The Bitter Suite

I am really aging myself here, but one of my biggest influences in my early days of learning the tarot was an episode of Xena: Warrior Princess, “The Bitter Suite.” It aired on 02 February 1998 and was instantly a huge thing on the early internet, and it really stirred the possibility of scholarly interest in fandom. My little nerd moment aside, the imagery was amazing, and I wanted to soak up every bit of it. I did this by using my Paint Shop Pro skills and on-line graphics and screen capture sites to make a study deck for myself.

Two and a half decades, and many moods later, I no longer have those cards, but certain images are burned into my head. The episode, of course, is ripe with Major Arcana influences and images (Xena and Ares as the Devil; Gabrielle as the Empress; The Wheel of Fortune.) In my deck, the Seven of Swords was a broken Chakram. The meaning behind the image, and the card is betrayal, deception, lies and trickery.