Advice for the week

This is a reading for myself...but you could use the same technique for your own questions. First two questions are a 3-card draw (lines 1 and 2), final question is a 1-card draw (single card on right).

What is the best course of action to take this week to assure the outcome we want?
What is the best course of action for security in the future?
What is my best next step?

Tarot de Marseille Francois Chosson 1736, Yves Renaud

Be prepared to spend a lot of money; otherwise, the outcome is out of my hands.

Stability is the result of optimism, trusting in a partner, and going with gut feeling.

My next best step is to wait for the call. Nothing else to be done.

A week in the cards

White Knuckle Playing Cards, SeaOfPain.com 

Good week ahead, lots of red, that's what we like! Shame about that 5 of Spades at the end, I wonder how I'll be feeling by the end of the week. (Most of the cards appear to be reversed, so I must have had the deck upside down. I am disregarding that aspect). I know a row of red cards that ends in a spade denotes delays. Something is going to stall out by Friday. 7 of Diamonds may mean a 'troubled purse'. 5 has to do with health and the body...I should be on the lookout for trouble brewing, possibly having to do with finances as it affects my relationships and/or emotions. I have a feeling this has to do with a certain political party I've joined and paid fees for. I think I may be excluded from the party because of affiliation with another party -- and it doesn't look they'll refund fees taken. Could also be pointing to a pattern of conflict about money in another area that's been happening lately. One I have no control over, but the other I can watch for signs and make an effort not to fall into the same pattern.

I intend to post thoughts each morning, then return with an update in the evening, then look at the spread in retrospect on Friday evening.

Monday  - 3 of Hearts
AM - Today's card is 3 of Hearts, which is rather like tarot 3 of Cups. Today I will work on being a good friend and watch out for how friendship unfolds around me.

PM - Evening update, I didn't notice 'friendship unfolding around me', but I did have some concerns about something at work and a few people were supportive. That's not exactly a party, but I'll take it.

Tuesday - Queen of Hearts
AM - This morning we have Queen of Hearts. Compassion. Will I be filled with love and compassion today? Or will I be in need of compassion? Maybe both?

PM - Completely unexpected outcome, but very Queen of Hearts. I found myself feeling quite overwhelmed by all the trouble going on in the world lately, and a friend suggested I try these out Free Empath Survival Programme but by that time it was 2.15 in the morning, so I'll have to try them on Wednesday.

Wednesday - 7 of Diamonds 
AM - Troubled purse. Great. I'm hoping this is just a reference to needing pocket change for the bus today. I'll check my wallet and go to the cash point on my way out.

PM - Nothing to do with my money happened yesterday -- unless it was my visit to the house where I talked to the vendors. There's always the chance the impression was made that I want to pay through the nose for it, which might trouble my purse when my mortgage advisor tries to get the price down a bit.

Thursday - 5 of Diamonds 
AM - Financial health. Greater stability is sought in finances. Hm.

PM - We got the damp report. We spent a lot of time discussing money. We were definitely discussing financial stability.

Friday - 5 of Spades 
AM - Oppositions and obstacles that are temporary.  Sometimes indicates a negative or depressed person (Cafe Astrology). Be wary of those that might make trouble for you. Do not get drawn into unnecessary disputes and arguments (Aquarian Insight). Reverses and anxieties, but eventual success (Cartomancy 101). Being at the threshold of a project; money anxiety; success in business or love after lots of hard work (Meanings of Playing Cards). Okay, so things with the house may look shaky, but with determination we will work them out.

PM - Mortgage adviser offers less to estate agent. Now we have to wait until Monday (next business day) to hear vendor's response.

We are The World

Jean Dodal Tarot, Flornoy 2009 

Hello, World! Don't see you very often in my daily draws and readings. How ya doing?  What do you have to say to me today?

Everything is perfect as it is.  (Yoav Ben-Dov, The Open Reading)

What are you, kidding me? Day before yesterday I drew the 10 of Batons -- my house buying troubles, the EU Referendum, what about those two black Americans gunned down by shrieking, panicked white police officers in the US in the last day or two, and refugees and war and famine and injustice and all those other things that I see and worry about? What about those? Now everything's perfect as it is?

I am not about the things of this world. I am The World.

Right. ...
What?

I am the soul operating within the limitations of physical being. I represent your being 'in the world, but not of the world.' I am about finding your place in the world and discovering your oneness with everyone and everything in it. (James Ricklef, The Soul's Journey: Finding Spiritual Messages in the Tarot)

Umm. What if I don't want to be one with everything in this world?

It's not about what you want, it's about what is. You are already one with The World. I am the realisation of this. 

The world is a dangerous place. We're all in tremendous peril.

We're all having the same experience -- life and then death. There's no difference between you and everyone else. None. 

It feels like some people in the world are out to get everyone else. Or that they don't mind chewing up and spitting out others to get what they want. That's not a world I want to be a part of.

And yet in some ways you are the same. You just don't see it from the point of view of those you, even indirectly,  'chew up and spit out' to get what you want. 

Are you talking about consumerism?

Haven't you even thought about that word? What does it mean to 'consume'? Who or what is being consumed? But I don't want you to go to a dark place or feel guilty. That does not help. I want you to realise your oneness and look at things from that higher point of view. 

Oh. I just heard that there have been more shootings in Dallas. Police officers targeted by snipers. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to feel?

Feel how you feel. Feelings are okay. I am not here to change the world, I am The World. The more who realise me, the less likely it will be that the circumstances that lead up to atrocities committed upon each other will occur. It is not for you to change the world. You cannot save it. It doesn't need saving. It needs to wake up, and that can happen only one sleeper at a time. 

This seems kind of heavy for a Friday and a daily draw.

Okay, how about this: There's a world of information out there, but the art is in knowing what to do with it (Camelia Elias, Marseille Tarot).

I can cope with that. And it gives me permission to process all the bad things in my own way. Thanks, World.

De nada. 

3 of Cups

Jean Dodal Tarot, Flornoy 2009 

Well, this is unexpected, especially after the 10 of Batons day I had yesterday. I won't go into it except to say, it did turn out to feel like a tremendous burden, but there was an ally who told me not to worry. (Fat chance!)

'Three shows things growing,' Dawn Jackson's saying goes, but as Camelia Elias points out in Marseille Tarot: Towards the Art of Reading, it can be growing in increments, or it can be diffusing. Three flowers growing in a tight bunch can be something of a bouquet, but three flowers spread across an entire lawn just looks a bit messy. With a three, you either focus, or you scatter.

The playing card, 3 of Hearts, can mean either love and happiness growing, or emotional problems and inability to decide who or what to love.  (I saw this meaning repeated in several places online, so it must ring true for a variety of bloggers).  The three 'shows us a fork in the road. We must choose which path to take. Negatively speaking, the three symbolises uncertainty and confusion. Positively, the three means entertainment and 'right choice'. We must be optimistic and above all have faith' (Metasymbology).

What do I see here? It's hard to forget the three sisters (I think of them as sisters) carousing in the RWS image. But if we look at what's here in the Dodal image, there are some cues to springboard from. We do see a single cup followed by two cups, and there is  sense of growth in that. We also see that the cups are separated by vines and leaves, and there is a sense of dispersion in that. I also see that underneath the top cup there is a spiky red shape that reminds me of flames. How very curious. What's putting that cup's feet to the fire? There could be fruit for interpretation there, depending on the question and the intuition of the reader in the moment of the reading...

For me, I'm seeing more the separate between the cups than the unity today. To me, it looks like two against one. Two what against one what, though? Don't know yet. :)

10 is a lot

Camoin-Jodorowsky

Ugh. I only slept 4 hours last night. I think it must have been a backlash from having slept 7 hours per night for the last two nights. I wasn't sleepy at all until 12.30 pm and then of course woke up at 4.30. Then I draw 10 of Wands.

Camelia Elias calls this the 'Can't see the woods for the trees' card. She also says it indicated 'a lot of work, pressure and blocked ways. Not good.'

In Dawn Jackson's playing card mnemonic, ten is 'the end'. The card could be a tipping point spilling over into a new cycle of some sort.

But Yoav Ben-Dov has a different take on the card entirely. In The Open Reading, he calls this card 'Loyalty', and sees it as an ally, someone you can trust in times of trouble. This comes from the two wands standing together amidst the entanglement of the other eight wands. They actually pass underneath the entanglement -- they're not interwoven like the others. He suggests the card means pure intentions, alliance, loyalty, partnerships overcome hardship. Honouring one's principles in spite of difficulties. (We also saw the idea of an alliance in the 10 of Swords card, which depicts two swords crossing tips, apart from the other eight swords...)

There's a lot of passion and violence in this particular card, the Camoin-Jodorowsky. Lots of red. But I actually drew from the Dodal TdM, and that one has red batons, but the centre is all pale blue with only 4 red diamonds in the middle, and those are disconnected from each other. (Sorry for using an image from online -- I couldn't be asked to scan this morning and for some reason Camoin is the most popular TdM on Google search). Pale blue is the colour of ice, and is associated with detachment. A lot of ruckus, but at the core there's detachment. You care and you don't care. Or you care, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, whatever it is you're riled about. That's one way to look at it.

On the other hand, it could be as simple as, 'If you've got a lot to do, don't forget to ask someone to help you.'