Fire Through Spirit - Infolightenment Archives

Finding The Oracle Within, A Tale Of Experience

Graven Images Oracle is the concept and photographic art of Natalie Zaman. Natalie began her professional career writing radio commercials, and then taught English, Language Arts and Creative Writing. Her love for cemeteries led her to conduct graveyard and museum tours in the United States and Europe, and her memorial photography has appeared in international juried shows, private collections and magazines. She has also published poetry, articles, stories and ritual crafts in various media. Natalie is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, the American Tarot Association and the Association for Gravestone Studies. In addition to Graven Images Oracle, Natalie co-publishes Broomstix, an ezine for pagan children with Kat Clark and Charlotte Bennardo. She is currently seeking a publisher for her YA fantasy novel, The Trysting.

The layout and interpretations of Graven Images Oracle are the work of Kat Clark. She is the author of An Irish Book of Shadows, and her work has appeared in Dan and Pauline Campanelli’s Circles, Groves and Sanctuaries. A Tarot instructor and reader, Kat is an an award winning poet and a creative writing teacher. She has lectured at college, taught in high and middle schools, and led workshops for the National Endowment for the Arts. An Elder of the Tuatha De Dannan Wiccan tradition for over 30 years, she has appeared in various live and print media regarding the Craft and has served as an expert on the Occult for local police departments. She is past Wiccan instructor and Circle leader for Earth Spirit New Age Center, Red Bank, NJ. Kat is a member of the DAR, North Brunswick Historical Society and the Association of Gravestone Studies. She is currently seeking a publisher for her new book, Things Your Elders Never Told You.

I saw his face across the rows of markers; he called to me. About my height, slender and white, the marble stone of his body were pitted by years of rain, grime and moss. The unblinking eyes, perfect hands, even the folds of his garment were beautiful.

Out came the camera. I shot him from many angles, full length, and then just his face. This was his most striking feature, for the elements had perfected him like no sculptor could, darkening his cheeks, lips and eyelids so that one half of his face was black, and the other, a creamy alabaster. The Saint. Both human and divine, somewhere between perdition and absolution. Apathy.

Tomb sculpture speaks to me, as it does to anyone who loves roaming in graveyards. On the day I found this statue of St. Anthony, a mist hung over the tiny cemetery of St. Joseph like a silvery veil, making the objects caught in its folds all the more mysterious and haunting. It also made me forget that this little haven is right across the street from a Costco. Despite its industrial niche, this small patch of sacred earth has the serene silence that all graveyards possess; an atmosphere that has drawn me through the gates season after season, year after year.

Because cemetery imagery elicited emotional responses, not just from me, but from other people who looked at them, I felt that something should be done with the pictures I had taken. I wanted to go beyond a photo essay, and eventually the idea came—a cemetery Tarot. I started playing with photographs, arranging them like puzzle pieces into the framework of a Raider-Waite Tarot. They fit neatly enough. Obelisks would be Swords, and Urns would do very well as Cups. Then the project faltered. Years later I discovered Leilah Wendell’s Gothic Tarot (Westgate Press, 1998), a majors-only deck combining New Orleans cemetery imagery with collage. Feeling that my own project was compromised because this avenue had now been explored, I bemoaned my fate to my mentor and friend Katharine Clark (An Irish Book of Shadows, Galde Press, 2001). She replied, as she had when I had first told her about the work, “You know, it doesn’t have to be a Tarot deck.”

Over the course of my relationship with the Tarot, I've seen numerous decks. Many are variations on the Raider Waite-model, illustrated with symbols systems or significant works of art and literature posed in the various tableaus of the Pamela Coleman-Smith drawings. Cemetery imagery could be plugged into this platform, but the questions arose: Could it stand on its own? And if so, how? Is it, like a DaVinci painting, the poetry of Blake or the plays of Shakespeare, “divinely inspired?” Does funerary art touch the face of God, and then reflect it back like a mirror, revealing a touchstone to the viewer?

I think so. Even at the most lucid of moments, (for no symbol is absolute or interpreted with perfect clarity), we see “through a glass darkly.” Yet, looking at those ivy clad statues and carvings trigger for me, and countless others, personal memories and awareness of those intangible facets of life shared by all people: faith, family, fellowship, and hope. I've seen similar reactions from both readers and querents to the Rider-Waite imagery. Who does not inwardly smile when the Ten of Cups shows its face in a reading, or cringe when the Tower looms in the future?

Any body of work that carries symbolism that resonates on a personal level can lend itself as a tool of meditation and divination. It is not necessary to plug each image into the Tarot formulary. They will create their own and, in doing so, potentially open a wider window for vision. But where to begin? We started using the Tarot as a springboard.

One of the first things Kat and I did was to go through the tarot and make a list of all of the possible feelings, situations etc. that each card conveyed. Next, we looked for those things expressed in cemetery art. As images were added, patterns emerged; there were light cards and shadow cards, there were stones and settings and shapes that spoke of the Divine, Physical, Mental, Social and Emotional state of humankind. One by one the pieces found their own suits. The end result was a deck of 71 cards depicting cemetery imagery that is not necessarily famous, but accessible and familiar to most people. It has capabilities, like the Tarot, of tapping into the Divine in order to seek direction, guidance, and answers. As with the Tarot, our Oracle deck is a journey. As Kat has written in the text that accompanies the cards, “If all the cards are laid out in a circle, the progression of the meanings can be seen as you move from spirit, to physical and beyond.” In their own unique way, the cemetery images conveyed aspects of achievements and disruptions. The process will work for any symbol system.

Another point that emerged in creating the oracle was this: lack of conformity to set formulas allows the creator to incorporate innovations. For us, it was a card depicting headstones flush against a church which we named The Wall. The graves in this photograph are in their original positions. Unfortunately, the building of a new annex wall nearly engulfed or eclipsed those markers. They are so close to the church structure that it is almost impossible to read the inscriptions. The Wall is an indication to stop the reading, as there are influences present making the information in the other cards tainted and unreliable.

There is always the argument that cards have set meanings. In a sense they do, but it is also true that both querent and reader will bring individual experiences, feelings, and memories to the images, whatever they may be. When working with a divination tool, the querent never looks at the symbols as she mixes and selects them. Her part is to meditate on her question or situation, put her energy into the tool, and allow her hands to order the cards - a sign of the Divine aspect at work. It is primarily the reader to whom the cards “speak”. When choosing a divination tool, a reader will naturally gravitate towards a symbol system to which they can relate, utilize traditional and textbook interpretations, and incorporate their own knowledge, affinity and experience. Allowing the symbols to evolve organically makes an oracle a living tool, one that is continually expanding, creating unlimited meanings. Querents and readers are encouraged to draw their own conclusions.

No divination tool resonates so soundly as one that you have made yourself, or in which you have invested your energies. Look around you. What imagery sings to your heart? Listen closely for the guidance and wisdom the Divine will whisper into your ear, and then like the Fool, follow it merrily to a new beginning.