The road so far...

So over the past about year and a bit, I have completed 29 and a half Harry Potter tarot cards. I have written posts for most of them, some I haven't posted yet. The list of the ones I've completed are on the blog, but I thought it would be cool to get a group photo.

Because there are so many, it's hard to get all of them together. So I also took this photo:

and one of each one of them in their groups:

The Major Arcana:

Gryffindor:

Hufflepuff:

 Slytherin:

Ravenclaw:

Just thought it was pretty cool. I've done a lot, but I still have 48 and a half more cards left to do. :)

2 of Gryffindor: Domination

  
(I wanted the picture to be a little better so it was easier to see the work I put into it. I might upload a new one in the future)

2 of Gryffindor: Domination

Meaning of card facing you: future plans, progress, decisions
Meaning of card facing away from you: fear of unknown, lack of plans

The Ministry of Magic can represent future plans in many ways. Many people, like Hermione, spend their years at Hogwarts preparing for the future by making sure they know enough magic to get into the field they want to work in. In fourth year, Hermione creates SPEW which is an organization that is supposed to be about the protection of Elfish welfare. She doesn't make very much from it but it marks the beginning of her wanting to get involved in magical creature rights. Later, after the war, she ends up in the law department of the Ministry of Magic.

Voldemort had plans for the Ministry of Magic. He wanted to take over the Wizarding world and a very effective way of doing that is infiltrating the Ministry. After taking over by using Imperio-ed wizards and witches, he begins an anti-muggle/muggleborn/halfblood campaign. Obviously these plans don't work out once Harry defeats Voldemort, but it shows that the Ministry was a stepping stone for Voldemort's plans.

You are probably wondering how the Ministry of Magic could fall to one wizard, but the answer is fairly easy. The fear of the unknown made the Ministry a very unstable thing to hold onto. Fudge did not want to believe Harry or Dumbledore that Voldemort was back because he feared that this was the truth. The Minister stuck his head in the dirt and allowed horrible things to happen around him because he didn't want to face the facts. This lead to the Azkaban breakout, Death Eater recruitment, and more. There was a lack of information being given to the public because the Ministry was stopping it from being spread. If the Ministry had, instead of being scared, worked with the Order of the Phoenix, Harry, and Dumbledore, Voldemort might have had a very hard time getting back into power and a lot of damage could have been prevented.

The Ministry of Magic, though it has many problems, is a place of progress and decisions. It's a place where people make laws, and enforce them, as well as creating things for the sake of learning and discovering more about magic. In the fifth book and onwards, we learn more about how the Ministry works. Harry gets taken in for a hearing regarding his use of magic outside of school. There is also the Department of Mysteries where Unspeakables make experiments with magic and do many things they do not speak about. The Ministry is decision making and progress with these things and more, its many departments moving it along and taking care of business.

It's important to remember how much influence the Ministry has. Though it can be incompetent and unwilling to face reality, it controls many things like the newspaper, regulations, school things and more and when it actually uses its power (like Voldemort did) it shows how dominant and strong it can be.

3 of Gryffindor: Exploration

3 of Gryffindor: Exploration

 <-- sketches


Meaning of the card when it's facing you: preparation, foresight, expansion, enterprise
Meaning of the card when it's facing away from you: delays, lack of foresight

The Pensieve is a something that gives the user access to his or her memories  by watching them happen in real time. It can represent expansion because it gives you more room in your head. It allows you to take a memory out of your brain and store it away from later. That way, you don't lose any of your thoughts and you make room for new ones. It can also help you expand your knowledge because sometimes even if you remember something, you might not remember it exactly and miss details that are important. with the Pensieve, that isn't a problem. It can be an enterprise because it is a successful in the things that it is supposed to do (which in this case would be storing peoples' memories and allowing them to view them when desired).

I'm not sure how foresight-y it is. You could probably make predictions and assumptions about the future from looking over your memories enough to find patterns or something. You could record moments of foresight, like Dumbledore did with Trelawney's prophecy. You could also have the foresight to save the memories in the Pensieve to view at a time when they are important.

Because the Pensieve lets you look at your memories, it can help you prepare for the reason that you can see what has happened and figure out might be happening. Harry was able to view memories that Dumbledore collected about horcruxes. Without this arsenal of information, Harry would not have been able to hunt down the horcruxes, or even have any idea what they might be. And without that, he would not have been able to defeat Voldemort.

Ghost of Gryffindor

Ghost of Gryffindor

  <-- sketches


Meaning of card when it's facing you: enthusiasm, exploration, discovery, free spirit
Meaning of card when it's facing away from you: setbacks to new ideas, pessimism, lack of direction

Nearly Headless Nick is the beloved Gryffindor ghost. He's proud and kind. He talks to the students at meals and in the hallways, waving, talking, story-telling enthusiastically about the school and people and things that he has heard and seen over the years. He is eager to share his knowledge with Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and anyone else to asks. I think in general, he is one of the most liked ghosts in the school- or by the Gryffindors anyway. They great him in the hallways and sit with him at dinner.

Going along with that, Nick can represent discovery and exploration because he helps the Golden Trio come to understand things and know things that they might not have. He tells them about the Sorting Hat, and the House Elves which makes Hermione upset and leads her to starting SPEW in support of Elvish rights. He invites them to his death-day party and they get a full experience of how ghosts party and taste things and their goals in death- Nick's being joining the Headless Hunt. They also learn more about Peeves and Myrtle which turns out to be helpful later on. Nick tells Harry about the after life in the fifth book and explains how some people become ghosts though others don't and that Sirius won't be coming back. He helps Harry again in the seventh book by pointing out the Grey Lady to him. Without that, Harry might not have known important things about the diadem and might not have been able to find it.

He could be a set back of new ideas because Harry thought that Sirius could become a ghost and Nick told him that he couldn't. Lack of direction because his only goal really is to be part of the Headless Hunt which is futile because he isn't even headless and they have already rejected him a few times. He has a few setbacks and people might not respect him as much as he deserves, mostly because he's a ghost, but he helps Harry out a lot from getting out of a run in with Filch to giving him information that he needed during the war.

Head of Gryffindor

Head of Gryffindor

 <-- sketches


Meaning of the card when it's facing you: natural born leader, vision, entrepreneur, honor
Meaning of the card when it's facing away from you: impulsiveness, haste, ruthlessness, high expectations

Minerva McGonagall is my favorite teacher in the books, Remus being the second, and Crouch-Moody being the third tied with Trelawney.

She is the head of Gryffindor, Deputy Headmistress, and Transfiguration teacher at Hogwarts. She is strict and smart, but kind, caring, and understanding. She is a natural born leader because even if we don't know her from before the years that Harry was in school, it is still clear that she has natural leadership. Her students listen to her and respect her. They worry about the homework that they have to do for her and performing spells right in her class, but they know, especially the Gryffindors, that she is understanding and insightful and cares about them. Dumbledore values her opinion and thinks of her almost as an equal. She challenges him sometimes, which shows how healthy their (platonic) relationship was.

Some students of hers would say she is ruthless and has high expectations. Her classes are hard and full of fancy spell-work that are difficult to perform. Even Hermione struggles in her class. Transfiguration in general is very difficult magic and it takes someone who is a strong wizard of witch to teach it.

McGongall is kind of the opposite of impulsiveness and haste. In the first book, Harry, Ron, and Hermione burst into her room and ask for help. Because there doidn't seem to be any actual evidence or danger, instead of rushing off like the three of them would like her to do, she tells them to calm down. She actually helps calm Harry down a lot over the years. She advises him not be be impulsive around Umbridge so that he didn't get into trouble. He didn't listen to her and suffered the consequences. She is a thin barrier between Umbridge's haste-y negative decisions towards Harry and Harry's impulsive urge to speak the truth when it comes to Umbridge.

There is a lot about McGonagall that we don't really know mostly because she is a teacher and therefore Harry wouldn't know much about her anyway. She is a strong caring leader who can take care of herself in a fight and isn't afraid to assign scary amounts of homework. 

6 of Gryffindor: Victory

The 6 of Gryffindor [Victory*]

This is the first card I made. I had been sketching out different ideas for symbols and characters and it was the one I was the most confident about.

Sketches that I've made

When the card is pointing at you, it represents public recognition, victory, progress, self confidence. When it is facing away from you, it represents egotism, lack or confidence, fall from grace.

I chose the Golden Snitch (or Quidditch in general)  to represent these things. In the Harry Potter world, Quidditch is a sport that everyone knows (in fact, it is really the only sport we hear about, except maybe chess). Every wizard child loves or knows about Quidditch enough to get excited about it. It's a game of skill, speed, and strategy that comes with recognition when you win.

The first time Quiddtich becomes important is in the first book. Draco Malfoy took a Remembrall that Neville had dropped and threw, goading Harry into flying even though he was told not to. When Professor McGonagall sees how easy Harry catches the ball out of the air, she takes him to see Oliver Wood, the Gryffindor Quidditch captain and Harry is made Seeker of the team. At this time, Quidditch is made important not only by the fact that Harry is the youngest to join a house team in a 100 years or that everyone gets excited by that fact that Harry did but also because it is a victory for Harry over Draco. It shows Draco that making fun of people is not a good thing to do and that there are consequences to being nasty.

The Snitch is also one of the sure ways for a Quidditch team to win a game. When they catch it, they receive 150 points. We find out in the fourth book that there are circumstances where the Snitch does not win the game, but as a general rule for the Hogwarts games, the team that catches it, wins the game.

Quidditch also can represent victory from Ron's perspective. At first he was doubtful of his abilities as a Keeper and often fumbled, causing his team to lose. The Slytherins made fun of him for it, which brings down his confidence even more. (This is an example of the cards meaning when it is facing away from you) In the sixth book, Harry pretends to slip Ron a potion to make him luck (Felix Felicis) and this causes Ron to think that he will get lucky when in the game. Because Ron did not actually take the potion, he was running on self confidence and was able to save all the goals that the opposing side was trying to make against him. Without confidence, Ron failed, but with it, he was unstoppable and victorious. 

*One of the inspirations that I took (a rather strong word here, but I can't really think of another in it's place) from Ellygator. All of her card 2-10 of each suit have a name that is associated with it. Based on the descriptions that I found of each card, I agree with her titles. The other places I looked did not have titles like this for their cards, so I'm not sure if other decks have them, but I really liked them so that is why "took" them.