The Fives
Minor arcana: Blasted Oak, Strength. Position on wheel: Lammas. Chakra solar plexus
Five of Wands: Power
The Cerne Abbas chalk hill figure grasps his oakleaf shaped club whilst the fiery energies of the August heat rises to be grounded by the lightening flash. An active power that is hard to hold in balance, tendency to anger; when misused by any gender, this becomes power over others.
   
Five of Arrows: Frustration
A hunter shoots a longbow at a fleeing ibex. A double edged card depending on whether you are the hunter or the hunted. The card can be a warning-either take flight or stand firm and face the situation. Ungrounded aims and fears.
   
Five of Cups: Ecstasy
A woman dances, dressed in a solar costume as she celebrates the end of the summer and the first fruits of the harvest, the wheat which pours from the two horns of abundance (Cornucopia). She holds a rattle and a bull roarer. She is full of dynamic energy, dancing into the night. Shamanic dance. Sexuality. Release of pent-up energy. Whole hearted surrender to life.
   
Five of Stones: Endurance
A figure sits in the darkness of a cave watching lightening strike their home, their emotional centre. They have temporarily withdrawn, looking on, unsure of how best to handle the situation. This inactivity initially taken as self-protection, can become over passivity.
   
Reflection(new card)
Minor arcana Sixes Position on wheel: Autumn Equinox. Element: Water.
Colour: green/blue. Polarity: white.
When the foundation of one’s life seems to have collapsed beneath you, you can seek sanctuary in Reflection from the emotional intensity of The Blasted Oak. Reflection is a new card that I have added to the traditional tarot deck. It is similar in meaning to the usual High Priestess card which I have replaced with the more grounded Seer.

Having studied medieval symbolism, I knew that there was a conservatism and consistency in its use; I therefore found it strange that only three of the four virtues, Strength, Temperance and Justice are usually included in a tarot deck. Prudence is missing.
She is traditionally depicted as a serpent-tailed woman, holding a mirror, sometimes enthroned. I considered this the perfect and necessary image for the Autumn Equinox phase of the wheel-the journey to the watery west.
Reflection is concerned with sacred mysteries, which were practised upon islands in lakes-set apart from everyday living. people would visit the priestesses upon these islands which were scattered amidst miles of marsh land.In areas like Somerset,England, people lived in wooden houses on stilts, lake villages. Flat bottomed boats were made from oak logs, these took you through the mists to the island .

In the card Reflection, a person lays sleeping in the boat. They are resting, in need of healing, perhaps dreaming.

A serpent-tailed woman holds a Celtic mirror and crystal ball/moon. She is Morgan (Morvran-sea raven), the Lady of the Lake. Her serpent tail and mirror associate her with mermaids. These have been much misunderstood. Originally they represented powerful female sensuality, the abilty to see otherworlds, the ebb and flow of watery currents.

During the iron age, (Celtic period) rainfall increased substantially and much land was consumed by water. This archetype has become known as The Lady of the Lake. But that mythology denies the more ancient Goddesses of water and knowledge such as the Goddess of the Boyne River Eire, Boand. Reflection depicts an initiator into the deeper mysteries of sensual healing, spiritual healing, womens cycles and psychism. Just as water is a natural mirror, she holds a mirror up to you so that you are forced to look at your reflection and taught how to love or change what you see there.

Her cauldron of wisdom , contains a herbal brew to enhance vision. The heron, the silent wise guardian of the mysteries, has the heron/crane bag, the medicine bag of all knowledge hanging round its neck. Originally the oracular priestess would have worn a heron feather cloak and been heavily tattooed with woad-dyed enspiralled patterns representing the ebb and flow of the water. The moon of course influences these.

In a reading this card indicates profound healing, a period of introspection, healing, immersion in myths and visions, stellar lore, conception, learning about yourself.

   
Wheel of Fortune
Minor arcana Sixes Position on wheel: Autumn Equinox. Element: Water.
Colour: green/blue. Polarity: white
Amidst the misty waters a vertical iron-age loom has been made from living hazel trees. Hazel, when coppiced, grows into straight poles. It is also a sacred tree that grows beside the pool of knowledge (see The Salmon). Across the loom are spread the warp and weft of living green, stretching in all four directions out to infinity. These connect you with to the cosmic web, or the web of wyrd (fate) for your life is intimately connected to that of the living universe. At the base of the loom hang the loom weights. You are weaving the cloak that is the pattern of your life.
There is a process of interaction at work in this card and the mediators are the three cloaked figures standing at the lower right of the cloak.

These are the three fates, the norns, the hooded ones who watch over your destiny. Originally a triplicity of oracular priestesses cloaked in heron or raven feathers would be consulted on one of these sacred islands, hidden by mists and accessible only by a boat. By a combination of dreamwork, teaching, divination and healing, the person whose soul is wounded would be taught to see the patterns, the strands running through their lives.

In the centre of the cloak is the layout of the wheel for the Greenwood Tarot cards. Our tarot is a unified, self-contained system. By studying it one will gain profound insights into the connection between one’s own psychology and the natural world, and European mythology.

It is important to know that your weaving is flexible, your destiny is not woven for you, it is an interaction; every one of your actions can affect a change in the design of your cloak at any point. It is never finished but is continually unravelling and being rewoven. You may have severed the threads binding you to others for reasons of self-protection - these can be rewoven, carefully linking you to the abundance of the world (six of wands, Harvest) thereby avoiding unwanted situations (six of stones, Exploitation).

The primal guardians of the Greenwood Tarot, the owl, horse, deer, bear, heron, raven and Green person stand as guardians of its teachings.