Who loves the Sun?

The Intuitive Tarot by Cilla Conway (St Martins 2004)

This is a very Thothy Sun I've drawn today from Cilla Conway's Intuitive Tarot. My first thought on drawing this card is that it's going to be hot today. That's a possibility! Then I wondered if perhaps today might be the day that they shortlist the job I've applied for, and maybe I'll get shortlisted. Leaving these details, the card could indicate that it's just going to be a very positive day in which I feel okay about...everything. For the most part, The Sun is a card that almost never has a negative meaning. Even reversed, it's a positive card, with this its shine only dimmed somewhat.

The twins in the Intuitive Tarot are referred to in the companion book as the 'heavenly twins' and are said to represent the 'reunited parts of our soul, separated for so long.' According to Crowley, they represent 'the male and female, eternally young, shameless and innocent. They are

dancing in the light, yet they dwell upon the earth. They represent the next stage that is to be attained by mankind, in which complete freedom is alike the cause and the result of the new access of solar energy upon the earth.' Lon Milo DuQuette asserts in his book 'Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot' that Thelema, Crowley's 'religion', is in fact 'a modern form of sun worship. But then I am quick to add, "And when I use the word Sun, I am also referring to myself."' Or as Crowley put it, 'Every man and every woman is a star.'

Certainly a very positive card, then. 

And what do the Devas of Creation have to add to this card? I've drawn Mineral Kingdom.

Devas of Creation (Conway 2013)

As soon as I turned this card over I was amazed at how similar it looks to the Sun card. So golden, with the spiky 'rays' of the crystal flaring out in all directions. Where the Sun card's rays point down, the Mineral Kingdom's 'rays' point up. But what could the Mineral Kingdom have to do with the Sun? 

Like the Sun, crystals and minerals may appear inert (a golden ball, a rock), but they are in constant change and flux. The Sun burns and flares, the crystals slowly grow.  'The appearance of this Deva, 'says the companion book, 'indicates a need to give ourselves the right conditions to grow. It reminds us that change is often slow, and that if we try to force things, it may well prove counter-productive.' 

So I'm not going to go through the day looking for 'Sun' things to happen. I'll just let the day unfold and see how it goes, like a crystal slowly becoming something amazing and beautiful. 

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.

Summer Solstice Reading 2014

This is my summer solstice spread for 2014. I shuffled the cards very well and laughed when I drew the Sun as the first card.

1. Sunrise - What is beginning in my life? - Sun
2. High noon - What is my greatest power right now? What should be my sharpest focus? - Dreamer Two (2 of Swords)
3. What is winding down in my life right now? - Justice
4. What is under the surface, at rest for the moment? - Dancer Three (3 of Cups)

Sunrise
I'm entering a new phase of optimism, success and achievement in my life. The figure in the Sun card beckons directly to the viewer to join hands and dance around the hill, which resembles Glastonbury Tor, topped by a tree framed by the sun, which is also the faery glyph. The little butterfly fluttering between us and the figure is a symbol of rebirth. It is also me, freshly emerged from my chrysalis, seeing everything with new eyes. Can you imagine what it would be like to be fresh born, looking around for the first time, feeling yourself moving for the first time, and the first sight you see is this scene? Nothing but joy and wonder would ever have been your portion. You emerge from your shell to go directly upward toward bliss. My, my.

 The sun in the card shows its great power, as it is the source of all life after all. The sidhe join hands and progress up the hill in a snake-like procession, toward the Source and the Tree of Life. This is kundalini rising, it is enlightenment of a kind. The upward spiral image is used to characterise kundalini and the awakening of bliss. Eion Finn refers to joy as an 'upward spiral.' We know that life itself is an upward spiral, we can see it in the form of the double helix of DNA. We see here in the card, the bottom of the card is somewhat murky in colour, though creatures of flight abound - birds, fluttering bugs and butterflies of various types. There are also some rounded objects in the two lower corners that look like geodes, a word that itself means 'earth-like'. The red-haired sidhe beckons me to join the creatures of the earth in a spiral dance into the greenness of life, upward, to return to source, to return to the True Self.

The card does not point to specific events necessarily, but an overall feeling of happiness and radiance. It is the start of my time to shine. Combined with the other cards, it suggests ways to gain in self-confidence and personal power, and that success and hope are on the rise. I can see many connections to my spiritual practice, my yoga practice, and the direction I hope to move my life.  All this is in the sunrise phase of the 'day'.

High Noon
At its zenith right now in my life is Dreamer Two, 2 of Swords, titled 'Half-Moon Truce'. The card shows a purply-bluey sky dominated by a huge circle, half black and half white, containing the ghostly face of a sidhe. It is ephemeral; there are wisps around the circle suggesting it may have suddenly appeared, and may be going into and out of focus. At the bottom of the card, the yellowing of the sky above two mountain peaks, in swirls of clouds, and hanging between earth and sky is a magpie, its wings outstretched. With its black and white colouring, the magpie represents duality in some ways. In folklore, the magpie can represent risk-taking, as its dual colours suggest both good and bad. Magpies are courageous, daredevil birds, they have amongst the most complicated of bird vocabularies, and they are notoriously attracted to shiny objects. All of these help us to see the sorts of things represented by the black and white moon - decisions, decisions. Do I dare to take a risk? Do I dare to speak my truth? Do I dare to go for the shiny objects?

Called 'Half-Moon Truce,' this card actually represent the pause between decisions. It is the moment of drawing breath between having an idea and speaking it into the world. We know that words make manifest. The moon is the silence of the heart, the mountains the resolution of the spirit, the magpie, then, would be the speaker of the magic. So all the swirling around the moon becomes the breath that gives life to the words.

In Dreamer Two, none of this has happened yet. It is the moment between initial foment and subsequent action. It is the balance that cannot last, it is like a rock that has been pushed up to the pointy top of a precipice, where it pauses, filled with potential energy, before either rolling back or teetering over and down the other side of the hill. It cannot just sit there forever. Natural laws will not allow it. Spiritually and mentally however, we can prolong this moment through hesitance to move either way. This is one reason why the woman in the traditional RWS image wears a blindfold and is seated in the non-land at the edge of water ('between the salt water and the sea strand', as Simon and Garfunkel call it, a non-place). One message of this card is that you cannot sit in this non-place forever. The moon in the card cannot stay half black and half white forever. The magpie cannot hover with outspread wings forever. Even the mountains will not endure forever!

So what is at its greatest power right now, what should be in sharpest focus in my life right now?  I am at the crossroads of possibility, the state between changed states -- and my greatest power is in being able to see with clarity, by looking inward, where I've come from and where I want to go. There are many decisions that must be made, but the card suggests that now I am at my greatest potential for making them.

Sunset 
The time for balance is over. The previous card just talked about how a balance act can't last forever. And then to represent what is on the wane, we see a card which represents a balancing act that lasts forever. In the sky of the card we see a sun and a moon side by side, the clouds around them forming the lemniscat of infinity. The green-haired sidhe, wearing a fetching red leotard, balances on the tips of the fingers of both hands on the handle of a glowing sword, which stands on its tippy-tip in the centre of a spiral, which is of course a faery glyph. The hair of the sidhe spills down from her head, forming the earth and the spiral, which actually looks like it could be the surface of a small pool of water. Here we have day and night, sun and moon, light and darkness, earth and sky, rock and water, and the flashing colours of green and red. The balancing sidhe can clearly maintain this pose forever. She herself is part of the landscape she balances on. It's all connected.

 However, the Justice card isn't about rock solid stability. Even this highly skilled, amazing strong sidhe cannot maintain such a posture like a marble statue. The balance requires continuous tiny adjustments to maintain the equilibrium to allow her to stay there in that position, which may vary in tiny degrees moment to moment, but which, overall, always appears the same. Look very close and you will see all the tiny tremours and miniscule movements of muscle that allow her to maintain the pose. (Just like in yoga.)

My time of 'continuous tiny adjustments' to maintain my status quo is now on the wane. It's on the way out. The time of tiny adjustments to keep everything looking the same is over! In conjunction with the previous Dreamer Two, the message is clear. Change is about to happen, based on decisions that I make. And because 'adjustment' is on the way out, making these decisions is something I can't avoid. Or even if I do avoid them, refuse to make them, change is going to happen. It's going to happen.

Night
Dancer Three or 3 of Cups is the card of celebrations, parties, festivities, community, lightness and joy. And this is dormant right now. Oh yes, I can certainly see that. We can safely say that I haven't felt like these water nymph type sidhe, frolicking together in the warm sea under the radiance of the full moon. I have felt isolated, agitated, and in many ways hopeless and directionless. Perhaps not hopeless, but certainly I have had no joy in community of any kind to speak of for many, many weeks. And in fact, this aspect of life is still dormant for me right now -- but there's one good thing about night. It doesn't last forever. If something is in the darkness of night, there is a clear implication that it will eventually see the light of day. If something is asleep, it will wake up.

And actually, I do have several social engagements lined up in the near future, and of course a big cause celebre is the end of this secondment, which is the main source of my feelings of isolation and unhappiness lately.

Advice
I decided after all this to draw one last card, asking for advice. How do I move more fully into the sun? How do I make the best of the Half-Moon Truce? What is the recommended action?

The safe choice?

Watch the clip from Jim Carrey's commencement speech to Maharishi University of Management Class of 2014. It's such an important lesson for us all, the lesson he learned by observing his father:

You can take the path that seems like the safe path, but there is no guarantee of safety there. As Jim Carrey puts it so well, 'You can fail at what you DON'T want...so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.' 

My bulletin board

And Here's the Tale as Told by Gaian Tarot

The world's a scary place. 

So you do the 'right thing' - take the safe and responsible option.

But guess what -- you can't keep lightning from striking the oak tree by stockpiling a few acorns! (You don't even like acorns, but they seemed like a safe bet...)

Well, surprise! All your 'safety' goes up in smoke. You didn't think this could happen. You thought karma would accept the 'noble sacrifice' of your dreams and give you security as a reward. Wrong.

You might as well have listened to your own heart, although it is scarier than gathering acorns.

And dared to dance a little too close to the fire, out in the open, where everyone could see you. Yes, you might get burned. 

But you might also find real joy. 

It's not too late. It's never too late. What have you got to lose that you couldn't lose anyway? 

Sherlock Holmes Tarot Week - The Sun

Here's my first draw from the newly arrived Sherlock Holmes Tarot by John Matthews and Wil Kingham (Connections, 2014). Great card for today, and not just because it's the one featured on the cover of the box. It's the Sun -- and the Sun seems to finally be coming back for me in my life, too.

I haven't posted in a week and for that I apologise, but I have been having considerable personal difficulties and really haven't felt like playing around with tarot cards or writing blog posts. My mind was on only one thing -- my problems.

BUT, I am feeling better, getting back to normal, and a new deck arrived today (which I pre-ordered at the beginning of March), and so it seems a great time to get back into my usual routine.

The Sun of course is a card of seeing clearly, enlightenment even, or can also indicate general good cheer or even radiant health. In the Sherlock Holmes Tarot, Holmes' magnifying glass has been chosen as a symbol for the Sun. I like that.

In this card, we see Sherlock Holmes himself, wearing the hat he is depicted in most often throughout the deck, the top hat which would have been worn by the typical established Victorian gentleman. (Holmes is never described as wearing a deerstalker hat in any of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories, though he may well have done when in the country. It was the films that popularised the deerstalker.) I'm struck by how young Holmes looks in these cards. A little online research reveals that Holmes is 27 years old when he moves into 221B Baker Street, serving as a detective for 23 years, with Watson as a companion for the first 17 of them. Watson himself is described at the time of their meeting as being three years out of medical school, and apparently age 25. They really were young men. The old movies have got it wrong. The new TV shows are closer in age, though even Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman are possibly a bit on the elderly side to be portraying Holmes and Watson. Surprising!

Expect a lot of my personal explorations of Holmes trivia throughout the week.

I will give a review of my thoughts on this deck at some point this week -- but let me say that first reactions are positive, as far as it being a fun thing to have. Whether it is, for me, a 'reading deck', I don't know, but I am enough of a Holmes fan and I like the artwork enough to keep this deck. It's a lovely set.

Dude, what's going on with your behind?

Today's the last day for the CBD Tarot, and I've drawn The Sun. Just looking at the details on this card. I've never been much of a fan of TdM art, anyway, but the Sun card always puzzles me. Why the twins? I've read so many ideas about why there are two figures on the card. And look at the art. They both have skin that looks like it's made of folded sheets of something flat, like origami figures, and the one on the left looks like he has a tail. Both are wearing blue loin cloths that don't actually cover their bits, which aren't there. The brickwork on that wall doesn't match up at all. Then between their little legs, the blue from the ground goes up between the knees of the left figure, notching into the wall, and the wall between the right figure's knees is flesh-colour. They both wear odd red collars and their faces look like they've pulled all-nighters at the local dive. There are strange multi-coloured drop shapes in the sky. The best thing about the card is the sun itself. I like that he has so many rays, and that he takes up so much space on the card.

Now, I know many TdM readers do something called 'colour pooling' and that the colours have significance. I know that the droplet thingies are sometimes seen as looking like Hebrew alphabet markings. I know that the twins are variously Castor and Pollux, Romulus and Remus, or the Children of Pleasure from the 5th House of the zodiac. But I still don't think this is a very pretty card. Except for the Sun, I like him. :)

Oh well, anyway. Drawing the Sun today gives me hope that it will be a pleasant day for me -- and that will be a nice change from yesterday. I hope these hives go away. I broke out in hives yesterday morning, and they are still here with a vengeance.

Have a great Friday!

Ancient Italian Tarot Pairs: Day 2

The Sun                                      8 of Swords

Today's 'Embrace -- Release' pair from the Ancient Italian Tarot is The Sun and 8 of Swords. I should embrace happiness and freedom, and release feelings of being trapped or unable to help myself.

I believe this draw is telling me to allow myself to be happy, and not to brood or overthink or fret today. So I won't. Today's the day to give myself a break.

I like that I drew Sun on Sunday. :)  Maybe linking the day to the card will help me savour and enjoy the day more each week.

'Mystic Bastard' Day Three

Mystic Faerie 2007, Deck of the Bastard 2013

Wow, two majors today, which is pretty impressive for a morning when I've woken up with a slight sore throat and runny nose, and a decidedly grey sky out the window. Today we have Strength from Mystic Faerie Tarot, and the Sun from Deck of the Bastard. It is a very encouraging combination, telling me that I have fortitude and vitality.

An Invocation of the Fey

Tarot of the Sidhe, Carding 2010

'The Mysteries'

Here and now are the Mysteries.

Out of no stored and storied past

Of things long lost,

But the breathing moment of time.

Out of no twilight

But that which falls upon the hills this night.

The old trees partake of them,

And the voices of the grass,

The ghost-white blossomed elders,

And the first clouded glow

Of the rising moon.

If we can hear.

If we can see.

Out of no buried past they come,

But from the fields of our own home

Is reaped the grain

That makes the bread of their feast.

Out of the flowers of every summer

Flows the honey of their mead.

Look -- between the stones is a blade of grass,

And all the rites of the high Mysteries,

And the runes of all witcheries,

Are written upon it.

~Doreen Valiente

Jitterbug on a rainbow

Servants of the Light, Aquarian 1991

It's nice to draw this colorful, cheery Sun card from the Servants of the Light Tarot (Aquarian, 1991) on a grey, rainy day like today.

The card is dominated by the sun, which is nice to see, as a few decks don't really feature the sun in their Sun cards (I'm think particularly of Wicca Moon). Here we see the motif of the two young figures, this time a female and a male, clasping hands and dancing on a rainbow disk which is perched, phonograph record-like, on the top of a mountain. They do look like they're doing some sort of jitterbug, and it's funny to imagine big band music in connection with this card.On the side of the mountain, near the sea, there is a town, and above the town, the rainbow disk, then on this disk, our dancing fools, then above it all, the sun, bursting through the clouds in rings and rays.

The Sun card always stands for good things, and today I am embarking on a good thing, which I think will help me very much. The card certainly bodes well for it.

May the Sun shine on me in my endeavors today and for the coming year. 

Mantra: Om ravaye namaha, om suryaya namaha, om savitra namaha (Salutations to the Light of Compelling Radiance, to the Dispeller of Darkness or Ignorance, to the Light of Enlightenment)

Flower essence: Gentian (brings the ability to see that all things are working to the right end, thereby taking away dejection)

Wicca Moon: The Sun

Wicca Moon by Shirlee@Wicca Moon

The Sun card from the Wicca Moon Tarot is a curious thing. Here we see a relatively small sun looking down on a woodland scene. Under a tree, from which hangs a spider, there are two faeries. Both appear to be male, and seem human size, in relation to the tree. They stand on outsize mushrooms that are houses, presumably for some smaller form of fairy. (?) They sprinkle gold glittery dust and wrapped chocolates onto the ground. One of the fairies has a book tucked under his arm, bearing the title 'Magic' on its spine. Bumblebees, butterflies and dragonflies hover around. On the ground, a snail looks up, and standing on the mushroom beside one of the boys is a muskrat or big mouse or some sort of rodent, standing on its hind legs and looking up at the glittering offerings the fairies are dropping.  There are little mushrooms and floxgloves growing in the grass, and a spider building a web between the two mushroom houses.

It's a strange scene.