What are my blessings?

Today really is the first day of the rest of my life. The cards I've drawn to day from Sirian Starseed Tarot (Cori 2012) answer the question 'What are my blessings?' They seem to directly refer to this morning's task. It's the first day of a new thing, one of those outside agencies I wrote about earlier in the week, the very first day. It's a new start, the beginning of putting things back together again. Well, that started as soon as things were blown to bits, but you know what I mean.

The Sun (or Solar Deity) will shine his light into the dark corners, refresh the pilgrim spirit, and new perspectives will be seen.

Three major cards, a big deal.

Cori writes of each:

Solar Deity - 'When this key appears it is a hallmark of great things in the works. It is a gloriously beautiful new day.' 

Starseed - 'When this card appears in a reading, it implies that the querent is off on a new quest, unconditionally, knowing that a new experience, an unknown, is about to unfold and become manifest.' 

Hanging Man - 'Hanging man appears to be waiting to be reborn, as many of us describe it, into to a new spiritual consciousness.'

It is a lot to ask of a 1.5 hour meeting, but there is nothing to lose and much to be gained by trying. I feel hopeful. Each day has been the beginning of healing, of course. This day appears particularly auspicious. And even if these cards refer not to today but to general life (because after all, I didn't ask about today, I asked 'What are my blessings?) they are good tidings. They show me good things. Whatever the outcome of this situation, however it turns out, I still have these blessings.

Clean anger

 Karma. What a loaded word. So many people think 'karma' means 'paybacks'. No, no, a thousand times no. It does not mean paybacks. I've written about this before.

What's happening to me is not because I deserve it, or because of some 'sin' from a past life, or because my 'negative energy' has 'drawn it to me', or even because of some 'lesson' I need to learn. There is no cosmic tick sheet keeping track of lessons we all need to learn, and meting them out to us in different forms depending on how much pain we have 'earned'. That is bullshit! And I don't believe for one single minute that someone's 'soul' decided to it would be good to born profoundly disabled or to die after a few hours in this world in order to 'learn' some 'lesson'. Bullshit! Bullshit!

What's happening to me is simply what is happening to me. It's not happening for a reason, it is just happening. The way I choose to deal with it, the actions that I take in response, that is my karma. That is what karma means.

The word karma means 'action'. I will show you again the actual scriptural teaching on karma from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad:

One more thing I have lived through

 Of course there are times in our lives when we think, 'What could there possibly be to celebrate?' It's the worst thing that's ever happened to us, or so we feel at that time, and the very idea of seeing any sort of bright side seems like a betrayal of our own suffering. And yet today we see Three of Chalices from Sirian Starseed Tarot (Cori, 2012).

Three frosted wine glasses with golden stems float above the surf on a beach. In the background, superimposed on the sky, three little girls with garlands of flowers huddle with their heads together, giggling. They look (disturbingly, in this instance) like members of a wedding party.

According to the LWB, this key (that's what Cori calls the majors) is about friendship and the celebration of unconditional love. It reminds me that from all over the world online and in my real life, too, people have been reaching out to me in concern, asking what's wrong, and extending their well wishes. All of this positive being sent to me can only be helping me to heal and find my feet. I appreciate it more than you know.

'The three opens to the celebration of what comes from sharing emotionally and spiritually with others -- without limitation.' ~ Cori, LWB

Openness is a pivotal part of what has been happening to me lately. Sharing everything without limitation is the only way that my current situation is going to be resolved, or that those of us involved can possibly heal and move forward. We have to be able to share our thoughts and feelings, and most importantly, be able to teach each what we need from the other. It's crucial.

The Indigo Angel card for the day:

'This card reminds you that life will continue long after you've gotten through this challenge and forgotten all about it. The angels ask you to concentrate on the good things in your life and see beyond whatever is going on around you.' 

There will never be a time when I will have 'forgotten all about' this. But if I can release the pain enough in this moment, I can see that there will be a time when it feels like and is a distant memory. It will feel like something that happened to someone else, a story that I was told. (That's the way all my other traumas that are now in the past feel to me, so I am sure that will be the case for this one, too.) 

I don't know what the future holds, but I do know that one day this will all be in the past, just one more thing I have lived through. 

Outside in

This is a beautiful card from Sirian Starseed Tarot (Cori 2013). It's the Hierophant, and it features a statue of Buddha floating between the forepaws of the Sphinx. All the colours of the chakras swirl around them.

"What is that which in the morning goeth upon four feet; upon two feet in the afternoon; and in the Evening upon three?" 

This is the riddle of the Sphinx. It speaks to us of stages of life...Everything we go through is a process. No matter how random and chaotic things seem, there is a process to them. I'm not saying there's a master plan because I do not believe in master plans. But there is a process. We do not have to discover it so much as surrender to it. Allow it to happen.

I'm still in shock and in turmoil. But I am beginning to see that there are things out there than can act as a bridge. Organisations, systems, and bodies that exist to help and to guide, and I can access those. It's the traditional interpretation of the Hierophant.

Now here I differ with the meanings given in Cori's LWB:

Very apt

It's the Three of Orbs (3 of Swords) today from Sirian Starseed. It's also Day 3 since my trauma. I woke up this morning feeling sick and crying. Thankfully, yesterday I went to the GP and was given beta blockers and valium and that controls the anxiety enough that I can actually think rationally.

'Through the dark hour of the soul, when all appears to be dim, and the mind's eye is clouded to the vision of the higher purpose of difficult or painful experiences in life, the light of understanding is within your grasp. The card invites us to conquer the mind's focus on pain and loss, and look to the light, where we can transform our thoughts to acceptance and forward motion.' ~Patricia Cori, LWB

And some really penetrating questions:

What core beliefs or convictions have to be let go of?
How can you accept the pain of your loss and learn from it? 
What fear of separation or infidelity is causing you to suffer? 

I can't share with you the answer to those questions, but I can say that this card strikes deeply where I am at this moment. These are good questions for journaling, I think. Or just for sitting and pondering.

The Indigo Angel card for today:

Another lightning card, interesting. The LWB advises: You're extremely sensitive and can unknowingly absorb a lot of negative energy. This limits your understanding. Step away temporarily and connect with this beautiful planet. 

A walk would probably do me good at that. I may do that. But first I have to coax myself out of my bathrobe and bleary valium-induced haze (and don't think I'm not grateful for that haze right now). 

Ten of Orbs (10 of Swords) from Sirian Starseed Tarot (North Atlantic Books, 2012). Very apt for right now. The swords aren't in his back, but they might as well be. They're not though. He can survive. I will, too.

Bad things are happening and I have no control over them. But there are things I can control, and I am going to focus on those.

It's a very bad time, a traumatic time.







I decided to draw an angel card and it just stabbed me even more painfully, though I hope the message is true:

Sirian Starseed Tarot (Cori 2012).
Indigo Angel Oracle (Virtue 2013).

Sage of Flames

Recently in a Facebook group, the question was asked, 'Which tarot card represents your best qualities?' This was a question to which I had no immediate answer. Can I even identify my own best qualities? The things I value most in myself might not be the things that others see as my best qualities, and certainly may not correspond to what the 'Universe' or existence itself might consider my best qualities. So I thought I'd just ask. 'Which card here represents my best qualities?'-- and the question was open, to include anything that might lie dormant or be unacknowledged in myself, to include the most obvious and overt things. I shuffled the Sirian Starseed Tarot, cut, and drew -- the Queen of Wands, or Sage of Flames. This both surprised me and made me laugh ruefully at tarot's humour and insight.

Learn to release -- time to drop that sack

I rarely post about oracles because to me, oracles tend to be straightforward, personal messages. There is not a lot of interpretation involved, whereas of course tarot cards are so full of esoteric symbolism and associations that they could be discussed and written about forever (and hopefully will be!).  Today's draw from Conscious Spirit Oracle by Kim Dreyer (2013) gives us an affirmation:

'I release that which does not serve my higher purpose with gratitude and love.'

What unwanted clutter is holding you back from your full potential? We've all got it. It's just a matter of realising you're holding on to it. 

This reminds me of a story I read somewhere. A man is walking down a path, carrying a huge sack on his back. The sack is quite a burden; he's nearly doubled over. The man stubs his toe on a rock in the path and stumbles. 'Oh, idiot,' he says to himself. He stops, picks the rock up, smashes himself in the head with the rock and throws it into the sack. He continues down the path, trips on another large rock. 'Stupid! Stupid!' he mutters, stops and picks up the rock, smashes himself on the head with it and throws it in the sack. He does this another three or four times and finally a second man who had been standing on the road side observing this (the man with the sack wasn't able to move too fast or get too far for obvious reasons!) finally steps into the road. 

Karma Karma Karma Karma...

'Every thought you produce, anything you say, any action you do, it bears your signature.'
 ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

You know what? Karma doesn't means 'what goes around comes around.' That is a gross oversimplification. Karma is not about universal paybacks. Karma is not reward for good and punishment for bad.

'Karma' simply means 'action' or 'deed'. A man who performs good actions is a good man. A man who performs evil actions is an evil man. 'Anything you do, it bears your signature,' Thich Nhat Hanh says. Maya Angelou said it this way: 'When people show you who they are, believe them.' That is what karma means. You are what you do. You are your actions. You cannot do evil and say, 'I am really a good person though, so this doesn't count. I cannot be judged based on my actions but on my inherent worth as a human being.' It doesn't work that way. What else are you besides what you do? 'My actions are my only true belongings,' says Thich Nhat Hanh, 'I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.'

Now as a man is like this or like that, according as he acts and according as he behaves, so will he be; a man of good acts will become good, a man of bad acts, bad; he becomes pure by pure deeds, bad by bad deeds;
And here they say that a person consists of desires, and as is his desire, so is his will; and as is his will, so is his deed; and whatever deed he does, that he will reap.

                                                                        —Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, 7th Century BC

In a talk, someone asked Thich Nhat Hanh about karma:

You never speak of karma. Why not?

'I speak of karma all the time. There is no moment when I do not speak on karma. Karma means action. The action can be in the form of a thought, or in the form of a word, or it can be in the form of a physical action. So when I speak about mindful breathing, that is good karma. Mindful breathing is good action to bring your body and mind together, so you can be there in order to touch life deeply. When I speak about the Five Mindfulness Trainings, I speak about karma, because karma is action—if you think, if you speak, according to the spirit of the Five Mindfulness Trainings, you will get good results: peace, joy and happiness will be yours. I do not use the word karma, the technical term, but I always speak of karma, and the food of karma, which is karmaphala. And also good karma and negative karma. Let us not be caught by terms, even ideas. Let us deal with our actual problems. Let us have real practice, and not indulge ourselves in too much speculation and too many ideas.'

So let's dispense of all this talk about pay backs through karma. Any pay backs in karma come only from within ourselves, and happen to ourselves. That is what 'Whatever deed he does, that will he reap' actually means. 

And what does this have to do with today's card? Even though the LWB speaks a bit in 'payback' language -- 'a time of reckoning' -- the spirit of karma as I understand it (as taught by Thich Nhat Hanh and the Birhadarankya Upanishad) is the same:

Do I walk my talk?
Have I learned how I have created everything in my world?
What lessons are to be learned? Have I learned them?
Am I ready for transformational epiphany?

Today is Independence Day. Free your mind from the pay back mentality of karma and look to your own actions. Your actions are the ground upon which you stand.

Gather your thoughts - 4 of Orbs in Sirian Starseed

I love this image from the Sirian Starseed Tarot. It's such a lovely evocation of what it's like to be in meditation. There are moments, fleeting, between listening to sounds, between wondering if you're doing it right, between resisting the urge to peek at the clock, between hoping your feet don't go to sleep so deeply that you fall down when you try to stand up--there are moments when you really do disappear into yourself, and join the wash of the waves of the universe and feel a kind of alignment through the spine with the heavens above and the earth below.

This is so much more powerful to me than a medieval tomb in a relic of a cathedral.

The card tells me today is a day for quiet introspection, hibernation, meditation. It is not a day for solving problems. It is a day for retreat, for gathering oneself in, for recharging in preparation for dealing with the problems. The problems will wait. They always do.

'You canNOT be Sirius' -- the Dog Star in Sirian Starseed

Osiris

I've drawn the Star from Sirian Starseed this morning. This card features, of course, Sirius, the Dog Star, the brightest star in the sky. It is the nearest star to earth at 8.6 light years' distance. It is nearly twice as hot as the sun and puts out 26 times more energy, which it produces by converting hydrogen to helium through nuclear fusion. This is Sirius A.

Sirius B is 10,000 times dimmer than Sirius A and wasn't discovered until 1862. A white dwarf companion to Sirius A, it is very small at nearly the diameter of earth, and is affectionately called 'The Pup.'

As far as Sirius C is concerned, there is debate in the scientific community as to its existence. If it exists, it is tiny. It was first suspected in 1894 because of anomalies in the Sirius orbit. Something was observed at least 20 times between 1920 and 1930, but even scientists were unsure if they were actually seeing anything. A study of 60 years of observation conducted in 1978 by Gatewood & Gatewood concluded that nothing suggests the existence of a third body. However, there are anomalies and the debate continues.

Well -- of course you know a big bright obvious star, a tiny companion, and a near-mythic teeny-tiny 'phantom' star would hold GREAT appeal to New Age types! Listen to this from the LWB:

The image [on the card] includes the three stars of the triunal Sirian star system, described in detail in Sirian Revelations [a series of three books by guess who -- deck creator Patricia Cori] as Sirius A (still in the third dimension, Sirius B (ascended to the sixth dimension) and Sirius C (ascended to the fourth dimension). The Egyptians referred to them as the 'star sisters' and indeed they are. Hence, it also invites us to contemplate the ascension process, which many of us know we have come into this lifetime to experience. 

Click here for some 'channeled material' from the Sirians on Patricia Cori's website. (While you're there, click the link to the messages from the Sirian High Council. I like how they all end with ©Patricia Cori! Ha ha). And here is an entertaining look at some of the New Age ideas surrounding the Dog Star: The Dog Star from Outer Space.

So in the card we have Osiris, riding a barge through the heavens, holding a staff and an ankh. Sirius tops his staff. I assume the big star over his ankh is meant to be Sirius B. And your guess is as good as mine as to which little blinky is meant to be Sirius C. The interpretation is traditional - hope, trust, moving toward dreams or goals, etc.

Today I go to the surgeon to have my hearing checked again. The card suggests a positive outcome. For me, that will mean my hearing hasn't decreased more than expected and that I'm holding steady.

Sage of Crystals is talking in my ear this mornin'

Sirian Starseed Tarot 

The Sage of Crystals from Sirian Starseed Tarot makes an appearance this morning. She is beautiful, and her garden is beautiful, and her message is much needed.

As water of earth, the Queen of Pentacles (or 'Sage of Crystals') has a lot to say about our feelings about and sensitivity toward the material world and the physical body. All of the queens can be considered earth mothers, but she is the earthiest of them, a mini-Empress in some ways (although this deck calls the Empress 'Abundance', and in some ways, the description of it in the Sirian Starseed LWB sounds more akin to Queen of Cups than Queen of Pentacles).

The Sage of Crystals asks me to take a loving and compassionate look at all aspects of my life on the physical plane. She asks me to forgive myself for mistakes I may have made, for poor choices or misguided thinking about the material world. But she gently insists the importance of moving myself into a healthier direction.

She asks us:

In what ways have you acted as steward of your body lately? Have you respected, nurtured and loved your body? Have you looked after yourself lately? Have you thanked your body for all it has done for you? Have you dealt compassionately with its flaws, or ways in which it might have (inevitably) let you down? Have you taken the steps you can to preserve and defend your body? Have you eaten well? Have you exercised? Have you given your body a proper amount of rest? Have you moisturised your skin? Have you exfoliated? Have you drunk plenty of water? Have you conditioned your hair, flossed your teeth? Have you had your eyes checked? Have you had your smear test? Your mammogram? Have you been to the dentist? ARE YOU TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF? 

In what ways have you dealt with the reality of your domestic and financial situation? Have you felt gratitude for the things you have? Have you dismissed longing for the things you do not? Have you balanced your check book? Do you know how much money you have in savings? Do you make regular deposits, to the extent that you can, to savings investment? Do you have short term and long term savings goals? When was the last time you did a big clean of the house? Cleaned the refrigerator? Culled your sheets and pillow cases? 

In what ways have you been looking after your personal appearance? When was the last time you culled your old socks and underpants and got rid of the holey or stretched out or washed-to-grey items? Does your closet need a clean? Do you throw on anything? When was the last time you gave some thought to your clothes? Are they comfortable? Do they make you feel happy? The Sage of Crystals isn't asking you to spend too much money or strive to impress, but just to dress in a way that expresses yourself, that feels comfortable to your body and that makes you feel happy. Are you doing those things?

I don't even have time this morning for the Sage of Crystals to start talking to me about work and livelihood -- because I've got to get dressed and go to work! But I think she's had plenty to say to me already.

How about you?

He's all sparkly glowy

Sirian Starseet Tarot 

Here's the Knight of Wands from Sirian Starseed, also known as Adept of Flames. He has a piercing gaze, a purple robe, a waxed chest and a glowing solar plexus chakra. All tools to vanquish fate!

The Adept of Flames asks us today to balance our solar plexus chakra by reflecting on these questions:

What lights my fire?
What do I feel in my 'gut' that I want to do?
What are some things I used to be curious about that I've lost the flame for...do I need to rekindle the flames? 
Am I spending time worrying about what other people think of me and my choices? 

The manipura (solar plexus) chakra responds well to scent, so perhaps you could take a nice scented bubble bath, put on some fragrant lotion, or burn some incense today while you think about these things.

I'm in London today, having gone to visit friends. Fingers crossed the weather is nice! May the Knight of Wands lead us on some interesting adventures for the day. :)

The Indigo child, oh my

Now this is one of the cards in the Sirian Starseed that may do your head in. It's the Magician card, but instead of a magician doing the Saturday Night Fever 'as above so below' pose with a table full of elemental symbols, we have an 'Indigo child' holding a crystal. A creepy smirking child...with creepy Midwich cuckoo eyes...

So what the hell is an 'Indigo' anyway? I'm glad you asked.

Once upon a time in the 1960s, there was a psychic called Nancy Ann Tappe, a synesthete with a gift for seeing 'auras' (though many proponents of the Indigo child idea deny it was 'auras' she saw). As you probably know, an aura is a kind of emanation that surrounds living things and is considered to be its essence. Some people with special sensibilities  claim to be able to sense them, even see them. Nancy Ann Tappe could see them and see their colours. She called these 'life colours'. (She also claimed to be able to taste shapes.)

Nancy saw so many colours around people. She saw magenta, red, blue, orange, pink, lavender, yellow, tan and green. She went around seeing colours and tasting shapes. But in the 1960s, she started seeing a new colour infants, indigo. She hadn't seen this colour before. So she called these 'indigo children.' A few were born in the 60s, with the numbers increasing until today, she says (or would say, if she hadn't died in 2012), most people under the age of 30 are indigos. Her website says that in the 60s, about one in 5000 births were indigos. Now, '95% of the population are indigos'. I guess it means 95% of the population born after the 60s are indigos, or else lots of others will have changed colour, not something that appears to be possible.

How can you tell if you're an indigo? Here are some traits of the indigo:

• Feeling like an alien -- like you don't belong here, that you are different from most people
• Anger -- which some might call righteous indignation and others might call an overblown sense of entitlement
• Tenacity -- you won't be beaten down, also called willfulness 
• Resistance of authority, structure and hierarchy -- Dislike/distrust of teachers, doctors and authority figures of all types
• Seeing through lies -- always asking why, always seeing through those in power trying to pull the wool over your eyes, but you are not having it!
• Defiance -- (which more forgiving New Age types call 'breaking down structures') -- basically, trouble makers, but always felt to be justified trouble
• Radical authenticity -- the indigo must 'be himself', refuse to 'wear a social mask', no matter the consequences
• Love -- very powerfully throw themselves into emotions
• Depression -- see above
• Sense of mission -- indigos feel they are here for a reason, and they search diligently to try to figure out what it is
• Power, creativity, energy -- multi-talented, creative, with lots of energy toward things they want to do, and a big 'F you' to the things they don't want to do
• Intuition -- make decisions based on gut feeling; just 'kind of know' things
• Loners -- enjoy company of other indigos, otherwise don't mind being alone
• Sensitivity -- sensitive to textures, colours, etc, sensitive to situations, for example big parties can overwhelm; it varies with the indigo, but they are all 'sensitive'
• Other traits -- attracted to animals or children, tendency to be vegetarian, defy age classification (hard to tell age), do not respond to 'guilt' discipline 

A lot of people see the whole 'indigo child' thing as an excuse for problem children or poor parenting. I shall withhold comment other than to say that as a former teacher, I can certainly imagine a parent/teacher conference during which a parent might say, 'Well, he's his own person you know--he's an indigo.' I never had anyone call their child an indigo, but I certainly had parents say they couldn't exert any type of meaningful influence over their children's disruptive behaviour. Heck, my own kid was a little hellion in school, but that wasn't because he was an 'indigo' -- though he fits most of the 'traits' listed above. Shrug. Who knows -- maybe his aura is indigo, I certainly have never seen an aura around a person, so what do I know. I've taken online quizzes and according them I'm indigo.

Are you an adult indigo?  

I'm skeptical of all this 'Indigo' business, so I'm not thrilled to see 'Indigo' as a major card, but I will get over it! If I leave aside all that I personally see as nonsense in it, I can still see in the card the representation of a kind of pure potential, and the art shows me powers of the universe converging and taking shape in human hands -- as above, so below. So I can live with it. :) 

Sirian Starseed Hermit

Sirian Starseed Tarot 

Isn't this a simply gorgeous Hermit card? I love it. It's called 'Reflection' instead of Hermit, and the LWB offers these questions for...reflection...

Am I able to silence my mind and reflect on the situation at hand? How am I quieting my mind to contemplate the higher truth? Am I able to be still and listen to my inner voice? Have I matured from what I have learned?

The immediate situation at hand for me is I have made an appointment for 9.00 this morning to see the dentist about this swelling of the gums around my tooth. It's the tooth with the filling that gave me so much trouble in March and April. I have many fears about this, but I must quiet those fears because I don't know anything yet. There's simply no need worrying about the things that the dentist 'might' say, the treatment options that she might give me. In fact, from what I've read, I know what they 'might' be: a treatment of the gums involving an incision to drain the abscess (assuming it is an abscess), a root canal, or extraction. That's pretty much all they can do. But there's no point wondering and worrying what she is going to say until she says it.

The last two nights I have gone to bed very early. Night before last, 9.00, last night 8.30. I slept all night, except night before last, when pain in my gums awoke me at 2.45 and I got up to rub them with clove oil and take some ibuprofen. Last night I woke up briefly but the discomfort wasn't bad enough for me to have to get up to take pain relievers.

I can reflect on this fact. I am very lucky to live in a time when pain relief is a small matter of 50p or less for a box of ibuprofen, and dental care is available to help me. I might not particularly want to have a gap where a tooth used to be, but even if it comes to that, the procedure will not be life-threatening nor a torment of pain. For that I am grateful.

But for now, I hope that it's something minor that will require just a bit of fixing up.

ETA: Well, I'm back. The dentist said I have an external infection, gave me some antibiotics and made noises about my 'very deep filling' and hinted that this tooth might not be terribly long for this world. For now, though, I will happy to have this infection cleared up and no more pain. And I hope to hang on to to the tooth for another several years. To that end, I've decided to go off sugar. It will be for the best for me in every way.

Magnificent moments

It's the happy-happy-joy-joy card! Which is kind of funny because today I have to do 'evening cover', which means I don't get to leave the office until 17.30, and with my commute I won't be getting home until nearly 19.00. BUT, hubby and I have planned to have a long lunch and take the picnic blanket and some sandwiches from Subway out to the park and sit on the grass and watch the bunnies and birdies and listen to the wind in the trees and so that is probably going to be my 10 of Cups moment for today. :)

The Sirian Starseed LWB offers some questions for consideration at the end of each card interpretation:

Are you aware of all you have created  and how the world is unfolding through your manifestation? Are you feeling the magnificent of this moment in your life? How are you sharing the joy with others? Do you give thanks for all that flows into your life?

These are very good questions to hold in our hearts as we move through the events of the day.

The space men have landed

Once upon a time there was a Nobel Prize winning author called Doris Lessing. She wrote, amongst other things,  a series of five books called the Canopus in Argos series (1979-1983). The books examine the history of the earth (or earth-like planets) and humankind (or human-like beings), from the point of view of alien intelligences. Doris's readers were disappointed when she turned from literary fiction to what she called 'space fiction.'

 'I would so like it,' Doris said, ' if reviewers and readers could see this series, Canopus in Argos: Archive, as a framework that enables me to tell (I hope) a beguiling tale or two; to put questions, both to myself and to others; to explore ideas and sociological possibilities. What they don't realise is that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time.' 

One of the series is called The Sirian Experiments (1980). In this book, the Sirians have become quite advanced; in effect, immortal. So they get bored and develop a case of 'the existentials', and decide to go off and seed new worlds and have meaningful new spiritual and existential experiences. Of course the worlds are all ostensible versions of earth. A cult seems to have grown up around this.  Lessing said in an interview that its followers had written to her and asked, "When are we going to be visited by the gods?", and she told them that the book is "not a cosmology. It's an invention", and they replied, "Ah, you're just testing us."

Then along comes Patricia Cori, 'Scribe to Speakers of the Sirian High Council', in 1996, claiming to channel messages from a 'Sirian High Council'. I'm not entirely sure this comes directly from Lessing's books, but I strongly suspect so. Here's where I lose the thread a bit because this sort of stuff involves a lot of densely written text on websites having lots of flashing effects and scrolling messages and exclamation points, and reading it all makes me lose the will to live. Suffice to say that in 2012 Patricia Cori created a tarot deck, and in 2014, in a curious departure from the norm, I bought it. 

And guess what?  I really like it. No, really. I do. 

We'll have to turn to the LWB for more about the Sirians. Apparently, we are all 'starseeds' who have chosen to inhabit earth in this incarnation. I can't really tell if that makes us Sirians or if we are little starseeds in their cosmic petrie dish. The tarot structure can encompass the Sirian Starseed story the same as it can encompass any story, though, and it does fit beautifully. The majors of course contain the archetypes of any sort of journey, spiritual or otherwise, and they will fit anything, I'm convinced of this. They are the archetypes of every story. That's all there is to that.

The four suits have the names changed to chalices (cups), orbs (swords), crystals (pentacles) and flames (wands). The courts are called 'people keys' and are seeker, adept, sage and master (page, knight, queen, king). 

The art of the deck is photocollage. Some images are a bit clunky, but overall, I really like these cards. They are huge and very pretty and easy to read right out of the box, or at least that has been my experience. 

Sirian Starseed Tarot

Today's card is Master of Chalices (King of Cups). The People Keys 'can't be interpreted in simplistic terms and finite descriptions,' says Cori in the LWB. 'To understand them you will need to explore the essence of each suit' and then consider how each People Key embodies that essence. Masters (Kings) have complete authority over the suit and carry significant social responsibility for them. The suit of chalices represents 'the subconscious, emotions, love and relationships, sensuality...illusions, intuition, blissful celebration' -- and so the traditional card meanings exist very strongly in this deck. To me, the imagery is just a rather new way of evoking the traditional essence of each card. I like that. 

This the kind of deck that doesn't take a lot of wordy analysis. It can be experienced. Stare at the Master of Chalices. There is the ocean in all its depth, and the sky is filled with a pair of knowing eyes. It's all you need, really, to get a feel for the King of Cups. Very powerful card. 

I will master my emotions today. Particularly as I have had a toothache in that  demon seed tooth that caused me so much angst and misery in March and April. I am going to believe in my heart that this discomfort is nothing and will pass. I am not going to let my imagination or my emotions run away with me about it.