Gargoyles…

“What are these fantastic monsters doing in the cloisters under the very eyes of the brothers as they read?  What is the meaning of these unclean monkeys, strange savage lions and monsters?  To what purpose are here placed these creatures, half beast, half man?  I see several bodies with one head and several heads with one body.  Here is a quadruped with a serpent’s head, there a fish with a quadruped’s head, then again an animal half horse, half goat…Surely if we do not blush for such absurdities we should at least regret what we have spent on them.” -- St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 12th Century.

Strange, fanciful creatures indeed.  And they make their appearance in this equally strange and fanciful major arcana deck created by German artist, Helmut Wonschick.

Ah!  What did you say?  What is a gargoyle?  Well, I am so glad that you asked that question because this deck sent me happily off on an exploration of this unique art form.  Along my way, I was introduced to entire colonies of gargoyles, grotesques and chimeres.  And, believe it or not, this information will be of value when you consider why Wonschick chose this as one of two art forms used to portray his tarot images.

First, a history lesson.  A small one, I promise.

The original purpose of a gargoyle was to drain water away from the sides of a building.  The word comes from the French “gargouille”, which means “throat or pipe”.  However, the history of the gargoyle extends much further back in time.  They were “alive and well” in ancient Greece.  They especially flourished in and around the Middle Ages (700 A.D. – 1450 A.D).

Now technically, a gargoyle is only called such if it serves its purpose as a drainpipe.  If its purpose is not strictly utilitarian, then it falls into a general category called a “grotesque” or “chimeres” (monster).

Grotesques served a number of other functions.  They were an adornment of the house of God.  They were carved by many, many people and took a number of forms:  animals, people, demons, fantastic creatures or conglomerations of interesting little symbols or other devices.  Many of them verge on the absurd with their large grins, toothy smiles and protruding tongues.  They were believed by many to serve as protectors, relating to the idea that in order to keep away “evil spirits”, something frightening must be used.

Why all this importance placed on some strange, stony images?  Well, to understand this, you must try to imagine the medieval person’s powerful belief in God.  The cathedral was a manifestation of their faith.  Every person in the community contributed something to the building of a cathedral.  Many who had no money to give labored on the cathedral from start to finish.  To the medieval person, the cathedral was the most beautiful structure on earth and no task was considered too arduous for the glory of God.

The cathedral sent messages to its people in many ways.  Its very presence was a testament to the Almighty.  However, it was also a “sermon in stone”.  This was necessary for a population that was mostly illiterate.  What better way to “illustrate” Bible stories, or communicate the frightening idea of “eternal damnation” than in the images set into the very stone of the cathedral itself.

So, we see that grotesques served several purposes.  As “gargoyles” (drainspouts), they prevented water from pooling on rooftops and running down the sides of the buildings.  As “grotesques”, they could be put on the outsides of cathedrals to prevent evil spirits from lingering.  But most important (for our purposes) was their ability to tell a story.  The story was told using imagery that the people would understand without words…imagery relevant to their times.

Now step forward in time to the 20th Century.  The National Cathedral in Washington D.C. (which is just minutes from my house) employed a great number of stonecarvers, during its construction, many of them painstakingly carving the gargoyles and grotesques so reminiscent of the cathedrals in Europe.  With some interesting differences.  At the National Cathedral, the gargoyles are not all medieval fanciful monsters.  There are very modern ones as well.  This is in keeping with the tradition that grotesques and gargoyles are used to tell stories and to represent situations or symbols of the current day.  If you walk through the National Cathedral, you will see some very strange grotesques that do not at all fit the “image” of the traditional sculptures.  A camera and a computer…both are instantly recognizable as icons of our “age”; doubly interesting because they, in turn, are communication devices themselves, just like the grostesque itself (a story within a story).  There is a rooster holding a can of film with the film wrapped around his neck, forming a bowtie (a recognition to a contributor to the Cathedral fund who was a film maker).

Images and icons relative to the people of the current times.  Telling their stories.

Which is how Wonschick uses them in his tarot.

However, Wonschick doesn’t stop there.  He has used another art form upon which to build his tarot images.  He takes his little creatures and other symbols and assembles them on quite another platform…a totem pole.

We are all probably very familiar in some cursory way with the totem pole.  What may not be so well known is just how important these were to the families and communities that created them.  For certain cultures who had no written language, the totem pole served as a way to portray the clan’s deeply meaningful symbols, family crests, prestige, adventures, stories, wars…anything of importance and significance.  Here too, deeply symbolic images abound…bear, wolf, half-man, sea serpent, red snapper, wild woman…

Like the stone images an ocean away, these totem images served as a means of communicating ideas, stories, histories…anything of importance or deep meaning.

Upon these two unique art forms, Wonschick has “built” his tarot images.

I say “built” because, as you cast your eye over the cards, you will notice how much Wonchick’s drawings resemble sculptures.  You can see how he has layered his series of grotesques, symbols and other objects into these vertical totem poles.

You can almost feel the textures.  There is a sense of solidity to the renderings that compliments his blending of these two art forms.  A marriage of two communication devices…all the better to “tell” his tarot story.

Kaplan calls Wonschick’s structures “totem poles of the unconscious”.  This is probably not a phrase he thought up himself and I am going under the assumption that he is probably quoting the artist.

If these are indeed totem poles of the unconscious, you’d better dust off your intuitive nerve endings, reach for your favorite reference on symbols and get ready to work because, as Kaplan says “the designs of Wonschick’s tarot can be interpreted only through imagination and free association."

Which is really just a very high-class way of saying “hey guys, there’s no little white booklet with this deck, so you’re on your own."

Challenge accepted.

Let’s begin with the Fool (Narr).  Here, we see the first of several “double-ended” cards.  The Fool, our traveler, is just beginning to crack through the thin veneer of his outer shell.  We see his face emerging, his happy smile and innocent eye gazing innocently outward.  He holds his walking staff in one hand.  The other hand reaches down to the reverse image, that of a window, which he is gently pushing open with his fingertips. Through the window he will go and be on his way.  The road is beckoning.

The Magician card (Zauberin), is a rendering of the tools the Fool will need as he begins his journey.  The sword and the wand are easy to see.  The coin is cleverly residing atop the totem poem, looking very much like an eye.  The cups hold up the magician’s table, which, in this rendering, is the black and white checkered surface…representing opposing forces or concepts…light vs. dark (notice that one cup is white, the other black), order vs. chaos, good vs. evil…for how can there be true unity, wholeness and reciprocity without these dualities?  The idea of unity and totality is further emphasized by the ouroborus which has unobtrusively twined himself around the base of the structure.  The ouroborus…symbol of eternity…immobile, yet in perpetual motion, the end and the beginning…alpha and omega.

The Emperor (Herrscher) is another rendering incorporating only symbols to relay its meaning.  Here, we see some of the traditional symbols…the Ram’s heads (symbols of Aries), the crown, the staffs resting confidently and authoritatively upon a small globe (representing dominion over worldly matters).  Here is not one, but two shields for the Emperor (one shield bears the initials of the artist and the year the drawings were created).  A small triangle further symbolizes the attributes of the Emperor…fire, heat, solar energy.
The Chariot card is a delight.  The “chariot” has become a ship.  And here is a curious thing…the horses (one black and one white…again emphasizing the concepts of duality and counterbalance) are not pulling the chariot, rather, they are riding within it.  The ship is being guided by two mermaids…the black guiding the white horse, the white guiding the black horse (duality upon duality).  The Hindu symbol, the lingam-yoni (union of male/female, positive/negative) makes this card instantly identifiable.

Let’s move on to the Hanged Man (Kunst).  The first thing we notice is the downward-pointing triangle (representing water, subconscious), which supports the leg of the Hanged Man.  He has gone deep into the earth, his head barely visible through the earthy roots of his capsule-shaped cocoon.  His eyes are closed, his face has a rapt expression.  He is deeply submerged in the unconscious.  When he emerges, he will never be quite the same again.

We see a true grotesque in the Devil card (Teufel).  Here are the classic features…the protruding tongue, the exaggerated facial expressions.  A pentacle rests between his horns.  He holds a staff over his pot belly which, as it extends into the reversed image below becomes….a serpent which has wrapped itself around a chalice held by a young male.  This young man is not alert to the enticements and subsequent dangers offered by the Devil…he is too busy dreaming of a young female, whose nude dream-image floats overhead.  Dreams, desires, the allure of the contents of the chalice (which is discreetly but inexorably connected to the Devil)…all draw this young man into the spell of the Horned One.

The Moon (Mond) gives us another interesting grotesque.  In this image, the lobster has become half lobster, half woman.  A small moon levitates above her right hand.  Her eyes (without pupils), stare blindly and vacantly.  Illusion has clouded her vision.  The lobster claws sprout from her head, reaching upward to grasp a circle containing a triangle (form held within the circle of unity).  She is still partially submerged in the waters of the subconscious.  Two fish peer upward towards her.  The small globe from which sprout two cords (one culminating in a feather, the other a shell), bear a strong resemblance to the female anatomy.

Freeze-framed within a strip of camera film is the World (Welt).  Here, the World is surrounded by what appears to be a mobius strip rendered in the shape of a lemniscate.  The revolving globe, the leminscate, the mobius strip…all these images emphasize the cyclic nature of the spiritual journey.  The strip of camera film further brings home the point that this image represents one single moment, for, just as the cycle completes itself, it will begin again and all that will be left of what has been will be a memory.  The spiritual journey is eternal and ever evolving.  This card, this particular “piece” of the journey is but a “snapshot” in time.

The Wonschick Tarot is beautifully rendered in pen & ink and was published in 1984 by Kunstmaler.  The cards measure 3 ¼ x 5 1/8.  Included with the 22 arcana is a title card bearing its own totem pole, with the initials of the artist engraved on the pedestal.  There is also a card containing a small poem that introduces all the cards and briefly outlines the spiritual “journey”.  Its last line is of particular interest and is roughly translated as follows:

“We leave it as fools, if we do not dare from time to time to look into the mirror.”

Which makes perfect sense because, if we do not face ourselves honestly and sincerely, do we not walk through, and eventually leave this world, as fools?

As if to emphasize his point, Wonschick has created a cardback that is meant to depict a blank mirror.  However, if I had not read this in Kaplan, I would never have picked up on it.

The Wonschick Tarot (a.k.a Bilder zum Tarot) was printed in a limited edition of 1000 decks.  It is very hard to find.  I saw it appear just recently on Ebay, where it fetched quite a price.

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Guest Review Copyright 2000 by Paula Gibby
used with permission