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. 

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? 

Tear it down to build it up

Ancient Italian Tarot

'How are you improving and restructuring yourself and your environment? What structures in your life are breaking up?' 
~ Tarot for Yourself, Mary K Greer

Today's card is La Torre, the Tower, from Ancient Italian Tarot (Llewellyn, 2000), which is of course the Soprafino Tarot , created in 1835 by Carlo Della Rocca. It's based on the Tarot de Marseilles, but is, as its name makes plain, 'very refined' in comparison.

Actually, today is my last day at my 'new' job, the one I've been going to every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday since the first week of January. I'm leaving it to go to my new new job next Monday. I'll finish out the rest of this week at my old work place (my Monday/Thursday base since Jan), and then that's that.

So, Mary K Greer's book 'Tarot for Yourself' asks, 'What structures in your life are breaking up?' And that seems pretty obvious. On Sunday morning, I had a huge cull of my wardrobe, getting rid of all those old clothes that no longer fit me. It was a giant black sack full, one of those big plastic sacks like you use to rake leaves. And then yesterday at my 'old' workplace, I spent time deleting documents from my personal area and cleaning out the file drawer assigned to me. Tomorrow I'll be cleaning out my locker and pigeonhole. I've sent emails telling everyone to take me off their mailing list. It's a strange time for me. I've worked at this workplace nearly ten years. That's probably too long to stay in one place.

You know, the Tower doesn't always have to be a bolt from the blue. It can be a conscious choice. It can be simple disruption. It can be, as Mary K Greer says, 'outgrowing your environment' or 'involvement in drastic self-improvement program, housecleaning, fasting.' Well, I certainly haven't been fasting, but there's been a lot of housecleaning and bringing things to a close lately. Today is the first full stop. Then Friday is the last full stop. It's only a 12-month secondment, but 12 months is a long time, and who knows what I'll be doing come March 2015. So...the end of the known, and heading into the unknown.

Today's the first lightning bolt I guess. The first crash into the structure and routine of my days. Not to worry, though. I'm a pro at structure building, and I'll begin building my new one next Monday. :)

Towering toenails, captain

Aquarian Tarot, 2006

I hope this Tower card from the Aquarian Tarot doesn't mean what I fear it means! I have a doctor's appointment today to have a look at a my left big toe. Sounds funny but it's kinda not! Back in March, I wore a new pair of walking shoes (which I had to buy when I forgot my worn-in shoes, taking an extra pair of my husband's shoes by mistake instead!), and ended up getting a nasty case of black toenail, which occurs when one's toe is bashed around in an ill-fitting toebox. When I got back, the toenails of my left big toe and second toe were in terrible shape, lumped up, and and a top layer came away. This left a lumpy part underneath, but from the cuticle fresh new nail was growing, so I didn't worry. The lumpy bit has made it half way up my toenail now (I was hoping it would grow all the way off) but now it's started hurting and it hurts when pressure is put on it. (For example, when pressing the tops of the feet into the mat during yoga, for say, upward dog). So I am going to the doctor to see what she says, and I have a fear she is going to say we need to remove the whole thing and start again. I have a great fear of this procedure! Ugh!

Ancient Italian Tarot Pairs: Day 7

3 of Coins                                           The Tower Rx

I don't usually bother with reversals, but I thought I'd leave this one and take a look at it. This is the last day of the week with Ancient Italian Tarot, drawing in pairs: 'Embrace - Release.'

I've drawn the same 'Embrace' card today that I drew on Wednesday, 3 of Coins. I am seeing the combination today as advising me to embrace my work and release fears about losing my job. (Or for that matter, of husband losing his.) In a way, it could be taken as a repeat of yesterday's message, to attend to the moment and not be carried away by worries about 'what if this happens, what if that happens' scenarios. Now the Tower being reversed adds a new dimension to the combination. I don't take reversals to be a simple opposite meaning. I see them as a deepening of the meaning. I decided to consult Jonathan Dee's 'Tarot: Interpretation and Divination' because not only does he feature the Ancient Italian Tarot in that book, he devotes a page each to upright and reversed meanings of majors. (Plus, I usually agree with most of his interpretations!). He writes: 'The initial indications of the reversed Tower may be even more disruptive than its upright meaning. You may be accused of something; there may even be a form of forced isolation included in the oppression. On the other hand, you may be rebelling against some form of tyranny, showing a side of your personality that will come as a shock to others.'  So, the reversed Tower would indicate expecting the worst, and possibly worse than the worst! Suspicions of scheming, tyranny, undermining and overthrowing. Well, the draw today tells me to release all that, and instead to embrace 3 of Coins, letting my talents shine, and making the most of opportunities, particularly at work. Interestingly, Jonathan Dee says the presence of only one 3 card in a draw can show 'a lack of energy.' I wonder why he says that, where that idea comes from.

Oh, well, so for today, I will focus on my work and release any 'sky is falling' thoughts or feelings. :)

Ancient Italian Tarot Pairs: Day 1

This week I'll be drawing two cards a day using the Ancient Italian Tarot (LoScarabeo). The deck is a reproduction of an Italian tarot from the 1880s, in a style known as Soprafino (a word meaning 'very refined').  I've decided to draw two cards a day using a popular variation on the 'Do this - don't do this' tarot spread: 'Embrace - Release.' For each day, the first card drawn is the advice of what I should embrace for the day, and the second is the advice for what should be let go.

So, today's draw is:

 The Tower                             Knight of Coins

Embrace the Tower. Release the Knight of Coins.

Well, that is a smack upside the head this morning. To embrace the unexpected, the unplanned for, the lightning strike coming out of the blue that shakes you to the very foundations. And to release good old Mr Faithful, the plodding planner who can never be hurried along.

Where exactly I'm meant to take that advice, of course cannot be said. The nature of the Tower precludes it. To try to second-guess or orchestrate a Tower event would be to take a Knight of Coins approach to it. Can't be done. So, all I can do today is be open and receptive to the chance to say 'Yes' to anything that I would normally say 'No' to.

Oh, the very idea fills me with trepidation! I am a world champion sayer of 'No'. I love routine and hate disruption. Just the extreme regularity of this blog ought to be evidence of that! I don't have a clue what the universe may offer me today, and I'm already girding up my loins to bellow 'NO' to it. I love the Knight of Coins, love his stability, his regularity, his confidence, his humility, his laconic and phlegmatic nature. He might not be exciting, but he's dependable. And you can't say that about the Tower -- well, it's dependable all right, you can depend on the fact that whatever the Tower brings is going to be mighty unsettling!

Okay, so my goal for the day is to watch out for any opportunity to say 'Yes', no matter how subtle, to something that I would ordinarily say 'No' to. *biting lip* Oh, man.

Burnin' down the house

I've drawn the Tower today from Tarot Illuminati (Dunne and Huggens, LoScarabeo 2013). Jumpin jiminy, I wonder what the heck is on the horizon today, then. Kim Huggens' book is pretty dang dramatic:

'All knowledge up until now is false; the more you cling to it, the harder it will be to let go and move on. It is time for illumination, and since you have made it so hard for revelation to come to you, you must now face the lightning strike. It will destroy everything you have surrounded yourself with to get to you, and when it does, you shall fall. You will be liberated from that Tower, and as you fall you shall be able once again to see the stars that you have missed for so long.'

Hey, way to sell it, Kim! When you put it like that, how can I say no? Tch.

I have problems with the Tower card and its usual dramatic interpretations. In all honesty, most people only have a few true Tower moments in their lives. The rest of the time, there's usually just bumps, blips, niggles, and inconveniences, to varying degrees of annoyance. I doubt very seriously that a Wednesday is going to bring me a shattering transformational experience, particularly as in many interpretations, the Tower is seen as one being the victim of something outside one's control. Of course something absolutely dreadful could happen to a loved one today, and that's the worst possible thing I can think of to happen, but the likelihood of that is quite low.

Personally, I think in a daily draw the Tower is usually an annoyance. And in many cases, it can be a change in paradigm, or even just in habits, and often changes that you instigate yourself. You start tearing down your own 'tower' of established thought grooves or behaviours. That's what I'm hoping to do today. I have a few modest goals for today to try to change some habits and behaviours. So we'll see if I'm able to burn down that house, or at least get my Zippo to light.

ETA: My Tower moment came when I received a postcard saying Customs wants £17.95 for a parcel I'd ordered from the US. And £8 was 'handling charges'. WHAT!! PO'ed. Ha ha. Tower moment? Well.

Bang, boom! The Tower

My first thought on seeing this card is that in the entire 78-card deck, this is the only one in the Haindl Tarot with an image of a modern structure. It's the Tower card (Haindl Tarot, Lotos 2002). To confirm that, I did a quick check. There are only seven cards in the deck that show any sort of man-made structure at all, one shows standing stones and a barrow, and the other five details of castle or abbey ruins. I mean, really ruined, like you have to look twice to realize they might once have been usable structures. (For the curious, they are: 2 of Wands, 2 of Swords, 3 of Wands, 8 of Stones and 10 of Swords).

So in a deck that focuses on the earthiest aspects of the natural world - there is precious little green, and hardly any blue sky in this deck, mostly soil and rock - it is very telling that the card which symbolizes destruction is our temple to modern civilization and the might of man, glass and steel towers that reach with arrogance and hubris toward heaven -- the skyscraper.

You will notice that the card contains four additional bits of information: a Hebrew letter, a rune, and a planetary symbol. There's also a tiny arabic numeral, which is the 'mispar' or 'primordial number' associated with the Hebrew letter. For the Tower, the Hebrew letter is Peh, or 'Mouth', and its number is 80. The rune is Irr, 'to err' or 'to wrong', and the planet is Mars, the god of war, and an extremely masculine energy (the symbol is also used to stand for the male). I can't say I know much (yet) about the numerical value of Hebrew letters, but I certainly can see significance in the other three associations with the Tower. We see in the card image an immense, round skyscraper, struck from the outside, with debris including flags of the world flying out from it. The Tower is so huge we can only see a bit of it, we can't see the foundation or the top. There is a glimmer of hope in the card in the form of a colorful sunrise on the horizon at the bottom of the card. Peh is path 27 on the Tree of Life, the path of war.

Arthurian Tarot by John Matthews

The tarot of the week will be the Arthurian Tarot by Caitlin and John Matthews, first publised by Aquarian Press in 1990. I have the edition in the sliding box (not the plastic 'video case' box pictured). I also have a companion book called Hallowquest: Tarot Magic and the Arthurian Mysteries, Aquarian Press 1990. Recently, a new edition of the Arthurian Tarot has come out, in a green box. I am not sure how many editions this deck has been through. Mine have the black arched borders. I trimmed the white outer bits off. At least one other edition has the arches in white. I would like to have a white-bordered one in addition to the black-bordered one I will be using this week.  Maybe some day I will run into one...


Today's card is XVI The Spiral Tower. Holy crap, what a start! Fortunately for me, the Tower almost never spells disaster. As I've said before, the Tower is usually something quite mundane for me, and don't think I'm not grateful for that. This Tower doesn't speak to me of disaster, anyway. It's more like a channel for receiving great power from the universe. Okay, it does cause the Tower itself to disintegrate, but surely that is a purification rather than a disaster. Once that Tower is razed, there'll be nothing left but the hill (and the new spiraling 'pure' tower reaching up to the heavens), the sky, the fields, the owl (symbol of wisdom), and all those glowing zodiac symbols. I'm not sure why they are there. I know nothing about astrology. Maybe someone can enlighten me with what they think of the symbols. The companion book only says, 'About the tor, the signs of the zodiac glow within the land.' Hm.


Well, we will just have to see what happens today. I predict, not much, personally, but it will probably be rather stressful at work. Busy, maybe.