Action Eases Anxiety: Choose and Protect

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Reading left to right:

What it is: The Whip. Harshness or conflict is at hand. Even if it doesn’t directly involve you, it impacts the environment where you live and function. Think of war or inflation that makes things worse for everyone. Now is not a time for impulse. Prepare for any storms, real or metaphoric, as best as you can. A paramedic instructor once told me that “if you prepare for the emergency, then the emergency goes away” meaning that it doesn’t change what is actually happening but it seems like less of a scary big deal than it would have otherwise been. Calm is contagious.

What to do: The Key. The Key card indicates that a choice is at hand. The choices we make today are the key that unlocks (not predicts) our future. Choosing not to choose is still a choice. You can choose inaction. You can choose to watch, wait, learn. You can choose to accept the outcome of inaction or you can choose to do everything you can to unlock the outcome you want. In the words of David Axelrod of the Barak Obama presidential campaign “The least we can do is everything we can do.”

Even if things don’t go the way you want, at least go into that situation knowing you did everything you could to make it right.

The time has come to choose your side. The fence, the middle ground has thinned so that those who do not choose will fall unwillingly to one side or another. Action speaks louder than words. Inaction is no longer silent.

In the words of Desmund Tutu, “If you remain neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

How to do it: The Bear. The Lenormand Tarot deck gained popularity in the eighteenth century, but bears symbolized protection then just as much as our ‘mama bear’ meme does today. Important choices are seldom easy and even less often consequence free. Protection can guide some choices. Choose the thing that protects your path forward. Choose the thing that protects the people you love (including you.) Choose the thing that protects your resources during lean times. Choose what lets you see the happiness you already have. Choose the path that protects your inner peace.

Deck: Healing Light Lenormand by Christopher Butler copyright 2021 all rights reserved used with permission llwellynpublishing.com

Action Eases Anxiety: Portal

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Current Energy: THE KEY. This is a time of transition, a liminal portal from one cycle to another – not quite finished, not quite begun. This energy is akin to a blend of the RWS eight of cups and the Magician energy than the pure beginning energy of the Fool card. This isn’t pure beginning. It is manifesting in the context of a new cycle. This resounding quiet is a potent time to plant the seeds of being and set intentions to manifest in the future.

Next Step: CLOUDS. Endings and beginnings both carry potent emotions. When endings and beginnings come close together, as in a closed circle, the emotions can be intensified. Be kind to yourself. Remember moods and emotions are transient as clouds. Let go. You can’t grasp the mist.

Action, doing something, can ease the anxiety and worries that can’t help but persist if we do nothing but wonder ‘what if…’ Action is necessary for there to be change, for anything to actually manifest. But the first step in any action begins in the invisible, begins with thought or decision. Making an action plan is as essential as the action itself, no matter how quickly that thought or decision or plan happens.

Making a decision – even the decision to do nothing – is in itself an action that eases anxiety.

Deck: Healing Light Lenormand by Christopher Butler copyright 2021 all rights reserved used with permission Lo Scarabo / Llwellyn publishing.