thoughts about thinking

It's been a while since I did something a bit different, a bit more experimental, so. This is a reading around the general theme of Why do I tend to cling/fixate so much on negative thoughts about myself? Rather than doing the usual process, though, this is going to be an exercise in free association - write down any thoughts as they come about each card, one sentence per idea. Also, it somehow turned into exercise in the second person...

3 of Cups

You tend to think less negatively when doing things with friends - it's a chance to get out of your head, to distract yourself with something enjoyable.

On the other hand, there is feeling alone even surrounded by people you know and like, and wondering why am I always like this?

Like many people, you can't help comparing yourself to the people around you, and noting the shortcomings on your part.

There is pretending you feel what they do, all of you drinking from your cups and talking about this or that, nodding, and not saying so much, never talking about so many things.

Sometimes, surrounded by people, you feel unreal; seeing them, and knowing yourself as only you can, you wonder if you are even really a person.

You enjoy time with people, the talking, the contact, caring and being cared about but there are limits - you are the one dressed in the monochrome, sitting a bit apart from the others.

You like to be amused and amusing, use humor to mask darker things, learn the language of minimization - make your problems sound not so bad, not so concerning, choose words carefully.

You enjoy the meetings and celebrations and interactions, but there is a burden to everything that needs to be left unsaid, the distance it creates, the juxtaposition of the you that drinks from the cup and laughs and chats and the you that they are not allowed to see.

The Empress

She walks through a field ripe with grain, with plenty, but there is something melancholy about this Empress, something detached or even uncaring about her demeanor.

No matter how rich and fortuitous and pleasing your surroundings and material circumstances might be, they cannot fix your internal troubles; there is a real limit to how much they can even improve your mood.

The symbolism here is a bit funny for you - pregnancy is supposed to represent positive things - giving birth to new endeavors, the act of creation - but you have always been profoundly uncomfortable certain aspects of the stereotypical feminine.

You have always been uncomfortable with the way some would reduce your function, your purpose, to that of baby-making machine; the idea of you yourself inhabiting the body of this Empress makes you want to scream.

There are so many small things about being a woman, and what that should mean and what that de-facto means and what certain old white dudes would like to say about it that you hate, that you rebel against intellectually and viscerally, and yet you wonder how much of that has shaped you anyway.

Sometimes you wonder if you'd have ended up the same way, if you'd been born a man.

Going back to the intended metaphor, you wonder too you are even capable of creating much of anything anymore and that bothers you, in a small, constant way.

Strength

The expression of Strength mirrors that of the Empress, but seems subtly different - calm but more positive, trusting, perhaps.

There is a difference between confidence and trust, and apathy and indifference, though the external expression of the two feelings may indeed look the same.

The lion is calm too, eyes closed, following, trusting, at peace. The woman's hand rests on his brow, connection, work.

If the lion is the beast of unconscious thought, of cogs of the mind that spin as they will, the woman has trained it, has learned to work with it, knows the nature of the beast and has learned to control it.

Knowledge and action are two different things entirely, and you have only ever excelled at the former; self-awareness does not mean self-control, and you have never been good at bridging that gap.

An animal does not become obedient naturally, by itself, without concentrated, focused effort over an extended period of time. Are thoughts too, then, trainable? If so, how much have you really tried, to train them, to relearn patterns? How much effort have you been willing to extend?

Though the lion, lets not's not forget, is a dangerous beast with sharp claws and teeth, and training and controlling one is hardly a safe and easy prospect. 

on longing and dread

Just asking this question: Where am I at - with things in general, in my head, etc.?

Besides neatly illustrating the unusual way that the Silicon Dawn switches the elemental associations of the wands and pentacles/disks suits, the Six of Wands and Seven of Disks offer an interesting contrast of imagery here...

The Six of Wands shows an insect-like figure, the queen bee perhaps, generously sharing her pots of honey with a group delighted to receive it. She is in a comfortable position - confident and successful, able to share the fruits of her successes with others, the work she did so that she could do just that - to give but also to be appreciated for giving, for sharing. Even truly altruistic acts of giving, sharing, working to help others have an aspect of that after all, don't they? If nothing else, there is the feeling of knowing whatever you produced or gave or shared or did is good, is something others enjoy, want, appreciate having, that you are able to do that, the validation of knowing that about yourself. Here we see the benefits of a positive cycle, of acts that improve your own position in life, and which allow you to do something that also benefits others, enriching their lives as you enrich your own. It is an image of the kind of meaningful existence I long for these days, and which usually seems quite far out of reach.

On the other hand, in the Seven of Disks we see a centaur-like figure standing in the looming shadows of forbidding buildings, tall, colds exteriors that threaten to crush, to suffocate. A bird caws in one of the windows, perhaps shrieking at the potential intruder, perhaps trying to escape. Everything feels too intense here, dangerous, and there is no clearly outlined path, nowhere that really looks comfortable or safe. There is dread, there is the sense of being overwhelmed, paralyzed perhaps with fear or uncertainly. What's interesting is that there is no clear threat, for all the fear and dread and looming pictured, nothing that we can point to, there, that is the danger. How much of the image is a matter of perception? Are the building truly looming in a threatening way, or does it just seem that way to the figure? Some days even the most mundane things can feel overwhelming, sometimes a simple board game can serve as a reminder of all your feelings of being a failure and isn't it fitting that 'Failure' is what this card is titled, for example, in the Thoth? How much is merely perception, and what kind of difference does that make to the figure cowering, in that moment?

This is where I am, it seems, stuck between longing and dread: wanting to be able to create and contribute and give, but feeling stuck, overwhelmed by so many ordinary, everyday things.

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.

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?

love of work

Do what you love, and love what you do.

It's the kind of overly-cliched, happy-dandy can do phrase I instinctively tend to shy away from, and yet on the whole I find the advice to be quite true. The artisan in this card-image is making wonderful, detailed engravings on the wall. His work impresses the spectators, perhaps his clients or patrons, but it likely isn't why he does it. So much effort goes into what he does: could a person sustain that, day after day, if the process and the end result didn't fill him with some kind of joy?

It's always been my tendency to excel in the things that I love, and to neglect those I don't necessarily get along with. My grades in high school were a very clear case in point: consistently near-perfect marks in subjects I enjoyed, like history, english, various electives; near-failing marks in those I did not - math, chemistry, physics. I really do believe that a large part of why my overall academic performance has been so much higher in college and now graduate school is because at this level, it is much easier to simply avoid things that you don't want to study (I took symbolic logic to fill a math requirement, in undergrad).

I do good academically because I genuinely love the process of discussion, reading, research, writing - enough to drive me forward even when things get insanely stressful, when the work just piles on. It takes so much more discipline to stick to something you don't have a passion for. But then, should you? Life being short as it is, is it worth it spending time working on things you have no love for, if your circumstances don't necessitate it? Persistence isn't always a virtue. Even if it may feel like failure, perhaps sometimes it is best to simply walk away.

On the other hand, a reminder too, here, about the importance of continuing to engage in activities I love, of combining productivity with pleasure, things I enjoy. The creative aspect of this picture especially come to mind - yesterday afternoon, I picked up my camera for the first time in many months. The cherry blossom trees are blooming again, and they make for such lovely pictures. I took many. Photography is one of the things I love doing, when the mood strikes me - perhaps it is one of those things I should try to do more of...

memory of sun, outdoors

I suppose the Sun is one of those cards in this deck where its Swedish providence is especially noticeable - in the style of the clothes that the two children wear, and even more so in the prominence of the moose. It has to be a pretty northern country if such an animal is associated with sunlight and warm rather than winter, snow.

We have pictures of moose - from vacations is Alaska and, I think, perhaps Maine as well. I was too young then to remember much from those trips, and what does stick out in memory does not include any experiences with such creatures. Deer though, I do remember seeing, outdoors.

Its really kind of amusing how much of an outdoorsy scene this sun card is: children playing in the grass, roosters feeding, butterflies fluttering above it all. It's things like this that remind me of how much of a city kid I really am, both in experience and in outlook, preference and predilection. We had a house in the Pocanos in Pennsylvania for a while when I was a kid. It was a big change going out there - so very rural, foresty, quiet. There was lots of grass and forest, dirt roads, wildlife of all sorts. Yes, there were the deer that I saw, coming in twos or threes across the road to nibble at this or that plant. It was nice, sure, to be able to see them, something certainly not possible in New York City.

In America at least, I've only ever seen chickens and roosters at petting zoos, also in Pennsylvania. It was not they, but the goats, that tickled my fancy. For a while we used to drive down there almost every weekend, two hours in both directions, card trips I hated for the motion sickness they caused. There was so much grass to play on and forest to explore - I did neither, much. I was bored outside. It was boring and uncomfortable with all the bugs, the lack of man-made noise. I much preferred to stay indoors and play on the Sega Genesis: the Sonic games, street fighter games, that random game where you played a team of criminals, one short and fat and one tall and skinny, who had to successfully break in and rob various places. I read history for kids books about Pompeii and the sinking of the Titanic, about the life of Anny Oakley and about the Trojan War. I colored in coloring books or watched movies with my father, many of them (in retrospect) not especially age-appropriate but no one objected. I would sit at the table when my mother's friend, who lived nearby, visited and complained about her miserable job as a hotel maid and her husband, who was over twenty years older than her and who she had only married to secure a green card and whose grumpy ass she was now stuck with. He was nicer to his dogs than he was to her, she would say. I sat quietly and listened to them talk.

I did not see the appeal of that kind of outdoors. At home, playing in the backyard and in the street, on stoops and stairs of houses, always some other people around making noise, arguing, that was tolerable sometimes for our imagination games but so much quiet and trees and grass and bugs and why bother?

To this day I cannot help but feel this way. Place me in a city, any city in the world, and I will happily wonder round in it all day, on foot, and never grow bored. I love exploring cities, the nooks and crannies and changing style of the architecture of buildings, whether they be cities full of metal and glass skyscrapers or Eastern European medieval architecture or low slung white structures and fields of trash and wondering goats.  In a city I can enjoy the sun, and I love the contrast of trees and flowers to the man-made things all around them. Looking forward to taking pictures of the blooming cherry blossoms around DC again next week for just that reason. But in an actually rural place, the kind of naturey environs so many people find relaxing, a nice place to get away...I can appreciate PICTURES of such places, but actually put me into one and I will very quickly grow uncomfortable and bored and possibly very paranoid about bugs and feeling itchy for no reason and if forced to remain there I will very soon pull out a book or a game and ignore it all.

Different strokes, different folks and all that.

inspiration vs. organization

It's the contrast between these two cards that sticks out most to me: female and male, casual and formally dressed, standing and seated, flowing and rigid, flower wreath and crown. The page parties with her creatures; the Emperor commands his.

A juxtaposition in concepts as well, here. The page is about creativity, about imagination, inspiration, youthful and naive energy. The page begins, playfully touching on this and that - she can visualize ideas that others would dismiss as impossible. She stands in a sea shell, bringing to mind the famous Botticelli painting of the birth of Venus, or Aphrodite. She rises from the waves, with so much romantic notions - the playful faeries of so many tales. A tortoise carries her, and why not? What rush is there, why not take your time and see and imagine and explore?

A far cry from the Emperor, with his ram-headed stave and throne, his eagle shield, his crown of power. Since getting this deck I've wondered about that panda, something that distinguishes this Emperor card from most others. Apparently, in Ancient China emperors were known to keep them as pets. These days, endagered as they are, it takes a fair bit of organizes effort to keep the species from going extinct, I suppose. The emperor sits up straight, and rules over lands, mountains, sky and stars. Discipline, authority, responsible management of your resources and time.

The conflict between these two has, I suppose, always been a sort of theme in my life. Part of the reason I don't have the negative reaction to the Emperor archetype that many in tarot seem to is because I have always WANTED to have a firm grasp on the best of what he represents: discipline and self control, getting things done, organizing properly what needs to be organized, authority of a reasonable sort. I try and I try, and yet nonetheless so often I find myself rather stuck in the position of the page, a scattered kind of brilliance, imagination without much direction, so many ideas on so little of the concrete to show for it.

A source of frustration in particular as of late. So many examples abound. I am quite clearly more advanced than my classmates in Arabic. I spend hours listening to news clips, political talk shows, historic documentaries to improve my comprehension skills. For a long writing assignment I wrote literary analysis (former English major skills, ha) of Soviet dissident literature that I like...in Arabic, and it was GOOD if I do say so. My professor is impressed with my enthusiasm for learning the language, and yet she has told me that my grade will suffer despite that because I cannot keep from being constantly late. A valid criticism indeed. Another professor is consistently impressed with my written work, but is currently displeased with me and gave me a lowered grade on an assignment because I submitted it twenty minutes after the stated deadline...and again, quite right of him. I don't mean to do this. This isn't me not caring - I write my to do lists and I try and yet things slip away and slip away and slip away. How often to I forget to do something, forget to bring something, lose something? Constantly. I feel like I put far more deliberate effort into trying to be organized and disciplined than many people, and even so I am far more of a flaky, scattered mess.

Without some firm-handedness to things, riding that turtle will get you exactly as far as one might think - very close to the same place you started. How does one find the proper balance then? How?

self improvement focus/task

Often, when there are so many things that need attention and doing, its hard to really focus on any one thing. I believe I did this once before here, and thought it'd be a good idea to do again: Pull one card, with the theme/query of one aspect of things or task that would be worth focusing on for self-improvement, right now.

I named this Magician as one of my favorites in an early 'Favorite Majors' series most, and I must say that I'm still of that opinion. I particularly enjoy the fact that the Magician here is a woman, but not in the overly feminized and/or sexualized sense seen in some decks - no, she is presented as powerful, and in many ways stylized, like so many ancient statues. This makes clear that what he have here is still an archetype, and idea depicted in human form, but at the same time it universalizes that idea: power and self confidence is not, nor should it be seen as, just a man's domain.

She wears a skirt covered in pentacles, has sword in hand, cup on the altar in front of her and wand held by the trunk of her elephant shield. What does it mean, that elephant? Wisdom, massive strength, a long memory? According to the almighty Internet, it is often used to symbolize mental and spiritual, as well as physical, power and strength. Interestingly, apparently there is a connection between the elephant and those storm clouds I hadn't at all known about:

"In Siam, Laos and Cambodia, the white elephant grants rainfall and plentiful harvests. But when ridden by Indra, Lord of the Heavens, the elephant becomes the Storm-God."

Other meanings include mastery, and unification of heaven and earth...well, apparently in many cultures the elephant has quite a similar significance as this very card. Since getting this deck I have been intrigued by how symbolism-dense it is, and this bit of research has got me thinking about perhaps looking into that more deeply...

In any case, we have the monkey from the Thoth as well, echoing those meanings, and the storm clouds that can apparently be tied to that elephant shield, but perhaps too can be read as...well, lightening is mighty powerful too, isn't it, and dangerous, but there is so much we would have never achieved has someone not figured out how to harness the power of electricity...

And what does this all mean, as related to my original query? What should I be focusing on in the very current moment in particular? On myself, it seems, on myself and what I can do, my abilities and strengths. I should focus on self confidence, empowerment, the active, can do, inner motivation and drawing on my resources, in spite of any storm clouds that may be lingering above, darkening the skies. Mundane and esoteric, environmental and personal...how can I empower myself?

True enough this. After quite decently long stretch of feeling quite on top of my game I'm afraid I have been slipping back into self doubt, questioning whether everything I am doing is on some level pointless. Career-wise, it's hard not to be discouraged when... no one seems interested in taking you on even for unpaid internships. Of course, the more discouraged and unconfident you feel, the harder it is to push yourself to keep applying and keep trying and that can only add to the problem...

So reminder here to focus on strengths rather than dwelling over much on the shortcomings. Perhaps in some areas of life I have not made much progress, but in others things have changed and evolved much indeed. There are some things you cannot change or cannot, at this time, overcome. Fine. Focus on what you CAN do, what you ARE capable of, and things that make you feel good about you.

different kinds of balance

In this particular take on the justice card we have a scale, unbalanced it would see, or perhaps simply in the process of swinging back and forth. We have a card of contrasts and juxtaposition: light and darkness, clear skies and raging storms, peaceful nature the man-made cities, towers, factories. What does it mean to have all of them portrayed just so? The hand move holds what looks to be a clock pointing at the number twelve, noon and midnight, beginnings and ends.

Balance... it was equilibrium that I focused on so many times last year, with Justice as my year card. Balance, the idea of trying to be even-handed, of trying to find that right place in between extremes, of adjusting and carefully weighing and getting it all to just enough, yes, enough.

Life isn't all about things we can balance out through or own efforts though, is it? Part of this 'Justice' and weighing is more in the grand scheme...that some experiences will be balanced out by others, that painful events sometimes lead to good ones, that personal failings we have, but also talents...and so on. People often say things along the lines of evil or suffering being necessary, that there would be no light without darkness, no appreciation of the good times without the bad, and so on.

True enough, I find, though perhaps not as comforting a notion as sometimes put forward to be. There have been times when I have found very much amusement and pleasure from such insignificant things, if only because there was nothing else I could laugh about or focus on. These days...simple moments, the most pedestrian of experiences and such strong appreciation, satisfaction in what someone else might see as utterly unremarkable.

You appreciate how nice it is to go on a walk through a city you like, to enjoy the weather and look around at your surroundings without quite that constant background of gloom, idle fantasies (of say, throwing yourself in front of a car)t hat you could never quite chase away so familiar, ignored and unspoken, same old same old.

You feel so accomplished when you calmly finish a task a few hours or even days ahead of a deadline, rather than staring unable to think or write until it gets so late that you begin to panic as you think of the consequences of failure, of disappointing people, and then stay up for two days straight, not letting yourself do anything else, crying from stress as you make yourself write and write desperately.

You find it to be so wonderfully ordinary when you can let yourself sit in a coffee shop for a few hours alone, drinking a coffee and eating an oatmeal and reading for school because it is such a contrast to so many other experiences, an illusion of sorts and a glimmer of feeling what other people feel when in fact you have not known what it means to eat a normal meal like a normal person since you were fourteen years old and still don't, really.

A constant state of storm certainly does make clear sky days so much more amazing, but perhaps the same would also be true in reversed. Ordinarily I hate rainy days. So much inconvenience, forgetting umbrellas or proper shoes and spending hours wet and cold. It rained once during the ten weeks I spent in Tunisia and I ran out onto the balcony to feel it, because it felt so amazing, after so long without...

Darkness and light and a scale that tips back and forth, back and forth. Justice and balance and what can we have, if not all of both? Is there a way to have the convenience of factory produced gadgets without killing off all those beautiful whales swimming in the sea?

tarot with a bit of... Science!

So while browsing around the internet in search of a bit of a different kind of spread to try out, I came across The Newton Spread on Raven's Tarot Site. I'm not really familiar with the website as a whole, but this spread is the kind of thing that tends to strike my fancy - bit of a different perspective on things, combining tarot with an entirely different field, etc.

I admit physics has never been my thing (I passed that class in high school by the skin of my teeth) but I figured it would be interesting to do an abbreviated version of the spread. Rather than pulling cards for all three of the Newtonian Laws of Motion, I decided to focus on just the first:

"Newton's first law of motion (also known as the law of inertia) states that any object in a state of rest or of uniform linear motion tends to remain in such a state unless acted upon by an external force.

Card 1 is your inertia, the potential inside you that won't act up or get effective without another force or impulse that will bring it into activity.
Card 2 is that other force or impulse that will bring the existing power inside of you into action."

 ----

 1. 
What then, within me,  is in a state of rest, inert until something pushes it forward, gives it momentum? We have here the 9 of Flame Songs, or Wands per regular titles. A colorful image, cluttered with so many objects united by the theme of creativity and self-expression: dance shoes, crafting supplies, paints and musical instruments and pages full of written words. In the center of it all there is something that looks like a cracked egg, the yolk dripping out, connecting all those objects together, the bright orange energy also flowing out in a tornado above it all.

Creative strength, artistic impulses. I've always had them. I used to want to be a writer for a while, as a teen. As a kid art sets were among the most treasured of holiday gifts received. Sometimes I dabble in writing poems. For a while I picked up knitting, then forgot about it again. I used to make collages and graphics on photoshop quite a lot. I go through phases of sketching. I haven't done that in a while, though I do tend to doodle madly, in numerous pen colors, all over what ostensible should be my notes in class; I always have, helps me think and pay attention. When I set my mind to it and found the patience to draw the same thing again and again and again until I got it just right, I managed to design a tattoo which, now that it is on me, I quite love. I once took a ceramics class I quite enjoyed. I go in and out of phases of doing photography. For a while my senior year of college I would destress by drawing/coloring on paper with colored chalk, different entirely and quite fun. Now I impatiently away the silly UPS to actually bring me the watercolor pencils I ordered.

Artistic impulses which come and go, which I rarely stick to for long. I allow my attention to flit this way and that, stop doing things for years at a time. Unimportant, unimportant. How many ideas do I have that are never acted on, ideas that flitter around in my mind until eventually they are forgotten because I do not have the time or the energy. There are more important things to focus on, serious things, things related to trying to eventually procure some kind of gainful employment that is not mind-numbingly dull and deeply dissatisfying... and in that context, these artsy things always seem like distractions, like waste of time, self-indulgent and only ok in limited quantities. Enough to destress, enough to distract when thoughts get too overwhelming but then back to the real things, the real.

So much creative potential that is not activated nearly as much as it could be...

2.

What force or impulse does or could get that creative, artistic side of me moving? Well, the Wheel of Fortune certainly does represent movement, the world and life spinning in cycles, up and down. Here the circle is divided into eight slices, each one showing a different image: success and catastrophe, sadness and joy, the bizarre and the mundane. We find ourselves in a variety of different circumstances at various points of our lives. Perhaps this card is suggesting that certain life phases lend themselves much more naturally to artistic endeavors than others.
At some points, I was taking art classes and doing artistic projects to fulfill academic requirements. Other times I had so much free time on my hands in made sense to experiment with new things. On the other hand, being a student in grad school, studying Arabic, trying to get life in some kind of order and desperately applying to various internships and suchlike...perhaps not the most conducive.

On the other hand, I can also see this as pointing out the fact that life is always topsy-turvy, full of surprises and complications and so many things that must be dealt with. I find time to do other things I consider important in spite of that; hell I find time to do things I know I would be much better of NOT doing - so why not make the time to play around creatively as well? It might not take the same form all the time - perhaps sometimes its more about drawing and other times I have a poem in my head, or a story idea; perhaps right now I have a mad desire to play around with color. Why not? Find time, way, to work on some of those things, to improve my abilities in them. No skill gets better without practice. I can write well, when I try, because I have a hell of a lot of experience in writing. If sometimes I do something artsy and get frustrated because it doesn't come out the way I see it in my head...the only way to get better is to do more of it.

I have, despite my creative inclinations, chosen to try to go down a career path where artistic ability is unnecessary, true. That doesn't mean I should engage in it on my own time, for my own enrichment and pleasure. Perhaps more sometimes than others, perhaps in different ways depending on what is convenient or possible but...something to keep in mind, something to pursue rather than ignore, leave un-moved, for that oh so intangible "later".

memory of games

What does it mean - to win, to succeed, to level up?

There are quite a few extra cards, optional, that come with the Silicon Dawn. Being rather traditional with my tarot preferences, I kept most of them out, but the 99's were among those I kept. The culmination of a suit, its essence developed, a sort of opposite to the Ace. The king can be seen that way, is in many decks, but in a way this idea makes more sense - Like the Ace, this is a card representing forces, situations, opportunities rather than people, the personal.

Fire-Disks, the practical in life combined with energy, light, destructive potential. The metaphor in this card is a great example of why this deck so very much appeals to me. I grew up playing video games - Sega Genesis, SNES, several generations of playstations and gameboys and computer games. Books you could get for free from the library, huge stacks of them - video games were what saving up money was for. You fight and walk and solve puzzles and dig around in virtual garbage cans for hidden treasures.

My favorite games were the ones where you could customize your character. Pick a race, a class, skills to put points into. When you leveled up you could further specialize: would you be fast, or strong? Shoot fireballs, or learn to heal yourself and save a ton on potions? In some games, later on, you would have many characters on your team for storyline reasons, and you had to further choose which ones would be the ones you fought with, developed, allowed to level up again and again.

There were the difficult games where you had to grind - to walk around in certain areas fighting monsters again and again to gain experience, go up levels until you were finally strong enough to face this or that boss without being defeated. There were games where you had to strategize how to develop your character, what would help against this or that opponent. Brute force? Picking them off at a longer range? Status effects, attrition?

I still remember my first ever computer game. It was called Rise and Rule of Ancient Empires. You picked a civilization, built cities and roads and armies. I liked being the Indian empire best because of their elephant units. Strategy there was in that, yes. Which buildings will you choose, which advantages, will you lay seige to that city, take the offensive early on or bide your time and hope your neighbor doesn't build up his forces faster than you? There were the city building games too...Egypt, Ancient Greece. You start with a few hovels and farms, and expand. Build temples, mines, bathhouses, theaters, tax collector's offices. A garden next to houses will allow them to evolve, a mine will lower the property value - even in video games no one wants to live next to a mine. Can you level up that city enough, build the infrastructure needed to harvest the resources that will allow you to advance to the next part of the game?

You would calculate and think, in those games, trial and error. Trade offs, budgeting, this for that and you can never have everything. I played three generations of Sims games and even now my thinking about interpersonal relations is so very influenced by them - sometimes I imagine those bright green bars indicating hygeine level, social need, energy. The bars that showed relationships. Talk on the phone to advance, except if you don't have a strong enough relationship that person will not want to talk to you on the phone. Have you leveled up your skills, schmoozed with your coworkers and boss enough to gain a promotion?

In media video games often get so much flak - the violence, the time waste, the people with the
'video game addiction' and 'no life'. They are not mindless though, not all or even most. I read like mad and played video games too. And life too, has leveling up, of sorts. My social skills have certainly leveled up over the years. My ability to prioritize, my confidence even. Some things still need work...even in the Sims it was rare to have, without some kind of cheating, an elder with all their skills maxed out. That was a simple game. Always you can improve, grow, use energy to become more.

Achievement and pride, but fleeting. There is always more to be done, new beginnings, chances for gain and for loss. Some skill and some hard work and sometimes, luck, or lack thereof. I remember sitting in the air-conditioned computer room in elementary school, playing Oregon Trail. Perhaps if you prepared well and chose a good course and prudent actions you would make it to your destination. Other times, you would be mauled by a bear, your comrades would catch a disease and so it goes, game over. When you can you level up, and then you keep going at it.

Answering a few questions

So I notice that quite a number of my blogger friends have been doing the whole 30 Day Challenge thing. I admit there is no way that I could stick to that all the way through, nor do I find all of the questions interesting. I figured that answering a few in a single post might be a nice little exercise...

---
My parents were never super religious, but I spent a fair amount of my childhood in [catholic] church. I always had found the masses incredibly boring and never listened. At around age 12 or so I realized I did not agree with and could not believe in anything the priest was saying, so I went to my local library and started looking into other religions. Wicca was the only one that really intruiged, so I studied/'practiced' it for a couple years before realizing atheism was the path for me.

Anyway, some of the Wicca books discussed tarot cards, which intrigued me. I bought my first deck ten years ago at a local Barnes and Noble at the age of 14 - the Universal Waite deck, specifically. I disliked the art from the very beginning, but it was apparently the 'proper' deck to learn on and so learn on it I did. I consulted lwb and a book titled 'Tarot for Beginners' or something similar. I had a couple periods of totally forgetting about the deck, going back to it, etc. It wasn't until a few years later when I was in high school that I got my second deck, carefully chosen based on aesthetic appeal - the Gilded tarot. I remember opening it with such excitement on the ferry ride home and almost losing one of the King cards...eventually I gave both decks away. :0

The first spread I learned was the Celtic Cross. I found it overly long, complicated, often confusing and just unnatural. In fact, it wasn't until I totally stopped using it that I found my reading improve significantly, and my interest in and attention to the cards became more stable. I've never gone back to it since. I know its 'tried and true' and all that but really just is not the reading method for me. I am generally averse to spreads that are more than five or six cards unless there is something really interesting/intriguing about them and...this is none of those things for me, at all.

In general I don't have a favorite spread. Other than structured reading exchanges on forums and times where I deliberately choose to use a spread because it looks interesting/really relevant/I just want to experiment, I tend to play it fast and loose with spreads. Make one up on the spot that seems appropriate, or not use one at all. Sometimes just pulling cards I find that they organize themselves into 'spreads' for me...not all decks are like this, but for example with the Thoth...it almost seems an insult to the deck to force it into a spread when it is so obviously able to do that itself...

I sometimes use reversals, though much less than I used to. It mostly depends on the deck. In general, meaty/complex/unusual decks tends to mean no reversals, whereas 'simple' RWS variations tend to be better for using them.

I prefer reading for myself than for others generally, especially offline... mostly because I feel not so confident in my 'people skills' as they relate to tarot, and because I know my verbal communication skills are and always have been noticeably inferior to my writing skills so that...even when I KNOW what the cards are saying, getting that phrased right, on the spot, can be tricky indeed.

I know some people say they cannot read for themselves, but in my case it has always been MUCH easier to read for me than for anyone else. After all, I know all the details of my life and situation and so can make all kinds of analysis and connections to specific things, whereas for other people it is...poking and guessing and talking in a kind of general way and hoping it means something to the other person - it feels like grasping in the dark, whereas reading for me is more like picking up a tool and using it to examine things I know of in a new way. Also, reading for free on any kind of scale would be too much of a time suck, whereas reading for money feels like too much pressure and stress, worry about whether they are getting their 'money's worth' and...yeah. Not for me, at least right now.

Oh, and I have absolutely no 'special' time or place or rituals around my tarot reading. I read/do draws for myself absolutely anywhere - in bed, on the floor, in the car, on the bus, on the train, at a cafe, in the library, in a hallway, really just anywhere. Why not? In my experience it makes absolutely no difference.

When I was in Tunisia I kept doing daily draws for myself when we were on the bus visiting the south of the country. At one point the director of the language school asked me for a reading and I obliged... he spent the rest of the summer calling me 'Deghaza', which means fortune-teller in the Syrian dialect. At one point we went on a field trip to the national TV station and he introduced me to the staff as 'Deghaza', to their amusement. I chatted with several of the employees and none of them ever learned my real name...

the whimsical and strange

I have to say that I really, really like the backs of the Dreaming Way tarot. That particular shade of green is one of my favorites, and the aesthetic of it as a whole...it has this vintage, 60's or 70's kind of vibe in my mind, a touch of gaudiness that just...very much appeals.

A gaudy kind of whimsy. I admit to having rather unusual tastes in some many ways. Sometimes in old houses with walls painted in white or pastel tones you can find areas where the paint has chipped off and beneath some kind of older, bright colored wallpaper with a flower design - it looks vaguely ridiculous by today's standards and I very much wish the whole of the house was still like that. As a kid I slept on sheets that came with the house my parents had bought - bright blue with bright yellow and white and green colored flowers, quite nicely drawn. It was a disappointment, later shopping for sheets in stores, to realize that such designs simply aren't sold anymore. Tacky, people might call them. So I settle for black, an all-black contrast to any room because I need that sense of the visually vivid in some form.

I would wallpaper a room with the design on the backs of these cards. I would hang such curtains in my windows.

Just about everyone who spends any amount of time with me in person, and around whom I feel comfortable enough to act like 'myself' rather than carefully work on the facade of being what you want to see, ie. 'appropriate adult', sooner or later tells me that I am strange, odd, bizarre.

Whimsy. I especially like the whimsy shown in this particular Page of Cups. It fleshes out the idea of the fish in the cup, takes it further - this cup has polka dots and she wears a tea pot on her head and the fish are swimming through the air and why not, all of this? Why not?

Whimsy. If not for the presidential inauguration making bus tickets to expensive, I would have gone to visit friends in New York for the weekend just passed. I had a brilliant idea of going to a bakery and having them decorate us a Martin Luther King day cake, and roping everyone into an impromptu MLK day party - because why not celebrate a federal holiday as you would other holidays, with cake? Why not feast on processed sugar to commemorate the accomplishments of that great civil rights pioneer?

I hate the idea of driving a car and hope I never have to, but if I did and if money was not an issue, I would totally choose to drive something odd: a tiny, clunky Eastern European car from the 1960's painted, perhaps in burgundy or a nice blue, for extra effect. I want to adopt rats and give them funny names when I move again, somewhere that allows pets. I want to one day have at least two cats, and have one of them be a hairless sphynx because they look so bizarre and it makes me squee in delight to see them. Phone conversations with closest friends tend to take very particular turns, often stemming from some random subjects I have recently used the vast power of the internet to learn about in detail: the life of bearded ladies, the unassisted childbirth movement, the process of draining abscesses, a particularly 'yucky' but highly effective treatment for chronic anti-biotic resistant bowel infections, the history of counterfeiting in the United States...

And, after all, why not?

wonders and dangers in life

The world is full of so many things - opportunities, possibilities, innumerable new experiences that can broaden your perspective, tickle your imagination, shape your memories and thoughts. There is earth and there are the things that can grow in the earth. You are born a blank slate and you live and as you do, roots and trunks and branches for, reach higher upward every year. You see paths in front of you and you follow where they may lead.

There is wonder in the world, and there is also danger, conflict, pain. There are shocks, major and minor, sudden and long-in-coming. To stay still and hidden is to see so little, and yet to venture forth is to risk. Sometimes you fall. Sometimes you watch someone else fall. Sometimes the risk is abstract and sometimes very much physical. You know this, as you know of the good. And just and so often we allow ourselves to take for granted the small joys we can find in life...so too do we minimize those dangers.

Every so often something happens to remind you of their existence: you spend an evening sitting on your living room floor giving your roommate ice and watching as a veritable stream of police walk in and out, take questions and statements, photographs. You listen to him say in disbelieve how does something like that happen right in front of your own house?

But such is the nature of life, of the World. There is always a balance, between withdrawing into yourself and engaging, between knowing your potential and using it, between guarding yourself or letting your hands be free to touch, to feel and explore and learn. Safety in the familiar or risk in the unknown - the exact measure and choice is different for everyone. You try to do what you an to make your own life and fulfilling and you can, as complete. I don't deny being reckless, to some degree. There are things I simply don't care about though I should, and there is that always burning curiosity, to see and do and run far...

Once upon a few years ago you spent a final week abroad walking around by yourself in a large foreign city because you wanted to BE there, to experience, to really see. You tell people about this, about how much you enjoyed those days, those long walks alone. You do not mention, usually, that one day among many - the restaurant and the waiter who followed you into the bathroom, who kept touching you and trying to hug you and kiss you as you writhed and said no and tried to get him to unblock the door; he did finally, and then followed you several blocks after you quickly paid and fled. It was unfortunate but it is a risk you take and such is life sometimes. You want to go somewhere strange and you do, and mostly it is amazing. You think someone is a mentor or friend and time spent with them is great until it's really not. So it goes.

So it goes and so you live where you do because you decided to spend a summer in an amazing place and thus only had a week to find somewhere to live that you could afford. So things happen, and yes, to be on guard, to be aware and ready to defend yourself if needed is good, but only to a degree. What is the point of living if you live in fear? What is the point if you make a list of so many things that sound amazing but that you will not do because there is risk? That is not achieving the concepts the world represents - for some perhaps there is no conflict, but everyone is different.

Guard but not too much, against the World. It has risks and and has wonders and to chase possibility means to encounter both.

capability and success

So I drew these two cards yesterday morning while preparing myself to deal with something I consider deeply unpleasant. Essentially, there was a kink with my financial aid/student loan disbursement, the kind of bureaucratic issue that requires phone calls, being transferred to five different people, none of whom quite know what they are talking about, and then some running around between multiple offices. I have some issues with phone anxiety: email or other written communication I am great at, talking in person is just fine, but give me a phone and a number for someone I don't know well and I am filled with dread.

The Magician here makes an intriguing picture in part because he doesn't seem to really...care. His posture is casual, hands in pockets, almost slouchy. Not much enthusiasm at all - the color palette of the card further strengthens that impression: brownish hues, a distinct dearth of any livelier tones. Yet the tools of the suits float in front of him nonetheless, ready to be used. Perhaps this magician is not very happy with his situation, but he has the resources, the personal power and capability to deal with the situation he faces effectively.

And so it is. I may dislike doing it, but I can sound perfectly professional on the phone when I need. I can wait patiently through multiple transfers and keep my tone pleasant and polite despite my growing frustration. I can buy an additional latte to fortify myself and do the required running around. Actually, once I went back to academic coordinator of my graduate program things got a lot easier, because she is one of those people who really knows how to get things done. And so within a day the issue has been resolved, and I can say I succeeded at dealing with it.

Success yes, the much brighter and colorful six of wands. A lot of green in this card: grass in the background, leaves curled around the wands and even a green checkered cover for the horse. They move forward towards new beginnings, toward growth and development. The main figure succeeded, worked with the others, and now he can move on to other, more pleasant things.

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.
--

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.

Away from Judgement

What does it mean, to be walking away from Judgement in the new year? In the previous part of this exercise I saw walking towards fulfilling potential ideas and dreams...in the Judgement card, I see a couple of ways that kind of momentum can be halted.

Taken most literally - yes, judgement, the internal critic. You have an idea and then you start to question it, question yourself, your abilities, your ability to convey your worth, if any, in applications and such. It's easy, from the perspective of those on the ground, to look up at the shining angels, the golden glow around them, and think: I can never be like that, that good. There are too many things holding me back. Why bother dreaming, trying.

On the other hand, in the sense that this card is often representative of the idea of 'the call' I can see the issue being one in which...you hear it, yes, recognize that you must make a decision, take action; recognize and stop at that - dither, overwhelmed.

Lastly, Judgement can be a card of rebirth, renewal, entering into a new Aeon and starting things all over again from scratch. The idea that change must be radical, all or nothing, go away from the familiar completely...that it is only by throwing out all of the old that you can move forward...this can either lead you to lose far more than you really needed to or, unable to give up so much at once, end up doing nothing at all.

Obstacles yes: self criticism, indecision, all or nothing attitudes. All things that I have been guilty of in the past. Better to walk away from these indeed.