Three Angles on Inauguration Day

This morning I pulled out two decks that called to be used for a reading: Dark Goddess Tarot and the Earthbound Oracle. It was one of those moments where your intuition is pulling you in a particular direction, and rather than question it you just go along for the ride. As I was settling down to shuffle I realized that the Dark Goddess is fitting for today as thousands of women descend upon Washington D.C. to announce their (our) unyielding presence.

First I drew from the Earthbound Oracle: Deceit.

A two-headed snake lies coiled, looking outward. One of the most mind-boggling aspects of the current political situation in the United States is the depth of shameless hypocrisy surrounding the notion of "lying." Hillary Clinton was marked with the scarlet letter "L" and yet it was her opponent who strangely became ever more popular with each falsehood uttered confidently and contemptuously. It has become jarringly apparent that truth is irrelevant. Nearly everything that the President-elect says is false - demonstrably so - and yet his followers either trust him in spite of the evidence, or they downplay its significance. In my opinion that is extraordinarily dangerous.

Yesterday one of my favorite news pundits said (and I'm paraphrasing here): "It's no longer time to support the important institutions and programs that make up Obama's strong legacy - it's now time to defend them." We can battle deceit with truth, but we have to be sure that we make our voices heard, and that we are unrelenting and consistent in our message.

Then I drew Santa Muerte, Death, from the Dark Goddess Tarot.

One of the most common ways that this card is described by readers is as a "transition," so it's apt to see it on this day of critical transfer of power from an outgoing, and very dear, President, to a new, and rather unpopular one. This is certainly a death, of sorts. And it's not without pain and grief. In fact there is a group of women I know who are wearing black today, in mourning. I decided to don, instead of black, my Obama shirt, which I purchased promptly following the election day this past November. I didn't formulate the sentiment into words, but essentially I was declaring my position: This is my President. My mother posted a wise quote by Judd Apatow today:

"I don’t think it serves a purpose to be against him. It only serves a purpose to fight issue by issue."

So in the wake of the inauguration, a time replete with uncertainty and charged with the unmoored feeling that is a part of loss, this gives us something to focus on: a tangible action to take, a perspective we can get behind.

When I went to photograph these cards I decided to take that moment to pull my daily rune. I don't normally post about my rune draws, but when Uruz came out of my rune pouch, it felt like a potent cap to the two cards I had drawn, a pyramid of complementary energies.

Uruz is the wild aurochs, it is strength and vibrancy and well-being and power. My thoughts went immediately to the women marching on Washington today, and to all of the people gathering together across the country to make their convictions evident - both to the powers that be, and to each other. There is great power in unity, and great strength in sharing a common cause. This is precisely what we need as we take our next steps forward as a people. May our endurance never wane.

Crow Mother: Initiation (and a Tarot Spread)

I had to make a leadership decision at work recently that was as necessary as it was troubling. It threw me off balance for several days preceding and following the main event. And as supportive as everyone was about it, I still felt rather alone in the aftermath of the experience, when all was said and done. I didn't know how to process the residual moodiness I was experiencing, and I ended up designing a spread to help get my head and spirit around it all:

(In Case of Emergency) Spread:

1) How I'm feeling

2) Nurture this

3) Express this

Dark Goddess Tarot; Ellen Lorenzi-Prince

I decided to use the Dark Goddess Tarot, which had been calling my name for a few days. The cards were:

1) How I'm feeling: 2 of Air (inverted)

2) Nurture this: 8 of Air

3) Express this: 2 of Water (inverted)

The first thing that stood out to me was Crow Mother in the central position of the line of three cards. Crows have caught my attention quite a bit lately; everywhere I go I see them flying, hear them cawing, watch them calmly perched in treetops or on power lines. They have come to feel like patient and ever-present friends, and I find them comforting. Seeing the Crow Mother as the anchor card hit home the sense that the crow is passing through my life as a sort of "spirit bird," serving as an usher through a challenging time of change and uncertainty.

To move back to the first card, the 2 of Air in an inverted position (and especially with Athena ruling here) reflected my feeling of being at war with myself. I had a very divided mind, and rather than finding peace with it, I was feeling quite at odds with my own choice. Should I have done it? Did I act too soon? When I passed the previous month or so through my mind, recounting all of the contributing circumstances, I knew I'd made the right decision. And yet I found little comfort in that.

Crow Mother represents initiation, and in the position of "Embrace This," she encourages me to understand and accept the choice I made as an initiatory process, a necessary aspect of my new leadership role. Initiations are not supposed to be comfortable; they are often jarring, full of mystery, of the unknown. By living through them the initiate achieves new levels of understanding, is able - perhaps "invited" is the better word - to integrate new knowledge and perspectives. I hadn't previously thought of this as a rite of passage, but indeed it was, and there was some comfort in understanding it in that light.

Interestingly, as I was flipping through one of my gem and mineral books in search of an "initiation stone," another stone listing caught my eye: pallasite. This immediately connected me to Athena (Pallas Athena), and to the 2 of Air. Upon reading the entry for this meteorite, it turns out that one of its principal functions is that of helping to calm the emotional body. Very fitting, I'd say.

Unfortunately I didn't have any pallasite on hand, but I decided to pull out a new piece of one of my favorite stones - black tourmaline - that I'd just acquired the week before (you can never really have too much of this one!). Black tourmaline has a soothing, relieving energy that feels very good to me. And I realized, as I was gazing down at it in my hand, that it looked quite a bit like a crow's head.

Crow's head Black Tourmaline

The final card in the reading was Lorelei, the 2 of Water, and it had appeared inverted as the 2 of Air had. In the position of "Express This," it urged me to release the sorrow I was holding onto regarding the decision I'd had to make; to talk about it; to call on the ever present and all-abiding pool of universal love to help heal from its painful after-effects. A close friend to whom I've spoken about this has commented several times that it's very much like breaking up with someone. It's an astute observation. Lorelei was a siren whose beauty and hypnotic song was said to lure entranced sailors to their deaths against the jagged rocks. In a way, I could relate. I want to always help, honor, and nurture people, so coming to terms with having to make a decision that I knew would inevitably cause someone pain was (and still is) quite difficult to manage.

The sum of this line of three is 12, associated with the Hanged Man, a card that has appeared for me on a couple of occasions of late. Sacrifice, evolution, release, surrender.

In addition, I find the layout of numbers in this spread to be intriguing - 2 - 8 - 2. Twos relate to duality and choice, while eights correspond to change, strength, and personal power. The willingness to embrace difficult choices for the heart and mind provides great fertilizer for transformation.

Onward and upward.

Divinity Within Each Moment

There is divinity within each moment. Sometimes it calls to us like light from a vivid setting sun, vibrating through and over and around us. Other times it is subtle, elusive, hidden within the folds and bends of everyday life. We often overlook its presence; we swim like salmon against the current into the embrace of deeper meaning, even if our awareness there is fleeting.

Dark Goddess Tarot; Ellen Lorenzi-Prince

Ritual is a helpful tool for bringing our consciousness into divine awareness, and ritual can be found in everything, most especially the seemingly mundane facets of quotidian life.

There is a certain stability and sanctuary (literally, "holy place") that the present moment affords, and tea brewing is one way I seek to inhabit it more mindfully; a method to show appreciation for what is; brewing/drinking as a ritual of embracing the immediacy of the moment:

Now I am watching the steam curl upward. Now I am pouring water over leaves. Now I am seeing them unfold, release their essence, color their surroundings. Now I am waiting. Now I am sipping. Now it is scalding to the lips. Now it heats a path to my center. Now I release and sigh. Now it becomes warm, and now it becomes cool. Now I am here; not earlier, not soon, not tomorrow. Just here, just in this space, in this moment.

Tea time pauses everything. It keeps the pressures at bay. It reminds us that there is a holy light in each moment if we choose to find it.

Goddesses of Empowerment

It is a time of many decks.

I don’t remember ever before being in the position to juggle (in the best sense possible) so many different manifestations of Tarot. Just in the last few months I’ve acquired – either through gift or purchase – the Cosmos Tarot and Oracle, the Dark Goddess Tarot, the Ancestral Path Tarot, the Fountain Tarot, the Tarot of the Holy Light, the Wild Unknown Tarot, and the Steampunk Tarot. Needless to say, I’ve got options. Not that I didn’t before – I haven’t counted lately, but prior to this new lot I had somewhere around 50 or 60 Tarot decks to choose from (not counting oracles). The difference is that I love every single one of these new acquisitions. There is not one that is underwhelming, or “not my style,” or just “nice.” There are no qualifications when I say that they are all wonderful. They all have a unique voice; they all draw me in and excite me with what they might show, and how they might show it.

This, of course, is a fantastic conundrum to be in (that of “which deck to use now?”), and I’ve thought several times recently that I could lose my entire collection, save these, and be quite fulfilled (well, I wouldn’t like to lose the New Orleans Voodoo, or my Thoth..! But you get the idea).

So over the past several weeks I have often found myself using one or two one day, and then switching it up the next. This way I am tasting them all, feeling them out in fairly regular intervals.

So it was that last night I decided to pull a card from the Ancestral Path Tarot – the Hermit – and immediately felt the relief of that simple reflection wash over me. In fact I had just leapt onto my bed for a much-needed (albeit brief) moment of alone time amidst what had been a busy-but-lovely Sunday. I drew the Hermit in the moment I was most aware of my need to embody that quiet, solitary energy.

This morning I decided to draw a guidance card from the Dark Goddess Tarot (this is such a rich, profound, wise, and moving set of cards) and I drew the Magician – Isis. This is my soul card (in terms of Tarot Birth Cards) and also one I’d drawn over the past several months as I moved through the change from my previous teaching position into one of departmental management. It all fit; it was as if the universe was saying: “This is you, it’s your time, you got this.” And here it was again.

I closed the previous week with an important meeting at which I provided a pile of evidence in support of a change that I knew needed to happen. I wasn’t sure what the outcome would be, but in the end the upper management team agreed with me and approved the change. I was walking on air (appropriate for the Magician!). I felt that I’d accomplished something that was as monumental as it was simple, and I was elated to have been able to pull it off. Today I will be sitting in another meeting where I will be explaining this change, and later this week I’ll be doing it yet again, so Isis was very welcome encouragement.  The guidebook for this deck reads:

“See what needs changing and step up to change it. Because you can. Energy is flowing through and around you now, available for you to shape and direct.”

It gave me shivers to read that. One thing that has been most satisfying for me as I walk this new path has been the ability to make positive change where I have seen the need for it for so long – change that benefits the faculty, the students, the program, and the school overall. It is extremely empowering, and there is a breath of liberation within that experience that I have not felt before quite in the same way.

I took a look at the bottom of the deck, and smiled at Baba Yaga, the Hermit, flying through the air in her mortar. It was a gentle reminder that I am still in Hermit-space, and that much of the work I’m able to do now has come from all of the time I’ve spent alone, gathering data, investigating, testing out my theories and making new discoveries. It’s funny because as I thought about my Hermit tendencies in relation to the workplace I recalled how I often call my office “the cave,” and when an instructor wishes to talk in private I often say, “Let’s do it, come into my cave!” The irony, of course, is that my office has no roof, and only three walls. The fourth wall is also a sliding door made entirely of transparent glass, which means that I’ve got a fish-bowl thing going on. Still, there is something to be said for boundaries, and these walls at least give me a designated space in which to sit alone, and a door that, while clear, can still be closed.

On the top of the deck I found Epona, embodying the 6 of Fire. When I made this rather large change last week I was nervous about what the global reaction would be. Would my team understand? A few that knew about it were supportive. I was very confident that they would all feel the same way after I presented the evidence, and yet I still battled some anxiety. Would a partner department be on board with it? It turns out that they are just as happy about it as I am, which was both a surprise and a tremendous relief. The 6 of Fire is not just “success” (though it is that, too). In the Dark Goddess Tarot it is about transformative work that comes about through caring leadership and working as part of a team. This is how I see myself – not as a boss, but as a leader, and honoring the role, value, and strengths of each member of my team is of utmost importance to me.  The guidebook reads:

“Sometimes it takes a herd. And a herd needs a strong, sensitive, balanced leader. Especially when the herd is not of docile sheep but swift, spirited horses.”

My “herd” (I’m not sure they’d appreciate that title, ha!) is most definitely the spirited type, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Accept the accolades, take in the blessings, and store that sunshine. Let it give you strength as you go forward.”

Experiences teach what instruction cannot. Often it is in the doing that the deepest learning takes place. I’m certainly “doing” these days. I don’t have a mold to fill, and every day presents new opportunities for growth and expansion. I will store this sunshine as I continue to walk my nebulous path that materializes with each step I take; and I am grateful.

New Moon Spread: Earth, Air and Fire

Today is the New Moon and for the Instagram challenge hosted by @violetauraphoto the theme for day 9 is "Dark/Shadow," so I've decided to do a New Moon reading. Normally I limit these to two cards: what is waning, and what is waxing. However for today, in addition to using three decks, I've added a third card:

Card 1: What energy is waning? Mother of Pentacles (Wild Unknown Tarot)
Card 2: Where/Who am I now, on the dark moon? Scathach, 6 of Air (Dark Goddess Tarot)
Card 3: What energy is waxing? Mars (Cosmos Oracle)

I asked my four year old son to choose which deck to use for which position, and I have to say that I admire his choices ;-) I'm also glad for them because my first pull was Scathach, a card that appeared for me in a reading I did last week, and it was affirming to see it again here.

So where, who, am I now, on this dark moon? Scathach is a warrior goddess who encourages us to step up to the plate, to embrace the tasks set before us, to live up to our capabilities, to show our worth. She encourages us to open up to new experiences, to learn, to ask questions and accept guidance - especially when that guidance will help us to tackle our responsibilities. Scathach reminds me of my fundamental ferocity, that when I apply myself I can move mountains.

I certainly recognize this energy in my life at this time. In my leadership role at work everyday brings something new, a puzzle to solve, a project to start, a dilemma to sort out. I often feel like I'm creating my path as I walk it; the road materializes with each step I take. And while it can be challenging at times, I am enjoying it immensely. I thrive on the complexity, on the layers, on the combination of finite details and large-scale vision. And while I love the autonomy, I also highly value the guidance of my mentor and boss, a woman I trust and respect, and who has much to offer in terms of growing into my new director-skin.

The Mother of Pentacles symbolizes the energy waning at this time, and this has a several connections: this past week has been the first week back to work and school following an extended holiday spent in family. The kids are busy with school work once again, and that precious period of constant togetherness has reached an end, for now. The kids have also been sick, so during the second week of break most of our time was spent relaxing at home, sneezing, coughing, and drinking loads of tea. Now the last couple sickies are on the mend. And in a more global sense, this Mother represents my newly expanding ability to provide materially for my family, which has been deeply satisfying.

Finally, Mars shows a time of increased energy and activity. I see myself here as I tackle some important new projects at work, host the first team meeting of the new year, and continue to tap into creative possibility as I look for solutions, fresh ways to build and improve on previous systems and procedures. With Mars, energy begets energy - the more possibilities I uncover, the more impulse I feel to keep digging. And yet Mars is also my husband, and I know that in the next couple of weeks ahead he will be focused on making some important decisions and plans for his own work as well.

I like that this line of three cards from three different decks shows three dominant figures - that is striking - and I like how the docility of the doe moves into the strong male and female warrior energies of Scathach and Mars. I am also intrigued by the presence of these elements, and the way they move from the calm stability of earth, to the intellectual engagement of air, and finally on to the burning creative force of fire.

May your own Dark Moon provide deep insights for rumination!

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!