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...

look at the semester ahead

So as I start off yet another semester of grad school and classes and suchlike, I thought it might serve me well to do a general reading about it - what too keep in mind, look out for, etc. Once again I am using my de la Rea tarot and the Comte de Mellet spread. This time, I got quite a few more pairs, and in reading them, a pattern kind of emerged: Major = Theme, Minor = Details.
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In the first pair we have the Devil, wonderfully illustrated here by the particular shapes of these masks (the gold paint really does look much nicer in real life) as well as the smoky effect in the background. In this pair, starting off the reading, we can see a kind of question: what is lost likely to hold me back, tie me down, limit me, take away my attention from the things I should be focusing on? In the minor, the five of cups, we can find that answer. In the Thoth, which this card reminds me of more strongly due to the colors (there too, we have the kind of bright orange-red, as the background), this card is called Disappointment. We have wilted leaves, a pentacle reversed - image often associated with the Devil card as well. In the RWS we have a figure weeping over spilled cups, focusing on what is lost rather than what still stands. Cup within cup within cup here, and on top what looks like a kind of egg or perhaps a pineapple. Shall we reach it, crack it open? Or is it too high up?

Devil is the tendency to focus on the negative, to get lost in feeling sad; a tendency to be blinded by obstacles; disappointment and resignation, weeping over spilt milk, over things that one may wish would get better but they don't, at least not much.

In the second pair we have the Fool as the theme question: Where and how should I be more like the fool, willing to go forward, willing to take risks, willing to have faith and to move forward even if it does mean being bitten in the shins now and again? The minor here is the seven of wands, seven wands firmly rooted in the ground stretching upwards, into the sky. Seven is the Chariot in the major arcana, a card of action and movement and small victories - and wands is the suit of personal growth, of ambition and creative energies. Valour, the thoth says, as as in here shows one powerful rod overcoming and controlling the rest, behind.

To be the fool is to take action and take risks, to DO even when the outcome would be far from certain. Face the world and face insecurities and be willing to challenge myself.

Our third pair presents us with Justice and the 2 of Coins, two cards that speak well to each other. In Justice, with her scales bound to her sword with a serpent that reminds me much of the Caduceus symbol used in medicine, there is the reminder that finding and maintaining equilibrium in life is important even if it isn't a Justice card year for me anymore? And how can I work on channeling this, balance, adjustment as needed. The two of coins, of course. The RWS image of the juggler, keeping the balls in the air with a steady hand: smart multi-tasking, prioritizing, focusing on keeping up with many things at once - and not just the obvious ones like 'x assignment and y application'; taking care of oneself is something that needs to be on the list too. In the Thoth the title for this card is Change, a reminder that life is dynamic, of the need to go with the flow. There are runes on the ribbon in this card - we can use them, and cards, and whatever else to help us navigate these twists and turns and that is fine, but do not resist or despair at the unfamiliar, the end of things and start of others. The snake eats its own tail into infinity because such is the universe, hello and goodbye, loss and starting anew.

Justice is balance, is prioritizing and juggling and switching back and forth as necessary; it is keeping track of things, not getting over-focused on the one task and letting others fall to the wayside. It is taking her of responsibilities as well as the self. It is working with the changes that may come.

Finally we have Death posing a suitably appropriate closing question: what should I let go of, put an end to, cut away? What things have passed their expiration date, their usefulness? Bits and pieces of once nice things lay scattered on the ground here, where the reaper walks and cleans, in his own way. The chariot racing into concrete action is advisable - the chariot racing around in the land of fantasy and dreams, not so much. In the RWS we often see a figure confronted with too large a selection of cups filled with two many things - which to pick, which to pick? Indecision is a a very great shortcoming of mine. Just this Monday I spent about fifteen minutes in the bread aisle while grocery shopping, unable to decide on what to pick to make sandwiches on because SO MANY OPTIONS. Feeling like there are too many options can be almost as paralyzing and difficult as feeling that there are no options at all. What to do, so many things, they spin and how could we grasp at just one, how could we decide? Old things and new clutter together, make a mess, and how can you pick out what it is that you really want, now?

In Death we find a need to sort and clear away the confusion, both physically (I have business cards in my wallet of people I no longer even remember at all 0_o) and mentally. In some areas of my life, it is time to step away from the abstract, to sort out a concrete plan rather than just think and dreaming and despairing. In terms of school assignments I would do well by just choosing a topic rather than wasting time that could be better spent on researching going back and forth with 'but i could do this...or This...or That!'. The blade is no worse than the clutter, and the time comes to make use of it, to cut through that fog that can erupt from the fountain of cups.

on movement, the death of things

We all know, us tarot readers, enthusiasts, what the Death card means. We know that it isn't necessarily, or even usually, about grandma or spouse pitching over dead when it shows up in a reading. No, it is death in a far more abstract kind of sense - the death of things, the withering away of the old, the tired. It is the end of things that are ready to be done. It is the stripping away, reaping the crop so that the earth may be sowed again with fresh seeds - reaping so as to stave away the rot.

We know this, we know. We know that things must end so that others may begin, that they must end because everything that begins also ends, eventually, and how boring would life be if things only ever stayed the same as always?

So many things we know will end before we even begin them - the trip with return flight scheduled, the relationship that is fun, but that you know deep down from the start is never going to be quite right.

We know too the metaphor of the Wheel, of cycles spinning around and around, of fortune swinging up and down. We know of wheels and spinning and death. Sometimes, when we are in the midst of something we love it can be bittersweet, this knowledge - that days are numbered, that all to soon this will become a mere memory, a shadow among many floating about in our minds. When our circumstances are terrible, in contrast, this knowledge serves as a hope, something to desperately clasp: yes, this is bad, yes this feels utterly unbearable but it too, will end, if we can only wait it out - it will end, like all things must.

Loss and death and ending can be frightening, painful...but is there anything more soul-shattering than the thing you fear will never be over, no matter how many times that wheel might spin, no matter how many other things might change, no matter how hard you might try?

They spin, those wheels and cogs, but are we moving with them or do we resist, clutch at things over and done? We long for things we can no longer have, comparing the now to the once was and feeling sad rather than trying to make the most of it; we stew on old resentments, slights and disasters, avoiding reasonable things because we insist on making sure that they never happen again, those wounds.

There is just so much energy, momentum around that spinning wheel...easier to move with it, wouldn't it be? Even when something deep inside us would like so very much to dwell in nostalgia...

death, change, musing

I am reminded here, of that well known fact of life - all things come to an end, eventually, a kind of death. All things appear, come to life, and then, sometimes quite quickly, die off as well. That is simply the way things are, unchangeable.

Life is full of little endings. My week working with a particular deck. I put the thing aside, grab another. A good book; I sigh and close it, remember a bit, move onto something else.

And larger - this time in Tunisia...it feels like so short now, with only a week left before I must go back; it doesn't feel like enough time. People you know, have met, who wonder into your life suddenly and then exit it again, perhaps never to be seen, existing only in memory.

And so it goes, the wheel spinning and spinning as it were. Change and death, so very much tied into each other. Nothing can stay the same for very long, unmoving, and yet to accept new developments is to necessarily allow some of the old to wither, fall away. Let the vultures feast on the remains.

So it goes. Climb out of the water and onto the rocks - or is the other way around? Yesterday we visited some more ruins - funny how close I live, here, to the remains of an ancient, burned out city, Carthage. We visited what was once the port of that place - in ancient times they considered it strategic, able to fit two hundred ships of war or trade.

Now it looks more like any lake in the countryside - filled with little boats with funny names. A old man wearing a straw hat sits across from us at the other side, fishing line in hand. Trash in the shallow parts of the water, cigarette cartons and plastic bags.

All things must and will die, change. Nothing to do but move forward, ready to see what the next stage has in store for us.

A mind like a feather perhaps, ready to float from one place to the next, light and unburdened and free to see. A mind like a feather, always ready to be picked up by a stray breeze. Ready to learn and to see.

Death comes from the sky and a wheel spins somewhere and a single feather blows away, in search of a new adventure...

changes and exploration

So yeah, another spot-on little draw here. Changes. Smaller ones, and vaster. Second session of my language program begins on Monday. Two of my previous classmates gone, and a third, new one to join us. A new roommate, who may or may not be the new classmate, is moving into the apartment tomorrow. The class schedule will be different too, earlier on in the day, to account for the fact that Ramadan is set to begin soon.

That will certainly be a change, and something quite new to experience. A lot of things not open during the day, restaurants, cafes, stores. A lot of places open much later at night. Looking forward to it.

Larger changes too, loom. More than halfway through my time here, now. In a bit over a month, I shall be on a plane back to the US, where I still have to figure and find a place to live, a job, where I still have to figure out exactly what I want to do with classes, fall semester, everything.

Changes and decisions and indecision. It strikes me how easily I am willing to embark on the new when it is literal: going somewhere, seeing something, trying out a new activity...and how difficult it is for me to let go and really embark on change when it is bigger than that, more abstract - behaviors, habits, patterns of thinking that I KNOW no longer serve me well and yet, change seems in so many ways simply unattainable.

Together though, this pair reminds me to focus on navigating the small; perhaps, in small steps, the larger will become clearer. Focus on making the most out of things. I try to see things as an adventure, a wonder - everything that happens, good or bad, is something to learn from. Everything that happens to you has some kind of intrinsic value.

Have been exploring in a more literal way too, walking around old parts of the city, further away, less familiar. Long train rides over water, crowded and shoved in among strangers. Cobblestone streets at sunset, beautiful.
                    

Reinforcing the message

Sometimes I read about specific issues, or with specific focuses, or using specific exercises in mind. Other times though, I find it interesting to just draw cards with absolutely no questions or ideas in mind, and just see what pops up. I trend I notice with that is that...the cards tend to return to the same themes, the same ideas that I apparently need to hear. This holds true even when I switch decks - and apparently, mediums.

I wrote about Attitude Adjustment a little while ago, while on the trip to the south of the country. To be honest, while it HAS been on my mind, as I've settled into a more regular routine here in Tunis...well, let's just say it's always easier to settle back into old/established thought/action patterns than it is to really do the work of creating new ones. Which isn't to say I've failed utterly at this just....not doing as much as I could be. Anyway, part of yesterdays random/daily draws with my VRR, and then this mornings on-a-whim work with the Arcana Stones really kind of caught my attention/amused me...

ANOTHER version of the Ace of Swords card, this time coming up as a 'shadow card' in a more day-centered draw, reminding me of the general theme of new thinking, learning to approach things better, etc. that I SHOULD be keeping in mind. I love the image there, the fairy girl on the cliff, sitting, perhaps resting but perhaps procrastinating/hesitating, and the flying bird to show her the way off, into the new...

In this morning's random arcana stones throw we have the mother of pearl stone, representing the Moon card, landing in the 12th House...the house of limitation, seclusion, self-undoing. Letting my more negative thoughts, letting uncertainty and mental confusion/chaos and things I KNOW I shouldn't be listening to in my head limit/get to me... We also have the mahogany obsidian stone, representing Death card, landing in the 8th house - the house of changes, endings and beginnings....a doubly emphasized message if I've ever seen one. These two stones taken together pretty much seem synonymous with that Ace of Swords card there and....yeah.

Echoing messages. Good to pay them mind, methinks...

ends and beginnings

So I continue my adventures in trying to find the optimal way of shuffling this particular deck. I love the art, and I love the elongated shape, but thickness of the cards...it does make things a challenge...

But so it goes. An interesting juxtaposition here - on the one hand death, old things that need to be swept, cut away, things that have outlived their usefulness, their time. All things come to an end, eventually. There comes a time where an ending is necessary even if it may be difficult to arrange, difficult to contemplate, difficult to experience. I do enjoy the way this card takes that on, though. We have the traditional skeleton in black robes, wielding a scythe, body parts and relics of glory on the ground beneath him...and yet he is dancing. He is dynamic, in motion, and he seems very much amused by the whole situation. It adds some perspective to the concept.

And next to death, we have the three of wands. At the top, a kind of animal head seeming to want to lunge forward out of a kind of decorative vine. Flowers carved out of the top of those wands - new growth, development, beginnings. Three, which is associated with the Empress in the majors - nurturing, fertility, creativity; and wands, the suit of fire, of passion, of self-development, ambition, potential. The card of new horizons, new prospects, new possibilities out there, waiting to be grasped. Al-mustaqbal - the future, the new, waiting for you.

I'm reminded by this draw of the concept behind the symbol of Ouroboros - the snake that eats its own tail. I have something similar to this specific image tattooed on my right wrist, decoration and reminder both.

All ends are inherently a beginning, and all new things inherently require the end of something that came before. Tis the nature of things. A cycle, constant. Time never stands still. Existence never remains exactly the same for long. Trying to resist this is...not only limiting, but also in many cases futile. Better to roll with the changes, transformations. Give death it's due. Excitement rather than melancholy. Plans rather than nostalgia.

My Favorite Majors: Death

Well, If I had to choose one major - the one I found most interesting, most compelling, both visually and conceptually - it would likely be Death. What can I say? There's just so much in this card, tightly woven together: the positive and the negative. Death, withering, ends to things you do not want to end, and yet also the necessary, rebirth, the new that you find in the ash of the old...

It tends to be a really interesting card to look out for in decks, in that...it is one of those cards that varies HUGELY, from those decks that portray it as happy-happy 'transformation' to those that present some pretty grim scenes, and everything in between. You have it as a hooded figure, a skeleton holding a butterfly, a phoenix...sometimes it is cute, and sometimes it is disturbing...many things to look out for, really.

In terms of favorite, there was absolutely no consideration. I KNOW what mine are, for this one. Also, unlike all of my other posts in this series so far...there is no favorite and a runner up. They are both simply co-favorite. I just cannot choose between the, cannot say which I like more.

XIII. Death

Favorite:
The Silicon Dawn is an awesome deck in general, but this card in particular grabbed my attention in a very intense way from the first moment I saw it. First of all, I love monochrome color schemes. Monochrome on a Death card? Most excellent, most appropriate. I love the details - the large, full moon, the rain, the big black puddles underfoot. The downpour, the washing away of the old. You lose, but you also grow lighter, freer as a result. The black rose in the foreground - things are still growing, new things...the people running and riding away and toward in the background...

Most of all though, I just love that death figure. I love how wild she looks, how strange, how primal, how free and careless, how recklessly she leaps, jumps forward, the white ribbons streaming behind her. Death as a force that moves, unstoppable. Death as something you leap into, grinning. A silhouette against the backdrop of that mad, unknowable glow of the moon... Death, both terrible and amazing, the most difficult and most simple change, transformation of all...

Co-Favorite:
As much of a fan as I am of it now...I hesitated to get the Thoth for quite a while. RWS-based was my system, after all, was what I knew and liked and could read with. Looking at scans, this major was one of the cards that helped convince to me to give it a go. Aesthetically, this take on Death just really appeals to me. I love the contrast between the bold blackness of the skeleton and the colors that surround him. I love the unusual perspective and composition, the clever way that his arms wield that scythe, cut those life-strings, while his legs form an arch, a gateway, opening up to new things. The Thoth is a deck packed with symbolism and this card is no different: we have the ancient Egyptian double crown on his head, the scorpion, the fish and in the corner the eagle, hope...death and life again. I love how striking the colors are. I love the geometry in the card. It just...draws me in, again and again. To me, it perfectly represents the major, all of the concepts that Death is supposed to encompass. It's bold and dynamic and I just...really, really enjoy it.

story time, take three

Here's another go at the three card story-writing exercise, this time with the Harmonious tarot.

There was once an old man who was a fool – royal fool, to be exact. He would dance and contort in front of the King and the courtiers. He would joke, play with words, play with props exotic and mundane. The royal family adored the fool; the king was generous and gave him all manner of expensive trinkets over the years as gifts. The fool always wore the same plain clothes though, and lived in the same simple shack with his son. In this way, no one paid much notice to the old man; no one envied him, nor acted to make his life more difficult, as was not uncommon a pastime in that court, at that time. One night, Death came for the fool, ethereal, dressed in black robes. Death carried the hourglass whose grains of sand marked the Fool’s lifespan. As the last of them ran out, the Fool began to dance – the funniest dance he’d ever choreographed, in fact. In his last moments, the old man was spry again, free.

After his father’s burial, the fool’s son found the chest where his father had kept all the gold he had ever received from thing king. In this way, the old man had ensured that the son would not be forced to take up the Fool’s mantle in his father’s place, and instead could follow his own path, whatever path it was that his turned out to be. The young man, uncertain at first, opted to join the ranks of the king’s pages. But there was Fool’s blood in the boy, and he didn’t make a very good page at all: he spent too much time dreaming, sketching ideas for contraptions he might someday create in the dusty ground. He was a curious young man, one who wanted to learn more than there was to learn among the pages and knights of the court. One day, a member of the king’s Academy of Science saw one of the boy’s sketches; impressed, he offered the page admission and apprenticeship instead. Thanks to his father, the young man could pay the fee, and so joined the ranks of the king's inventors instead.

Freed of the military garb of the page, his mind allowed to run wild in the halls of the Academy, the Fool’s son began to dress not unlike his father once had, and as his training progressed he created ever more interesting gadgets. One day the King decided to hold a contest – he erected a large obstacle course and decreed that whoever could pass all of it would be granted a boon. The Fool’s son, using his inventions, won out against the knights on horseback and the noblemen who competed, and as he was crowned winner asked the King for the hand of one of his daughters. The king shrugged – if one of them will have you, fine, he said. The king had two daughters, and the women were intrigued by this strange young man who had beaten their father’s challenge. So together they went to meet the young man. They talked with him, asked to see his laboratory, examined his strange clothes. Afterwards, they conferred. The older sister decided first – I don’t see a husband for myself in him, she told the younger, and shrugged; in truth, she already had her eye on another, a prince from a neighboring kingdom. Then the younger pondered a bit, and after a while nodded. Yes, I like him, she stated. I’ll choose him for a husband. And so she did, and the two youths were married, and to the surprise of much of the court, turned out to be quite well-matched. At the wedding feast, the groom even danced for a few moments just as his father once had, all those years ago.



judging and changing

So another interesting idea to work with/try out. A singular, short reading done by drawing cards from two different decks and then reading them together normally.

So the idea of death as change and all that...familiar enough (at least to tarot readers). beautifully illustrated here. Yes, there definitely come times when we must cut short this or that thread, let the flower wither and die, let the scorpion do his thing. There are times when the situation really does just call for and end, and extending things further is only doing yourself (or possibly, others) a disservice.

The process can be a pain, and difficult, and frightening, but good things come as a result: new growth, new life, new possibilities. The void created by the death can now be filled with something more appropriate. Change is necessary and constant in life and in death and so it goes.

Except sometimes, things get a bit more complicated than that, don't they? Sometimes it's not quite so straightforward as THIS IS BAD, SNIP SNIP and everything taken care of. Sometimes, a part of you KNOWS that you need this end, and yet hesitates: sometimes another part of your mind argues, insists that no, you should give this old situation a chance, not take the risk, avoid the difficulties that come hand in hand with the process of this death.

And sometimes it isn't just in your mind. Sometimes there may be others involved, well meaning or looking after their own interests or some combination of those. Others who will question whether you should change things. Others who might not know how bad the situation really is and might say, no, why shake things up, you have a good thing going on there.

Or they will agree that the situation needs that death-change, might even feel about is more strongly than you do: you need to do it NOW, must do it THIS way, must do it suddenly and completely. This is bad and also this and it would be best if...

And maybe they are totally off base. And maybe they have a point, and you recognize the wisdom in some of what they are saying, but knowing the situation as you do, and knowing yourself, you also know that what they are saying will never work, will never happen - you just CANNOT do it that way.

There are many doors, archway, windows in shadow and lights, ways to go forward, and not all of them can be right for a given situation and if you allow yourself to be distracted by them all...sometimes you need a bit of that metaphorical blindness, deafness. Push away everything else. look deep within yourself, the inner you, the real you, your third eye, your intuition and instincts: what is it that you really want? How do you want to achieve it? Feel the feather of justice, of rightness in your grasp and THINK on it. What is too heavy right now? What do you want to hold onto for a bit longer. What is really, to you, the fairest solution? The most balanced? Sustainable?

If you are going to go ahead and face death, you certainly have the right to do it on your own terms. Not only choosing to do the snipping but also how much, when, how quickly, with who - listen to advice, and listen to your own mind, and then make the BALANCED choice. Not everything your own thoughts and feelings tell you is correct; certainly not everything others can tell you can be. There is some truth in both of those things. Use your objective logic and your instincts and find the right balance and then yes, proceed, proceed.