Tarot Temperatures Rising…

Well,  it has been a white Christmas here where I live by the sea on Lancashire’s  usually mild, if sometimes windy Fylde coast. It did not strictly count as white, for anyone who might have placed a bet on it, as no new snow fell, but it looked white all right.

Il Matrimonio, the husband, asked me, thinking of prospects for inter-familial travel, did I see a thaw coming by today, Monday?

I performed a single card reading and drew THE KNIGHT OF WANDS.

The Knight of Wands From The Thoth Tarot: Alesteir Crowley/Frieda Harris c. U.S. Games Systems.

The associations for this card are:  speed, change, sudden arrivals and departures, warmth, the south, sultriness.

 

The Tarot was therefore indicating a thaw that would arrive on or by Monday, which is today.

And here it is, a relenting of the icy grip.  Icicles falling off the roof, meltwater rushing out of the drains, a metre wide ribbon of water standing on the road. Drip drip. Plip plip.

A little respite for the birds who are having a tough time of it.

A thaw, yes. Sultry…well, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it that, but technically, yes, in the sense that the melt is due to warm air coming to us from the south, from the continent.

Keep warm this winter, may you successfully fend off all sniffles.

You may be interested in looking up the medicinal uses of such home use remedies as oregano oil:-  http://www.homeremediesweb.com/oil_of_oregano_health_benefits.php

 

True Tarot…

True Tarot….

Fire, I’ll Teach You To Burn!

This could have been the theme for tarot blogs in recent unsettled weeks, in the fiery light of the London riots. In fact, I found my cards foreshadowed these events, and the tragedies that followed with the Tower card and the Ace of Swords Reversed. No, this is the story of a personal reading, in which I was struck by a definite theme.

There were Wands cards everywhere:-

Wands in Tarot is the equivalent of Clubs in playing cards and its corresponding element is fire.

The associations of this Tarot suit are:   fire, energy. passion, drive, ambition, travel, communications, business, moving house, heading south, summer, speed, and speaking literally, such things as combustion engines, flames, hot foods…

You get the idea…Now, in this reading, we had:-

 The 5 of  Wands, the Page of Wands (Rev) the Knight of Wands (Rev) the Queen of Wands (Rev) and finally, the King of Wands, Dignified.

It emerged that:

The Five of Wands was flagging up the client’s worries about disruption, gossip in her workplace and was indicating a certain amount of stress, even anger centering on failed communication.

The Page of Wands referred to a move at work that she was not happy about. It also referred to her reservations about a  proposed house move. She had not fully realised just how uneasy the idea made her, she said, until she saw it reflected in the cards.

The Knight of Wands Rev. The man in her life had children and he didn’t want any more. She herself had no children.  He had initially said he would consider having more, as she was helping look after his children,  although they were not married. However, he had lately reconsidered and was saying no. This card spoke therefore of ardour dampened, ignition of new life denied.

The Queen of Wands Reversed referred to the client’s feelings about this situation. Astrologically speaking, she was a Queen of Pentacles,  a Taurus queen.  She  was being shown as a Queen of Wands REv because her impulses were ruling her actions.  Her common sense and her need for security, were being overruled by her passionate feelings, both happy and unhappy.

The King of Wands represented the man…an archetypal Wands figure, fun, dynamic, exciting, charismatic, but also, capable of carelessness, ruthlessness and selfishness. He could be chaotic and volatile and she had good reasons to feel cross.

Drawing another card of flames, The Devil I wondered what was her her job?

She couldn’t possibly be attached to the Fire Service, could she?

Yes, she could.

She was a firefighter. 

The Devil!

The Devil: The Gilded Tarot

With kind permission from Ciro Marchetti

How was she to manage the flames of this relationship without getting burned?  The Tarot’s answer came from the client’s own astrological suit…Pentacles.

The Tarot called for her to build and maintain a firewall of Taurean earth. to be able to enjoy the warmth of the flame in safe bounds.

What might this mean in practical terms?

The Four of Pentacles, the 10 of Pentacles and the Ace all asked her to reconsider begore agreeing to sell her house.

It was her own house, in her sole name, willed to her by a grandparent.

The Tarot could not have issued a louder warning against selling at urging of this man, her partner, without security of marriage.

Would she act on this?

True Tarot was secretly doubtful. Fire scorches earth, earth smothers fire, and what was the glue at work here?

The seductive power that’s also represented by that fiery Devil card. Uh oh. Can it be reasoned with, before it’s burned itself out? Does this golden oldie below remind you of the tarot card illustrated above?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2g-6QGsC8g&feature=related

The Flotsam

I had a dream the other night

A planet, blue and cobweb white

A small pale moon encircled it

A ghostly child that clung half lit

I wanted to return to earth

I’d thought I’d try again for birth

I came in for a closer look

On a mountain top, an open book

I hovered but I couldn’t read

The faded words, all scattered seed

The stories left for me were lost

I crossed horizons and recrossed

Them, nothing moved below on ground

And sifting dust the only sound

I turned to face Andromeda

What tide could carry me so far?

What kindly harbour would draw me in?

Forgotten endings, re-begin?

Katie-Ellen Hazeldine, July 2010.

Practical Tarot:The Chariot

I find a 4 card spread is a neat but comprehensive way of quickly opening a reading, I think of it as ‘taking someone’s temperature’ Tarot-style…

North card. Material Affairs, home, work, health etc

West Card: Relationships, spiritual matters, mood.

South Card: Career, ambitions, passions, energy levels

East Card: Thoughts, intellectual preoccupations, planning.

A central card or simply an extra card placed alongside may be used to identify the question or concern that is the motivation for coming to the reading.

This may or may not be logged in the forefront of the client’s conscious thinking at the reading’s outset and may emerge later. Don’t be put off too much if you’re new to reading, share the meaning of a card and a client refutes it. Don’t argue, accept the rebuttal and wait…very often it will emerge during the reading that the Tarot was right, and the client just needed a little more thinking time or to settle into the conversation first.

In the North I drew The Chariot Reversed. A card of Travel, Transport, Ambition, Partnership, Cohesion, Teamwork, Success achieved through focus and determination.  Being drawn Reversed…was he currently experiencing trouble with transport or a sense of dissatisfaction with his job?

Not with transport he said, looking baffled. Yes, to the dissatisfaction at work question.   He was a building labourer, a skilled one, and that was OK, he liked the work, but he had a hunger for learning, and a taste in reading and curiosity in metaphysical matters that he found was not readily understood by his work mates.

This formed the greater part of the discussion that followed.

But for now that did not seem to be all of ‘it’…what about his car or van, I asked? This was probably not a serious problem, positive surrounding cards indicated it as a passing concern, but it was lodged in the material and financial department of this small spread. 

The MOT was due on it the following week, he said, and he was not looking forward to the bill one bit.

Aha. The Tarot was picking up on basics. And so it should.

The Chariot from the Swiss IJJ Tarot.



A Tarot Tantrum!

A Tarot Tantrum!.

A Devil Of A Tarot Tantrum!

Me sunshine black jumper shrunk

Jung coined a phrase to describe how he thought tarot worked: ‘synchronicity.’  Something in the reader connects with something in the cards. The cards are shuffled blind and drawn at random. However, synchronicity proposes that actually the selection isn’t random;

”[In synchronistic experiences] the perception of wholeness derives not from our ego, our conscious sense of self, but instead from the way in which the meaning unites all of who we are, parts of experience we were unaware of, potentials we have that have lain dormant or underdeveloped, elements of our personality that we didn’t know existed”

One evening a client left after an intense reading, and that day I had been very, very tired. I went upstairs with a cup of tea to lounge with a book. My teenage daughter came in asking me to take  a look in the cards for her.

I said, ‘not right now, sweetie, I’m too tired. Give me half an hour’.

She persisted, and as I knew the question, and knew it wasn’t serious, and could wait I became annoyed.

‘If you keep on asking when I’ve said I’m too tired,’ I said. ‘I’ll show you the Devil card! Now then.’

She asked again. Oh, dear.

‘Right!’ I said and whipped the cards out from their cloth and shuffled them furiously.

‘Now see THIS!’ I hissed, pulled a card and brandished it at her, and  knock me down with a very small chick feather,  it was, it really was  THE DEVIL CARD. Look atta ugly mug. thedevil

Ooh-er. A Devilish Tarot Tantrum to match my own.

She was I might say, suitably impressed. In fact she ran from the room howling for her dad, who was watching the footie and wasn’t remotely interested in this psychodrama, while I sniggered,  feeling better now, peacefully drinking my tea.

Hey, you old Devil… you said it for me, heh heh! Now go away again, thank you.

Devil's Backbone
Devil’s Backbone (Photo credit: pietroizzo)

 

How about that for synchronicity?

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