Left: Ace of Pentacles. Take a factual inventory of your resources at hand. You might be better off than it feels. Think MacGyver reruns.
Center: Eight of Pentacles. Literally make something. That’s how the species has survived since time immemorial. Make something real with your full attention, and feel the survival instincts of your ancestors seep through. Think Joss Whedon quote “Write it. Shoot it. Publish it. Crochet it, saute it, whatever. Make.”
Right: Wheel of Fortune. Change is the one thing that doesn’t change. Things changed to get us from the way things used to be into how they are now. They will never change back to exactly the way things were…they may change into somethjng even better. If ‘what goes up must come down’, then what is down will eventually come up again.
Every change requires a choice, and every choice results in change.
Change and choice are two sides of the same coin in both subtle and obvious ways. If we choose something radically different from what we have been doing, the change is obvious. Once again I’m reminded of what Chris Chibnall wrote for Doctor Who
“The future pivots around you, here, now. So do good.”
But what about the future when no choice is made, nothing is done. What is the change there? No choice, no change, right? Not entirely.
A physician I used to work with often said that the decision not to decide is still a decision. In that case, the change comes in mindset rather than external circumstances. If you decide to decide later it relieves stress in the present moment, which in turn can help us see clearer, get more information, and you guessed it…make a better decision later on. Not deciding makes for less stress and better judgement….both of which are a change from the initial mental state.
Deliberately deciding to stay the course, and persist is a choice. Only time will tell if it was a wise one or not. Deliberately deciding to NOT change externally still has internal impacts. One possibility is that choosing to stay on a path changes your level of confidence and courage and persistence for the better.
Even in the most passive, oblivious scenario possible, where no choice is made, time changes. Don’t choose, and by default things will still change around you, like or not. Load the change side of the wheel with enough time and external change, it will eventually force a choice. At some point or another, we all wind up choosing if we are happy with our circumstances or not. Once that question is answered, we must choose if we are going to do anything about it or not. If we choose stagnation, we change relative to the world around us that is not stagnant.
Like two sides of a moving wheel, choice and change are very much connected. If you want a change, it requires a choice. Make a choice, even if that choice is to do nothing, some sort of change will still come in time.
A few days ago, we looked at the question of why cards sometimes turn up repeatedly in readings, regardless of whether you are getting readings or giving them. As I was uploading the post, I could almost hear a chorus of “It’s Mercury Retrograde” coming from social media as a hot take explanation of why life lessons are hard to learn; why messages aren’t being heard well and why cards have repeating lately.
I disagree. Understanding and enacting an important life lesson often takes much longer than any given Mercury retrograde. It takes more than a Mercury year. It can take multiple Earth years. Any retrograde of any planet in any solar system is no more than a trick of forced perspective. It is the relative movement of a very close planet compared to very distant stars. It is a little like those photos where it looks like someone is holding up the leaning tower of Pisa or holding the setting sun in the palm of their hand. As the animation above shows us, shift your point of view, and POOF! no retrograde. Only normal cycles of planets – and of nature – remain.
I have seen, however, a connection between repeating Tarot cards and one particular planet’s orbit. It isn’t Mercury; It’s Earth. The Wheel card in particular speaks to these cycles. When the Wheel shows up, think about natural cycles that may be moving through your life. There is also a subtext of adaptation. We must move with the wheel of time and natural cycles, or be crushed beneath it. This is a good example of a difficult life lesson that takes time to learn, don’t you think?
Seasons of the year are an obvious natural cycle. Over time, I’ve seen several cards cluster around summer and winter. They seem to capture the essence of the season. I often see cards like the 9 of cups, the 4 of wands or the 3 of cups turn up frequently around the Winter holidays. It fits Those holidays are akin to the cards with celebrations, traditions, family foundations and social connections all at top of mind that time of year.
Summer cards are a bit more subtle.
We think of summer as an active time, and it is. Yet it needs balance. In the winter, we balance the seasonal cold with warm things: woolly clothes, fires in fireplaces, spices, warm drinks, candles, lights. Summer needs balanced with cool drinks, sitting in the shade, loose cool clothing, going barefoot. Again, there are cards that hint at this seasonal balance, with quiet introspective cards like the 4 of swords, 3 of wands, 5 of cups or The Hermit. Admittedly, I’ve seen this pattern emerge more as a reader than as an individual. It think of it as being part of the entrainment phnomenon we talked about last time. Cards may repeat in a party (or in a season) as a resonance with the time and place (or time of year.)
If a card keeps turning up time and again, yes, it is significance. Yes, that repetition in and of itself is a message. If a card keeps repeating, it could be for multiple different reasons. As always, it is usltimately up to your feeling and your intuition to decide which reason best fits..or if it is something else entirely. It might be:
an important message or lesson you are misunderstanding, failing to hear, or failing to enact
a significator, a stand-in for you in the reading to show how Tarot and spiritual growth in general fits in with you as individual and with your self-image of the time.
a validation, a signal from spirit the card’s message is important, real, authentically for you
resonating with places you go …. parties and so on
Life never changes at at perfectly steady pace. It speeds and slows of its own accord. The trick is knowing when to nudge it along and when to let it flow, although most of the time it is the latter.
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