Keep on truckin

How appropriate to draw The Chariot on this, the last day of our week with Tarot Illuminati (Dunne & Huggens, LoScarabeo 2013).  I am travelling today for a weekend away with a friend. Sometimes our daily draws can be interpreted on a very mundane level indeed.  (I recall once a reading I did in preparation for a job interview, asking for advice, and I drew the Ace of Cups. I thought it meant I needed to try to be open. Nope. On the day, my mouth was so dry I actually slurred my speech. It was awful. Only afterward did I remember the card and realize I was probably being urged to stay hydrated and take a bottle of water!! Tarot can have a mean sense of humour. Happens a lot.)

I am thoroughly enamoured of Tarot Illuminati. It is a fascinating deck to look at, has an entertaining (if at times overwrought) companion book, and a lovely, sturdy magnetized box that closes with a satisfying clunk. There's a lot to be said for sturdy packaging in the tarot world. Do consider getting yourself a copy.

Tomorrow brings us a completely different deck, and quite an odd little duck it is...

Mind the gap

'You were born together,
and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when the white wings
of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the
silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another, but make not a bond of love.
Let it rather be a moving sea between
the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous,
but let each of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone
though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together.
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress
grow not in each other's shadow.'

~ The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran

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.

Avoidance

The Tarot Illuminati (Dunne and Huggens, LoScarabeo 2013) offers us 2 of Swords today. The first thing I think when I see this card this morning is 'No'. This woman is saying No to everything. No, I will not see, No, I will not feel, No I refuse to even hear. No, no, no to all of it. She turns her back to the sea, like someone who backs themselves into a corner for protection. Then she raises her swords over her heart and allows the roar of the sea to deafen her while the blindfold shuts out everything else.

I wonder what she thinks she's accomplishing. She is not accomplishing anything. She's not protecting anything, except whatever illusions and self-deceptions she's concocted in her own mind. Still, she would clearly rather be in there than out here, where life is real and has to be dealt with.

Of course, she can't maintain this stasis forever. A storm could blow up and wash her away, marauders could rob her or carry her off, or at the very least she's going to get tired, pass out and fall out of her chair. She could drown. How stupid she's being. How ridiculous to think she can protect herself by withdrawing in this way.

Are you withdrawing from something that you know you're going to have to face at some point? When will you take your blindfold off and drop your swords? Will you wait until the waves wash you out to sea and just drown? Or will you get up and confront what needs confronting?

A surprise from the deep

It's the Princess of Cups today from the Tarot Illuminati (Dunne & Huggens, LoScarabeo 2013). Clearly modelled on the RWS Page of Cups, the image includes the curious sight of a fish emerging from the cup, which the human figure understandably seems to be quite amazed by. There's an interesting bit about fish in the Cups suit at Tarot Teachings. In particular, I like the ideas that fish represent emotion/intuition because they 'move and react according to intuitive instinct', and 'abide by the flow, move with the current, accepting the yawning void in which they live.'

The Cups suit in the Tarot Illuminati features faery-like folk with silver hair and pale skin, as opposed to the other courts(Wands - Persia, Swords - Elizabethan England, Pentacles - Asia). I think this is probably because the Cups suit concerns itself with the intuition and that part of the self that is more fanciful and nebulous.

Overall I'd say the card is suggesting to me that I be sensitive to things today, both to my own emotions and those of others. I need to pay particular attention to the ebb flow of my own inner world. Perhaps some new insight will pop up, like a fish emerging from a cup.