Tarot Blog Hop for Mabon: Power of Transformation

NOTE: Apologies for being late posting for Tarot Blog Hop. Scheduling it to post didn't seem to work. User error, no doubt!.... Also, I don't know why the background color is doing this, and I lack the will to wrangle with Blogger, so apologies for that as well. Now, on with the show!...

Welcome to my blog, Tarot Blog Hoppers! You've most likely just come from Carolyn Cushing's Art of Change Tarot. After visiting with me here, please do continue on to Johnny Two-Brows.

The Autumn Equinox assigned topic is:

Of all the cards in the Tarot, of all the spreads  you may use, of all the meanings and significances of relationships between  cards, which to you most truly bespeaks the Power of Transformation? What  is the crux of your Search for the Hidden God, your Mabon Mystery, that  power which makes you able to transform your Self, your circumstances, and  produce something better than that with which you began? It is this which I  ask of you as a focus for your Blog Hop posting. Show us your Mabon Gift,  your Transformation. Make Mead with us, and we will all rejoice!

This is a very probing question and one that had me slumping back in my chair squinting. How am I supposed to answer that??? 'The crux of my search for the Hidden God?' I didn't even know I was searching for one. I gather King Arthur searched for this Mabon chap.  I have to admit I'm one of these funny types who doesn't pay much attention to 'god talk'. I'm all about 'energies', I can somewhat come to terms with 'emanations', but start taking gods and goddesses and I shut down a bit. I've bought several goddess tarots, and even have Sol Invictus Tarot, in an attempt to get a better grasp on the gods and goddesses, but I don't know...I'm more about generalities that specifics where this is concerned. 

Particularly with Mabon. In my personal tradition, I don't use the term Mabon, I use Autumn Equinox. I feel that Mabon is a bit tacked on to this particular holiday and it doesn't resonate (although to be honest I really hate the term 'resonate'--it's so overused!). So, asking me about Hidden Gods is not the best way to get an answer out of me. I'll start, as I so often do in tarot readings, by rephrasing the original question:

What tarot card, spread, or relationship between cards speaks to you most profoundly of the power of transformation, the type of transformation symbolised by the dying of the light at Autumn Equinox, which will be reborn with the Winter Solstice? 

The thing that interests me about the Autumn Equinox is that, when it happens, you can't tell by observation so much that the light is dying. It happens so slowly, by degrees, that it takes a while for us to realise the lights are going out. It's not like someone flicking a switch. (The same is true with Winter Solstice. If no one told you the nights were getting shorter, you'd be hard pressed to notice it for a while after 21st December.) 

Transformation is not something that happens like a thunderbolt. VERY few of us are ZAPPED into something new. It hardly ever happens like that in nature, and almost never happens to human beings spiritually. Transformation is a process that happens by degrees. It happens while we're not watching. It happens while we are distracted. It might call attention to itself suddenly, we might feel jolted when we finally notice it, but the Transformation itself has been going on for a long time. Like a tooth that finally erupts through the gums. You had no idea anything was happening in there, then it started niggling, then it hurt like heck. By degrees. 

So I have to ask myself, what card speaks to me of steady, gradual change, change that happens over quiet, dark nights,  to emerge, seemingly abruptly, but actually after a long arduous journey to the light: Judgement. 

RWS

Gaian

Robin Wood