Square of 9: Postmark (When mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy)

I've been so tired lately. I don't mean just tired, I mean feeling like my limbs are weighed down, and my eyes are burning, and when I do start to fall asleep, it feels like I'm sinking down underwater, and when I wake up, I am still tired. My diet has not been optimal lately and I have lacked the will to do any kind of exercise. So I thought I'd do a draw to see what might be going on:

Postmark Lenormand, Melissa Hill

I selected Tree as my health significator. I read a square of nine by starting with Card 1 as the Key Theme. Then I read 1+9, 3+7, 2+4+6+8.

I suppose one source of my tiredness could be isolation. The Garden suggests I need to break out of a rut, do something new. Hopefully my trip to London this weekend will help wake me up. Then reading the other combinations, I see a suggestion of socializing with other women of my age. The Cross/Man combo shows that this issue is worrying my husband. And the final combo suggests that I do some reading about a cloudy sexual health issue -- I bet this is a menopausal symptom. Time to visit the women's health section of the library.

(I've been thinking about the Fox from those previous draws. The Fox, for me, could represent overthinking. 'Outfoxing' myself. It's worth remembering.)

I also drew a goddess card from the Goddess Oracle by Marashinsky and Janto: Oya. She is the goddess of Change, and the companion book says:

'Have you been too busy, too stressed, to attend to the changes needed in your life to nurture yourself? Is change so fearful a concept that you push it aside, play hide-and-seek with it, or just ignore it? Have you arranged your life so perfectly that you have no room left for potential? Time for change. Perhaps you are in the midst of the Change (menopause) and arehaving trouble accepting it. Resistance to change brings more persistent change. Choosing to dance with change means you will flow with it.'

Some of that applies to my situation. I'm just not sure what the advice to 'enter deeply into change's chaotic dance' actually means. I just know I feel weary at the very thought of 'chaotic dancing'. Even the whirls of Oya's robe just make me think of snuggling up in a fuzzy blanket.

Lenormand Draw 7 of 7: Mystical

What is happening with me today?

Mystical Lenormand

AM (6.52)
Key theme: A decision, seeking direction
Prediction: A loyal woman will offer advice or I will need to make a decision about her.

PM (17.12)
Accuracy: HIGH
What happened in relation to the cards: Female work colleague who has always been very supportive of  and friendly toward me (we like to talk about Indian cooking!) will be retiring in Dec. Today, she offered me sort of 'life' advice; it was almost like her leaving message to me. She told me that when I know I am in the right, I should always stand up for myself and not fall into the trap of thinking it is somehow my fault.

Observations: I did not seek this out or wrangle this into happening. She started the conversation. In my original prediction, I added 'or I will need to make a decision about her' to account for the 'decision' aspect of Path. But to me, Path means Path--as in, the way one makes one's way through the world. So the card with Dog really seemed to me to be advice.

(Tally: Birds x 2, Mice x 2, Fox x 2, Mountain x 2, Scythe x 2, Path x2. Appearing only once each were Heart, Rider, Snake, Coffin, Bear, Lilies, Anchor, and Key. (Mountain, Scythe and Path were repeated in a mid-day draw I did on one of the days). Decisions, irritations, anxiety, the need to draw a line under things, and a sense of something out-to-get-me. To be honest, though there is no basis for these feelings in reality, I have had all of them a lot lately. Very tired, physically and mentally lately.)

Lenormand Draw 6 of 7: Blue Owl

Blue Owl, AG Muller 1970

(About the Blue Owl...when I ordered this, I thought I was getting the playing card inset version. I was unlucky and got the verses. But the deck was super-cheap, so I just ignore them. The verses are truly dreadful. Truly.)

What is happening with me today?

AM (7.02)
Key theme: The Fox again! I've tried, but I just can't see the Fox as work. It doesn't make sense in my head. I associate 'fox' with sly, deceitful, conniving, trickster. But it could have a more neutral meaning of clever solutions. Working things out. Finding ways to get what you want or need. Solving puzzles. Or it could just be thinking itself. Thinking about things.
Prediction: Fox+Mountain+Path certainly suggests that any attempts being clever, whether it's with solutions or more nefarious scheming, will dead-end today. The method, whatever it may be, represented by the Fox is blocked by the Mountain, and so is the Path. Sounds like it may be either a frustrating day where my problem-solving attempts come to naught (the neutral version of Fox), or a day when sly scheming doesn't work for the schemer. In either case, as this is a daily draw, whatever happens will be the blandest, most watered-down version of these scenarios, because real life ain't Coronation Street. (Out of curiosity, I drew three tarot cards asking for any clarity it might give. Aquarian Tarot: Fool, 5 of Cups, 4 of Cups Rx. The draw suggests to me disillusionment, perhaps some naive belief or hope being dispelled, and feeling sorry for oneself. So, who knows, but either way, not a promising picture of the day.)

PM (18.30)
Accuracy: Not bad
What happened in relation to the cards: A telephone customer was not happy that I would not make a personal recommendation for something rather than supplying her with information only. She soundly abused me and demanded to speak to my manager. I later spoke to the manager who said she has always heard me speak with composure and politeness. Really, it was so upsetting I considered just putting the phone down. So---was that woman who seems to have wanted to get me in trouble the Fox? And was the manager the Mountain she came up against? Possibly. Or the Fox could have been me trying very hard to sniff out exactly what this customer was after so I could supply it or offer an explanation for why I couldn't. But she was having none of it. Either way, trouble meets the mountain. Maybe the path is me ending up in the clear--because surely the whole thing was her problem, not mine!
Observations: (I notice that no matter what deck I'm using, I've been drawing more or less the same cards. Fox, Mice, Birds...I'll do a tally at the end of Day 7.) I observe that even though I can make connections at the end of the day, sometimes, I am still not very honed in on the predictions. My readings have always been introspective and healing rather than predictive, anyway. So it's not surprising that I am finding challenges with it in the Lenormand. But I chose to work with Lenormand specifically to tap into this skill, so I shall persevere.

Daily Lenormand 5 of 7: Melissa

What is happening with me today?

Melissa Lenormand 2nd ed,  by Melissa Hill

AM (7.14)
Key themes: Treachery, being watched, gossip
Prediction: I will (or am advised to) take the moral high road when tempted to engage in idle gossip that serves only to annoy me.

PM (17.20 )
Accuracy: Once again, not sure
What happened in relation to the cards: It wasn't gossip, it was finding out things at meetings and and trying to sort out how to do my job in accordance with new policies. So it really looks like Fox+Mice+Cross is about annoyances at work, even though I'm trying to work with a system in which Moon is work. (Actually I'm not sure where I got 'gossip' for the Fox card. Maybe it was from the Melissa LWB).
Observations: It may be that for me, Fox can be work. I know that Fox is work in some systems, Lilies is work in some, Moon is work in some. Even Anchor can be work in some. Also, I'm not sure if it makes a difference which deck I use. Someone recently said to me that she couldn't use a certain deck because things  kept turning up as the wrong card for that particular deck. To be hones, I'm not mad about the Melissa as a reading deck. It's pretty, but...maybe I should stick to just one deck for these daily draws?

Aim high, but stand firm

Book of Shadows, Moore

'What do I most need to work on today?' I asked the Book of Shadows tarot first thing this morning. I drew 8 of Earth. Like most of the Book of Shadows card, this one is dark in its artwork. You really have to peer at it until the details start to come through. I don't know if this is an issue with print quality or intentional. It does seem to me that some images published online seem brighter than the deck in hand.

The 8 of Earth appears to be from the perspective of being up in the top of a tree. We are fairly high off the ground. If we look straight down, we can see a little gnome looking up at us. If we look around ourselves at the tree branches, there is a bird building its nest, a bee busily gathering pollen from a flower, a butterfly emerging from a crysalis. There a few new leaves on the tree's mostly bare branches. Perched around us in the tree are a few more gnomes. In the air overhead, large black birds are in flight. (You may be able to tell from my blog how I feel about all corvids and blackbirds. They are special to me). The sky is enriching itself with the colours of the rising sun. It's a beautiful image of dawn in all its guises, really.

It doesn't even really occur to me when looking at cards in this deck to consider them in relation to traditional tarot meanings, but for sake of a thorough examination, the 8 of Coins usually depicts someone hard at work churning out products, or a master training a youth, and the card is often interpreted to mean hard graft, more or less. I suppose you could see that type of industry here, nature producing and reproducing. However, it doesn't suggest to me hard graft so much as getting on with a natural progression.