Tag: card meaning

Every Year Has a New One In It

A bunch of new ones, actually.

When something is a circle, it doesn’t particularly start or stop at any one place. That is true of a year. Not only is it a circle, it is kind of an arbitrary way to chunk up time into manageable pieces. People invented the year as a way to describe time. Naturally, one of the best ways to do that is, well, nature. Seasons turn in the great circle of a year (yes, I know seasons are caused by planetary tilt and orbit which is actually an elipse, but I’m in no mood for pedantics)

Either way, when and how you mark the new year is pretty arbitrary. Celebrate it any time you like…or multiple times. Perception and emotions change in a blink. Each new moment can be a fresh start. Any day can be New Year’s Day.

This is that new school year time of year. We parents, I suspect, are a bit sentimental at the passage of time. Students, I suspect, are a mix depending on how they feel about school. I’m not sure what anyone is feeling or doing with the pandemic sized wrenches that have been thrown in everyone’s schedules.

I’m a fan of Fall, so I always look to this part of the year with a fairly high degree of anticipation. Even now that I’m no longer connected to the school year per se, I still feel a sort of anticipation. It brings the hope of cooler weather, back to business and a more predictable work flow, and of course, pumpkin spice everything. Harvest and Halloween as the mark of a new year resonates with me as much as confetti and champagne in January, maybe more so.

It felt right to do a Year Ahead reading today.

(I’m still trying to think of a better name for the layout. If you have any suggestions, please drop it in the comments. I’ll do a ‘year ahead’ email reading for you if I pick your name for the layout.)

By any name – any day is a good day for a new year. All you need to do is choose your moment and begin. Two “nine” cards is particularly draws my attention to September. Whether you are connected to the American school year or not, it feels like September might be an opportune energy environment for productivity. The song “Danger Zone” comes to mind, especially the part about “overdrive” In all fairness and full disclosure, that is when I’m planning to let some schemes out into the wild, so this bit might be projection on my part…take all of that with whatever size grain of salt you’d like.

Like the year ahead layout says, let’s begin with right now.

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Speaking of seasons and the equinox – That’s when the $10 off special price (website only) for the 7 card email Tarot reading disappears. Until then, you can get a full 7 card reading (the same layout used for in-person sessions) by email for only $1 for each year I’ve been reading Tarot cards.

Friyay Tarot

This weekend is going to be a busy one here, so Today’s Tarot is a Friyay Tarot looking at the weekend vibe.

Lucky you if this card is in your path! The nine of wands is about endurance, persistence, recovery. In some instances it has to do with setting boundaries but I don’t get any sense of that sort of thing here.

If stamina and persistence is thwarted or blocked, as the reversal would hint, then the next 72 hours might be a good time to stop struggling. Just stop. The struggle and persistence will still be there on Monday. Pick it up again later, but give it a rest for now.

That isn’t to say it is all fun and games. While playing as hard as you work can be healthy and healing, healing in itself can be hard work, especially on the emotional or spiritual level. Wands cards are associated with the element of fire, the inner world – spirituality, philosophy, your relationship with yourself. Outward battles may need a rest, outward progress and persistence may be blocked or slowed, but the hard work of inner growth and facing yourself is very much at hand. It is a weekend to give it all a rest while you do inner work that will, by comparison, make the external stuff seem easier later on. Witch Instagram tends to put this kind of thing in terms of “shadow work” or “breaking generational curses.” Whatever your tradition, whatever terms you put on it, it is a weekend to look yourself in the eye, and then be kind, nurturing, teaching and healing to the person that you see.

Today’s Tarot: It’s Essential

Things can’t get better if they don’t change. Without change, there can be no hope for improvement or problem solving.

It’s not change that we fear: it’s risk.

When things change, there is a danger that things can get worse. When things change, there is a risk of something precious ending or being lost.

If you remember it, it lives on.

We can’t control change. Life brings change and all the risk that entails – but it brings the possibility of brighter days right along with it.

Today’s Tarot: From a Certain Point of View

Deja Vu. Have we just had this card and this energy recently? There is something out there, in the general zeitgeist energies that is a bit of a flashback replay.

I try to be vigilant about blaming my own issues or emotions on energy, spirit, or any of this psychic intuitive thing…true enough, this could be my annual ‘I don’t like August’ funk, but the volume is turned up higher than usual. I’m not sure what or why, but there is some abstract something that feels like March 2020. Yes, I have my own stuff that probably accounts for a big part of it, and no, I’m not going to share any of it here because I’m very protective of everyone’s privacy, but still, there is some something in the ethers that’s ringing the old intuitive-sensitive bell too.

Has anyone else noticed anything like that or is it just my need for another cup of coffee and a nap? Seriously. Comments and email are open.

For whatever reason, this card and its energy today seems all too familiar.

There were a few ideas so equal, it was hard to pick one for the video caption. First there is the boilerplate “it all depends on your perspective” idea. Think about the view from the standing person’s perspective vs the seated person’s perspective on the card. The standing person can see the way ahead is actually clear and can see the landscape fully for what it really is. If the seated person sees anything of the landscape or the water, it is through sharp edges, gaps in a wall of swords.It is very much reminescent of that Obiwan line from Star Wars about what he told Luke being true “from a certain point of view.” or the parable of the blind men and the elephant. Small shifts in perspective can create big changes in feeling and understanding.

Equal with the idea of perspective, the energy idea of obstacles steps forward. Funny thing, obstacles. Seems like you will either crash into them, crash through them, or figure a way around them. If an obstacle is perpetually floating just in front of you, like swords stuck in the canoe you are riding in, is it really an obstacle at all?

Today’s Tarot: Learn by Doing

“No plan survives first contact with implementation” – unknown

“Follow the process, not the plan” – Adam Savage

“Actually sir, after all these years, I just, sort of, go with it.” – Harry Potter (Half-Blood Prince, JK Rowling and yeah, her anti-trans stance has soured the books for me)

You can read books until the cows come home, but there is no substitute for actual experience, and that includes the experience of explaining something. While it may not be the high stakes intensity of “see one, do one, teach one” in medical training, the same concept applies to most things, including Tarot, intuition development.

Don’t get me wrong. Books are treasures. Reading is invaluable. Especially about things we can’t easily access in the real world. Books open vistas of space and time we otherwise could never experience. Reading, learning, growing are life long things, or at least they should be.

I love writing stuff. But a writer can’t fit what they write to everyone. Even when I write a custom Tarot reading with your own unique card layout, you are still involved. Writers encode information…we as readers are responsible for decoding and implementing the information. Which isn’t always as easy as it sounds. That’s where Adam Savage’s advice and Harry Potters adaptability comes into play. Things never go perfectly to plan, so we have to rely on the processes we know and just go with it. Good or bad, a result will happen. Good or bad, there is something to be learned from what we do as much as what we read.

Then comes Einstein

“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough” – Albert Einstein

Explain something. That will teach it to you as much as anything. Try to explain it – whatever your “it” is – simply. Writing leads to understanding as much as it demonstrates understanding. Maybe more. Such is the value of blogs and journals. You don’t have to be Hemingway to write. You don’t have to share it or effectively educate other people. Write, teach something. Even if it is just in your imagination, if you learn from what you teach, either through the process or the end product, then it is mission accomplished.

There is no teacher quite like experience. Any topic can benefit from a little learn by doing…especially if that doing includes a little simplification, synthesis, teaching and explaining to help you really wrap your head around the topic at hand.

Today’s Tarot: Apply Liberally

Before you get your underwear in a bunch, liberally in this case is used in its dictionary definition, not in a politically knee jerk one.

In other words “in large or generous amounts”

Justice is a large, complex, difficult, ever-changing topic, and getting more so every day. No wonder in the prediction-oriented early days, the card was simplified as an omen about a literal legal issue. Tarot doesn’t pretend to have all the answers to anything this big, and it certainly can’t predict with certainty the outcome of any legal issue.

It can, however, remind us of key ingredients for Justice writ large: wisdom & compassion. It can hint at how energies are flowing, or alternatively, how to nudge energies in the direction you want them to flow.

Martin Luther King, jr told us that the arc of the moral universe is long but bends toward justice.

From what I’ve seen, it only bends so because of the weight of generations of good people, the weight of untold millions of individual acts of kindness and wisdom pulling it in that direction.

Today’s Tarot: Rent Well Spent

“Money can’t buy happiness. But it sure can rent it for a while.”

Kim Grunenfelder, comedien

Invest in your happiness. It helps if you can be happy with things that fit your budget.

“Simple pleasures are the last healthy refuge in a complex world.” – Oscar Wilde

Today’s Tarot: Coffee and Contemplation

I’m so not a morning person.

One of my absolute favorite lines from any series ever was in Stranger Things when Sheriff Hopper said that “mornings are for coffee and contemplation.”

*raises mug of dark roast to THAT idea*

The Four of Cups has that sort of feel to it. Cups cards reflect close circle relationships. You can’t get any closer to you than you. Tarot is first and foremost an art form of personal development and personal internal spiritual practice. All that crime drama horror movie predict the future fix your love life nonsense is exactly that. Unsurprisingly, all of the cards have some aspect, even a minor one, that can help us to engage with life in a more satisfying way. You know, like the “personal enrichment” use in the small print disclaimer.

When I say satisfying I mean satisfying like a hot cuppa coffee on a day that starts just a little too early.

The Four of Cups has been read to mean all sorts of things: dissatisfaction, (look at the guy’s pouting toddler body language on the card) moping, abiding, meditation, abiding with emotional pain, thoughts or activity below the surface, serenity, meditation, contemplation.

The idea that steps most forward to my mind is the meditation and contemplation one.

I ‘hear’ (meaning that the intuition comes as mental words instead of mental images, so no, when I say that I’m not hearing things for goodness’ sake) – but “meet your meditation where it lives.”

And I do mean meditation.

For some a long run is meditative. Knitting is meditative. Braiding bullwhips is meditative. For others it is the classic cushin sitting zazen TM meditation style. As I understand it, there is a lot of overlap between zen, ch’an, taoist and transcendental meditation styles and it seems that everyone who tries it, loves it. Meditation is a pleasure. If not, I suspect you’ve been told something if not wrong, at least unhelpful.

But anyway, the point is you can sit under any tree to meditate. You don’t have to sit under a tree at all. Meditating is easy. Finding where and how it naturally, easily fits into your life is a good first step.

Even if your first meditative step of the day is contemplating a good mug of coffee.

Today’s Tarot: Of two minds, and neither one has an answer

Of the different meanings for the Two of Swords, “of two minds” comes to mind. A lot of times when we think of that, it means that two options are equal, and there is no obvious, logical, good way to decide between the two. There is six of one and half dozen of the other as they saying goes.

So what do you do when you are of two minds and both options are equal: equally bad that is? What do you do when you don’t know what to do at all? What do you do when you are of two minds and neither one of them knows what to do?

It’s ok not to know. It’s ok for some things to be unknowable. And it’s ok to try and find out. If you don’t know, ask. If you don’t know, learn. If you don’t know, welcome to the universe. It is like that sometimes. We haven’t figured it all out, and that’s OK too.

“I’d rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”

Richard Feynman