge, so much so that one leaves all else behind; the search for answers; the quest that leads one away from human society; the restless need for understanding, to find the synthesis of what is known and what has yet to be known.
28: THE SACRIFICE
Letter: U
Element: Fire
Direction: West
Rank: Magi
Animal: Phoenix
Plant: Red rose
Picture: A woman tied to a stake, being burned alive. Her face is contorted, either in agony or in ecstasy—one cannot quite be sure.
Meaning: Sacrificing oneself for desire, for what one considers to be a greater purpose, goal, desire, or passion; passion—pain, but also ecstasy; complete immolation in one’s passion of goal, usually voluntary; death, but a death that leads to rebirth, either of anew self or of a new purpose.
Acknowledgments
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage Books, 1966;
Eric Elliott, who illustrated the Gates for me;
and finally, everyone who helped babysit 3R-S—thank you!
About the Author
Kate Elliott has been writing stories since she was nine years old, which has led her to believe that she is either a little crazy or that writing, like breathing, keeps her alive. Her most recent series is the Spiritwalker Trilogy (Cold Magic, Cold Fire, and Cold Steel), an Afro-Celtic post-Roman alternate-nineteenth-century Regency ice-punk mashup with airships, Phoenician spies, the intelligent descendants of troodons, and revolution. Her previous works include the Crossroads trilogy (starting with Spirit Gate), the Crown of Stars septology (starting with King’s Dragon), the Novels of the Jaran, the Highroad Trilogy, and the novel The Labyrinth Gate, originally published under the name Alis A. Rasmussen.
She likes to play sports more than she likes to watch them; right now, her sport of choice is outrigger canoe paddling. Her spouse has a much more interesting job than she does, with the added benefit that they had to move to Hawaii for his work; thus the outrigger canoes. They also have a schnauzer (a.k.a. the Schnazghul).
April Quintanilla
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