Category Archives: Major Arcana

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Daily Draws (Dark Angels Tarot) – 10/27, 10/28, 10/29/12

I’ve been drawing cards but due to hurricane preparations haven’t had time to post. Now that we’re hunkering down and the office is closed, I am home all day and can catch up! (We are well-prepared, not terribly concerned about really severe damage, but we definitely could lose power or have ceiling and window leaks.)

Saturday ~ 8 of Cups

The card of loss-yet-moving-on; admitting there are things you can’t hang onto, can’t control, so you let go and move forward with a lesser burden. There is regret but also hope in this card for me. We have to determine what we most needed to preserve and put it all in the safest possible places, and not everything in the house fits into one windowless room or one ice chest! So there are things we could indeed lose to the storm, but we are making preparations. It would be worse NOT to face the reality of the storm and possibility of loss, to cling to everything and pretend it’s all going to be fine if we don’t prepare. Maybe it will be fine but we can’t assume that. So knowing what’s most important and looking clearly into the future are the most helpful things now.

Sunday ~ Lovers

The storm hits today; the mayor has declared a state of emergency to start at 5 p.m., and by 2 a.m. this morning all mass transit will be shut down and no one is supposed to be on the streets unless they’re driving an ambulance, police car, or fire engine. I don’t know if I’m reading the card correctly, but the feeling I get, with the angel presiding over the rather frightened-looking couple, is that the higher powers (both spiritual and literal, our angels and the city government) are in control and the public, including me and my family, should stay together and hold onto what’s really important (each other, mostly!). If the choice aspect of the card is considered, I again think that it’s about choosing what’s important … staying together, not running off and leaving the home/family behind to pursue something else while it’s dangerous out there.

Monday ~ 10 of Coins

Oh, I like this card here. We’re currently under the leading edge of the storm, with heavy rain and gusty wind, but it’s going to get worse before it gets better…still, the 10 of Coins is the “family unity” or “domestic tranquility” card in my mind, it seems to be saying that my family and I will stick together and be safe, and the damage to our homes from the storm will not be impossible to handle. This being the Dark Angels deck there IS some destruction implied but nothing that can’t be fixed when the storm has passed. We won’t lose everything (this is especially reassuring considering my parents have a house near the ocean! – they aren’t staying there though, they’re inland with my brother’s family). The best thing we can do, as all the previous cards this week have been saying, is count on each other, stay indoors, and know that we’ve build the strongest foundation we could.

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Daily Draw (Joie de Vivre Tarot), 10/20/12

This is a brand new deck for me. I have the creator’s previous deck, the Paulina Tarot, which I like and have good reading results with. When I saw this new one in the shop last week, I had to get it! Then I read some less-than-phenomenal reviews – not saying the deck was bad, but that it was just a “more colorful, less detailed Paulina Tarot” – and second-guessed my choice. But I wanted to get to know it for myself and selected it at my Deck of the Week, and after going through the cards with the LWB, I shuffled it 7 times and drew…

The Star

Description: A dreamy-eyed young woman sits on an egg-shaped hill in the middle of a stream, pouring water from a silver moon vessel in her left hand and a gold sun vessel in her right hand, gazing up at a heart-centered star. A lovely little bird offers her a flower in its beak, a four-spotted lady beetle perches in her hair, and there’s either a moth standing in her lap or an embroidered moth on the waist of her dress. And also, she has amazing striped wedge-heel booties that I *want*

Interpretation: The first thing I noticed was the lady beetle – I’m a wee bit obsessed with them, and as soon as I saw it in this card, I knew I was in good hands for the week. The Star is about hope, but not just “wish-on-a-star” hope; it’s the kind you have to work for too, an active bringing into being of your desires. The egg-shaped hill may actually BE an egg; I wonder what’s going to hatch, and if the things I’ve been working on and hoping would come to fruition are going to do so this week. What I’m getting from this card, on this day, is that my worries about the deck were unfounded; that it does have power and can speak to me (the LWB describes the lady beetle as “whispering in her ear”; and if the woman in this card isn’t me, she is certainly a stargazer and bird/insect-/shoe-lover like me!); that my hopes weren’t misfounded and the next week has the chance to be a very positive and happy one if I wait for all my eggs to hatch and keep my focus elevated. A very good start!

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Daily Draw (Dark Carnival Tarot), 10/14/12

Temperance

I was somewhat cautious about starting to work with a deck so different from my usual style, and far removed from my own cultural background; I didn’t know if I should look at each card and read the entire book to try to get a more academic understanding or jump straight in and start playing. Well…a deck with this many counterculture clowns is a deck that wants to play! So I read the introduction to the book and then shuffled the deck and Temperance jumped out at me.

Description: A man with dark glasses mixes strange, colorful liquids in a variety of oddly-shaped vessels under the glaring light of a single fluorescent bulb. He looks like he might be cooking up illicit drugs or mixing drinks for a very singular bar clientele. The colors of the liquids and the light form a counterclockwise rainbow effect: containers of red liquid on the right, a yellow lightbulb spreading orange light at the top, containers of green and blue liquid on the left, and purple spilled liquid on the bottom.

Interpretation: The elements of the classic Temperance card are still here: the rainbow (even if it is going backwards), the mixture of fluids, the otherworldly alchemist presiding. Whatever the style of the artwork this is still a deck I can understand and work with. The alienness is tempered by the familiar. The new things in my life that I’m concerned about being “too big of a change” (returning to my Tarot journey, reaching out in my path of recovery, making more friends outside my current social circle) are not scary or weird if I can temper them with the more familiar, older things in my life: I worked with Tarot before, I tried to help people in recovery before, I’ve reached beyond my comfort zone before. And it all got me to wonderful places – it will again. Maybe that man is wearing those dark glasses because he’s afraid of being blinded by the strange colors and blazing light, but as his eyes adjust, he’ll be able to take them off. I can ease into the strangeness and newness too, one step at a time, and when I’m ready I’ll be able to take off the glasses and look directly at that glorious rainbow…