Graven Images
Oracle using tomb imagery as independent divination system honoring mortality.
by Natalie Zaman, Katharine Clark · 2007
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The record
Tomb images carry weighty traditional and personal symbolism, and lend themselves as independent tools and divination. Indeed, the images bring us closer to that portal from which we have become estranged, but cannot avoid. The Graven Images Oracle is a stand-alone oracular system. Unlike a tarot deck, it has a different structure of 71 instead of 78 cards, and instead of the usual tarot archetypes, it works with the weighty and sombre symbolism and real imagery of the cemetery gravestones and memorials and persons unknown. Natalie Zaman searched the graveyards of North American to photograph just the right headstones, statues and tombstones to illustrate the symbolism she wanted to show for her cards. Graveside ornaments and headstones use a consistent symbolism of their own, etched or formed in stone: angels, wreaths, lilies, weeping willows, crosses, hand clasped or pointing, torches, columns, obelisks, urns and much more. The cards are clear and atmospheric; sometimes gloomy or bleak, but other times calm or tranquil, eerie, and unexpectedly beautiful. There are 71 cards in the Oracle set. Seventy of the cards are divided into five suits;, each associated with the five point
The cards
