One cup short – or am I?

Today’s card was 9 of Cups from the amazing Sheridan-Douglas tarot, a new favorite. A woman is sitting naked, holding a cup and 8 other beneath her. Her eyes closed as if in deep thought and her hair a wild mess of thought-tentacles. She is yellow (intellect) and the cups are blue (emotion) As a 9 I see her as connected with IX The Hermit. She is solitary but I wouldn’t say lonely. She is one cup away from the ‘perfection’  in the 10 of cups. But is she really? This card today makes me think a lot of the social norm that a family is the goal of life and that therefor a 9 of cups lady HAS to secretly wish for the fulfillment of that last piece of the puzzle. A lot of us do fall outside of that norm though and we are not even yearning for family-bliss.

Today I am happy in my own skin and happy in my own company.

Feast

This weeks Tarot is a big, bold, beautiful round deck. The Daughters of the moon tarot by Ffiona Morgan created in 1991. I don’t have any kind of book for it and the cards are in many cases renamed so it will be a bit of an adventure. There is a Black/White colour it yourself edition out too but I got the vibrant colourful one. There are only 3 courts for all the suits, Mother Maiden and Crone. All in all there are just no men here at all, but quite a few butch, femme, skinny, fat, tan, pale, brown, young, old, disabled, limber, sneaky, half-animal ladies. And yeah, it is a ladies only deck. It just doesn’t bug me as much though. The whole point of the deck is the reclaim the feminine and if that is not your cup of tea, just pass on it and move on, there are thousands of decks out there, surely it must be ok to have one with just the ladies… As usual I will photograph the cards with my old trusty camera since I am too lazy to scan and it looks horrible scanning round images.

Sunday’s card is the 3 of Cups with the keyword of Bonding. What I think of for this card is Celebration! So how can I celebrate my day? Why, by baking of course! It is one of my favorite things to both do and enjoy the result of. Will have some family over to share the goods later.

While looking through this deck I felt inspired to take out an old book I read the first time back in the late 90:ies.  The Holy Book of Women’s Mysteries: Feminist Witchcraft, Goddess Rituals, Spellcasting and Other Womanly Arts by Zsuzsanna Budapest. This is the book that in many way triggered my search for my own kind of spirituality even though I since left this particular path, I will carry with me a lot of the good stuff. There are a lot worse mentors and inspirations out there for sure. I have started re-reading it right now just to see how I feel about it after all these years.

Puss in boots!

This has really been my kind of day, just as the card promised. Now I don’t do these daily draws as predictions, more as finding an energy, in the case it has been a self-fulfilling prophecy though. Perhaps if I pulled a more industrious card I would have gone out and about into the hustle of the world. Instead I take a time out like the man here on the card, minus the pipe (gave the smoking habit up in 2001) Now I didn’t lounge about in a fancy painted beer hall with a little page at my elbow either, but close enough. I did have my own personal little puss as a tummy warmer much of the day while drinking tea, eating toast with tzatziki and reading novels. I think my favorite part of this card is the relaxed Puss in Boots in the left hand corner there, so comfy, kicking back, enjoying life.

This is the book I just finished. The poison tree – Erin Kelly. I wish I could have given it 2.5 stars. Perhaps it will grow on my in hindsight and I can add a star later. Right now I am dipping my toes into my latest Douglas Coupland novel called ‘Player One’

3 cards 3/3

Simple deck interview 3 card spread. Tarot of Prague. Copyright Magic Realist Press

1. Tell me about yourself: Knight of Pentacles – Air of Earth. This is a real work horse of a deck, solid and reliable. This has been a back-bone in my collection since I got it and it ain’t going anywhere 😀 This knight is standing still too as is his dog.

2. How do we connect? 4 of Cups. I might think I already know it all, being too focused on myself and my expectations/dreams and missing out on the task at hand. What ‘sheeps’ do I need to tend to this week? It feels like I sometimes go into life too much of a dreamer and misses out a lot of the real world bustling about around me.

3. Outcome or what will I have to learn? Page of Swords – Earth of Air. Same elements as in the first card. I see it as a challenge to bring my lofty dreamy ideas into reality, to actually DO and not just think. A detail that sticks out to me is that the Page is standing on what looks like the top of a chimney. When you sweep chimneys you get your hands dirty and perhaps that is what I will practice more of this week. Being more in the moment and connect my inner life to my outer, rather stagnant one.

Monday mail

Dreamed of being on the road. I was given a job that stole all my time but gave back in security and stimulation. While I cannot remember exactly what it was I know it was something that kept me on the move. I took a tram to work and lived in a remodeled train. I woke up feeling invigorated and happy.

Today I picked 2 cards from the Yoga tarot again. No positions, just to get a general view. The first was Ace of Pentacles. A square of earth, a seed and sprouts, what looks like veins encircling it. Gift of Life. The LWB asks: ‘What kind of person do I want to be?’ I want to be growing outwards while keeping my roots firmly planted, deep and strong.

The second card was 3 of Cups. A man in an astral landscape. A trident in his hand spearing a lotus. Or rather, showing it off. Displaying the lotus, the prongs do not penetrate it.  From the LWB again: ‘The path of the heart has been traveled and the act of loving becomes meditation’ My thoughts to this is How do I show my heart? True love carry no fear.

Oh and I got a package today with next weeks deck. The Italian proverbs as I call it ‘Proverbi Figurati’. And Sharyn also sent me a rose-quarts pendulum that I will keep. Cleansed it and ‘programmed’ it to myself just now. (I program it simply by asking it to show me yes and no) The Proverbs will continue their journey to someone else in our group after the week with me.

Hasty snails

Well, they are shells, not snails, but I gotta at least try to be a little clever here. The hasty snails is of course refering to the pip-minors in this deck. For this ‘Will I love you?’ reading I picked 2 shells for outcome and then cringed. Not the best start. But let’s do it from the top.

Tell me about yourself: Magician. Goal oriented first came to mind and this is a deck with a rather one-track mind. It’s all about relationships, all about LUV! ❤ As an old spinster I will have to mold this to fit my own purpose cause I am really not out ‘on the market’ I am quite happy just me and Charlie the cat. The Magician is kinda solo too and he don’t look upset over it.

How do I best work with you: Hermit. Alone, in solitude, withdrawn, weeping in a glass of wine, forever lonely. No but perhaps this tells me to use it independently, closing in on details, seeing the correspondences in the world. Noticing the synchronicity. It’s that little bird in the right corner that the Hermit is listening to that I like the most about this card. And the well, it is a well, right? (now it is) A well with green water and blossoms.

Outcome: Such a vague description too. Outcome of what? For how long? In my journal I (ironically) wrote down ‘I will fall madly and deeply in love with it and it will be just me and True Love forever and ever. Actually this very card told me that this would never be the case cause I hate the frigging pips. Really, they got like 15 minutes to do the minors? Off they go, back into the box with them. I might add the courts though, they are nice.

Oh and click this for a better pic of the nifty spread cloth my mom knitted for me:

Nuit of the oceans

Today after waking up and writing down my dream, before even pulling a card, I watched a sad sad clip from an online news paper of a whaleshark caught in a net. Seeing that amazing creature, dark skinned with stars across its body, like a Nuit of the oceans, made me weep a little. I went to national geographic website and found some more info and images of this largest fish on the planet (that we know of, there might be even more deep down the depths that we have not seen yet)

The card I pulled a few hours later was the Woman of Cups and it felt very right. She is connecting to the world with all her senses in this card, her emotions run deep. I had a talk with one of my neighbors today. The man next door has been gone a week or so partly due to the cold apartment but also cause he just been diagnosed with a new tumor in his brain. A month ago my cousin lost his daughter, just 27 years old. Friends online too are struggling with cancer. It all makes me so utterly sad and scared. My mom is a survivor, she had a radical mastectomy  a few years ago and is still very frail. I wish I could be more then I am, more of a support, a better daughter and friend.

 

Cold creeping in and then out.

Todays card is the 8 of Cups and the first thing my eye caught in this image was the frozen waterfall. It is a lot of decay here too, rotten leaves, dry caked mud, broken and glued together cups. Some things in life is best to discard, broken cups and dead flowers are among those. What things in my life do I try to glue together past their best-before date? What scabs do I keep picking at?

I got a lot of frozen emotions about my parents, my mom and I battle it out on a weekly basis, at least we keep things fresh and interesting. But with my dad – it is like that frozen waterfall. I won’t even cry about it. Haven’t for years, even while listening to his weeping on the phone once ever 3 years or so.

Time to drain that specific cup, wash it out and throw it away. Not my dad of course, but the lingering expectations I have of us ever resolving this cycle of false new starts and betrayals.

On the other hand the mailman was nice to me today. He knocked on my door and gave me 2 packages. One with a few books and a set of Fallen Angel cards from Amazon. And one pack with the Key to the Kingdom cards, a beautiful pristine first edition. I first saw them over at Cat’s place. I took one card right away and it was Jack of Spades and here is his verse:

‘Look out! look out! Jack Frost is about’

No kidding. It is still cold here, not -30 like this weekend, more like -23. My landlord now got some heat going though, so the house is slowly getting warmer, but I can see my curtains swaying gently in the cold draft.

A week with Voyager

It was most reluctantly I put away the Silicon Dawn tarot to pick a new weekly deck. This week it will be the Voyager Tarot. The deck is from 1986 and does feel a little dated on first glance. The cards are very large and got that sticky kind of lamination and broad borders. The guide book I got is falling apart in the back. I had this deck tucked away in the bottom of a large box with other ‘undesirables’ for a few years now. Recently it was brought up on the ATforum though. So when it came up in the random draw this week I decided to give it a go. It’s just a week after all. See here how prejudice I am already against this deck!

When I took it out last night I just went through the cards and sorted it into 2 piles, just at first glance. The + and the – pile. Oddly enough the + pile was more then 3/4 of the deck. I made a little deck interview spread with it. This is the cards I got:

1. Tell me about yourself. What kind of deck are you? Child of Cups. This card is jammed packed with kids! Happy kids, sad kids, pensive kids, sleeping kids. It tells me this is a deck for curiously exploring emotions. Kids don’t hold back. They will test you and then give an instant verdict. They are open and spontaneous. They can be mesmerized by the tiniest details yet grasp the mood of any situation quickly.

 

 

 

2. How can I use Voyager for the best result? The Hanged man. This card was in the – pile. I look at it and feel really unsure. But I guess that is the point. What I get here is that I might simply need to twist and turn the cards around to really see the whole picture. To not let the amount of details overwhelm me. And to not be too much a prisoner of the guide-book.

 

 

3. Outcome of working with Voyager. Sage of Worlds – Master. I doubt I will be a ‘Master’ in this Tarot (yeah, they actually have specific Voyager classes if you are so inclined) but it tells me that I will get what I put in. Question is – how much am I willing to put into it? That remains to be seen over the week to come.

Squid

Todays card do reflect my mood. A socialite is trying to keep up appearance while it rains in her cocktail, in the other frame we see her in a tank with a life-support system, and somewhere in the depths a squid goes down and down and down…

I was talking to my brother last night about how hard it was for me to stay ‘in time’ right now and how I just drifted away and kept getting things twisted up. My brother with a diagnose of Aspbergers is convinced I have that too, but I refuse to get some piece of paper to define my life. He asked me to roll my thumbs, then to change direction with just one thumb. Impossible and utterly useless if you ask me. Why on earth would someone even want to do that anyway? I don’t know about Aspbergers, but today I definitely feel squid like and in need of a life-support system.