St. Patrick Well Tarot Deck,(Major Arcana Set.)ETCHING VERSION

 

St. Patrick Well and Anastasis
 

“Visit the underground, while purifying yourself you will find the ‘secret stone’ “(Alchemy)

 

St. Patrick Well is a construction which was built in Italy in the 16th Century by an architect called Antonio da Sangallo the Younger. It takes its name from a medieval legend whose main character is St. Patrick of Ireland. It shares a similar theme that of Dante’s Devine Comedy, that is Anastasis. Anastasis is a symbol which is cultivated in mythology and fairy tales. It can also be expressed as descending to the underground to have an unpleasant experiment.
This has been the starting point for this deck which also takes its name from the legend and the construction. In descent to hell initiation, student must be completely purity-free to be able to move on to the next stage of initiation, which means he needs to have a pure consciousness. To achieve this, he needs to go through certain experiences which is practiced in all initiations. It can be named as death experience. This is a kind of conscientious showdown (inner feud) that all people have to go through after death. In almost all cultures, it is a recurring theme but in different forms.
But in this case, the student has to experience both the death stage and the second stage, which requires confronting his past reincarnations, while he is alive. Student enters into a coffin or a tomb to confront his past to have a deep trance. This also exists even in primitive cultures which calls for the enclosure of the person into a cave. When the student in trance kills his own dragon, he wins the fight, which helps him gain his pure self before reincarnation(s).

What tarot is and its history is hard to mention here as it has a long history .But here, St. Patrick’s Well – “descent to hell” and Tarots share a common point. Both of them are related to a certain kind of experimentation.
In the history of tarot cards, it is often mentioned about the journey of the Fool. Actually, in essence, the tarot card ‘0 ‘represents to the starting point and the Fool symbolizes pure human. Therefore, we can say that the Fool represents the beginning of life.

The journey start with the card number “zero” and finishes with number “21 “, the world card. According to the tarot philosophy, the journey does not actually end with the world card but it starts after one experiences the world. For this reason, some of the card readers and makers put the fool card after the world card. The journey always returns to the beginning, which is similar to the theme of St. Patrick’s legend. Although the student may manage to reach his purest self, he would start again as he wakes up from the trance, which is a paradoxical. For this reason, the logo of St. Patrick’s Well Tarot Deck is the infinity symbol.