a look at myself

The following is an abridged version of the Planetary Personality Spread shared by a member of the local tarot meetup group during her presentation last Saturday. The planetary positions on an astrological chart are used as a basis for the card positions in the spread. I thought my reading using this spread was rather on point, so figured I'd post it here.

1. The Ascendant
Your persona, what people see when they first meet you, the mask you present to the world.

As the title of the card would suggest, Temperance is in many ways traditionally a card of balance, of having patience and taking care, of moderating influences. In the Thoth, the card is called Art, Alchemy, in emphasis of the  mixing of the water in the cups, of experimenting and creating, combining, synergy and evolution. In the Nusantara, I see aspects of both of these takes: here, the figure looks harmonious, calm, at ease, carefully balancing and mixing; but there is a certain enthusiasm, a look of energy and enjoyment lacking in the traditional RWS artwork. She still has one foot in the water and one out of it, but the positioning looks more precarious, the water more roiling, the land more like the edge of a cliff. She almost looks like she could be dancing, and yet, is still quite absorbed in her task, the mixing.

What does this suggest about the persona I present to the world? A woman who tries to appear light, at ease, not particularly burdened; someone who wants to appear together, reasonable and trustworthy in their approach to the things they do; someone who very much enjoys experimenting and mixing various perspective, interests, hobbies, etc., even things one might not think very complementary or mixable; someone who tries to downplay the precarious nature of the ground she stands on (or not) and someone who has a hard time actually committing to any one thing, one foot here and one foot there.

2. The Sun
Your basic personality and temperament, your core behaviors, what drives you.

The five of cups generally signifies grief, loss, disappointment, despair, regret. Sometimes it speaks of necessary grief, the need to see harsh reality for what it is, process, and move on; other times it speaks to dwelling on the negative, fixating on what is broken and spilled and gone rather than that which you still have. Here we see a dark-clad figure staring down at the three ups whose water has spilled on the ground, back to the two cups still standing. Grey pervades the background, giving a melancholic air to the surroundings.

What does this say about my basic personality, temperament and behaviors? Well, it suggests a person who has a melancholic type of approach to life, a person that perhaps struggles with depression and has for a very long time, but also a person who has always, even in childhood, had a tendency to fixate on the negative rather than the positive aspects of a situation, a person who dwells on losses, even of small, petty things, someone who has trouble seeing things, as they themselves at least, with hope; someone who inspects and dissects what went wrong, who does not allow themselves to forget even when they do, mostly, move on.

3. The Moon
Your private side, your inner self, your core [emotional] needs.

The seven of wands shows us a man, armed with a stave and standing in a defensive position, ready to fend off attacks - from who we cannot see, only their staves, rising up towards him, fencing him in. The seven of wands generally signifies struggle, facing and overcoming challenges and opposition, perseverance, valor, fighting on even when things seem hopeless.In this deck, the man stands on the precipice of what looks like it could be a waterfall, bright colors of his clothes contrasting with a dull-colored background. He looks determined. Small sprigs grow out of the staves both he and his opposition hold.

What is this showing of my inner self, my core needs, the private me? We see someone who, though very much not a fan of any sort of conflict (notice how peaceful the mask that temperance presents above is, how uninterested and seemingly unprepared for any such engagements), is nonetheless, when backed against a wall (or the metaphorical precipice of a waterfall), responds with defiance; not anger, necessarily, and not confidence or enthusiasm, but a kind of grim, determined defiance. This is a person who sees themselves as alone in such conflict much of the time, who may not even really care about the outcome, hell, would happily throw themselves down that waterfall, but who will not be pushed, or goaded. This is a person who will not be controlled or made to do anything against their will, and whose sometimes terribly strong desire to give up is balanced by that drive to keep fighting, a person more motivated by defiance, even of oneself, that any kind of ambition or desire.

4. Mercury
How you communicate and think, your intellect and ideas.

Last we have the ace of swords, traditionally signifying  sharp thinking, insight, mental clarity, analysis and reasoning through logic, new and original thoughts and ideas, realizations, objectivity, intellectual impulses. Representing the element of air, we see the sword in this ace grasped by a hand reaching out from within a whirl of clouds; crowned, it stands against a background of long, unbroken blue sky.

How does this describe the ways in which I communicate and/or think, my thoughts and ideas? Someone who thinks deliberately, someone who values and relies and logic, objective and internal, whose judgement and even emotional responses are predicated on logical analysis. This is someone who is capable of great insight, into herself and into others, though insight does not necessarily mean appropriate action in response; someone who loves to think, and who thinks independently, sometimes very unusually; someone who is driven more by intellectual rather than mundane concerns; someone who thinks deeply but also someone who over-thinks habitually, especially when it comes to most forms of communication; and someone who is open to considering other perspectives, to a point, but who, once a decision or a realization is made, is quite capable of cutting off completely certain paths of thoughts and action, rightly or wrongly, and utterly unwilling to reconsider that which has been culled from possibility.

realities and dreams

(I've been working my way back into tarot things with small 1-2 card draws. Figured it was time to try to work my way into writing about them too...)

Right now, what do I need to know, remember to keep in mind, understand and internalize?

For me, the Thoth is a deck I've been able to read intuitively since I first picked it up, but also one with many layers to delve into and expand on; it's also a deck that tends to give me kick in the ass type blunt messages and answers, but in a positive way. This quick draw is no exception, it would seem.

We have the The Star and the Queen of Wands, and right away the visual juxtaposition is striking: two powerful female figures side by side, a study in contrasts. The Star is sinuous, flexible; her body, like the water she pours, seems to flow. She seems softer somehow, yet also more distant, unearthly in color, unknowable with her face turned away, looked elsewhere, grasping up. The Queen, on the other hand, appears more rigid, still, looming rather than flowing. Her card is awash with warm colors, she herself abstracted yet still recognizable as a real person. She is also much more direct, face forward and head tilted downwards, slightly, towards the reader. Another difference: the star is alone on her distant planet; the Queen sits with her feline companion, resting one hand on its head.

The Star traditionally represents hope, but also inspiration. It speaks of cleansing, of healing, of reaching farther for more. In this pairing, the color contrast brings to mind the logic-feeling dichotomy - the Star speaking to the intellect, to high ideas pondered in the abstract, to possibilities, to 'dreams. The Queen, meanwhile, speaks to more pragmatic concerns, to the actual person behind the big ideas, the person that needs those little material comforts and needs to wonders how to even try to approach the big picture, and yes, in this case, to emotion.

It might seem a bit strange, that the card that represents inspiration, healing, hope, insight would represent the logical part of my mind rather than the emotional, but it makes sense. Tell me to FEEL hope, to think with feeling about what I want in life, what I would like to do, where I might be going, and you will not get much of a satisfying response. How does one even feel things like that, emotionally? My mind is too much a mess most of the time to know. No, it is the intellectual, the logical that has always driven me: my love of learning and knowing all the things, and the things my need to know has lead to to learn, and my desire to do something about them, to make some kind of a positive difference, my love of knowing even if the thing I am getting to know is unimaginably depressing, everything I have ever reached and grasped for has stemmed from that part of me. The distant, spacey, sometimes lacking in common-sense and too detached from reality thinking part of me is all of that. Here, I think this Star is a reminder, to think about those things, those ideas, those interests that have inspired me in the past to anything of substance I've managed to do, think about what I would reach for if I thought I could, think detached from reality for a moment if I must but yes, that part of me is the one that can imagine how to change things, what to aim for, the part that might just find enough motivation in the big-picture sense.

If the Star is talking about what I need to do in a larger sense, the Queen of Wands here refers to the question of how, how to actually do something, how to actually grasp hold of that and actually DO something with it, some real progress: a reminder of confidence, of holding onto the things you know you are good at, the things you KNOW you can do, cultivating some kind of sense of self-assurance, self-confidence, an independent strength that nonetheless does not mean alone because a bit of comfort and assistance here and there is fine, is good, but you must cultivate that sense of what YOU can do, what you must do for yourself, turn what enthusiasm you can muster in the intellectual abstract ideas into creative energy, into some self-assurance, into some kind of determination that you WILL do this or that because you MUST and because you CAN. She is surrounded by spikes of flame, and of course fire burns, can hurt, but pain, too, is something you know well, can handle, if you just mentally prepare yourself for it, accept it, work through it.

So in summary: let your intellect and logical mind think and find and remember the things you care enough to reach for, however far away they seem, and then, approaching the how to, remember you strengths, that it may be difficult and it may hurt but know that you can do it.

Stillness and Motion

(The Prisma Visions Tarot is a full-color version of the Light Visions Tarot I've written about previously, and the only deck I've bought for myself in over a year, also through Kickstarter. The quality of both decks is amazing. More information on artist's website, if anyone is interested.)

It's been months and months since I've done much of anything with my decks, months since I've written anything substantive at all. I first pulled out the Thoth because it is a comfort deck of sorts, at this point, but the cards were at once too familiar and too distant, a reminder that my reading skills have gotten a bit rusty. And so, perhaps a new deck for a new perspective...

The five of pentacles - the card of misfortune, of bad breaks, of poverty and ill health, of crisis, of loss and lack and falling down without the energy to get up. The Thoth titles this card Worry, and yes - instability, insecurity, they do tend to produce that.

The traditional RWS image is of a pair of cripples and beggars staggering through heavy snow, passing a wall and a stained glass window that brings to mind, for me at least, a church. Here, however, we have something a good bit more intriguing. The man is no longer stumbling forward. He has collapsed, too tired or lacking the will to go on. He is alone. More interesting still - there is no snowstorm howling around him; if anything, the background looks rather peaceful, warm. No, the snow is raining down on him only from out of that stained glass window, which here is tucked into a crumbling wall rather than a solid edifice. The window retains its vaguely church-like appearance, the lingering remnant of some kind of authority - but how much of an authority is it now, half-exposed in a wall to nothing that is quite clearly falling apart? The snow only falling down from that one window is so suggestive of the power of perspective, the limits of focusing on that one point. What would happen if the man were to crawl away a bit further - he turns his back to the window, but also to everything beyond it; his eyes linger on the snowflakes falling, the cold. Perhaps he is hungry - there is that fruit there, high up in the branches of the tree, but how could a man so tired, so listless and worn, hope to climb up that high? It is easier, surely, to focus on the familiar, even if it freezing and miserable.

The eight of wands next to it is even more of a contrast to the traditional imagery. In the RWS and direct derivatives, we usually have some variation of eight staves flying through the air as though thrown forward. The Thoth calls this card Swiftness, showing a prism, a rainbow, bolts of energy thrusting outwards. In either case it is a card that speaks of momentum, of rapid motion, of channeling energy and taking action, of progress, initiative, change. Here, though, the image rather strikingly seems to be one of stillness: the wands stand in place, vertical, as the thin trunks of young trees. In the background we have reeds, the hint of sunrise or sunset against still waters. If someone asked me how I thought it sounded like, inside this image, I would say quiet, it looks quiet there.

And yet - look closer, study the image for a bit longer, and you notice how odd it is, really, all those colorful flowers just blossoming like that, directly from the trunks of the trees. You see the white wisp of energy, of motion, of something curling and climbing up the rightmost of the trunks, the wands. It is, perhaps, a more subtle kind of motion than the stave flying through air, smaller, simpler, but perhaps that is the point - this is something graspable.

Something graspable, something slow and grasping, something crawling, dragging itself up.

Someone might tell that man collapsed in front of that window to drag himself up by his bootstraps, to stand, to walk away from that ennui and cold. Yes, you have lost so much, yes, you are tired and so very cold, but see what kind of a difference just a few steps would make? You could climb over that crumbling wall easily to the other side, see what is on the other side, see what that bit of the world is like, try. Someone could say, and it would be words, all of it, sounds, abstract and distant and a little unreal, everything. Unreal, the word could, to a person too exhausted to want to exist any longer, too tired to want to bear any more weight, a person simply done with trudging, a person capable of finding a sort of numbing comfort in pain. Swiftness, momentum, the thought of sending staves arcing through the air in rapid motion - that kind of effort is laughable, when one doesn't have the energy to stay standing.

But that climbing shoot, that barely visible at first glance, perhaps that is graspable. Perhaps the man could crawl, inch by inch, a bit further away from that too-familiar window, that stream of snow. Perhaps that crawling, grasping might turn into something more, in time. How much energy does it take, to find motion again in the quiet stillness of broken, crumbling ruins?

The nature of the rut in which we are stuck

As the title suggests, I have indeed been feeling rather stuck in a rut when it comes to most dealing with life type things for a good few months, and have been growing increasingly frustrated with the situation. This has not, unfortunately, been particularly conducive to getting back into the swing of things with working with the cards. This afternoon I decided to try to kill two birds with one stone and ease myself back into more regular tarot reading/blogging by pulling a few cards from my all-time favorite deck, the Nusantara tarot. 

So - some advice about what to do about getting out of this negative/unproductive state I seem to be stuck in lately...

It's funny how illuminating a simple two card draw can be. After looking at these for a few moments, I realized that what I have is both the a description of the crux of the issue, and a general guide to the solution.

The World card, of course, represents accomplishment, self-improvement, fulfillment. It shows the unity of various aspects of the self, and celebrates what this can achieve. It is ostensibly the 'goal' towards which one strives, and in this context, it certainly represents a better head-space than the one I've been in of late. What's interesting here, however, is that here it appears first, the position suggesting foundation rather than endpoint.

One the other hand, we have the Eight of Cups. The traditional RWS imagery of this card always brings to mind nostalgia for me. This card speaks of the things you walk away from, the things you might desperately miss but need nonetheless to leave behind.  In the Thoth, this card is titled Indolence - that too fits, indicative of the consequences of not turning your back. The alternative of moving forward is to wallow... a self-indulgence whether it be laziness, self-pity or whatever else. The card is not, however, all about the those cups the man walks away from - the point is also the mountains he is walking towards, the new path forward and toward the unknown.

That image, following (rather than preceding) the World card, points to the crux of the message for me here, I think: that I need movement and forward momentum to thrive. Most of all, I need to feel that what I am doing serves some kind of purpose, brings me closer to achieving something, makes a difference to someone, improves the world around me, or equips me to better do those things in the future... something. Without that, regardless of whether what I am actually doing day to day is enjoyable, and regardless of whether the people around me are awesome and supportive... on a fundamental level I struggle with feeling unhappy and unmotivated. Without something external that is meaningful enough to set up life around everything just feels...endlessly pointless. Why bother trying and why bother writing and why even bother eating for that matter? It becomes a vicious cycle, deepening and perpetuating the rut, the negative thoughts, the weight of inaction.

Also, more literally, movement, in the sense of travel and exploring and experimenting with new things - these are the experiences that inspire me most. By best memories, the times I enjoyed life and everything around me the most are by far those from when I was traveling and visiting other countries - Tunisia, Egypt, Sweden...

Given that...well. Since finishing my grad program, I haven't had that sense of working towards a goal and doing something I love the way I did with my studies. There is no structure to time and activity to guide me, no reading or discussion or learning with career in mind to inspire me. Instead there is job searching that becomes more discouraging and difficult to do the longer it goes on, and too much time wasted on meaningless if enjoyable in the moment pursuits. I need external responsibilities in order to have that sense of forward movement. Not sure how to remedy the situation in the short term, but it is the only solution that makes sense. I cannot just exist, just be - my brain equates that with being a waste of space, my mind becomes bored, and my more self-destructive tendencies strengthen.

 I need to find a reason to move forward, something that allows me to feel that sense of movement, - an impetus to leave behind some of that negativity. Motion, forward motion...

2014: Another Year, Another Year Card

It's been a bit of a while now, since I seriously worked with the cards on any kind of regular basis. It was only when I finally dragged myself to the local tarot greet meetup last Saturday for the first time since last fall that I even remembered to think on the new year, and the new year card that comes with it.

Last year, the card of focus was the Hanged Man. It was a bit of a funny year, really. I intereworked and I moved, I wrote a thesis and struggled to finish my masters program. Yet, in many ways, it was a year of stasis. For a large part of it, I could not bring myself to work with the cards, though I missed it. The future loomed, and yet was not immediate. I tried and struggled, got so stressed I could not eat or sleep for three days, and yet still - was not able to finish my thesis work by the end of December as I should have done.

(Later there were profuse apologies, a polite, professional sort of groveling, an extension into the new year granted.)

6 + 27 + 2014 = 2047, added together gives us 13. Death is the card of the new year. Given that I've only gotten around to writing this entry now, in April, I do already have some insight into how 2014 might be influenced and guided by this particular major...

I fell in love with the Silicon Dawn's depiction of Death from the moment I first set eyes on in, even using it as an avatar on various corners of the internet, something I rarely do with tarot imagery as a rule. The monotone palette is perfect appropriate, and yet, even with such limited colors, this card feels far more vibrant and dynamic than the more traditional image seen in so many other decks: not the reaper on a horse, or standing still, scythe in hand. Here, Death leaps through rain that washes away the old even as it nourishes the start, here and there, of new life. Death advances, illuminated by moonlight, and below other, more human figures run, ride forward too. A flood, destruction, so many things wiped away and yet what you see and focus on is the sense of movement and forward momentum, the sheer energy shown so clearly.

Death is not so dire a card, newcomers to tarot are so often told, and indeed. Like the ouroboros snake I have tattooed onto my wrist as a reminder, Death too is a card not only of ends but of beginnings, of doors and gates that you move through, of the things you leave behind and the things you move forward into. We transform and we become, and what we think we know changes, and we are reminded again and again, that nothing is permanent, nothing lasts, all things must come to an end.

Last year did not feel uneventful, and yet, even in these first three months of 2014, there have been such great leaps of change. I did finish the thesis, albeit a bit later than I'd have liked. I graduated, my time as a student once more at an end. The real world, the need to find a real job, to pay those loans, to be a proper adult is more immediate, has settled in - a heavy, unpleasant weight.

That is though, in truth, by far the lesser of transformations - that was expected, the logical conclusion to the last two and a half years. No, what has me reeling was the fact that I, so very much an I Don't Do Relationships person for so very long, suddenly find myself involved in something very real. Not a brief, casual fling devoid of feeling, this, but rather a connection involving the heart, that fickle, vulnerable thing. A new year began and a friendship became something more; with it, the realization that someone could see the strangest, most disturbed, most difficult aspects of who I am, a decade's worth of scars, and still love me, want me. I found that I could feel the same.

And so, already my outlook and the way I interact with the world around me has been radically altered. On both counts, the end of some things brings with it stress, doubt, difficulty; it also brings unexpected joys, be that enjoying the touch of a person you love, or having the time to play a video game you enjoy without guilt for the first time in over two years.

Really, I don't know whether I should be excited or terrified to see what else the rest of this Death year might bring...

stillness, change and choices

It's interesting, how still the two of disks feels in this deck, seemingly devoid of movement. In the traditional RWS image, and in many decks based off of it, you see a man juggling coins, pentacles, trying to keep them in the air. It requires a good bit of effort, that - dexterity, coordination, sheer energy.

Here, instead, you have a motionless figure, with two coins covering its eyes. It's not an unfamiliar image - the ancient Greeks and Romans used to do that, coins on the eyes to pay the ferryman to the underworld, and it is a myth and custom that is referenced commonly enough to this day, in stories, movies, tv shows. So you have a that, suggesting lifelessness, passing, but then the figure is green, with vines and leaves extending across the forehead, the cheeks. Is that not spring, renewal, birth and growth of a sort?

One coin is silver and one coin is gold - right and left, dexter and sinister, yameen and yasaar. One coin has the two-headed picture of Janus - another reference to antiquity. He was, apparently, the god of beginnings and ends, doorways, passages, gates and time. The other coin has an owl carved into it - a reference to wisdom perhaps, wisdom and a bird capable of the freedom of flight.

The thoth calls this card Change, and change see here, yes, in stillness. It is not a kind of change that necessarily brings to mind this cards, traditionally, rather than say, Death. Life begins and ends and if you do burial than yes, eventually your remains might fertilize the earth and some kind of flora might sprout forth in the same place, but usually this card refers to more immediate, more mundane change - the ones you yourself have to make, the ones in your grasp. Choices and decisions and juggling all the things on your plate.

As it so happens, in my case, right now, this card is apt.

Sometimes you can get so overwhelmed with despair, or resignation, or frustration, ennui, exhaustion, whatever you want to call it. It spins around your head and the temptation to just give up is so strong, except you can quite bring yourself to go there, but the pull of it is paralyzing in a way and it is so difficult to get anything done.

Sometimes, the unconventional, extreme type approach is the most helpful: narrow it down to a simple choice, with two options, two coins. Stillness or motion - give up or get to work, but pick one and do it right now, right here, right in this moment.

Not insignificant, I think, that I would pull this card alongside the Star. The recommended choice and change is pretty clear, here. Bathed in a kind of intense, red light, the woman walks through what looks like it could be an ordinary field, but could also be one made of so many vaguely sketched people. She walks forward, and keeps walking.

A deck I could not resist

So my tarot absence of the last half-year or so has extended not just to this blog and working with the cards, really, but also to other tarot websites I usually frequent, and to buying any new decks. After all, if I am not currently even USING the ones I have, I surely should not procure any more until that changes.

So that has been that, up until a few days ago. I was browsing online is a general way, about decks and things and somehow found myself on the Kickstarter page for a new tarot deck. I've browsed Kickstarter before, but never have been tempted enough to actually join in on funding a project. The Light Visions Tarot, it turns out, did indeed tempt me in such a way. I pledged enough to get a copy of the deck because well, it is the first deck in many months to really strongly call to me. Love the art technique and the recognizable but not just a RWS clone nature of it, and yeah.

It is also the first deck in a long time that I have bought without first reading various talk of it on blogs here or on Aeclectic. No idea about anything around this other than what the Kickstarter page says. Fortunately it is relatively easy for me, with things like this, to kind of forget about it entirely for a while, so the wait at least should not be a bother.

On and Off

When people ask how long I've been reading and collecting tarot cards for, I usually say 'ten years, but on and off' or some variation thereof.

This is what I mean. It's like a switch goes off in my head and suddenly for no particular reason I just cannot get my brain to...work with the cards. It slides, drifts about into other things. Later, later it says, and days and weeks pass and my decks sit there, sadly untouched.

I haven't forgotten this blog though, or those I read. Did a series of readings that were kind of an interesting challenge - a character in an online D&D game I DM, reading cards for fictional characters played by other people, except me actually pulling and reading cards for it. It was like pulling teeth actually reading them, but was interesting. Perhaps will repost here once I finish with the last bit of that.

Hope everyone is well, at least relatively speaking. :]