Tarot Love at Samhain

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'People all over the world! Join hands! Join the love train...love train!'  

Oh, sorry. I was just singing to myself there. You've just chugged into the station on the Tarot Love Train from Christiane's blog at Tarot Trends, most likely. We have a brief layover here at Rowan Tarot before your journey proceeds to the TABI blog. Why not grab a cup of coffee and let's chat a bit before your connection?

For the Samhain Tarot Blog Hop, I was all set to do a Rachel Pollack-style wisdom reading, 'What is love?' But today, I don't feel like being deep. Today I just want to share with you some tarot decks that I love. So let me indulge myself by showing you cards I love, from decks I love. They're in no particular order, because how can you rank things you love?

TAROT OF THE SIDHE

Tarot of the Sidhe, Emily Carding

I love Tarot of the Sidhe for its bold colours, the beautiful vision realised by an untrained artist, and for its depiction of faerie folk or elementals. I find that the sidhe seem far more serious and 'real' to me than other faerie decks. This one is very, very special to me, because, to my mind, Emily Carding has made a meaningful connection to aspects of reality that the rest of us might only experience out of the corner of the eye or just under the surface of a dream. The deck is like a portal into the subconscious, and realms unseen. I adore the deck, but I find I really love these three cards: Maker Queen (or Queen of Pentacles) in the form of a tree with a beautiful flowering afro (are people allowed to say afro anymore??), her sexual nature and fertility highlighted by a lotus-like blossom, endless supplies of life-giving waters flowing from her palms. She's amazing. Then Dancer Nine (9 of Cups) has a lovely use of smeary twilight rainbow colours, with the Dancer reaching for her dreams as they float about her in golden bubbles. And the Warrior King (King of Wands) may be a tiny figure on the horizon, but his blazing image in the sky shows what he really thinks of himself. :) This particular deck is even more special to me because it was a gift from my friend Chloe at Inner Whispers, who even trimmed it for me! 

Tarot Blog Hop: Imbolc 2013

Tarot Blog Hop 2013 Imbolc Previous Blog:  TABI

Welcome, Tarot Blog Hoppers! Imbolc is here again already.  Is it just me, or does that wheel seem to be turning faster and faster?

So, what's 'in my belly'? What is in my spring? What shall I birth this season? These are the questions we're meant to answer this time around...

I'm so eager to see the earth spring to life, I asked myself, what is the most exuberant deck I own? And the first deck that came to mind was Wheel of the Year Tarot! I decided to draw three cards with no position:

Just look at those cards! Look at those colours! So fantastically spring-y. Ahhh. They practically warm my toes in my slippers. (You may notice I've cropped all borders off the deck, and written the numbers on in silver. I also drew a wiggly silver inner border around the majors. I quite like the effect.)

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

Tarot Blog Hop: Lammas

If you've come here following the Tarot Blog Hop, welcome! You can find links to the previous and next blogs in the Hop at the bottom of the page...


Choosing my pentacles card to represent Fruits of the Harvest was no trouble at all! The Pentacles suit has always been a favourite of mine. I just love them, and fancied myself a Queen of Pentacles for a long time--but that was just me wishin'--I've got way more of the Queen of Swords in me than Earth Mother, but still...

I've always been attracted to fields of grain, sheaves, cornucopias spilling with fruit and vegetables, and images of men and women working in fields to bring in the crops that will feed them through the next long year. I once tried a meditation in which I asked for my own personal god/goddess image. I don't know exactly what I was expecting to appear, but to my surprise, I got a sudden and vivid close up image of a head of ripe grain, glowing as if surrounded by a halo. Not sure why I was surprised, really. I've always had a reverence for grain. Stores of grain, loaves of bread, bins filled with dried pasta. There are few things lovelier to me than a window display in an artisan baker's. Is that odd?  I suppose it speak deeply to my love of security, of comfort and of assurance that ample provision has been made against hard times that may come. 

Which brings me round to the Pentacles suit. Surely no other suit in the tarot deck speaks so profoundly to these earthly concerns; and of the pentacles suit, no card so directly as the Nine of Pentacles. 

Morgan Greer, US Games 1979

Tarot Blog Hop: Celebrating the Longest Day

Hubby and I will be celebrating Litha on the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. We'll get up early (but not early enough to greet the dawn), then we'll spend the entire day walking the path and enjoying the light. Because even if it rains, there's still the light. 


I've never really understood why people contemplate darkness on the longest day of the year, and dwell on the light on the longest night of the year. It's like living your life in the future rather than in the now. For me, it makes me feel all out of balance. A couple of years ago, taking some advice from a book, I created an elaborate observance for Winter Solstice that involved a round candle encrusted with gold glitter, invocations of the sun, with music and a meditation asking for the sun to light the dark corners of my life. I was to shine light on things I wanted to change. Which resulted in all sorts of emotions being dredged up and causing me to feel very unsettled and disturbed for the following week. I realised later, what I personally needed was to revel in the quiet darkness, to rest and enjoy the fallow peace of that time of year. And at Summer Solstice, it's my time to revel in light and life. That's how I work, and that's how my spirit works. The prevailing energy is all to me. I don't like worrying with the 'yin yang' of the sabbats, and I don't like this constant New Age/neopagan obsession with using each sabbat as a time to 'reassess' myself and 'set goals'. How about just feeling what's there and loving it? What's wrong with that? And so I pray,


Blaze on me, O Sun,
blaze down.
Burn through me,
quicken me.
Warm me from scalp to soles,
Illuminate me.
Glint and glimmer,
tear my eyes,
pink my skin,
swarm and drone and ripen,
and I will wallow in your warmth,
I will squeeze every drop of your sweet juice,
and drowse on the hillside.


And here is my tarot draw for Litha. I decided the natural deck choice is Sol Invictus--the Invincible Sun. For this draw, I removed the entire suit of Wands and major arcana19 The Sun and used only those cards. 

Tarot Blog Hop: Beltane, The Fire Tends to All

Image credit

I'll wash my face in the morning dew

Bathe my soul in the sun

Wash my face in the morning dew

And keep on movin' along. 

~Tom T Hall

Beltane is a fire festival...but I'm feeling a softer spirit this Beltane. Oh, I know the fire's burning in the bosom of the earth --and in us all-- but this year, I'm feeling a spirit more of refreshment than of flame. Maybe it's because my part of the earth is awash with much needed rain. I can hear the wind blowing outside the windows and see the droplets dashing against my window as I type this. The flame of Beltane is a soft glow, a steady warmth. It's speaking to me of hearth and health.