tarot journal: four-card three card spread

My husband and I are househunting, a process that is frustrating and nerve-jangling. We looked at a house the other day that we considered putting an offer on, but we weren't totally sure about even after a thorough viewing and much discussion. This post, then, is about the reading I decided to do in hopes of clarifying whether this house was THE house.

digression: I actually rarely do readings for myself on important issues, or on issues with a lot of personal investment involved, because frankly I'm often afraid to see what the cards will say. Afraid they'll be right; afraid they'll tell me something I don't want to hear; afraid they'll be wrong and I'll make the wrong decision. I often wonder if other tarot readers feel the same way, or if they are more confident about their abilities. It's obviously one of the things one has to deal with before one goes professional, and now just as obvious that I myself am not a professional reader.

I call this the four-card three-card spread because I meant to draw three cards and only realized when I turned them over that an extra one had gone down with the first card. I looked at the two card that had come out the way I expected to deal them first: the Queen of Cups and the Two of Swords. In the Legend Arthurian Tarot, which I was using, the Queen is Britannia, the personification of the land, and that combines with the decision--and indecision--of the Two described my state of mind. I was looking for a place to put down roots and identify with, and i needed to trust my intuition with this decision.

The two-in-one cards were the Three and Four of Shields. They were reversed, though I hadn't meant to work with reversed cards in this spread. The Three in this deck, titled The Homespun Tunic and depicting Parsifal's mother sewing his shirts, I always associate with work done in the domestic sphere. The Four establishes a home base and a solid foundation (oddly enough, solid foundations have been an issue in our search, as most houses we've seen haven't had very bad foundations).

As it turns out, these cards were an accurate description of the situation, as by the next afternoon the house had another offer on it, so because we could not decide, the decision was made for us. We still don't have that place to root into. However, the hesitation was due to this house not being the eight one for us (hence the cards that were reversed), which is born out by the fact that there was only a little disappointment at the news it was off the market, mostly based the decision being taken out of our hands then by losing the house.

Truth spoken again.

self perception

Out and about this morning, and one of my stops was Roca Jack's. I've never been there before, but a friend recommended it when I asked for information on locally-owned coffee shops that roast their own beans. My daughter and I enjoyed a rhubarb muffin, I had a darned good coffee, and there was an artist working on a widow painting for the summer. He was young; a hippy type with a rasta hat, battered backpack, and faded pants and sport jacket. As I was putting my daughter in her car seat, he turned and said, "excuse me? I just wanted to tell you that you are fricking radiant. Enjoy your life...I know you will."

Such a nice compliment, and yet I wish I could see what that person saw. I don't see any particular radiance in me...in fact one of the prime things I feel is wrong with myself these past few years is that any radiance I might have had has been dimmed, covered up, or lost. I certainly don't feel radiant. More like harassed, worn down, and stagnant. Perhaps he saw my love for my girl, though even that is always tinged with worry. She's so small, so tiny, and so many people's happiness seem wrapped up in this one little life. How can she hold it? How can I live up to the responsibility of taking care of it?

But perhaps the best lesson to take from this encounter is that as worn down as I sometimes feel I, like everyone else, have a core of purity, of radiance, that will endure. An indestructible inner essence that is still available...if only I can find it.

tarot journal: ace of wands

So I decided to pull a card from my new tarot deck, the Shadowscapes Tarot, tonight. This deck is very light and fairy-tale in feel, and I actually bought it thinking that I would have lied it when I was young, and that if my infant daughter grew to have an interest in tarot perhaps It would be one she would like too. Somehow during the shuffle my thoughts turned to this blog, which I've neglected for so long I had even forgotten my login information. Cut from shuffling cards to puttering on my iPod, recovering login information and resetting passwords, and here we are.

The card I drew after all that was the Ace of Wands.

image ©Stephanie Pui-Mun Law

Tarot journal: 8 of pentacles

I started a daily card journal today, on the advice of someone at the Aeclectic Tarot Forum. It's actually something I've been meaning to do for a while, but the forum gave me the nudge I needed. No one reads this blog anyway but perhaps posting about it now and again will keep me on track.

Today's card was the 8 of Pentacles, which kicked off an interesting round of synchronicity. Right before doing the draw, I was getting laundry ready, looking around and thinking of all the undone physical and personal work that has been overwhelming me for so long, and thinking (as I often do) that really I needed to just STOP thinking and start doing--do anything but just start somewhere. And five minutes later I drew this card, which is all about applying yourself and working.

Then an interesting New York Times story pops up on my news feeds about new reseach on willpower, showing that trying to "control" every part of your life at once does not work. Concentrating on one thing at a time, however, will excersize and strengthen your willpower and help you to bring it to bear on other things later. The article specifically mentions that trying to suppress or deny your emotions will "use up" your will, preoccupying it so it can't be used effectively for other things. Right now, that statement is the story of my life. I did know this. I knew that I was exhausted all the time, and the reason I had no energy was because I was having to "put my game face on" and hide my emotional reality from everyone, but reading it here, on the day I drew this card, seemed doubly significant.

Then I get a new tarot book that suggests the 8 of Pentacles is about organizing yourself and having something to do. Instead of flailing about, just choosing one thing and doing it can focus and settle your mind in difficult situations.

Don't think the message could be any clearer...

Birthday spread

My first experience with tarot was with a boxed set of my dad's, never used and gathering dust in our basement. It was a particularly ugly Picasso-themed deck, with black line drawings over lurid striped backgrounds. The booklet that came with it was unhelpful--interpretations focused on legal judgements and the stock market don't mean much to you when you're 11 or 12 years old. Every time I tried to use it I'd get fed up and put it away, and yet I couldn't help coming back to it again. A few months, or a few years, later, I'd be searching out that black box with the stained glass window on it again, thinking that this time, surely this time would be different.

(digression: while tooling around on the web to find examples or information on this deck, I found that while these particular cards seem to have faded into well-deserved obscurity, Picasso himself was apparently fascinated with Tarot and very conversant in its imagery. Who knew? Not me, anyway.)

As time passed, I read a few books from the library now and then, and occasionally thought about where I could get my own set of cards (this being both before I discovered the existence of metaphysical book stores and before the mainstreaming of tarot). I didn't take action, however, until my late teens, when I became friends with someone who also read tarot. She owned decks! As in more than one! And books! Tons of them! What a revelation. We spent hours together, both on campus and after school/work, sharing books, laying out spreads, playing with the cards, telling stories with them. I learned a lot from her, and even more with her. I have so many happy memories of meeting at local restaurants and taking over tables for hours, hauling in bags of books and 2 or 3 decks each and just settling in for the day. How we got away with it I'll never know, but I'm certainly grateful for the waitstaff who served us water and let us alone instead of kicking us out. We don't live in the same place anymore, and she seems to have lost her interest in the cards, and I still mourn that.

My first deck, and the one I still love the most, is the Thoth Tarot. People usually think I'm crazy when I say that, but that's the deck whose imagery first ignited my imagination and fulfilled my ideas of what tarot was really supposed to be. I still don't claim to understand it fully, and probably never will, but it's still the one deck I have to take with me wherever I move, and the one I use the most. I collect other desks, and use most of them (I won't buy a deck I wouldn't use), but Thoth is my old standby, the one I reach for first.

My practice level still swings up and down, but tarot has been one of the most consistent companions in my adult life. I love how you can never know it all and be done. There's still another level to explore, another way to approach your cards, a new thing to work on to make your readings better.

No matter what else is going on in my life, I always do a 12-card spread for my birthday. This month I will apparently be influenced by Fool energy. I'm not sure at this point if it means a successful fresh start or another Life Lesson About Being Naive.

I guess we'll see.

consuming the shaman

So, everyone who knows that Paris Hilton was seen out with a "shaman" last week now knows the story was a fake. It did make me think, though, about spirituality and consumer culture. How so often we define our identities by what we buy. I'm sure everyone falls victim to this sometimes; I know that, at some points in my life, I have. Gathering the trappings and creating the image instead of doing the hard work of becoming. Why is it so important for us to project ourselves, I wonder, and see ourselves reflected? Of course we all want connection and validation, but what I'm talking about goes beyond that natural human urge.

Maybe I wonder about this because I so often feel like a fraud in my daily life. Always have. Like someday the other shoe will drop and I'm going to be "found out" as an empty poseur with no real skills. I don't know how normal that anxiety is, but it's a companion I've had for a long time--ever since I got old enough that I was supposed to get over being just free-form, floating potential and start actually Manifesting A Life.

I've never really felt like I understand what my purpose is, or why I'm really here. It's like I have a destiny waiting for me, but I can't see it.

.

And so it waits, undone, while I scrabble blindly in the dark, moving in the wrong direction, missing the chance to become who I am really meant to be.

Situation worsening for women in Iraq

From the BBC Middle East Edition: This article on the "National Crisis" for women in Iraq: 

"Present-day Iraq is plagued by insecurity, a lack of infrastructure and controversial leadership, transforming the situation for women from one of relative autonomy and security before the war into a national crisis"

So sad.

lexicon

I recently read Mike Nichol's excellent article defining "Wiccan" and "Wicca" vs. "Wicce" and "Witchcraft".  It's an interesting and well-defended position.

I came to "the Craft" under the name Witchcraft, and in my thoughts the practice in all its forms has always sat under that label.  In my personal experience, the word "Wicca" is pretty much used to make witchcraft seem less scary and more new-age fuzzy-friendly to the dreaded General Public.  Though I dislike the term--it sounds pretentious and twee to me, in most contexts--I will admit to using it in the past, in situations where I didn't want to be untruthful but didn't want the baggage of the word "Witch".

I own a copy of Wicca: a guide for the solitary practitioner, and when I first bought it (oh so many years ago, when I was young), I thought it was wonderful.  I modeled some of my early rituals on it, and I appreciated it enough to buy the sequel a couple years later.  Now, when I look back at those books, books that seemed so meaningful and inspired to me at the time, they seem appallingly fuzzy and naive; a watered-down, Minivan-majority* type of vague spirituality that doesn't really require anything of the participant.  Actually, writings of Gardnerian-type traditions excepted, most books that profess to be about "Wicca" seem like that. But it was what I needed at the time, and I suppose they are still what many people need at at least some stage of their development, so that's fine.  In the end I'm hardly one to talk about lack of experiential wisdom or dedication to the work anyway, am I?

But my main argument with the term Wicca is that it is a gendered word, and that it is male.   The word is actually a noun, so a man is a Wicca and a woman is a Wicce.  So this shiny-happy term that we've coined for ourselves to describe our new/old practice, a practice popularly seen as "female" and which still draws mainly women, a practice that we all insist is staunchly egalitarian if not feminist and woman-worshipping and/or female-dominated?  That term would be male.  Just like the rest of the "generic" pronouns in our language.  You know, the ones we rail against as "sexist" and "exclusionary" and "in need of change".

This really burns me.  The fact that is a "hidden secret" burns me even more.  And isn't it interesting that the modern usage of the term has originated in traditions codified and led by men? 

So.  I say now.  I may be Wicce, but I will never be "Wiccan".

*thanks to Lainey for this wonderfully evocative term!

Beginnings

I'm a witch.  I guess.

I still lived at home when I first started practicing.  I snuck around late at night after everyone had gone to bed setting up altars in my room and doing whispered rituals.  My first real working was actually in response to a letter from an ex-boyfriend.  We only dated for a short time, but I was young and fell hard and believed the lies he spun.  Two years after he dumped me, he felt the need to make a cryptic apology--for what I still don't know, there were so many many things to apologise for--and mailed me a letter that bothered me way more than I felt it should have.  So my first real Samhain was a ritual burning of his letter and severing of psychic ties, and it worked, and I suppose I should thank him for that small grace if nothing else.  He devastated me, but at least he helped me find out who I am.

I read a lot of books. (That shouldn't be past tense; I still read a lot of books.)  I whispered and snuck around. I lost a Christian boyfriend because I told him nature was my religion.  And then, right before leaving home to move to a small town,  I connected with a woman who was putting together a coven..  I joined anyway, and kept in touch, and when Small Town Boyfriend Number Three didn't work out, I moved home and became a regular member.  

After hiding my inclinations for so long, and almost losing myself in Rural Hell, I decided to quietly "come out".  I started wearing a pentacle, even to work.  I didn't volunteer the information, but for years if I was asked my religion I stated I was a witch (or a wiccan, depending on the company).  I didn't feel "ready" to assume the title, but given my issues with feelings of unworthiness I decided the best way to grow into it was to embrace it upfront.

It didn't really work out that way.

My circle broke up after about 5 years. Our growth had petered out anyway; rituals had become little more than hanging out in front of a bonfire.  I moved again, and tried to find a Craft community, but only found posers and hedonists.  I had no safe place to practice ritual outside, so I stopped.   Now I live overseas, in a highly urbanized area that, while interesting to be in overall, is at best "intolerant" of this type of spirituality.  I am in hiding again, but this time I feel disconnected from that core, the essence that sustained me when I was younger.  I've failed no one but myself, but isn't that the hardest failure to deal with anyway?  And I'm not wholly sure how to get back.  

Ritual feels empty.  But then I feel empty.  And at its heart, I suppose that's the problem.

Introduction

Okay, so you probably know the drill by now. Just old enough to feel youth is wasted on the young. Still young enough to feel starting afresh could almost still be possible. Disaffected, wondering if this is really all there is to life. Seeking for something without knowing what.

So this is my journey.