My Favorite Majors: The World

So, here we are: end of the line, last of the majors to pick favorites for. I've really enjoyed going through each of them one by one, picking the cards I liked most from my collection, pondering why it was that those were the ones I enjoyed most. Also, interestingly enough, posts from this series seem to be, by far, the most often viewed ones on this blog :0

Anyway, yes, the World - a card of success and completion and fulfillment, journeys coming to an end. A lot of decks tend to hew to the same basic concept illustrated in both RWS and TdM, though with their own various takes on it. In general, its not a card I have many qualms with in most decks, though also...rarely a favorite.

I had trouble choosing two out of the three I narrowed down my selection to - and well, since this IS the last card in the series, figured what the hell, I can break my two card rule for a second (and last!) time ;]

XXI. World

Favorite:
Of all the many deck-variations on the traditional image of the woman inside the large wreath of accomplishment, I've long been very much partial to this one. I love the dynamic, sensual energy of it: the woman here isn't just standing there, but rather, seems to be dancing, celebrating. The feeling of acceptance, of confidence, of completions, success - all of that seems to be here, much more so than in other cards with similar imagery. Looking at this card, I can feel the meaning it is supposed to be representing.

Of course, the lovely use of color here certainly doesn't hurt. As my previous posts in this series probably have already made clear, I am very much a color-oriented person. The use of the yellow-gold as a background here works really well especially. Love the details in the wreath, the animals, and of course those pillars which surround all of the majors in this deck. Stained glass effect works wonderfully here.

Runners Up:
As for these two, I couldn't quite decide between them because...they are so very DIFFERENT, and yet, both have aspects to them I really like. For the Aquarian World card - well, it definitely does not have the kind of wild, dynamic energy I see in the other two, but makes up for that with...well, I must admit, I have long been very much a fan of art-nouveau and art-deco, and the application of those to this card, done so thoroughly, with such lovely thematic consistency and attention to detail...I just love it. The color scheme is lovely too - not one you see very often, but more striking because of it. I particularly enjoy how it has all the basic aspects of the RWS but...re-done, re-imagined, stylized so nicely.

As for the Thoth...I've written about this World card before, more than once. I really do love it. Naked woman of gold dancing with a snake and all that it can represent - oroboros, beginnings and ends; she is dynamic, the universe opening up quite literally behind her, intimate and public all at once. Stars, the outline of ancient structures...and that, all of that, is only the surface level of the card, my own intuition - how much more to read about, dig deeper in the other layers that the Thoth deck has to offer...yes, a worthwhile take indeed.

the falling away of dreams

Funny that these would be the cards that come up for me today...

We have two dragons in this seven of cups, unreal creatures having a tea party, giggling, dreaming impossible things - stars around them, seedlings growing out of the teacups even as they play...

Impossible dreams. I have a good friend. We met in college - she was one of the few people who bothered to really draw me out, to get beyond those walls I build up around myself socially, especially back then. We became friends in large part because, for a couple of semesters, we were basically in all of the same classes - we had remarkably similar interests and yes, dreams, things we wanted to do, work in, achieve...

For me, even back then...the awareness that the highest of those dreams would almost certainly only ever be pipe dreams...too many factors, many out of my control, standing in the way... With her though, it was different. I watched her over the years pursuing those dreams, better-suited to it than I could ever be...and recently, especially, she was awarded an opportunity, one that would put her on a near-certain track to...doing it, getting there. And I was so proud of and happy for her, because I know her, know how good of a job she could do, how her amazing people skills and charisma and compassion would be great for that kind of role.

Last night, I ended up spending quite a while on the phone with her, listening, trying to be supportive. She just got some news, a decision that might...make all of that impossible. There is still the chance of an appeal, but...whether that would work is highly uncertain, to say the least. And she is so upset, afraid, angry at herself for small mistakes made years ago. It's hard to know what to say: I could try to tell her that even if the worst happens, it's not the end of things, that there will always be another beginning, something else to pursue; that life will fall into place somehow, that she can pursue other routes. And yet, I know how hard it is to hear that - not to mention actually believe it - when you are so distraught, so focused on the one disaster unfolding in front of you now. It is hard to see the other possibilities you might still have to grow, to learn, to become a better version of you, when you are so viscerally experiencing your dreams spilling and leaking away all around you...

You keep going. You keep going and you wait for the disappointment to mellow out into a kind of indifference, a resignation you can live with. You keep going and you laugh and joke about pipe dreams, about a younger, sillier you.

I look at the last card and think that maybe I should send her something - a card with a book or a poem of some sort. Will have to think a bit, about what might be appropriate...

Possibility

Remember this; remember this:

You may lose things left and right - possessions, people you once knew, bits of yourself that once seemed important - but in the grand scheme of things, nothing is truly over, done with. Not as long as you can still run; not as long as there is still breath in your lungs, and thoughts in your mind, the possibility of movement.

You can always, always still move forward, seek a new spring, the green of new beginnings tight across the crags and crevices of your body. You can seek another adventure, a new quest, a new focus, something to seek. Seek to get higher than you are now, to rise.

See the world in spirals that rise and fall and rise again. Always, at the very least, possibility - run and leap and perhaps even fly, freed by air, weightless. Airy dreams: less than half a century ago men from two sides of the globe launched themselves into the stars, into space because they refused to believe that doing so was impossible.A bit over a year ago you drove with your cousin to an air field outside of Stockholm and allowed yourself to be pushed out of a plane, to plummet madly through air, laughing, to feel the sharp tug of an unfolding parachute pulling you up again.

That momentum, to launch into new things, to mix and concoct and try again and again, to discover. As long as you remember the attitude of the Fool you will always have at least that: possibility, the seed of swiftness and maybe one day, some day, flight.

academic overview

I thought it would be interesting to turn the tarot-thoughts on a subject I haven't really touched on that much with them in a while - my academic life. Today's cards seemed to agree with that vague intention/seem to speak to that, and so...

This four of cups cards brings to mind my Arabic class, on several levels. I've been feeling rather physically tired overall lately - and mentally too for that matter - and the fact that this class, unlike all my other ones, is a morning class does not improve my enthusiasm for it. I've never been great with morning classes, and one of the thing I love about my grad program is that everything is in the evening. I CAN drag myself to class or work in the morning when I must, sure, but my performance is rarely what it could be later on in the day...

More significant here though, is the mood of the card as a whole, the tired sleepy posture of the figure on the chair and the studied apathy of the one standing up. Dissatisfaction - a why bother type of attitude? I am indeed, I must admit, rather disatisfied with the class so far. Over the summer, in Tunisia, I LOVED studying Arabic. It was challenging, interesting - we got to learn the patterns of the structure of the language, engage with reading and listening to apply that the teacher, even though his English wasn't as great as this new professor's is, could explain things really thoroughly...

As for her...she is a lovely person and, in my opinion, a rather terrible teacher. She doesn't explain things well at all, the haphazard way she assigns homework means I always struggle to remember what I am supposed to do, and really - I just don't LEARN anything. Fortunately most of what we are doing, I learned over the summer, and yet nonetheless - it isn't even a good review. Feels like tedious busywork and a waste of my time. But well - I am financially constrained by the language scholarship to stick with the class until the end of the semester and to, at the very least, do well enough to past with a decentish grade and so...a kind of tired apathy indeed :/

The ten of swords is a bit of a funny card to get in this context, but it does make a kind of sense. It's interesting that here the figure is...dancing among those swords, perhaps a bit melodramatic in posture, surrounded by so many dangers and yet, nonetheless, that graceful movement...

In my other classes, I find myself with a stack of reading to do each week, as always. And what do I read about? I read about the crimes and violence perpetrated by criminal groups, insurgents, terrorists, armies and militias. I read about these from an economic perspective, with complicated equations; with a security studies focus; from a humanitarian and human rights standpoint. Switch between reading about Sicilian mafia bombings to reading about LTTE suicide bombs and PLO hijacking, to all kinds of war crimes. The other week we watched an incredibly graphic documentary in my human rights class about the war crimes perpetrated against Tamil civilians in the final months of the war in Sri Lanka in 2009. And certain images stick in your mind afterwards, as you walk to the bus. The knowledge that people can do these terrible things and walk free with so much impunity because it is so much easier all around to just pretend...that did not happen. And so what if it did, over there, so far away...

I am also a but fearful of the kind of...difficulties that the 10 of swords can represent. I have a lot of papers and presentations due in rather narrow timeslots later on in the semester. I am hoping to get my act together a bit more and get a head start on things but...have been having some trouble focusing and doing that and last time I had multiple long papers and presentations all due within the same week or week and a half it was...a less than fun experience shall we say. Perhaps this is a warning to me in that regard, something to help me get properly motivated. Procrastination does not lead to great things, on the whole.

nifty deck, introvert paradox

So about a week ago or so I got my copy of a deck I've been eagerly looking forward to since I first saw scans of it online before it was fully complete ... the Tarot of the Absurd. I've always loved the idea of a black and white tarot, having a bit of a *thing* for monochrome, and the decks out there, few and far in between, that fit that description...all are lacking a certain something. Light and Shadow is the closest I've found to what I'd been wanting, and lovely though that one may be image-wise...the size and highly mediocre cardstock prevent it from ever really becoming a favorite. This...well, lovely quirky artwork that stretches you in reading and as for the execution? I keep wanting to TOUCH these cards because they feel so nice.

So some work with it, since I got it a nice bag to live in and got myself a phone again to take pictures with until I figure out the camera situation...

I'm reminded by these two cards of one of those paradoxes that come with being an introvert - very much so in my case. When I was younger, I used to have a lot of issues with social anxiety, with thinking that I wasn't 'good with people', In truth, social skills are in large part something that can be learned and improved on and, while speaking will never be my strong point and I doubt I'd ever win any charisma awards, I really am not any worse than the average person at socialization and getting along with people.

The thing about being an introvert is that you don't necessarily WANT to be alone all the time. That gets lonely, and everyone can use someone to talk to, to engage in activities in, to give and get support from. At the same time, being around people can just get so...draining, sometimes. The talk talk talk, the noise, so much going on, different motives and approaches and sometimes maintaining that necessary inner barrier between yourself and the world...tiring, yes.

Yesterday I went with a friend to the National Book Fair and it was a lovely time, listening to some fantasy/sci-fi authors talk and sign books and yet...standing in long lines, sitting in a large crowd of people...always sets me on edge to some degree. So much noise, so much going on. I only grudingly and occassionally use facebook, and avoid other social networks by and large because...they are too overwhelming. Too much going on that I don't want to deal with. There are better things to do with my time.

The feeling when a stranger or acquaintance insists on striking up a conversation when you are in no mood to talk. Listening to other people talk in the library when you just really, really want to work on your own things *silently*. Being obliged to go out and deal with the world on days when you really would just like to hole up by yourself at home.

You don't dislike people or social contact, not at all, and you feel blessed to have as many wonderful people in your life as you do, and yet...

moving forward, walking away

So some more experimenting - this time, an attempt to do a reading combining tarot and lenormand. Basically, draw one tarot card and have that serve as the overarching 'theme' of the reading, and then a string of three lenormand cards as the message for/response to/clarification of the tarot card. Basically the tarot still gets read as tarot and the lenormand cards still get read together, as lenormand cards ought to be.

In terms of over-arching theme, we have the eight of cups. A man stands in a body of water, his back turned towards the future, the sky. Above the water he is attractively-built, strong; below it, a kind of tentacled creature, bizarre, flexible and yet so...intangible, difficult to describe. The contrast between how others perceive us and how we perceive ourselves, in our heads? Ever since I was a small child I have always had this odd feeling that my body wasn't really...me; not the way my mind was, my thoughts.

Anyway, he faces away from the cups, the things he has, the place he has been, the past. Instead he looks up, towards the sky, the stars, hopes and dreams and the intangible - all the things you must work for, grasp at if you ever want a real chance at having. Turning away from the status quo to pursue more, the new. Letting go, being willing to reach. Knowing when to walk away, and what to walk away from.

Then, to take a look at the lenormand cards and see what they have to say about that...We have the crossroads, which is about making choices, and decisions, being forced to figure out which road you will take, what sacrifices to make doubts; and the coffin which speaks of difficult things, depression and illness and death, of endings; and the stars, of hope and creativity and imagination, of renewal, inspiration.

Given the cards around in, the coffin in this layout seems to hold a meaning quite similar to that of the Death card in the tarot. Particularly striking in this image is the ritualized, stylized nature of the thing - it isn't just death, it is death, decay preserved, romanticized, all that energy and cost gone into preserving something gone, over...reminds me of Lenin's tomb for example - quite disturbing and unnecessary, if you think about it. Better off to kill those things for good, let them go, choose to walk down the path of separation that would take you into the future towards far better, healthier, more productive and fulfilling things.The star at assures that it is possible, that you have in in you to heal, to fulfill those dreams, to do so many better things if only you could make that decision to let the negative coffin things really go.

How much energy goes into maintaining that elaborate coffin, dealing with it? What kind of starry things could you accomplish if your focus could be fully turned elsewhere, if like the man you could walk away from those tired old cups?

For me, this message is utterly applicable. Things that have gone on for ten years now... I truly do not know how to even try anymore and yet, the cards remind me, that I must; to not give up when I just feel so tired of the inevitability of it all. You can never get unstuck if all you do is muddle about and dwell on how stuck you are. 

addiction metaphor

Maybe for you it comes in bottles, or neat little pills, or injections; maybe you smoke it out of packs with the large cancer warning labels plastered on the front; maybe it is too much or too little food, or both, by turns; maybe it's the way that you treat your body, hurt it, undermine it; maybe it's the way you let others take advantage of you.

Whatever it may be - the pull, constant, and the weight of that pull, comfortingly familiar and yet so damned heavy. Maybe there was a thrill of excitement once, at first, when you were younger, when the effects where still abstract, easily pushed aside, ignored. Maybe once you were impressed by your own cleverness - that it was different for you, not nearly so difficult or dangers as people were saying.

How easy it is to be fooled, by others or by your own mind, bit by bit. The puppet strings that bind you, the chains, grow tighter slowly. Patterns develop over years, habits that become so ingrained that it becomes near-impossible to remember how things were before.

You drag yourself forward through the grass, back aching, balancing that burden that is yours to bear, always. Do you see people standing upright in the distance? Yes, you can see them running and laughing wildly and you wonder how that can be, how they can move so quickly with so much energy when it takes so much determined effort for you just to crawl. How can they be so free?

How? You grow so tired of it. You tell yourself that enough is enough - today will be different. This time, I will stop, I will do something different, I will refrain, take control of myself, my life. You tell yourself and...hours, days, a few weeks and...there it is, that devil, attractive as always. You know damned well by now whats behind that handsome facade - the shame, the dozens of tiny humiliations that slowly wear away at your soul, the things you'd once have sworn you'd never do that now you brush off with a certain nonchalant air because what else is there to do, what choice do you have. You see and yet drawn you are all the same.

The devil you know. He crushes you - you body, your soul, your mind - in tiny increments that add up to so much over years, and long after you know damned well what he is all about, long after you grow so sick of the same, miserable repetition day after day...break away for a few moments and return. Do it again. Dance away from the big changes, breaking that chain for good because...the devil you know. That pentacle glow, that dazzling, false light which remains...so familiar.

Lenormand dabbling

So yes, after long-resisting the idea of branching out into anything but tarot (too many decks already!) I first got an oracle and now...a lenormand, too. Pixie's Astounding Lenormand, in the 2nd edition, specifically. Confronting a whole new system of reading...it's comforting to have the familiar art style, which funny enough I actually appreciate more in this than in the actual RWS...

Anyway, a sample of the dabbling -

So, to go by the lenormand style, which seems to be much more about reading the cards together in string rather than individually, and then make connections, the way one does in tarot...

The ship and the moon together seem to reflect the way my mind is right now, moving about, unfocused, now daydreaming this and that, distracted by anything - I should be cleaning! Studying! Instead I am playing with Lenormand cards, flitting from this and that, anxiety and feeling adrift, yes. Aimless, foggy mind-sailing.

Which is in fact interfering with my studies, the books and readings I need to be doing, the learning I ought to be absorbing - as the book and the cloud together right there indicate. Of course this ship-moon-book combination, this lack of focus, only make me feel more stressed, the clouds thus forming a bridge between the book and the stars, the whole cycle of stress and anxiety making me feel worse which makes it even harder to do anything useful and yet...

The reading ends of the stars, the card of hope, inspiration, imagination in the Lenormand as well as the tarot. Stars, the awe of looking up at a perfectly black sky and seeing those pinpoints of light...hope, need to focus on that, finding the motivation behind the clouds even in times like this...