A Sun Reading

I’ve been slowly making my way through a Rachel Pollack book called Tarot Wisdom. Each major arcana card that she writes about comes with a spread that you can do that helps you see how that particular card affects you at any given moment in life. On Tuesday I pulled the Sun card as my “card of the day” and that just happens to be the next chapter I’m on in the book. Like I talked about in my Justice Blog, I usually don’t move on in that book until I either pull the card that will be discussed in the next chapter or if certain things in my life are echoing the meaning of the card in the next chapter. 

So here it is! :D

A Sun Reading

Gaian Tarot Deck

11-18-11

1-What is clear in my life?

                -Child of Water: Affirmation “I imagine a life filled with love, art and spirituality”

·         What is clear in my life is unconditional love, fantasy, imagination, dreams and spirituality. It is clear that art, music, writing and all those forms of creative expression are a deep part of me and what gives me happiness.

2-What is cloudy?

                -Explorer of Earth: living and working with nature, spirituality experienced in the body, practicality with health and finances.

·         My connection to nature is a bit cloudy. It’s hard to connect with earth based practices sometimes. I’ve thought a lot about this actually after reading The Hunger Games hahaha because I really don’t know much about outdoor survival and about plants and tracking and how to basically survive from what mother nature has to offer. I’m pretty materialistic and dependant on those material items. And as per usual my physical health is always cloudy for me.

3-What helps me see clearly?

                -Ten of Earth: Affirmation “I know my life’s work will benefit coming generations.”

·         What I do and accomplish will help and inspire whoever comes after me. Learning about the earth and taking care of my physical life and finances (Explorer of Earth) not only helps me out but my children and whoever goes on after I die. I can turn to the ones before me and my ancestors for knowledge and wisdom so I can apply what they learned and live it to be an example to future generations.

4-What confuses me?

                -Ace of Water: Following the heart’s desire, following intuition and dreams. Trusting the wisdom of your heart.

·         In the shadow side of this card, the companion book to the Gaian Tarot deck  says “You have many good reasons for why you just can’t follow your heart’s desire. Your challenge is to learn to trust your feelings and intuition”. I have all of these dreams and goals for my future and for what I want to be when I grow up but because of my fears I let confuse my heart and mind, I get stuck and I don’t want to change. It’s too scary. The image of the Ace of Water in this deck is a salmon whose eggs have just hatched and are swimming around “exploring their watery world”.

5-How can I simplify my life?

                -18 The Moon: Constant faithful changes, cycle of decent and return (the salmon in the ace of water) psychic awakening, light and shadow, dreams and imagination.

·         It’s like the reading has come full circle! The moon links back with the Child of Water. What is clear to me in the Child of Water is what I can do to make my life simpler. The confusion I feel in the Ace of Water is linked to the moon with the salmon. The moon card has the image of moon cycles, a wolf, an owl and the salmon. To make life simpler I need to trust my intuition even though it may seem confusing, but it will bring back that clarity in the child card. My work with dreams, the tarot, and writing helps simplify my life because I don’t feel so helpless or victimized. It’s more empowering. The moon doesn’t come across as simple at first glance but if I trust and even rely on change in my life I don’t get caught up and confused in my always changing reality.

It’s funny because I only got feminine elements in this reading. I got two water cards, two earth cards and the Moon which rules over water. Even the cyclic nature of this spread has moon themes in it. The clarity of imagination, dreams and emotions are confused with practicality and material life. Cleary seeing what I have to offer the world takes me on a new journey to re-explore what used to be clear but somehow got muddled up by fear and confusion then leads me to simplify my life through acceptance of change, death and rebirth to be born again as the Child of Water, right where I started from again…

A Follow Up to Halloween

Just to follow up after my blog about Halloween I wanted to write about the experiences I had this season! It was crazy!

I was reading up on the Celtic people and their traditions for Halloween.  They called it Samhain (pronounced Sow-en) and to them the gates of the Otherworld started opening on Oct. 29 and closed on Nov. 1^st. Those were the days when there was the most otherworldly activity going on. I thought that was really cool! The Celtic people also considered sun down to be when the new day started instead of how we do it now where it starts at midnight. So to them when the sun went down on Oct. 31 it was technically Nov. 1^st and that’s why they called the 31^st All Hallows Eve. Nov. 1^st is when the veil would be the thinnest between worlds. Because of how close we are to the other side on that night it was especially good for divination and seeing future events. I’m not a fortune teller but I decided to use my Halloween Tarot deck to participate in a tradition that has been held for who knows how many years by the Celtic people and see if I could take a gander at what the days between the 29 and the 1^st would bring. I pulled a random card each day to represent who or what other worldly forces would be at play during the day and then I pulled 3 cards to represent the events that influence would have on the day. So!....

September 28^th-29th

-Who or What other worldly forces will be at work today?

-King of Wands-Male influences, hasty and Fiery. The King of Wands can be an actor of sorts, someone who can wear all sorts of masks and has the confidence to pull off each roll.

-What events will this influence lead to today?

                -7 of Pentacles- Hard work, seeing results but after a long period of effort. Breakthroughs, a change of luck based on the quality of work put into projects.

                - 5 of Swords- Bullies and their victims, loss, defeat. Unfairness…

                - I Magician- Natural skills, working with all elements, creative power and mastery

The King of Wands to me was interesting to pop up representing otherworldly influences. In my last blog I hinted at the Queen of Wands as being a feminine aspect from the otherworld. I’ve read different theories that the suit of Cups is more about intuition, spirituality and “the Sight”, but maybe the wands could be the energy found there and the skills gained to work with it. To me the Queen of Wands is the Sensor of the deck, who has the premonitions and works with the other side. Perhaps the King then is the Shaman who travels the other worlds and has the authority there to gain insight to bring back here to share with his people. Who knows?

So keeping the King of wands in mind I looked at the event of the day that would be influenced by the King. The 7 of Pentacles was interesting because work that day was ridiculous. The pod I work in with my co workers had this shipment that took us from 9:30 to about 3 in the morning to finish. It felt like we had been working so hard all night with no productivity to show for it. Then the 5 of Swords happened. Things just got weird, like the mood shifted and just felt weird. People were crying, people were making people cry… the image in the 5 of Swords in the Halloween Tarot is a picture of a boy stealing Halloween candy from little kids. Kids were crying and the bullies were abusing their power. It was uncanny how right on that card was. Then the night ended with the Magician. I found myself having to really use the skills that I’ve learned to pull my team through some drama that our “bully” was trying to start. To me the magician is creative and craftsy, I usually relate that card to people who can make or do anything, like the “Jack of All Trades” people. But I was the magician in a whole new perspective! It was pretty cool.

Oct. 29^th-30th

-Who or What other worldly forces will be at work today?

                -XVI The Tower

                Chaos, enlightenment, clearing away the old to make way for the new, new foundations

The Tower is a card that is followed by some kind of shake up. When you have an epiphany of sorts there’s no way you can go back to your old way of viewing the world. And so naturally there is a time of chaos when you try to figure out how to apply your new views to your daily life. It’s that time in your life that you can look back on and be glad that’s it’s over but your happy it happened.

-What events will this influence lead to today?

                -VIII Strength- The use of gentle persuasion over brute force.

                -2 of Pentacles- Balancing two situations

                -3 of Pentacles- Hard work with the strength of passion behind it.

After work on the 30^th I had the worst headache ever. It could have been the “lightning bolt to the crown” that is depicted in the Tower but without the enlightenment behind it! The feeling at my job felt chaotic. The VIII Strength card was really funny because the image looked just like a moment I had with the “bully” at my job. It’s this lady who doesn’t know how to properly manage her row of workers and has a tendency to use her powers for her own self esteem. I was walking by her and she just looked so small and frail and it looked like the way the artist depicted the lion in the Strength card, all huge and imposing but with this look of sheer terror! The lion tamer is calm and sweet with the lion and is looking into his mouth to see what’s wrong with no fear of her hand getting bit of. To me I felt like the lion tamer and this lady was the lion. Instead of reacting to her games with anger I used “gentle strength over brute force” and I didn’t let my anger from the other day become “brute force”. The 2 of Pentacles was funny because I was having really fun and interesting conversations with friends at work about like astrology and the tarot and the elements and such, but then had to remember that “oh yeah I should be working” it did feel like a juggling act which is the depiction in the image of the 2 of pent. Then the 3 was funny because I came home from work and made astrology charts and studied up on things just because I wanted to! It was work, but there was a passion behind it.

Oct. 30^th-31^st

-Who or What other worldly forces will be at work today?

                5 of Wands-Competition, generating conflict due to stagnation, struggle

My grandma when she first taught me tarot told me that in numerology, 5’s are what she calls AFGO’s (Another Freaking Growth Opportunity). The 5 of Wands is an opportunity to test you on how you face challenge and competition.

-What events will this influence lead to today?

                -Queen of Wands-Our sensor again!

                -Page of Pentacles- learning about the world around us, study and seeking.

                -10 of Pentacles- Rewards, Family generations and inheritance

All day at work I could just imagine all of these little imps running around the lab and causing trouble everywhere just like in the 5 of Wands card. People were starting up conflicts not because they really felt a particular way about anything but because they just wanted to argue. Electronics weren’t working very well, things went missing people were on edge. The Queen of Wands was in a lot of conversations I was having during the weekend. To me it was funny that it kept coming up because I had learned a lot about her from the passing weeks. The page of pentacles was about learning about our natural world and seeking knowledge. The 10 of Pentacles was a picture of a kid trying to hit a piñata but there was a strange masked figure messing around with the rope the piñata was on. We finished the work early that night and they decided to let us watch the Nightmare Before Christmas what with it being Halloween and all. It had been such a weird day that is was nice to be rewarded with a fun movie to watch instead of a boring documentary they usually have us watch.

Oct.31^st – Nov. 1^st Halloween

Before I put the cards I got I’m just going to say that Halloween this year was without a doubt the weirdest Halloween I’ve ever had that I can consciously recall. And it wasn’t even just me! It was everywhere. I saw it in the football game my brother was watching. I saw it in everyone around me! Instead of thinking about the other worldly forces for my first card I decided to see what all the other “Influence” cards were building towards, like if they all could morph into one, what form would they take?

-What is the King of Wands, the Tower and the 5 of Wands culminating to?

                -XXI The World – “the fool reaches the end of his journey at the World (or Underworld) …”

Completion, Success, a sense of oneness with the world around you.

-What event’s will this influence lead to today?

-4 of Pentacles- miserly tendencies to greed and hoarding, savings, thinking ahead for future harvests

-6 of Wands- meaningful victories, much tested and much earned success.

-8 of Bats- restrictive surroundings, bad situations, imprisonment of the mind

When I pulled the World card for my question about how all the other influence cards were connected it was only natural that they combined into the World card. It’s a message that the other world is a part of this world; it’s not a separate place. It has just as much influence in our day to day that we have to it. And on Halloween when that gate is opened and we all walk together no wonder everything seems crazy! I dressed up as Elder Price from the Book of Mormon musical for Halloween. I asked my brother Kelly if I could wear one of his white shirts. I had tried it on to see how it would look a few times before Halloween but at work that night when I went to put the name tag on my pocket I noticed there was a paper already there. When I pulled it out I realized it was the program from my Grandma Walker’s funeral from 2009! There was her picture looking right at me. I truly almost started crying. After all my talk about The Otherworld and reconnecting with our ancestors who have passed on I couldn’t even have fathomed a sign that obvious! Between all the pesky little imps running around and causing trouble and all the petty drama at work, the card readings and the articles read about the season, that moment truly made me respect the powers at work behind the scenes during Halloween. Everything else that night had to offer didn’t even come close to that moment that I got to reconnect with my grandma after 2 long years of her being gone.

This Halloween had a lot of weird activity, fights and drama, but I feel even more connected to the other side then I ever had before. It’s not about seeing ghosts all the time and being haunted although there are situations where that happens. Being connected to the otherworld is just being aware of your surroundings and being able to understand those signs. Having a foot in both the worlds as the saying goes…

Thoughts on Halloween-2011

It has been ages since my last post! I do plenty of writing of my own but I can’t seem to get the motivation to get it on the computer. I prefer writing on paper. I can relate easier to my own handwriting than to an automatic font that anybody can use.

My latest thoughts have been about Halloween. Well maybe I should start a little before Halloween. I’ve been really sensitive about The Otherworld for some reason. When I use to term “The Otherworld” in this blog I’m not meaning Hell or any place that’s “evil”. I feel like that is an important thing to start off with. I mean it more like the Celts used it as the place of the dead. It’s a concept that has been used long before the concept of Hell came about.

These thoughts started when I started watching those ghosts’ shows on TV. I would get so mad while I watched them! I felt like these people that host the shows had no idea what they were getting themselves into. Like it was just a game they were playing with a serious issue.

Then as Halloween came around I started learning about where the traditions came from and why we do what we do for Halloween. Basically I’ve learned that America has done to Halloween what we’ve done to all the rest of our holidays. We’ve taken these celebrations and turned them into self gain. I’m not going to go on a rant about greed. I just wanted to “raise awareness” to why we do what we do instead of doing it out of habit.

Every country in the world has a day where the people honor the dead. There’s Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) in Mexico, in Brazil they celebrate Dia de Finados, there’s All Saints Day and All Souls Day in the Roman Catholic heritage in Europe, The Bon Festival is Buddhist for honoring departed spirits of the ancestors. The list goes on and on but I think that’s enough to show the point that Halloween in America, which started off as All Hallows Eve, has really become cutesy and tempered down, really having nothing to do with the dead at all.

On Halloween the veil between this world and The Otherworld is the thinnest. We started dressing up as a way to spook the otherworldly creatures away from us and our homes (especially faeries. Faeries are anything but cute and sweet!). Jack o Lanterns are cool. They used to be made out of turnips and radishes. When you carve pumpkins it’s best to carve one for every head that lives in your house. The jack o lantern protects the people in your family so having one for everybody covers everyone’s assets! :D In some traditions people would set a place in their house for their dead loved one’s spirits by preparing their favorite meals and feasts. So maybe this year just to keep our departed loved ones in our hearts maybe we could start by passing out their favorite candies they liked and just sharing memories you have of them; the good and the bad. You might even come to a resolution with them if you let them speak with you.

Halloween is a time of awakening. When I started really thinking about all of this, I decided to pull cards (as per usual) from my Halloween Tarot Deck. I got the Queen of Wands (which has been popping up constantly for me the past little while), XX Judgment and the 8 of Wands. In the tarot XX Judgment is a rebirth and awakening card. To have gotten this card in regards to Halloween is pretty right on. Halloween is a time for the Dead to rise from their grave (which is the typical image in the card) and to face their choices, nothing being hidden or censored from their minds. The character Shadow in the book American God’s by Neil Gaiman goes through that very same thing when he dies and has his heart weighed to that of a feather. In the story, Shadow feels everything he has ever felt in his life. How would that feel like? To be faced with memories and choices we’ve made that have been pushed down into our own “Shadow’s” and having to own up to those hurts? To be quite literally naked (just like the dead figures in the XX Judgment card) in front of a divine being who is giving you your “final” judgment. To us moments like this happen infrequently. We can be faced with repercussions of a choice we made and have to correct so we can move on. What about the spirits? What about the spirits for whatever reason still hang around us?

When I pulled the Queen of Wands (in the Halloween Tarot deck the wands were changed for Imps. I’m just using the typical symbol the Wands so I don’t get confused lol) for some reason the first “hit” I got was Spirit. Whenever I get Court Cards in readings I always get stumped. The court cards can represent a lot of different things. They can represent a person, which to me is hard to pinpoint because it could represent any number of people. They can represent the archetype of you that is directly involved with what is going on in your life at the moment or they can represent the personality of a situation if that makes any sense. When reading the cards we have to always go by our intuition. That’s why the “first hit” or first thought is usually the answer to the question. When I got the Queen of Wands I first decided to ignore my instincts because to me it’s hard to prove who the card could be about! Ok, so I feel spirit. What does that even mean? Does it mean a spirit of someone I know? Is it the spirit of Halloween? I decided that the traits of the Queen of Wands should be applied to the spirit of Halloween. The Queen of Wands is a sensor of the natural world. The Otherworld is a part of our natural world so she would be a sensor of that energy in our lives. She is usually depicted with a black cat. So she may be the witch with her black cat that you encounter on Halloween night. The cat is a magickal creature who is said to walk between the worlds. The Q.ofW. reminds me of Professor McGonagall from Harry Potter. She is a fiery witch who you would never dream of crossing and she just so happens to turn into a cat. But not to go into more harry potter metaphors because I know I could go on for hours…. Maybe she is the Faerie Queen of the Tuatha De’ Danann from Irish mythology? Who knows?

Then I get the 8 of Wands. This one seemed to stump me as well for a bit. The 8 of Wands is a card of action and fast movement. My tarot teacher called it the “email and texting card”. It’s a card about messages, about energy going all sorts of which ways. It can also be a harmonious card when every element is synched together like music or plays. For Halloween it could possibly be a card about the excitement and the anticipation! Maybe it could be a card about harmony between us and the otherworld.

I guess a good message to gain from these cards concerning Halloween would be to learn how to become sensitive to the spirits of our ancestors and our friends in the otherworld, to help awaken to our shadows so that we can move on and evolve and to work together with these beings in harmony without fear because the spirit world is a scary concept for people.

So while we dress up like Zombies, pop stars and sexy cats this year, just think about the spirits that are waiting just outside our earthly vision and how we can honor what they have left behind for us…