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.

Deck comparison, Three-Fold

So a while ago I asked for suggestions to do a deck comparison type post series on. I've not forgotten about it, and decided to start off with a couple of posts following up on an idea posted by thesycamoretree: something Thothy, something RWSy, and something Else. These will be done purely by my own intuitive readings, with no reference material. Why? Because anyone can look up the difference in these decks as written down in books, so why read me rehashing the same thing?

To start off with, why not begin with the actual Thoth and RWS (Smith Centennial ed., in my case) and add the Mary-El to that mix? 
---

Starting off with my favorite of these, the Thoth. Here, the King has been transformed into a Knight - less the superior to the Queen than her equal, and more dynamic a concept than the King image. It can be confusing at first, but I find with this in particular its best to just roll with it, is what it is, and onwards.

The Knight of Cups rides his horse, a pure white pegasus, symbols of god and of purity and power. He rides it upwards, away, showing the kind of optimistic ambition that can be associated with this card. Take that too far and you have escape into unreality, escape into dreams, escapism into the cup or so many similar things. Here, more positively, he rides above the wild wave, controlled in his motion so that they do not touch him. Just sketched into one of these waves we can see a peacock: so much show, and isn't it true? Doesn't he grave the applause just a bit? Emotionally he does, for reassurance rather than ego perhaps, but nonetheless.

Emotional energy as power here: the glowing of the cancer crab in the cup, the wings that sprout out of his back. His armor is green, like the suit of the Fool: optimist, faithful, ready to push forward into the unknown anew, but perhaps sometimes less than fully aware of what he should be aware of. His strength is his heart, his connection to others. His horse looks back towards him, ready for the next command, ready to work together brilliantly, as they are wont to. The image scheme here (weird yellow tint of the digital image aside) is largely blue and white, appropriate for the pinnacle of the watery suit, and bringing out the contrast of the armor and the cup even more.

In contrast, the figure in the classic RWS is far more sedate. He sits on his throne, dressed primarily in blue es well. Waves surround this seat, and we can see him holding a cup in one hand, a lotus shaped scepter in the next. We see fish and a ship, just barely, in the water behind him. The ship for movement and fortune (it takes money to launch one, after all) the fish for bounty perhaps?

Looking at this card I am reminded of how, so often, people say that the courts are the hardest of the tarot deck to read. If one is talking about the RWS, I cannot say that I much disagree. We have a king on a throne, facing towards the right, holding a cup and sitting still. He looks comfortable there, I suppose. I cannot say that, from image alone and without my knowledge of memorized meanings, I can get much from this card. This is in major contrast to the Thoth's, where I am struck immediately by all the details and could go on and on about it for ages. This one evokes...nothing. I have to go back to what I 'know' this card to mean.

Color-wise, it is a nice scheme, blues and greens with just a bit of red makes a nice contrast, and I do quite enjoy the muted palette of the centennial edition.

Lastly, we have the Mary-El king. This deck dances to its own tune, its own internal scheme and ideas which are not necessarily drawn directly from either major tarot tradition. The deck creator had very specific meanings for the imagery in mind, but they don't jive with me, so I use my own take.

Immediately, I am struck by the composition of this card. I am reminded of the famous painting of Ophelia, drowned. Like this king she lay half-submerged in water, surrounded by lily pads, flowers. There are many things a king of cups can drown himself in, should the darker aspects of his nature overwhelm. But there is a different here, between this king and the girl: the trident. Poseidon carried a trident, in mythology, a tool through which to channel his godly might, and his symbol.

He does not drown, does not die, merely floats. Perhaps indeed this is merely a swim in the water, a moment of relaxation, a return to easier, less complicated times. Not all escapism must be destructive or dangerous. Sometimes a long bath or vigorous swim is just what we need to take our minds off of too stressful things, to get back the perspective we need.

The nudity of the King also works for me. It general nudity can signify great strength or great vulnerability. This king can exemplify both, at different times. A different take here, on the water element aspects of the card than in the others, but comes through loud and clear nonetheless.

--
The message of the day then: to move towards what you want, and do not be afraid to let yourself move forward with optimism, or to take a but of a break for distraction - but do not let that distraction take over to the point of causing vulnerability, weakness.

2013 Year Card

2012 was a Justice year for me, and overall I found the year card exercise at the start of the year useful. Not so much predictive, per se, as guiding. The idea of seeking equilibrium throughout the year stuck with me, and helped me figure out some things. 2012 was definitely more about balance than any possible legalistic interpretations of the card, as I had thought right off - fortunately I do not currently have any legal issues to deal with.

That said, I thought I would do this again. For 2013, my year card is the Hanged Man.

I admit that the prospect of the Hanged Man as a year card does not immediately fill me with excitement: a year of hanging, suspension, feeling stuck in place? That does not exactly sound like what I am seeking to achieve. But of course, that is only one of many takes on the hanged man. This is a card associated with the water element, as the de la Rea here shows. Water is flexible, associated with dreams and emotions, depths, the obscure, neither fully solid nor gaseous.

The Hanged Man is associated in many tarot texts with the Norse god Odin, the AllFather, who hung himself from a tree for nine days in order to obtain runes, the key to all knowledge. He sacrificed his body, his power in exchange for that wisdom. He did not fight that sacrifice, did not try to cheat or find some kind of alternative. No, like this major shows in almost all decks: he hung with serenity, with acceptance of the situation as is.

Acceptance and even hanging do not have to mean stasis, doing nothing, giving up. Again, the reminder that all things have a cost - currently I am sitting on a bus driving back to DC. I am intensely motion sick and I am watching a very beautiful sunset while going over a bridge that enchants me from an aesthetic architectural perspective. Most things are like this, pros and cons. I could sleep and feel good and lose time and miss out on many lovely sights. Costs, decisions. Sometimes we reach a crossroads, a certain point where yes, there is stasis, repetition, doing the same thing again and again long after we have grown tired of it. What then?

A willingness to let go is called for - of the familiar, of the comfortable, and of control and distrust, at least to some degree. The hanged man in the Corte dei Tarocchi is particularly interesting to me in that he is not hanging from a branch or tree but rather from a rope of leaves held in the beak of two birds. How absurd! How could he believe that they would hold him up? He does though - he is willing to place himself in that position, and calmly.

The figure here is upside down, and at first glance it's easy to think that maybe we have drawn this card reversed. That is the spirit of this card too - the energy to turn things on their head, to look outside the box, the established way of doing things. You hang between realms and between phases of life. You let go and you find, grasp. The key is the serenity, the acceptance. This is not sacrifice for its own sake - there is a reason for this, something for which to strive.

In a way this image is not unlike a butterfly or moth still cocooned, waiting beneath the waves with held in breath. I used to do that too, as a kid. I liked to dive into parts of pools that were twice as deep as I was tall even though I couldn't really swim and I liked to hold my breath under the water for as long as I could, until my lungs burned. Why? It felt freeing. There is freedom in the way that you can move underwater even though, of course, all swims and baths must come to an end.

And so, a year under the Hanged Man's influence. A year for development and growth, sacrifice and letting go and finding the new, the better, the wiser and more fulfilling. A year for thinking differently, for stepping away from some of those careful caveats and limits of what you will do, for acting within a frame of acceptance - of self and of situation, of how things are and how things could be and what must be done to bridge the two. Of not only weighing out those costs but taking them on in self-awareness. Strength within constraint.

power of vision

We have here the page of swords - her head, her face, is concealed, outside the image. What we see instead is her body, arms wide open, ready for whatever may come. A bright red dragon tattoo stretches across her skin. Dragons, power, confidence, strength. In the red we have passion, fire. This page has intellect to guide her, too, ingenuity, imagination. She is young, ready to venture into the world, ready to take on challenges, ready to prove herself.

But for what? In the three of wands we have opportunity, potential. Red again, for energy and passion, for vision. The snake slithers and travels up, the other two wands taking on various complex forms. The ability to see what you want, to believe that it is possible to achieve. Inspiration, from above or from deep within yourself. The tools to make that idea real.

I have a lot of reading for my classes about insurgents, rebels, terrorists. Readings about what drives radicals, why religious terrorist groups are more deadly and dangerous than the secular leftist and nationalist groups that preceded them. Quite often, these groups are made up of many young men, pages, somewhat well educated; many leaders, historically, have been trained as doctors and engineers. And what drives them to take such extreme action? What motivates recruitment? Why do some groups succeed in preventing defection, infiltration  internal disunity? What drives someone to sacrifice their life for an abstract cause?

Vision, vision. There is so much power in a clear vision of what you want, what you believe in. If you can so clearly see it is easy to do so much to grasp it, to take the power within yourself, that dragon, and harness it ruthlessly - especially if you are young, without the baggage of so much experience to weight you down.

In less extreme circumstances too. One of my main meta-issues right now is a general sense of feeling adrift in life. One would think that being in a Master's program is a pretty clear indication of knowing, at least in a general sense, of where you are going or what you want, but I find that isn't the case at all. I question more and more why I am doing what I am doing, what, if anything, it is going to get me, besides a mound of debt I can't imagine being able to pay off. I question why I do most anything, sometimes.

Those times in life when I have had that vision, a sense of knowing what I want, and believing that I could get it, seeing a way...I have managed to do much, even when faced with significant challenges. I love learning, thinking, analyzing, writing, trying new things. All of that can serve me well. But when the vision isn't there, when everything is such a blur, it's easy for pessimism to set in. Then, even the simplest things can seem so tediously pointless.

I think this is a reminder for me, a push to think and clarify. What is important to me? What do I want? What do I think I can achieve in the short-medium term? Crack that eye open again, at least a bit.

Response to a Challenge

Earlier this week, Carla commented on a post of mine:

"You've made me actual consider ordering the Mary-El, and I didn't think that was possible. If you can write an entry reconciling me to that Hierophant image, I am sold. :)"

This, I suppose, is my attempt... ;]

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 "It was granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. And it was only when I lay there rotting on prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either - but right through every human heart - and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us it oscillates with the years. And even within the hearts overwhelmed with evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains…an un-uprooted small corner of evil. Since then I have come to understand the truth of all the religions on the world. They struggle with the evil inside a human being (inside every human being). It is impossible to expel evil from the world in its entirety, but it is possible to constrict it within each person."
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

The image for the Hierophant that we have here is, to say the least, rather unusual; some might call it uncomfortable, disturbing. Indeed, we have a woman, bony and sorrowful, awkwardly holding two deformed infants to suck at her swollen breasts. A stained glass window, murky, behind her; a golden key dangles at her chest. What to make of this image?

(The book offers an explanation tied to the deck creator's own vision/system, calls the woman Babylon. I have a firm tradition of only taking what works for me from such book, however, and much of the deck's underlying system as described is not for me. And so....)

Well, who is the Hierophant, really? What is this major meant to represent? Almost always depicted as male, he is sometimes called the Pope, or the High Priest. Though usually depicted as a religious leader, he represents more than just the influence of established religion. He is authority - not personal, familial, organization, like that of the Emperor - but rather moral authority, systemic authority, the pull of duty and obligation. All those rules and taboos, established and implicit, that we are pushed to follow. He can be a teacher and a guide, wisdom of time and experience collected so as to be passed on. He can be tradition, institutions that hold sway, a regimented, routine way of doing things, the path of least resistance, the path of doing what you 'should' do, what you are 'expected' to do. He can teach, and he can guide, and he can forbid and command, our Hierophant.

But is it only religion and institutions that can do this, that can push us this way? Is this the only aspect of our lives that this card can represent? What teaches us, sometimes gently and sometimes with great pain, clawing into our skin, our minds? What do we suck at, in life, to find our moral center, the traditions and routines we end up following? How do we learn which expectations to follow and which to reject, which are the duties that bind us, call to us? Only from teachers, mentors, religious leaders?

No, no. What greater teacher is there, in life, if not our own experience, our own suffering? What can build and nurture compassion more than our own pain? How can we understand the sorrow and grief of others, had we never felt it ourselves? How could we learn to forgive, if not for having made our own mistakes, sometimes careless, sometimes ignorant, and sometimes pettily deliberate? We are molded and shaped by our experiences, our traumas and troubles as much as by our triumphs.

Who is that woman, that monstrous figure of suffering that holds the key to wisdom, enlightenment, transcendence around her neck? Her hands are frightening, but is it she who causes so much pain in the world? Or is it us, our own hands that do these things, the terrible and the wonderful both? Two infants, duality. We build beautiful cathedrals and mosques that stand through the ages, feats of engineering; we help those in need, raise money, give food and clothes to those without. And we burn people and stone people and slaughter them with machetes in churches, calling them roaches. This is humanity. This has always been humanity, the two sides of the coin.

When did I really become aware of the world outside of myself and those I knew? When did I really start thinking about the bigger picture, the grand scheme of things? It wasn't during childhood Sundays in church, daydreaming about stories and characters I had made up; it wasn't anything a teacher said to me, or a parent. It wasn't the early teenaged years I spent alone with books, absorbed in my own inexplicable sadness, my then-need to hurt myself deliberately again and again. All of that may have tilled the earth a bit, opened my mind, but no.

It was me at seventeen, in high school, always the student of history, deciding, for some reason, to read Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, unabridged, all three thick volumes. So much painfully detailed recollection and recording; so much suffering, decades and decades of unthinkable injustice, brutality. We learn about the Holocaust in school, sure - see so many movies that to a degree we become desensitized; and anyway that is a story with a happy ending, relatively speaking. We fought the big bad Nazis, defeated them, liberated the camps. We had the Nuremberg trials and the formation of the Jewish state and we had bold declarations of never again, never again. This was something different. This was the suffering of twenty or forty million people (not counting victims or forced famines or war) killed over decades, and even more with lives destroyed. This was suffering without restitution, without justice, even without recognition. Who can speak of the gulags in any detail in this day and age?

I was seventeen and my eyes were pulled open. I read about genocides and wars and human rights. I went to university and studied international relations, economics. I wrote a thesis about the security implications of failing to protect human rights.

What shapes us, for good and for bad, if not suffering? What makes some people bitter and others kind? Why do some people grow and others remain the same, small in thought, in feeling, in self-awareness and understanding of the world? Why do some people bend and others break under pressure? What is religion, really, if not a system meant, for better or worse, to help people come to terms with the most terrible and terrifying aspects of existence?

Do we reach for the key, do we find it? Do we swallow the bitter milk we are fed and use it to grow stronger, better than we once were? It is a choice, for each of us; always there is a choice.

supportive influence

I really like this deck's Emperor. Usually he's presented as a harsh, imposing figure, full of authority, sitting on a throne of some sort. Here we are given a much more intimate perspective, zoomed in. We see an older, fatherly type of man, a more gentle wielding of power. But yes, mastery also, the symbols of the elements, the fish sword...

I quite like the image, the feel of it. As I've written before, unlike many I've never really had negative reaction or feelings for the Emperor. On the one hand, perhaps this is because I've never really had issues with my father. Growing up, he always seemed like the more reasonable of my parents, temperant, less easy to anger. My mother was the one who would scream, who I had most of the conflicts with. Likewise, in school, many of my favorite teachers were male. There was one English teacher in particular in high school who took notice of me, did little things that meant a lot at a time of my life when I was rather troubled and rather withdrawn... gave me book suggestions since  I was always reading, feedback on my writing even after I finished with his class, support with college application.

Even moreso, the conceptual meanings behind the Emperor, that of discipline, organization, management, ordering...these are things I long for, want in my life. Not because  I am naturally an organized, on time, on top of things type of person; no, quite the contrary. Left to my own devices, I tend to descend into chaos. Things get away from me, forgotten, lost. My living spaces and bags grow so disorganized and messy I can barely move, find anything. I start to lose my ability to think straight. I could easily sit, curled up and withdrawn from the world, for days on end, doing nothing in particular, staring at walls, wasting time on the internet.

Self-discipline and organization is what allows me to function - a gentle kind of support that I need. Part of the reason I gravitate towards ridiculously busy and stressful schedules, I now realize, is because it doesn't leave me the long slots of unstructured time that I so rarely manage to use well. Having classes and work shifts I need to get to gives a structure to my life that makes it easier to get things done than if I had the whole day to myself. Having to-do-lists, everything I need to get done neatly written down and categorized, a whole system around that, helps immensely. When possible, I try to schedule busy days exactly - class, then library to work on a, b, and c, then run this errand, then go to that appointment, then go back to another class, and so on. It's easier to get done when I am following [my own] directions. Even eating, when I am trying to do that well, so much of it is just...what ought to I eat at what times. Pre-plan exactly, bring with me as necessary, follow through. I like routines, going the same way and eating the same thing at the same time every day because it spares me the need to make decisions, so difficult even, especially, when it is about small, meaningless things.

The emperor helps me. When I write an academic paper  I follow a particular routine I have now - outline, where I write out my ideas, general organization of everything. First draft, the most painful, getting the words all down on paper. Revision, organizing things, making sure everything flows. Add citations, footnotes, fill in numbers, specific information. Revise again, take out unnecessary words, make sure everything is clear, concise, logical. Print, submit, go. It serves me well - he does, the Emperor.

I see in him all the things I need to strive for - the forces that help keep my life from falling apart.

two sides to everything

A tall, glorious city looms high above the ocean. A kind of sunset or sunrise motif to it, almost shining up high but dusky at its base. Below the waves, the angry waves crash into pillars, black and white, threatening to overwhelm. Everything has a cost...when you build a magnificent city near the sea that is the risk that you take. The head of a divine being rises out of the city's peak - protection, insurance, or an illusion people cling to when faced with very real fears? A raven flies overhead, an omen, a messenger...

A raven with a gem it its beak, a shiny bauble stolen at a cost; always a cost, always a tradeoff for everything. Nothing in life is truly free, in the grand scheme of things. The pearlescent serpent curls around the bird, ever-present, vaguely threatening.

Victory snatched from the jaws of defeat, it seems like. A natural disaster gives me additional time to write a far better paper than I could have managed in that originally allotted. I read about a city I love, soggy, start to set itself right as I polish off the last words. Always with the worry, this thing or something else. Worry and hope and desperate grasping. This for that, jewel and snake. Something that makes my thoughts clear, set right; and brings a certain breathlessness when I walk, even slowly.

Always the contrast, the juxtaposition, the dual-edged nature of things. What do you choose to focus on - the god bathed in light or the waves? The jewel in beak or the snake?

after the storm

Supposedly I am resting. Two days of unexpected rest, from classes and commute; an extension for that paper that was supposed to be due yesterday. Two days to sit curled under a blanket, drinking hot coffee, taking a break from the world.

A knot of worry, anxiety in my gut that will not go away. I watch pictures of the city I will always think of as home flooded: tunnels and normally busy avenues filled with rushing water, facades of buildings falling off. This is supposed to be the stuff of movies, dramatic scenes you watched with a skeptical air. I think of all the people I know, scattered around the East Coast - were they all as lucky as I, my power humming along as always?

The sky is still this unnatural, pure-white color, uniform in its gloom.


you watch seasons pass, each one stranger than the last:
hot when it should be cold, and massive storms.

you watch as global warming becomes climate change,
which in turn becomes the Thing Of Which Mainstream Politicians Do Not Speak.

(meanwhile, automobile sales in the third word soar,
unregulated factories spring up, ready to produce cheap goods.)

instead they discuss legitimate rape, 
suggest that government should control the most intimate functions of your body,
heap contempt on being poor.

working through doubts

So today we finally have some minors come up to write about. To be honest, the minors were a large part of why I hesitated to get this deck for as long as I did - though increasingly I find that I appreciate some variation from the standard RWS tradition images, the ones in this deck are particularly...out there. Would I even be able to even read them?
I find that with a bit of support from the book I can, and with much greater ease than I've had reading many a more conventional deck.

We have for today the three of disks, a family cloaked in folds and folds of shining reddish-gold, holding their newest addition, a baby newly born, newly created, newly entered into this world. Traditionally, this image represents work, but not of the mundane sort - rather artistry, craft, a labor of love, doing things you enjoy. Works, in the Thoth. I've been using that deck too, for personal draws, and that card along with the Knight of Disks came up as advice for this paper I'm writing. Work, find a stable foundation and expand outwards, keep at it as long as you must. A family is hard work too - birth, of course, but also after, the sleepness nights, the many costs and sacrifices each member must make to achieve some kind of harmony. Even gold, this card reminds us, is valuable not just for its beauty: how much effort, especially in ancient times, was required to dig it out of the ground, to smelt it into the form we are used to.

A labor of love. I wouldn't exactly call writing this paper that, but it is a labor that requires much of me, a struggle to create something I desperately want to be proud of, or at least satisfied with. This brings us to the second card, the seven of cups. Here we see a wolf, black, potentially frightening  making his way through the night. Fear, yes, apprehension surrounding him, and this. What if I fail? This professor, who is also the director of my program, a well known expert in the field - what if I fail to meet his clearly stated high standards, and what if I disappointing myself? What's more, the same professor sent out an email about a job opportunity assisting him, and as per my post yesterday about channeling that Magician energy more, I decided to apply to that as soon as I am done with the paper. That means again, putting together a cover letter, updated resume, the work that goes into trying to make myself sound qualified. Always the lurking wolf there, in corners of mind, when we make ourselves try for things we don't really believe we can have.

But the wolf also represents wild, primal energy, inner power, untempered by societal expectations, over-thinking, doubt. The wolf represents potential, what you can do if you unleash your abilities, allow them to roam freely in your life. The biggest obstacle to me finishing this paper and getting the application for the job sent is not a lack of ability, or work ethic; no, it is fear, and doubt.

Manifesting the Magician

The Magician in tarot represents will, manifestation of energy. He draws inspiration from above and acts with it, makes it real down below, in the realm of the everyday. Anyone can have great ideas, but the magician is about applying your skills, your talents, your time and energy into transforming those ideas into something tangible. He holds power in his hands, esoteric, exoteric, his. He can be any one of us, all of us an none at all.

Will and action, and confidence, the ability to believe that we can, that those actions are worth taking, that we have the strength in us. More often then not, when we hesitate, when we hold back, when we give up or refuse to even try, it's not because the thing we are facing is truly impossible, that the limitation is total and external. No, it is our minds, those powerful, amazing machines, telling us: this is too hard; you aren't good enough, smart enough, strong enough, worthwhile enough. You will fail anyway. so why waste the time? And the truth is, we can only have as much power in our lives as we permit ourselves to have. We can only achieve as much as we allow ourselves to try for.

Some of my proudest accomplishments - and certainly those that are probably most impressive to others - are things I didn't really believe I could do, succeed at. The queen of swords mind told me to try anyway, the costs of doing weren't so high, I didn't have much to lose, might as well. And then, to my shock, I succeed. Not always, of course. There are failures and disappointments, plenty, but such is the way of trying, risking.

In other aspects of my life that has been harder still to do - particularly those where the outcome is only partly dependent on me, when I can't even comfort myself with the knowledge that much of the situation is in my control. The challenges I still have to overcome, even in this one aspect of my life, are complicated and plenty, but the step I took Monday...I resisted that for so many years. Irrational fears, bad past experiences, distrust, unwillingness to give someone else (what I perceived to be) power over me, a strong avoidance to admitting weakness, and most of all, a fatalistic fear that it couldn't possibly work out well anyway. For all of that, it was not, is not, a disaster.

I'm better at manifesting the Magician in some areas of my life than others. Action, doing not just thinking about doing, taking risks, trying even when you cannot help but fear that you will fail. fall down on your face. I have a kind of system that I've been using for years, that has helped me do, even when having a quite difficult time of things. I have a special to do list notebook in which I write down all of the things I must do, from minor chores and errands to major life steps. These are valued differently, but for every three small things or one major thing, I get to put a sticker on my calendar. At the start of each year I make a point of getting myself a special calendar I will enjoy, and I've started collecting pretty stickers since that makes the process funner for me. A visual representation of the action of I have managed to take, productivity.

I will continue trying to expand the ways and areas of my life where I do this, particularly if I continue to feel better, so that doing more is actually manageable, possible. Impossibility should be something that life proves to you, not something you tell yourself is true.

small leaps towards balance

A note: this is definitely one of those relitively few decks where I very much feel the need to read the book/get the creator's perspective before I approach reading the cards, and thus what I write will surely be influenced accordingly.

Two majors to start off the week with the Mary-El tarot - a rather appropriate set, on a couple of levels. Though the card in this deck is titled Justice, I see in it more of the Thoth Adjustment influence than the tradition of the RWS. We have the Egyptian mythology here, Maat with the feather to weigh, to judge. The point of life, in that tradition, was to seek balance, equilibrium, to live and act in such a way that, when the time to be weighed came, your heart would balance out with the feather and your soul would not be eaten up but rather allowed to continue on to the afterlife.

Equilibrium is what strikes me, and reminds me of that word of the year project/idea I wrote about back at the start of the year. A word to focus on, an idea and a goal - I chose Equilibrium because this year is also a Justice year for me, as far as year card calculations are concerned, and I felt that its very much something I could use more of in my life. I must say, on the whole, though I have had some amazing adventures and experiences this year, particularly this summer, up until this week I would have to admit that I don't really think I have made much progress on the whole bringing more balance into my life goal. We have the Fool next to this Justice card though, a dynamic fool, full of energy and passion and most importantly, movement. The waterbearer, dancing with dragon-gods from Mesopotamian mythology, the earliest of human civilization beginnings, and butterflies for transformation. Air is the element of this card, the association in the Thoth. Air can represent intellect, thoughts, the swords suit in the tarot, but also freedom. Is there any greater freedom than the feel of flying through the air, the sky?

I think I may have made progress this week, small, limited, much-caveated but nonetheless real progress. I feel more capable of taking on some things than I did just a few days ago, and that is something.

Speaking of which, the other level at which these cards seem relevant deals with the academic - a very important paper I must write for my Terrorism class by Monday. The fool here I see as myself, at the beginning of my writing process, some ideas spinning around my head but much work still to be done. We had to pick one of six questions to respond to and I wrote a vague outline of an idea for two of them yesterday, since one answer I had to run by the professor and I wanted to have a backup in case he vetoed it. He approved it though, leaving me debating which idea to go with. In the Justice card, I think I have an answer. A prompt to compare the professionalism of two terrorist organizations. My thesis is a rather nuanced, balanced one - that neither was more professional than the other, per se, but that they are/were fundamentally different. Organization A was a hybrid terrorist group and insurgency, with significant conventional force at its disposal at its height. It's armed forces were quite well trained, as were its suicide bombers, etc. It controlled territory and governed it to some degree. Other group, on the other hand, is more professional at pure terrorism, a transnational network with no set location, its leadership having a history of moving when necessary, outsourcing to affiliates around the world, etc. The more conventional nature of the former group was what ultimately allowed it to be defeated, while the more purely asymmetric and loose network structure of the latter why it continues to be a major threat. They were both very professional, but different natures, strengths and weaknesses, etc.

Well, now that I have an idea even more worked out (I do love it when tarot helps me do my academic work), I suppose I should apply some of that fool energy and write a proper outline/draft.

Amazing Aces: Swords

So to follow up from my now completed Favorite Majors series, I decided to focus on another set of favorite cards from my deck collection - Aces. They are minors, but particularly notable minors, seeing as how they open up the suit, and how often they reference major changes, new beginnings and the like. In some decks, they can be drawn rather generically, a utilitarian approach that gets the message across well enough. Other decks though, have particularly nice, thought-provoking depictions. Why not focus on those some?

The Ace of Swords is. I think, an especially interesting Ace to start off with. It's one I personally see as having many layers, both positive and, if not quite negative, sometimes difficult. It can encompass both attitude and action, internal and external, beginnings and ends. So which ones do I like best? After some consideration, here are the three favorites:

Legacy of the Divine

Like much of this deck, the visual aspects of this card are quite stunning. I quite like the color palette especially, as well as the modernized, fantastical qualities of the ace itself. The background of clouds emphasizes the air element nicely, and calls back some of the traditional imagery of the RWS and Thoth Aces - although interestingly, here the Sword is pointed downwards rather than up. A focus perhaps not just on moving forward but also on cutting away, severing, getting rid of that which no longer serves.

I also like the eagles that circle the sword - fierce birds, noble and strong, ruthless when necessary. A good reminder of some of the kinds of traits that Ace of Swords situations can call for. Finally, we have a glowing air element symbol and the astrological wheel in the background, reminding us again of the outside correspondences we can use for additional meaning if we wish, and the grand scheme of things.

Silicon Dawn

The Silicon Dawn Ace of Swords provides us with a rather different image. The color scheme, for one, is at the complete other side of the spectrum. I must admit that I've never been of the school that sees yellow as a particulary airy color - to me it is too close to gold, to the earth-tones. But I can set that aside here, because it works. For one, I like the way the yellow fades into that pure, glowing white at the feet of the figure - an image of manifesting energy, potential.

I love the theme of gears and cogs too - simple details that speak loudly of engineering, of inventions and creativity, the wonders a mind can come up with when it sets to work at a task. A lot of times, the swords suit, which is the suit most associated with intellect, is used to depict the problems our minds can make for us: anxieties, grief, insecurity, self-sabotage. Here, instead, we are allowed to focus on the positive, the wonders we are capable of creating when we think.

Mary-El

The Mary-El is a deck newly acquired, so much so that I haven't even finished trimming it yet. Already though, many of the images are so arresting. This one in particular caught my attention. Again we have the image of an eagle, this time in a much more thought-provoking position, bound upright. The accompanying book, though it rather bizarrely associates Scorpio with air, does provide some interesting insight.

In particular, it speaks of redemption, of evolution, of rising up out of darkness, out of air and water and into the sky: the freedom that flight represents. Again, the emphasis not just on the difficult aspects traditionally highlighted by swords but also on free will, reason and purpose and communication. I especially like the idea of this card as speaking of striving, of doing what we must to free ourselves of those constraints, of seeking clarity, dreams and ideals. It is a card of channeling our visions and working to make them happen; a personal. internal kind of empowerment.