Uncategorized – Page 34 – True Tarot Tales

The Sun card in Tarot forecasts sunny weather at its most literal. It is the card of high summer, no surprise there. Metaphorically it is recovery from illness, respite from care, the gift of the moment. It is playful. It is children, the state of childhood and sometimes predicts the imminence of a birth. It is success. It is travel, particularly to hot places. It is the return of the sun after the winter solstice. It is the zenith of the sun in the summer solstice. In terms of trying to establish timings, we are looking at the zodiac signs of Cancer (the solstice) and Leo.

Reversed it’s the setting sun, delays and lesser joys, the passing away of childhood, nostalgia and beautiful, bittersweet twilight. It may mean getting something less than you hoped for, but what you get is still something to be happy for.

The visionary Star card on the other hand, can- and in readings it often has-indicated a recovery from depression, sickness and despair, a guiding light. Someone can sees a way ahead now, they couldn’t see before. This is a more cerebral card; Aquarian in character, both visionary and analytical. This is the card of the collective, of space

Klytie (or Clytie) was a figure in Ancient Greek mythology, one of the oceanids, a daughter of Oceanus who fell in love with the sun god, Helios or Apollo. Each day she would watch him cross the sky in his chariot of fire. There is a darker version of this story, that Klytie was a demented stalker bunny-boiler whose jealousy brought about the horrific death of a love rival. A gentler version of the story says that Apollo could not come closer without destroying her, but when she pined away and died, he changed her into a sunflower so she could watch him forever, understanding that his love was far distant, it was constant, and he would never desert her absolutely.

The sun means Life itself. The fire of the sun can also be cruel, savage when ‘reversed,’ and then we need shelter. We need ‘dark sacred night’ or we need rain. But in a sense, aren’t we all sunflowers…looking for the sun by day and the stars by night. Like Klytie, we live with our memories of many sunsets past and the hope of a bright new dawn. We are sustained in adversity by resilience, determination and hope.

Venus or Hesperus, ‘The Evening star,’ is also Lucifer, the bringer of Light- the Angel before the Fall-‘The Morning star’.

The Sunflower

Klytie stands and tracks the sun
From dawn until Apollo’s gone
A patient and a hopeful eye
In contemplation of the sky
Her days are rooted, quiet, spent
In upward focus, still, intent
With other suns of earthly gold
Arms outstretched for light’s sure hold
And rich with cargo, every one
Built strong with sugar from the sun.

She’s etched with frosts and winds of loss
But comfort comes with Hesperus
The Morning Star’s deliverance
Alone she stands in fields of fellowship
Hands asking to receive
But with no strength to grip
Yet keeping faith and trusting to the light
The faintest and the coldest star
Still promises Apollo from afar
A spark to resurrect a phoenix in the night.

c. Katie-Ellen Hazeldine 2010.

Till next time 🙂

Injustice eats at people.

Sometimes in a Tarot reading, the issue being detected is literally a legal matter. For a true story about that see my later blog ‘Manpower. The Emperor Card.’

Very often though, it refers to our sense of natural justice, our wish to see fair play done. The Tarot may then kick in as a kind of agony aunt. When we draw it in a reading for ourselves, the advice is to remember to play fair, to try and keep a balanced view, to deal in facts and to keep a cool, calm head.

I recently drew a card, Justice Reversed (meaning injustice or delayed justice) in a tarot sitting with a new client. The client had explained that she didn’t really know why she had come. There was no specific problem to be addressed, she said, but she had a weight on her mind and would welcome a little help in getting free of it. The Tarot adores doing this sort of work.

The Justice Card (Rider Waite, U.S Games)

Justice Reversed was the first card drawn, the keynote card of the reading. Because it’s a Major Card and because of the lack of a clear single theme shown in the other 7 cards of the spread, I felt its influence was working on her in more than one respect.

She wasn’t depressed, I didn’t think. Not as such. (No Star card Reversed) There was illness in the family though. I drew The 4 of Swords nicknamed ‘the hospital’ card. There was great anxiety and conflicted feelings connected to the forming of a new relationship (The Devil) There was a much loved mother on her mind (The Empress)

My client hadn’t mentioned her job. She hadn’t told me anything, only that she had a baby son.

But drawing the Justice card, though Reversed, prompted me to tell her that she could discuss work if she wished, because I had experience of reading for commercial lawyers. She then said she was a commercial lawyer.

Now the Justice card, as with any predominance of Swords cards, can indicate that a client works in the legal profession. However, there are many more occasions when when there’ll be no such connection. So a reader seeing this card cannot assume the client’s job is in Law. But on this occasion the card had served to prompt a hunch. Thisis the bridge between intuition and clairvoyancy.

The client had been harbouring a sense of injustice following a promotion disappointment the previous year. She did not trust the reasons she had been given for not getting the promotion. The Tarot however said that justice had been done. She was still very young, had been in practice 4 years and had been judged not quite ready..it was no more worrying or sinister than that, and so letting go would serve her best now. Promotion looked as if it was in the offing in the not too distant future…positive developments were indicated for July-September.

This the client said she could imagine, as she was aware of activities in the pipeline around that time.

There were other, less easily resolvable issues attached to Justice Reversed, relating to difficulties with a father who had ‘disowned’ her because he hadn’t agreed with her choice of husband. The Tarot had things to tell her and she left saying she felt much better, calmer in herself. She had formulated a strategy now for handling the problem with her father, and other issues

The Tarot is economical. It has to be able to talk about any human experience at all, using a toolbox of only 78 cards. Each card is a plump and shiny-coated workhorse, and will do multiple jobs in the course of a single reading. Especially if it is a Major card – this can really ‘up the ante’.

Comments or questions welcome. See the comment tag below.