Fire and Air

I've come to regard the court of Air in the Tarot as my principal teacher in 2016. The Knight of Swords made many important appearances throughout the previous fall, along with the King, and at times the Queen as well. They are here to help me recognize the power of their element within me, and to develop those aspects of my Self that will benefit most from their energy and wisdom.

The other night I drew a card from the Dark Goddess Tarot asking how I might best approach this integration of Air and out flew Cerridwen, the Witch of Fire:

I picked up the card and when I saw the sow-faced figure of this goddess I was entranced, though also slightly mystified that I should receive a fire card when asking about how to enhance my air qualities. The guidebook names Cerridwen a goddess of transformation: "Craft anew with the bones of the old." Ah, transformation. Becoming. This is certainly a year for those things. The infrastructure remains, but the qualities and elements are engaged in an ever evolving dance of growth and change. Cerridwen tells me that my walk through the realm of air is not so much a journey that I'll be navigating, rather it will be a process that will occur organically within and around me. It's simply time. I will learn to breathe and to speak. I will learn to release and to name. I will craft and be crafted; I will learn to allow the breeze to move through me. I will learn about power, and about the ways in which air and fire feed and influence one another. Air is already mine; I will learn to claim it.

As we drove to the sea a couple of days later I decided to pull a card for each family member for the year ahead from the Cosmos Tarot and Oracle deck. Uranus for my husband, Grus for my eldest. The Knight of Water for my Pisces son, and Canes Venatici for my younger daughter (a dog-lover, "incidentally"!). Lastly I pulled my own..... Lynx - King of Air!

November's Forecast

Several months ago I started to do monthly Tarot forecasts for each upcoming month, and so far I've been enjoying doing them.  The only downside is when I see what will potentially be an upcoming challenge, and have no way of knowing exactly what it will be or how it will ultimately impact me. That's what happened in November, and has left me wondering if I'd rather just not know what's coming - at least that way I won't spend my time anticipating something I can't necessarily change!

This was my November reading. The Queen of Swords was the summary card, and the following four cards represent each week of the month, in terms of major energies:

Spread with Deviant Moon Tarot (Patrick Valenza/US Games)

In case you can't see them clearly, week 1 was the King of Swords, week 2 the 4 of Swords, week 3 the 7 of Wands reversed, and week 4 is the Page of Wands.  Whew, so happy week three is over!!!!!

So how did I fare?  I blogged about the King and the 4 of Swords, so I'll leave them out - they were very fitting for their respective weeks. Week three nearly killed me. Wands often relate to career, and I can say that it was probably the worst week I've ever had at work.  Another fitting card for this week would have been the Page of Swords reversed.  Things are finally looking up, but this past week was full of gossip, emergency meetings, and a lot of drama that ended with one person deciding to quit.  Not at all fun, but fortunately the worst is over. I definitely did have some moments where I felt like I was that girl running anxiously through a dark wood, wondering what scary things were going to jump out all of a sudden from the abyss.  So back to my original point - do I really want to know that a week is going to be miserable, when there is little I can do to change it?  I think that probably I could use it to my advantage.  There's a saying "forewarned is forearmed." Even not knowing what form that challenge could take, it's still possible to do what is possible to prepare oneself. For instance, I could have made sure to get better sleep. Knowing that "something" difficult might arise might have caused me to be more aware of subtleties in the workplace so that it would not have been as great a surprise in the end.  All the same, I'll be honest - sometimes I just don't want to know what's around the bend!

To conclude I will say that the Queen has had my back all month long. It's been a Swordsy month for me, but mostly in positive ways. I don't tend toward the Swords temperament, but it has a lot of offer, and I've enjoyed the challenge of working on separating feelings from logic; it's helped me see more clearly, and think more effectively about how to approach a wide variety of things these past few weeks. Now I still have a week left… and the Page of Wands is looking pretty good right now. I'll welcome it with open arms!

Using the Cards for Yes/No Questions

I would say that, in general, I'm more a fan of using Tarot for gaining deeper insights into the variety of situations in which we encounter ourselves in life.  Using Tarot to provide guidance, to highlight major energies or themes that influence us and the decisions we make. Sometimes to take a look at where our current paths our leading us.  But yes/no questions?  Not so much.

Deviant Moon Tarot
Patrick Valenza, US Games 2008

I know that a lot of people have differing opinions on this, and some are very much in favor, while others feel it's a poor use of this sacred tool.  So I decided to experiment.

You could do an Internet search for this topic and find numerous blogs and websites that will give you 82 different ways to determine the answer to a yes or no question using the cards.  Some are very simple: pick a card, and if it's upright the answer is yes, if it's reversed, the answer is no. Some are more complicated: select three cards, and if the majority are upright or reversed, there is your answer! But if it's a Pentacle instead of a Wand it might be a maybe!  Well, you get the idea, anyway. Some people reserve special decks for yes/no questions, or won't consider the influence of the Major Arcana at all. I find that if it seems too complicated, it probably is.

Deviant Moon Tarot
Patrick Valenza - US Games 2008

I use reversals, so to me the easiest way to test out yes/no questions is to draw a single card.  If it's upright, then it's yes, and if it's reversed, then no.  I also would consider the message of the card itself for additional information about the energies involved. Clearly in order to test this out it's necessary to ask a question whose answer can be determined in a relatively short period of time (and I would not test this out on a client, preferring to use my own life as the guinea pig).

I decided to ask if I would hear from a friend in the next 7 days.  This is a friend I normally don't keep in close contact with, though we've known each other for many years, and it's been more than six months since our last conversation.  Now I felt that this would be an obvious "no." So I asked a formal yes/no question: "Will I hear from this friend within the next 7 days?" I shuffled and cut and…

Deviant Moon Tarot
Patrick Valenza - US Games 2008

...the first card I pulled was the Magician, upright. Well that certainly looked pretty "yes-ish." I peeked at the next card, which was Strength, also upright.  Hm. Another strong "yes" card. Just to be absolutely SURE, I looked at the card below Strength, which was the King of Swords, upright.  Really?  I glanced at the card at the bottom of the deck: King of Wands, upright. Well okay, apparently my cards were saying - no, screaming - YES!!!! But I didn't feel like it would be a yes.  So I thought, "This will be a showdown between my reason and my cards. Let's see what happens!"

King of Wands - Deviant Moon Tarot
Patrick Valenza - US Games 2008

So I put my cards away after having documented those that I'd drawn and my thoughts about the whole thing.  And I went to bed.  I woke up the next morning at 6:30am and grabbed my phone for my morning ritual of Facebook-News-Weather-Time, and noticed that I had an email, too. When I opened my inbox what did I find?  A message from my friend.

So what did I learn from this?  Just maybe I can use my cards for yes/no questions after all.  Now if I'm going to be sciency about it (which I am) I'll be doing many more of these little experiments to see what happens, how things feel, how things turn out, what subtle nuances come across, and how to understand and interpret them in the context of this sort of concrete, straight-forward question. I'm not going to take this show on the road anytime soon, but I am at least open to exploring this "other" reading technique….. :)

November Begins with the King of Swords

I recently acquired the Deviant Moon deck (Patrick Valenza/U.S. Games).  This is a deck I'd seen many times, heard people talk about now and then, but I always thought it was a little too creepy, and definitely not my style of artwork.  For some reason it embedded itself in my psyche, and over time I began to think about it more….then look at its reviews online…then search for images of the artwork.  Finally I decided I needed to give it a try.  Lately I've been feeling a deep desire to work with decks that are outside of my usual interests as far as imagery goes, which is why I also recently purchased the mini Secret Tarot (Lo Scarabeo), and also why the Paulina Tarot (Paulina Cassidy/U.S. Games) is also on its way to me in the mail even as I type!  So the other night I ventured out to a local bookstore and found a dusty box of Deviant Moon and I brought it right on home with me.

Long intro, which thus far has nothing to do with the title of this entry.  So I'll try to get more to the point!  I've done a few readings with this deck, and it's really good.  It is quite elegant in its manner of speech (so to say) and I find that while some of the images can be a little creepy, I am really enjoying it, and the over all feel of the deck is not really creepy at all.  What I can say about it is that is definitely *different* and that may be what puts people off it sometimes (and what put me off originally).

So I've been using it exclusively for the past few days, and I did my November monthly forecast last night using it, and the card that came up for the first week of November wassssss……. the King of Swords, ta da!!!!!  I've finally gotten around to the true point of this post!

So here is the King of Swords from the Deviant Moon deck:

Deviant Moon Tarot - Patrick Valenza

Pretty sweet, right? This card came up in the past week in a reading done for me - this was the card that signified my obstacles to figuring out how to move forward with a new project I'm working on. So I'm hoping that by falling into the position of my first week of November, it means I'll be able to focus and find some clarity in the matter at hand.

So the King of Swords.  He's a clear-minded fellow who knows how to steer the ship.  He's a great leader in terms of having the ability to see the long-view of a given endeavor, though he isn't necessarily the most emotional kind of guy.  But that often serves his purposes just fine. He's very intellectual and reasonable, and he's a fine problem solver because he sees right to the heart of a situation and knows what stray threads need to be rewoven (and usually also knows how to go about it as well!).  He's a person with a well-developed sense of identity and personal ethics, and he lives up to his own code quite infallibly.

I tend to be rather emotional, and at best I have a strong practical streak that helps me to ground my feelings and desires in the world…but I've definitely never been very sworsdy. I am always thinking about how people feel, and how I feel.  But at this point in my life I think a dose of the King of Swords will do me good. I need to learn that there are certain times where it's necessary and fruitful to divorce feelings from reason so that decisions can be made.  Sometimes success requires a fair, clear-minded, business-like approach.

This King of Swords is a pretty interesting fellow.  The mix of red and gold in his clothing suggests the power to get things done combined with the elements of wisdom, success and prosperity, but all of this is filtered through his intellect and clear communication skills, represented by the blue shadow to his face. This is not a person who makes rash decisions. His sword is perfectly upright in a bold, sure position - he won't back down when he's certain he knows the right way to proceed. By his side is a little imp companion that looks steadily at us while resting its hands on a small Earth. To me this represents the global-thinking of the King of Swords.  He always considers the final destination, and each move he makes is done with that end-goal in mind.

This is the energy I need to bring into my life this week.  At the very least I will need to consider the decisions I can or should make, a bundle of action steps that can go on my to-do list for the next couple of months. I will need to keep the long-view in mind, clarify what I want things to look like when all is said and done, and create a plan to follow.  No time to be idle of mind!