11 - Whips by Valeria

Astrological Symbol Significance

Sagittarius

Optimistic and freedom-loving, jovial and good humored, honest and straightforward, intellectual and philosophical.

Playing Card Symbol Interpretation

Jack of Clubs

Faithful, friendly, helpful, honest, respectable, a good ally, unless opposed or rivaled. Someone thinks well of you. The 'other' man. Traditional name/Keyword: Sir Lancelot du Lac.

Artists Personal Symbol

Bathroom scale that has been "altered".

As a personal symbol, I have included an image of a bathroom scale with the settings tampered with so that it is to the negative by 5 pounds. As someone steps on this scale, they would appear to be 5 pounds lighter than they actually are. I included this image to draw attention to the fact that sometimes we go out of our way to avoid seeing or accepting the truth about ourselves. This isn't limited to the physical self but also to the spiritual and mental selves as well. This avoidance can lead to a slavery of maintaining the lie or continuing to avoid the truth.

Card Description

A silhouette of a "perfect" female form is shown against a background of things she is a slave to. Across the figure is her whip - a tape measure with a whip handle. At her feet, is a half eaten hamburger and a muffin.

Card Interpretation

"Do I look fat in this?" There is so much that can be said about this card and what it represents. We all have our own personal guilt demons that we are slave to. Although the guilt is spread across nearly every area of life, I chose to focus on body image, as it is the area that resonates within me the most. In today's world, idealized images of men and women are prevalent everywhere but in real life. When creating this card, I thought about what Whips really meant - what it has meant in the past. To me, this card represents a person's internal struggle with themselves over the guilt they feel when they feel they fall short of society's expectations of them. I think it is common to both men and women, but may be more prevalent in women as that is who the majority of the marketing seems to be directed. The tape measure has a whip handle because it is frequently a tool used by women to beat themselves up with when they are on a diet and things aren't going well. The hamburger and muffin are representative of the types of things people on diets have guilt about. Food addiction is one of the hardest things to fight because you can't "quit" food. As a result, people who diet frequently suffer not having something until they can't stand it anymore, then binge, then beat themselves up for being weak (in their own eyes).

Close to Querent: low self-esteem or self-loathing
Distant from Querent: self-confidence or self-love
One of the first 3 cards: unfounded guilt about something or someone is being overly critical of person
Card next to a 'person': person may be feeling guilt or "beating themselves up" over something

Keywords

Guilt, self-loathing, regret, sorrow, failure, diet

Artistic Media

The card is a composition of "enhanced" digital photo collage created with Adobe Photoshop on an Apple iMac computer.

Artist's Bio

Valeria is a software/systems engineer by profession and has degrees in engineering and information technology. Her first experience with oracles was learning yarrow stick I- Ching and Elder Futhark runes. She is relatively new to card-based oracles, but she has started and failed many diets. This is the second oracle card she has designed.

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