Divination 3 x 3 x 3

My friend Chloe at Inner Whispers has done a You Tube in which she shares her three favourite divinatory tools and invites us to do the same: tarot, oracle, Lenormand/other. After much deliberation, I have selected my 3 x 3 x 3. Here they are in random order:

Top Three Tarot Decks 

1986 Blue Box Thoth Tarot

My journey with the wonderful Thoth Tarot has been chronicled on this blog. If you look on the right side bar and click on 'One Deck Wonder: Thoth' you can read all about it.

I have three copies of this deck. My first copy was the small purple box Thoth, purchased for a workshop at a TABI Tarot Convention. Unfortunately, I couldn't hear the presenter (she wasn't on mike) and the people around me all had a negative reaction to the deck, which reinforced my perception of it as cold and unreadable.

When I at last decided to confront my fear and distaste for the deck, I made a commitment to using it exclusively for a time. I did all my blogging with it, my personal readings with it, and my client readings with it. I tried to ready Crowley's guidebook, The Book of Thoth, but found it impenetrable. I bought Tarot: Mirror of the Soul by Gerd Ziegler, but even with my limited knowledge, I knew his was an idiosyncratic and unhelpful take on the deck. Finally, I found Lon Milo DuQuette's book Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot and I was on my way.

If this were the only tarot deck in the world, it could easily keep you busy for a lifetime.

Yellow Box The Rider Tarot Deck 

Edward Arthur Waite and Pamela Colman Smith created what is now the classic tarot deck, and it is available in all sorts of colorations. There are clones (exact same images but with lines and coloring revised) and their are 'RWS-based' decks (too many to count! - Druidcraft, Anna K Tarot, Hudes, Aquarian, just so many). But when I have a tough question or am reading for a client and want to be able to answer clearly and confidently, the old standard yellow box Rider is just the ticket. Could not do without it.

Morgan Greer Tarot (US Games 1979)

This deck is special to me because it was the third deck I ever bought. It is a RWS-based deck, notable in its day for being borderless. It is the deck I turn to even before my yellow box Rider (or other RWS clones). It's not particularly beautiful, but I like it. The backs have no relation to the fronts in style or coloring and not reversible, but I like it. It's full of mustachioed men like something from 'The Joy of Sex', but I like it. It's a workhorse of a deck, shuffles like a dream, I've had it from the start and I like it.

(Honorable Mention: Druidcraft
I have Druidcraft and I used it a lot for years, but I hardly ever pick it now. I won't get rid of it though. However, I hardly ever use it so I can't really say it's a favourite.)

Top Three Oracles
I have to be honest and say most of my oracles were bought either to use as altar decorations or just totally on a whim. I do occasionally use a few of them for divination and here they are:

Morgan's Tarot (Morgan Robbins)
Read my introduction to this fabulous oracle here: 10,000 Words in a Cardboard Box. And it gives wonderful readings such as this: Have you ever been Biff Tannened?

I love this deck. Here are a few of my favourite cards:

Teen Oracle (Cinnamon Crow Dixon)

I learned about this oracle from Steven Bright of Tiferet Tarot. It is a very straightforward deck when you just want an answer. Black and white images with red text give it a 'you can't ignore me when I'm being this literal' feeling, and cards are simple as: Stop, Speak, and Relax.



Oracle of the Shapeshifters (Lucy Cavendish and Jasmine Becket-Griffith)

I may be the only person in the world who actively dislikes the artwork of Jasmine Becket-Griffith. I do not like these cards. I don't like any of her work. I do not like these bug-eyed, button-nosed, big-headed girls who like aliens suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome. BUT...Lucy Cavendish must be some sort of world-class witch because I have never used a more uncannily accurate oracle. For me, the book is indispensable. The cards are useless without it, and in fact, I often don't bother with the cards but just use the book, opening it at a random page instead of drawing from the deck.


Lenormand and other 
I do not use any 'other' types of divination, having given up dealings with runes, crystals, herbalism, and such like. I'm pure cartomancy these days. Here are my three favourite Lennies and 'other':

Esmeralda Lenormand

I didn't even know about this deck; it was a gift from a friend, and has become my favourite Lenormand. I use it for all my client readings and it is my go-to for my own personal Lennie readings as well. I love the rich colours and textures, and the little prompts and icons. All the information you need is right there on the card, and when laid out in a grand tableau, they look like a glorious patchwork quilt.



Titania's Fortune Cards
This was my first Lenormand, before I had even heard the word 'Lenormand'. If you buy it, ignore the companion book. It bears no relation to any traditional Lenormand system and will only confuse you. (I actually threw mine away.) They have a crazy, 'flashing colour' thing going on with them, making them look like lurid photo negatives. You get a sort of tatwa thing going when you use them. Here's a draw I did with them: Lenormand Daily Draw.

Psycards

The Psycards are a set of 40 cards inspired by Carl Jung's work, and based on the principle of 'archetypes'. I used to have the book but I traded that set, then a few years later decided I wanted the cards back and bought the deck only. It's okay, the book is not really needed.

Here's a reading I did with Psycards: Emperor Energy -- Not Welcome Lately.




Well, that was exhausting. :)

I hope you enjoyed reading about my favourite decks. What are your faves? I'd love to hear! If you do a You Tube or write a blog, please link to it in comments below. :D

The Beast

Call your courage up to slay
The foul fiend who bars the way

 We all know what the Beast is. As soon as you see it and read the title you know what it is. It is those fears, doubts and worries lurking in the shadowy corners of our minds. We won't go there because we are afraid to face the Beast, and we think it would be better to leave him curled up in the dark, hopefully snoozing. What would happen, after all, if we woke the Beast. He might destroy us! No no no, we think. Better to just carry it around with us, slithering along the walls of the caves of our minds, always just out of sight but nevertheless palpably there.

This card asks us to face our fears, because only when we do that can we overcome them. We must draw the Beast out into the light so that we can get a good look at that mutha. Only when we've looked squarely at him, and preferably from all angles, can we know what we're dealing with.

There are lots of beasts plaguing my household lately. We've begun to shed light on them. We're beginning to take certain steps. One does what one can.

The temple

Ha! No secret to why I drew this today. I did some yoga yesterday, first workout of any kind I've done since end of March (and before that it was like since December) and I am very sore already this morning. By tonight I may actually feel like a flayed man. :)

Also, could point to some concerns I've had lately about the hubster. He's had a loss of appetite and tiredness and then yesterday he started coughing. I told him -- go to the doctor, I don't like these symptoms. But you know how men are. I may have to drag him there.

I've taken my body for granted for too long. The card reminds me to carry on the good work I started yesterday. It also reminds me that the body is an important conduit for my relationship with higher things.

I don't know why but I just thought of Russell Brand and his yammering about the body and yoga and meditation and the universal energy. I LOVE him. Watch this:

Russell Brand shares truth in his own verbose and intense style

The scales fall away

Up and away at long last flee
But where tonight will your bed be?

Not surprising to have drawn this card after yesterday's imprisoned feeling from Father.

This is an interesting card. The door is open, but the door to what? If it's the door that covers the portcullis of this castle, it is a very ineffectual one, being so far away from the gate that it serves no purpose. Plus the key seems to have been left in it. So we have a door with the key in it standing wide open, and something lying on the path that may be the 'fetters' recently shed by the fleeing figure on the horse. Or maybe it's a whip that was used to scourge him. If you look close, there are two figures on that horse. Are two people fleeing? Did one save the other? It's enigmatic.

Not unlike our concepts of slavery and liberation. I was thinking yesterday... Who says work has to be fun? Who says you have to love your job? In the old days, people would have laughed you to scorn if you said, 'Do what you love or do nothing at all.' They'd have laughed as they made their coughing and miserable way to the coal mines or the cotton mills. Everyday working class people like me, they knew what work was. They knew the cost of keeping body and soul together. We don't know we're born these days, you know what I mean? We have it so good that we have to make up imaginary prisons in our minds. We don't know the first thing about real poverty or real hunger or real want. We know our 'versions' of these things -- but we don't know what it's like to leave a starving child on the side of the road because you can't carry it any longer and you can't stand to watch it die. We don't know anything about a 6 square foot shelter made of corrugated tin being an unattainable fantasy. We know nothing -- and it should make us look around and think twice.

I stumbled across this yesterday:

Wellbeing -- Being in a position where you have good physical and mental health, control over your day-to-day life, good relationships, enough money, and the opportunity to take part in the activities that interest you.

I thought very hard about every point in that definition, and I realise that on any given day, I can tick most of them, and the ones I don't tick, I've left blank because of something imaginary, something with no basis in the actual reality of the details of my life.

My First World problems embarrass me.

I enjoy such Liberation that I can indulge myself in making up ways to think I'm enslaved.

The key is in the door. The door is wide open. The gate is up. The path is golden. The sky is blue. It's time for me open my eyes.

Emperor energy - not welcome lately

'You are his seed so stand up high
Who sired you points you to the sky'

The Father works on three levels: your own father, concepts of masculine energy, and patriarchal hierarchies. Thus the Father card in the Psycards deck is not unlike the Emperor card of tarot.

Today I return to my very corporate work place, where hierarchy and rigidity prevail. There is really only one direction in which we are allowed to shoot our arrows, so to speak, and that's in the exact direction the Father points. But as you can see from the illustration, the arrows are rather ineffectual -- no arrowhead! We're pointing at nothing but the sky -- no real target. We do it because we're told to. Perfect example of local government.  The Father is not even looking in the direction he is sending the child's arrow...and by his facial expression, he is not really interested. Definitely a perfect example of how I perceive my work place.

It is hard not to take Emperor energy negatively. There are so many problems inherent in it. Probably the main thing we reject is being ruled over, because we know from experience that when we are ruled over, that when 'organisations' begin to be formed, the result is waste, mismanagement, power play and corruption, and all our good intentions and nobler goals seem to slip into the mist, forgotten. Maybe that is why the Father looks so dejected. He knows that arrow is leading nowhere. Maybe he's remembering how he felt when he first took up the bow himself, the idealism and hopes that were inexorably crushed by the 'system'. Could be.

Last night I dreamed that I was in a work place. People were dressed up in business way. I got told off for not being 'corporate' enough. I looked down and realised I was wearing a sari. It was a stark contrast to the others, and I felt self-conscious and spread it out to drape over my shoulder and cover over the bare  midriff (which saris often leave). As the woman marched away from me down the hall, I shouted feebly after her that she was a fat cow. (Her dress had transformed into a skin tight white affair with sparkly sequins and a blonde hair-do like a Dolly Parton wig.) She turned and said something back, but now I can't recall what. Then several of us were called into a small room and the 'cow' set us a task, all of us in a line. I was number 8, the last in line. Apparently we were meant to be passing scrap paper down the line, and my job was to put the last paper on and run from the end of the line to the beginning and back again every time. 'You'll have to keep running back and forth,' the fat cow said. I felt quite put upon. My sari, which had turned into yoga pants, a sports bra and a large Mexican serape, kept sliding off my shoulders. I protested, 'This is stupid. Why don't you get some admin assistant to staple these together?' I was told this is the way we do things here. I realised that there was no actual intended use for these stacks of paper. We were just making them because we make them. Then the dream shifted and I was looking in the mirror, examining my teeth. Some of my lower teeth were in the wrong place. 'Oh, no,' I said, 'they really are shifting!'

I woke up, checking at once with my tongue the location of my teeth, and with a headache.

So, hi ho, it's off to work I go.

Voyage - Just around the river bend

'Your heart turns to new shore
With new horizons to explore'

Funny I should draw this card today from Psycards, as I am working from home. I am definitely not going on any literal voyages. However, I do have an appointment this morning that could start me on a new voyage within myself. At least I hope so.

The 'voyage and return' archetype is one of the seven basic plots of storytelling (according to Christopher Booker.) In this archetype, the hero is not necessarily seeking a treasure or pursuing a goal, but is instead experiencing the journey itself, with no other goal than a broad one of 'discovery.' We don't know what's out there; we are open to whatever experience comes our way.  We can see this archetypal story in such things as Star Trek or Alice in Wonderland.

What voyage could I be going on today? Could I be starting a new voyage? Or has this card popped up today to remind me that life itself is a voyage with no particular goal in mind, that the journey is the only goal?

We can never know exactly what is going to happen to us. The best laid plans of mice and men, as Bobby Burns wrote, often go awry. We just don't know what lies ahead, but that doesn't mean we are powerless. It means we are adventurers. 'Relax,' reads an aphorism that's been making the rounds on the internet, 'nothing is under control.' That is what the voyage is about. We don't know. We can see patterns, we can see likely scenarios, we can even make plans, but that doesn't mean we or anything else is in control. That is the beauty and the mystery of being alive.

The Voyage reminds me not to be afraid. Not to feel dread. I am alive, I am afloat on the sea of my life, and I may not know what's over the horizon, and that is okay.

Yesterday on the telly, I caught a scene from the Disney movie 'Pocohontas', the musical number 'Just Around the River Bend'. She's trying to decide whether to marry the man her father has chosen, Kocoum, who is 'very serious' but would be a good provider, or follow her natural instincts to be a 'voyager':

What I love most about rivers is:
You can't step in the same river twice
The water's always changing, always flowing
But people, I guess, can't live like that
We all must pay a price
To be safe, we lose our chance of ever knowing
What's around the riverbend
Waiting just around the riverbend

I look once more
Just around the riverbend
Beyond the shore
Where the gulls fly free
Don't know what for
What I dream the day might send
Jut around the riverbend
For me
Coming for me

I feel it there beyond those trees
Or right behind these waterfalls
Can I ignore that sound of distant drumming
For a handsome sturdy husband
Who builds handsome sturdy walls
And never dreams that something might be coming?
Just around the riverbend
Just around the riverbend

I look once more
Just around the riverbend
Beyond the shore
Somewhere past the sea
Don't know what for ...
Why do all my dreams extend
Just around the riverbend?
Just around the riverbend ...

Should I choose the smoothest curve
Steady as the beating drum?
Should I marry Kocoum?
Is all my dreaming at an end?
Or do you still wait for me, Dream Giver
Just around the riverbend?

Those of us with a bit more life experience know that even if she did marry Kocoum, her life would not be as predictable as she thinks! Life itself is always just around the river bend. There's no need to think you know what's there -- and no need to fear it, either. 

Job reading using Psy Cards

There's a new job listing that I think might be interesting to go for, back in my usual place of employment. (Right now I'm on a secondment elsewhere.) The new post is a part time post on a higher salary than I've earned in a long time, but as it's part time, it's obviously less income overall. However, going part time would allow me to pursue my tarot reading service part time, instead of doing it as a hobby on the weekends. 

I took out the cards Yes, No, Now, Never. I shuffled them thoroughly, laid them out face down and used a pendulum to select a card, asking, 'Should I apply for this post?' I turned over: YES. 

Okay. So I decided to draw one card for the prospective post, one card for tarot reading service, and one card for current secondment, and I shuffled and drew: 

The new job = Warrior

Tarot reading = Home

Current secondment = Liar

I see this as saying that the new job would be something new and adventurous to do, that would take courage but could also lead to 'glory' of a kind.  The Warrior archetype is brave, bold, tenacious, honorable, loyal, righteous, and impatient. I can see how all these apply to the particular post I'm considering, as it is a leadership position in a sector that is fighting for its survival and to create its identity in a changing world. My battles would be small-scale, but I would still be expected to lead the fray. 

The reading service which I would then have more time and energy to nurture is linked to the Home card. Of course, helping people through readings is one of my favourite things, and the card suggests it is a natural place for me. The business would of course be run from my home. This area is where my comfort lies. Also, there seems to be a suggestion that reading as part of my living is a viable option for me, given the connotations of sustenance and shelter associated with home. These are good signs!

Finally my current secondment...at first I thought the draw meant that the secondment simply wasn't right for me, then I realised there is a much more literal interpretation of this card, as my main dissatisfaction with it has been that the work I'm actually doing bears little resemblance to what I was led to believe (by job advertisement, job description and person spec, interview and even the assessments I was given during recruitment!) I would be doing. The job is nothing like I thought it would be -- I do feel rather lied to. 

So I think I will apply for this job, even if it is 'part time' work. It may be my time to put new irons in the hearth fire. 

I love my cave!

'Ponder deep inside your soul
Darkness can sometimes make you whole'  

I've decided to look at an oracle deck this week instead of a tarot, the Psy Cards by Nick Hobson. They are drawn from Jungian archetypes. My card for today is 'The Cave'. The thing I like about these cards is you don't need any real extra information to understand them. We all pretty much automatically known what is meant by the cards just from the titles and images. (But in case you would like to read other people's thoughts on the cards, there are a few books about them, and the website I linked to above generously gives a few words about each card.)

Sundays for me are almost always 'Cave' days, days when I can withdraw from the outside world for me time, to recharge and rebalance. I love my slow weekends at home, when I am responsible for nothing and no one and can do whatever I want -- which is usually very little indeed. Quite often a Sunday is a pajama day, a day when I never even bother to get dressed. I love it. I love being past the age of having children (my child is a grown man), so it's just me and hubby watching movies or going for a walk or doing whatever. Me time. :)

I've had some things to ponder lately. A new job opportunity has come up and I need to decide if I'm going for it, and do some thinking about what I'll do if I get it. If it's the right thing, if it's something I should try, or if I should just stay put. Actually I've drawn some of the Psy Cards about it. Maybe I'll post the reading, after I've pondered it.

Job readings

Pardon my self-indulgence, I've done more readings about this job I applied for. I used the Psy Cards last night in a 3-card draw:

The new job  -- My current job -- The outcome/future

Psy Cards

I don't see how you can get more positive on the new job than a card that is a big fat YES. The message seems clear that if they offer it to me, I should take it.

 The job I'm currently in presents a bit more difficulty. The Tower most certainly speaks at once to the feelings I've had already in the post -- isolation. I've even used that word when asked how I'm feeling in the job. A Tower can protect us and it can also harm us by imprisoning us. This card has two meanings to me. It's both the way I feel right now about the job, and also the challenges facing me in the job -- which would be to break down the isolationist tendencies in this particular workplace, as in work practices and ideas which are not part of a bigger, company-wide ethos. This is important and ultimately healthy work, but of course is quite challenging, particularly in the initial stages! 

The outcome/future card of Tree seems hopeful to me. The Tree is part of a larger ecosystem as seen by its spreading roots. So perhaps either way I go, I have to potential to feel more connected, to feel as if I am a part of something greater than myself, that I contribute in a meaningful way to a unified whole. 

I also did a Lenormand reading asking about the outcome of the interview process:

Esmeralda Lenormand

I see this as a positive reading, and asked for input on the Lenormand Study Group on Facebook: 

Eva Vanderschueren That looks really positive. Moon is also my working card. The clover is succes, the lily a superior at work, who is giving you the key to work with them, and that will be officially announced (letter). The letter can also be the contract. I would really be surprised if you don't have the job! 

Michele Rubino-Mccray I think it looks good Carla and you have the experience fot the job (Lilies) which leads to an offer (Key + Letter)

My own reading of it is that I will probably receive a letter telling me I've been lucky in work -- meaning I think it may be a yes. We'll see!