The Tower – Raging fires

Yesterday I pulled the Nine of Wands from the Mary-El tarot as my card for the day. This card felt really significant since my inner Tiger has been dormant for quite some time now.  I know Tigers don’t hibernate but it sure does look like mine is a real sleepyhead.

Today I asked my deck of cards what I could do to wake up my Tiger and ignite my inner fire again. I pulled the Tower. Now, why does this not surprise me one bit? Really, I can’t think of a more suitable card to answer this question with. The Tower is the strongest wakeup call in the whole deck. Its energy crushes unfounded structures and old and outdated beliefs. It undermines the stories we tell about ourselves. It wrecks everything we thought was true and sacred. All these things and much more is as fuel for the raging fire we see in this card.

I believe we can release our Tiger and set our true self free if we are willing to sacrifice our illusion of safety and security, our preconceived notion of how life ought to be, and many more things that no longer are part of our reality but only hold us captive in our Tower. This doesn’t always mean we have to change our whole life: A new job, a new house, and a new husband etc. I think it is more often a radical change of our perspective and a new way of setting our goals and priorities. For me, it is mainly about getting Fear out of the driver’s seat and reclaiming my strength and confidence to chart my own course in life.

Chaos – Trying to find a way out

When letting go by ourselves (see yesterday's post) is too difficult life has a way to assist us....

Today’s card is Chaos, aka The Tower, from the Vision Quest Tarot. We see a horse rearing up in a burning forest. He is clearly frightened and he is feels trapped.. There is now way to escape  because the fire and the smoke are surrounding him. The only thing to do is trying to stay calm and hide away from the wind. Eventually the fire will make way for greener pastures. The question is how do we get to that point since we are clearly not having a great day.

And I pulled the Spirit Guide. (Judgement) To be honest I don’t have a lot of experience with spirit guides or spirit animals. I would love to meet one someday but for now it’s just me and my intuition or my higher self. Listening to the soft inner voice is hard. Taking the time and becoming quiet enough be able to hear the voice is sometimes even harder; we are often in such a hurry. This card encourages us to notice the little miracles in our life; the “road signs” along the way. So not only listening but noticing small details too. Mmmm, that is starting to sound a lot like living in the present moment and being mindful of how we experience life on a daily base.

Maybe if we would have been more mindful to begin with, we could have prevented the forest fire? Or do we welcome Chaos to help us to clear old and dead wood?

Daughter of Wands – Feel the Fear . . . and Do It Anyway

To be honest I wasn’t quite in the mood to blog today but my daily cards decided otherwise. I couldn’t resist to write down the message of these two cards. Also they are a perfect pair to follow up the Ace of Wands from a few  days ago. That was such an energizing card; so promising and exciting. But then after my birthday nothing happened. Everything was the same and I felt stuck instead of eager to play with the new art supplies I got for my birthday.

And then I drew the Daughter of Wands, an ideal card to promote experimental play in my art journal. Just to have fun and feel free to explore all kinds of ways to paint and collage and stamp and whatever comes to mind at that particularly moment. But nothing of the sort happened. The thought crossed my mind that maybe I was tired of my birthday festivities.. .Yeah right. Who was I kidding. I was afraid to open my book and to be unable to make my mark today. Or that it would be more of the same and nothing new and exciting would appear on my page. Why, what is the matter with me and then I drew The Tower. Often when we do daily draws and we get The Tower it is not as bad as it seems but today it perfectly represent my fear of being inadequate. Fear is  often very  great exaggeration of the actual things that might happen in a certain situation. I mean honestly, what is the worst thing that could happen if I did "fail" today. I am quite sure the lighting wouldn’t strike me.

So after posting this I am going upstairs and open my journal, put some paint on the page and see what happens next.

The Tower - I am only human

Yesterday morning I drew The Tower from the Druidcraft Tarot as my focus card for my daily Lenormand reading.  Not the most favorable card for a daily draw. The question I derived from this card was: What will shock me and/or undermine my confidence in an abrupt way?

From the Celtic Lenormand I pulled: cross, ring and clouds. I see cross and ring as a commitment to my spirituality. All my cards together looked like a rather unsuspected and emotional test of my spiritual beliefs. Again nothing too look forward to…

The day went by and nothing happened and honestly I totally forgot all about my cards until late at night when I went to bed to read a few pages in one of the books on my tablet. 

Since the battery was almost empty I had connected it to my brand-new charger cable. (A replacement for the one that died on me after about two weeks). I started reading and after a few seconds I noticed again the red cross in the battery icon: the G*dd*mm*t, F*ck  and Sh*t’s  broke the silence in my sleeping room. Ample moments later I noticed I hadn’t fully pushed the plug in its charging port. When I did so my battery was charging again….. And then I remembered my cards…

An electrical setback causes such emotional distress that I forgot all about my beliefs and started swearing ( which of course normally I never do!).

Often such minor events can be tracked back literally to our daily draw. Look how the lightning strikes The Tower…

The Tower - My House of Cards (updated)

This post is long overdue. I haven’t been writing anything for about two weeks now and I wanted to share with you what the reason is for my absence.  For me my tarot practice was partly a way to express my spirituality, as was meditation and practicing gratitude. But the most important tool for me was tarot as a way for me to access my intuition and to receive guidance of my higher self and/or God(des). As you all know my spiritual path is a spiraling one, with its lows and highs. Sometimes it feels like I am back at square one, only to discover a more in depth truth later on. But now it seems like my entire spiritual belief system has collapsed like a house of cards. It feels like I have been building my beliefs and practices on a unstable fantasy foundation and now the whole Tower came tumbling down on me and left me shattered with nothing but the memory of better times and a lot of debris. It might be possible this brokenness and inner loneliness is just a very big winding of my spiral path. I honestly hope it is, but I doubt it. It feels like I have to rediscover who God is to me all over again. If god is really out there, or just in me, or where ever, or nowhere at all... It would be so easy to just pick myself up and rebuild my Tower but I know that this would be postponing the inevitable: another collapse.

So now I have to make new stones and mortar and build a new strong foundation for the house of my soul. I don’t think it will be a Tower again. I think it will be more solid, a one story spacious house with open doors and windows so the air will remain fresh and it will be inviting for the Light to enter

Please know I am still visiting your blogs and enjoying your posts although I don’t always have something worth while to comment. I hope to be back soon and post my daily draws again or anything else which I would  like to share with you

Hugs

Update: I want to thank you all for your kind and warm comments. It makes me feel so loved and appreciated. Honestly I have hesitated to write this post but now I am ever so glad I did. Writing this and then reading your kind and encouraging comments has made a very deep impression on me.
So thank you all

Kali - Facing fears

Yesterday I've compared Storm Angel with the Tower and that reminded me of The Tower card from the Chrysalis Tarot which depicts the goddess Kali

She is a Hindu goddess, an aspect of Devi, the Divine Feminine. She is a slayer of Demons (mostly inner ones) and a Goddess of Time and Death. Although she has a frightful appearance she is a loving, protective mother goddess

“She is the goddess of the ending of cycles, the death and transformation energy that lets go of the old and brings in the new. Kali is a loving energy that helps free us of fear, she only destroys that which keeps us in bondage”,

She will help us with: Courage, Determination, Direction, Focus, Motivation, Protection, Tenacity

 I am going to put a depiction of her on my altar as a focal point for the coming time. It is almost Samhain, a time to let go of old and non serving thought patterns. Fear is one of my largest stumbling blocks and is keeping me from the things I really want to do and even to a point  I don’t always know what I really want anymore. I am so good  in avoiding difficult situations

Kali is all about facing our fears and acknowledging them is the first step. I don’t expect to get rid of them right away. She is also goddess of time. It will probably be a spiraling process; each time around I will free myself a bit more. To accept this is a learning process too.

A Thousand Gifts…

For today a slightly different post than usual. Lately I've been thinking a lot about Gratitude and what it really means to me. Maybe because we are heading for the Autumn equinox this concept has been a lot on my mind. Gratitude is the one pillar of my spiritual practice which never wavers. When everything else is put to the test and doubted, gratitude remains fully alive and intact. I even don’t mind if I can figure out  to who or what I am grateful.

Yesterday when I was Googling about Gratitude, to explore how others practiced it and what they had to share about this subject, I came across  Ann Voskamp, a Christian writer, who has written a book called: “One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are”. It was written in 2011 so perhaps many of you have heard about it already. Although her spiritual path isn't exactly mine, I think she has a very important message for all of us, since in my opinion Gratitude is a universal principle. She dares you to list one thousand things you are grateful for. One thousand gifts from who/whatever you think they are coming from. It is a well known practice to list five things each night before you go to sleep but to list one thousand is something entirely different. 

Ann Voskamp has been through a lot in her life and she claims her faith but even more her Gratitude practice has pulled her through. Gratitude is not all about being thankful for the big things in life but even more for  the everyday events, like a bird singing, a leaf falling or the snoring of your dog. Just try to notice the beauty around you where you are at that moment. You don’t have to live a grand life to be grateful. This morning while drinking my first coffee in the garden, I enjoyed the first signs of Autumn in crisp morning the air.

Being grateful when times are good isn't so challenging but being grateful when the wheel turns and life gets difficult is not that easy.
Seeing beauty when the lightening hits The Tower is a gift we can gracefully accept with our hands wide open. That’s when trust comes into play. Do you trust the flow of life; trust that everything will be okay again. That’s something to be grateful for and everything else will follow. We are all worthy of so much; even of one thousand gifts and more

So for today I am going to start with my list of a thousand gifts.

“Wherever you are, be all there." I have lived the runner, panting ahead in worry, pounding back in regrets, terrified to live in the present, because here-time asks me to do the hardest of all: just open wide and receive.” Ann Voskamp 

My First Impressions of The Joie de Vivre Tarot

Yesterday I've received The Joie de Vivre Tarot By Paulina Cassidy in the mail. I've ordered it two weeks ago at Book Depository. And to be honest is was a kind of an emotional purchase. Although I am celebrating my birthday in about three weeks and I am promised some tarot presents, I really needed  to treat myself on a light, friendly and uplifting deck.

A deck which will comfort you. A deck which will tell you the truth but in a gentle and kind way. A deck which will emphasize the positive side of a situation. Even the most dreadful cards are friendly and they speak more to your compassion than to your fears.

For instance the figure in the two of words is being  held by birds and the girl who is falling from the tower is held by butterflies

It had to be also a deck which would distract my mind form worrying. So there had to be enough symbolism in de pictures to keep my mind busy. Look how many symbols there are for instance in The Wheel: the zodiac, the moon cycles, the four trees on his head, the lemniscate on his jacket. In every card there are little treasures to be found.

And that’s when I knew it had to be the Joie de Vivre Tarot:

“French for 'joy of living', the Joie de Vivre is designed to access the childlike energy in each one of us to help stimulate, enhance, and inspire joy in our own lives. A truly fantastical people, the living beings in the Joie de Vivre realm are all sentient souls of love who want nothing but the best for those who take a journey through their world. An amplifier of intuition and a connection to the divine source, they hope the Joie de Vivre deck will help awaken a response from deep within your heart, mind, and spirit.”

It is the second tarot deck by Paulina Cassidy. I don’t own her first deck: the Paulina Tarot, because the artwork was too detailed for me. In the Joie de Vivre tarot the pictures are less crowded but still they contain a lot of little adorable details and symbols. The pictures were done in watercolors and ink. The colors are soft and transparent. The backgrounds are often just made  with a color wash and some swirls which is a good contrast to the detailed figures. The cardstock is average and the finish is glossy and smooth. The colors are much more vibrant than I had expected and they are absolutely beautiful.

One more thing about the LWB. Paulina has written a tiny little story about each character in her pictures and she has even named them. This makes this little booklet a very surprising addition to the deck

AL together it will be rather obvious I totally adore this deck.  And I haven’t even started reading with it. I do have already begun to knit a bag because the little tuckbox didn't survive the long journey overseas.