I have enough cards now that I am starting to run into a number problem, in the sense that when I'm trying to make a numerological correspondence to the card meaning, the number I want to use is pretty much already taken. Not only that, but there are gaps between numbers that I've used... for example, I have an eight and a ten, but no nine. I can either leave the gap and have a deck that's numbered non-sequentially, or I can just start randomly filling the gaps with card numbers that don't necessarily correspond to the meaning. This is a lot of babble to throw at you, I know. This card is the first of the latter option.
In a tarot deck, cart #9 is THE HERMIT -- and this design is anything but Hermit-ish. About the only correspondence I can make between this card and the number 9 is in John Lennon's morbid obsession with the number.
So -- I'm going to have to play fast and loose with the correspondences in order to have a deck with consecutively-numbered cards and no gaps between them.
The Scarecrow and Tin Man are normally as well-behaved as any of Oz's denizens. But when W.W. Denslow was essentially fired as the series' illustrator. he went on to write and draw his own, non-canon adventures of the two characters -- and in Denslow's universe they were immediately up to no good. In fact they might have taken a lesson from Mister Toad in the way they caused devastation with a motor vehicle and wound up afoul of the law.
-- Freder.
