Share a Spread Sunday: Harvest Moon in Pisces

The full moon is in Pisces this week (Tuesday, 9 September). It falls in Pisces Decan 2, a decan which makes us easily susceptible to the energies around us. Because this is a watery sign, we're going to be feeling emotional anyway, so it's going to be important in these days leading up to the full moon and then from then to the new moon to protect ourselves from negativity and shield ourselves with positive energy. 

This is also the last Super Moon of 2014 (when the moon comes very close to earth in its elliptical orbit) as well as the Harvest Moon (the full moon nearest to Autumn Equinox -- it beats out the full moon on 8 October by only 16 hours!) 

Here's a spread for the Harvest Moon in Pisces: 

1. How can I protect myself from negativity? 

2. How can I increase my own positivity?

3. How can I increase positivity around me?

4. What am I harvesting in this full moon? 

My reading for myself is on my other blog: Blackbirds and Rowanberries. :) 

Deck Review: Conscious Spirit Oracle

Conscious Spirit Oracle by Kim Dreyer ( US Games 2013)

What's included

You get a 44-card deck in a tuck box with a Little White Book (LWB). The deck measures 5.25 x 3.5 x .5 inches. The LWB is 43 pages. 

The cards 

Measuring 5.25 x 3.5 inches (13 x 8.5 cm), the cards are a nice size for seeing the details of the appealing artwork. The cards have very little lamination and are silky and pleasant to the touch. They riffle and bridge beautifully and, like all US Games decks, feel hardy and durable. The card backs are beautiful, depicting chakra colours, the world tree, the moon phases, and all sorts! 

The art

The art has been compared to Crystal Visions Tarot. I can see the similarities, but I think the images are more varied and the technique seems a bit more accomplished in Conscious Spirit Oracle. It is a very feminine deck in style, and every card features a youthful, nymph-like female figure in various attitudes of devotion, usually with closed eyes. Your attraction to/patience for this sort of thing may vary. I have a low tolerance of glowing nymphs, and yet I like this deck very much. 

The structure

Unlike many oracle decks of this type, the Conscious Spirit Oracle is not just a set of nice affirmations. Kim Dreyer has included deeper esoterica which I appreciate. The elementals are represented in the Fire, Water, Earth and Air cards. There is a Sun goddess and a Moon goddess (I would have liked a sun god but you can't have everything). The 7 chakras are represented. There is a Maid card, a Mother card, and a Crone card. The archangels are there, too (Raphael and Michael, though quite androgynous, seem to be male, which is nice!) I would have liked to see more representation of masculine energy, but this is all too often too much to ask. I have no idea why. The remaining cards are typical oracle cards - Transformation, Balance, Celebrate Life, Gratitude, etc. 

The affirmations

The affirmations include a sort of call to action, which I quite like:

'I celebrate and honour my physical body through dance and movement.' 

'I respect all of nature's elemental beings and help preserve life on Earth.' 

'I speak my truth and encourage others to speak theirs.' 

'I celebrate each sunrise and recognise the healing energies of the sun.' 

The LWB

Each card gets roughly 3/4 a page of text expanding upon the meaning of the affirmation. Here is an example:

Card: Crystal Ascension

Affirmation: 'I am attuned to the universal wisdom and energy of the crystal kingdom.'

LWB (excerpt): 'You are being asked to bring crystals and minerals into your personal environment. Your current environment contains too much artificial energy from material possessions, cell phones, computers and microwaves which causes imbalance in your body's energy as well as the energy within and around your home and workspace.' 

The verdict

I have been using this deck quite a bit over the last few weeks and I find it quite enjoyable to work with. I'm keeping it. If you like affirmations, crystals and chakra healing and have no aversion to frolicking nymphet artwork, try this deck! 

Recommended. 

Lennie Week - Focus for the Weekend

I'm ending the week of Lenormand draws using the Enchanted Lenormand Oracle with a line of 5 --

What should I focus on this weekend?

Birds + Mice + Scythe + Fish + Child = talk + trouble + sudden end + money/prosperity + beginning

Stopping gossip (troublesome chat) results in beginning of money. You what? LOL

...

Oh I see. This draw seems to be about self-talk, how our words manifest in reality. I see this as advice to avoid 'speaking trouble into existence' by cutting off destructive talk.

So this weekend, I should focus on speaking from a positive viewpoint, and this will see the beginning of a new era of 'prosperity'. Fish + Child seem to me to have something do with the exuberance of childhood, childlike enjoyment. What sort of prosperity does a child enjoy? Light-heartedness, fun. I can see that.

Interesting. I might be able to cut out the bad talk. It goes against my usual MO! But there's a reason for Scythe.  A Scythe is not a subtle thing -- you know, it's funny. Yesterday in my journal, in response to the prompt 'In what ways would I like to grow?' I wrote 'Stop talking!' And it was this kind of talk that I meant.

Synchronicity strikes again.

Lennie Week - Practice Triplet

Here's a three-card draw for all of us today: 

Sun + Moon + Anchor =

Work - Things are looking so much brighter with my anchor back in harbour! Where's your fresh new brightness coming from?

Relationship - Opposites forming strong bond of stability -- Me and hubby, strong as usual. How about you? What strong bonds do you enjoy?

Well-being/Spirituality - Security comes from a balance of polarities. How are you out of balance in your spiritual life and how can you bring yourself back into equilibrium?

Health - Active days and plenty of sleep at night = a good foundation for health. Advice we can all take.

Hope you found lots of food for thought here. I did. :)

Back to work - Lennie Week

I haven't used a Lenormand deck in months, so it seems like a good time to break one out. The Enchanted Lenormand Oracle (Watkins 2013) by Caitlin Matthews and Virginia Lee certainly deserves more attention than I have given it since I bought it -- at least a year ago, that was. So I'll be focusing on this particular Lenormand deck for a few posts.

Today I am going back to my 'substantive posts', having been on a secondment for the last 6 months. It was meant to be a 12-month gig, but I asked to be sent back early. It occurred to me recently that while I did a lot of readings about that secondment (would I be shortlisted? Would I be successful at interview? Would I be good at the job?), I never thought to ask how I would actually like it! And so I got all these positive readings and thought, yay! I just wonder if I had done a reading about how I would like, how that would have turned out.

So today I'm doing two draws. First: What do I need to know or do to be successful in returning to my old jobs? And I drew --

Anchor + Moon + Key + Letter + Cloud = Stability + Work + Important thing + Communication + Unclear=

'The key to stability at work is to be careful what you tell others.'

This draw is telling me to quietly take everything in upon my return, to keep my remarks to a minimum. The best thing I can do to get back in the swing of it is to keep my own counsel and carry on. In a few days it will be like I've never left, I'm sure.

Now the second question, which I failed to come out and ask last time: How will I feel as I get back into the routine of my old job? How will I feel about the work?

Tree + Ship + Fish + Anchor + Bear = Health/Long time + Travel + Money/Fluidity + Security + Strength =

'After a long journey (a journey away from health, tellingly), I slip into a place where I feel safe and secure.'

The draw suggests my main feelings will be like the sigh of relief when you get home from a long visit away. There are some interesting combinations within the draw. If we mirror, we see Tree + Bear = strength and stamina, Ship + Anchor = coming into harbour, coming home. It's interesting that the mirrored pairs are closely associated in meaning, Tree and Bear both carrying health connotations, and Ship and Anchor going together like peanut butter and jelly. :) Also the fish fits right in to the ship and anchor imagery, doesn't it. These three cards in the middle, being so closely related by their sea theme, makes me think of feeling like a fish in water, in other words, in my 'element' -- and possible there's something to be said there for feeling more like a 'big fish in a small pond' than a hatchling in the Pacific, which is sort of how I felt in my secondment! And flanking these three middle cards are symbols of longevity and strength, and I think that sums up well how one might expect to feel going back to a post you'd done for ten years.

Now...it doesn't say I'll be over the moon with excitement or ecstatically happy. It says I will feel things are safe and familiar. Yeah.

We'll just have to see how accurate this turns out to be -- I'll revisit this reading in a week or two. Remind me!