The Nine of Blades.

Nine of Blades 1.2

Traditionally depicted as a woman in bed, dressed in her nightclothes with her hands over her face as she weeps, nine swords hanging point down on the wall over her bed.

Nine of Blades 2.1

It’s a rather unambiguous card- worry, anxiety, dread. Bad news that comes unexpectedly. The dark night of the soul. That niggling doubt which keeps us awake at night.

I wanted to preserve the feel of the card; the somewhat ominous beauty of the image. I also knew immediately that I wanted to use this quilt in the background- it’s a quilt I made with my step-mother before I was married of fabric that largely came from my late grandmother’s stash of quilting supplies.

Nine of Blades 4.1

I’m really pleased with how some of these worked out- the lighting was hard because it was so dim, but I really like that in a lot of the images we can see that Stephanie is flesh and bone, tendons and sinew. It’s that humanity that makes this card work, I think- the knowledge that this fear, this worry, is all too rooted in our own human guts and nerves.

Nine of Blades 6.2