How to journey from the Nine of Cups towards the Ten of Cups

Yesterday I pulled the Nine of Cups and Death from my Original Rider Waite Tarot and although I am sure I must have pulled the Nine of Cups more often this year, this time at the end of 2017, I remembered it was my card for this year paired up with the rune Perthro.

I was wondering what the Death card had to say about the Nine of Cups because it felt like these two cards were standing at the beginning of an unfinished story but when I tried to pull an outcome card it didn’t make any sense at all.

So next I wondered how Perthro could be tied to the death card. Perthro is the rune of mystery and it sometimes symbolizes the cauldron of transformation. So maybe this rune wasn’t meant to be the tenth cup as I thought in January but perhaps it was meant as a symbol for the cauldron in which we could transform our nine cups filled with our comfortable wishes and happy feelings into something more substantial and sustaining.

And then I asked myself again what the tenth cup could be and I looked at the Death card which suddenly reminded me of the Knight of Cups, who goes on a quest to find his soul’s purpose; his heart’s desire: He is searching the Holy Grail.

Mmm, I suppose this could be the Ace of Cups. So this knight leaves everything he holds dear behind to go on a quest for Love with a capital L. It is the kind of Love which is unconditional, compassionate and which multiplies the more you give it away.  And so we arrive at the Ten of Cups. Empty handed but with a heart filled with Love and we come home to ourselves and our loved ones and everything we hold dear. Yes, all the things which we were able to leave behind at the beginning of our journey are represented in this card only now we are able to enjoy it with such a deep contentment and Love in our hearts.  So sitting with our nine cups is great but if we want to experience them fully we have to let them go and leave our comfort zone to find out what Love is all about.

Graveyard – Unnecessary Fear

Today’s card is “Graveyard” from the Halloween Oracle. There is something about graveyards at night which makes the hairs on our neck stand up. An unspeakable fear creeps up on us, mostly caused the countless ghost and horror stories we have been hearing throughout our lives.

Logically speaking there is no need to be afraid of the resting places of the dead. It is just our mind who likes to tell us differently. The Graveyard card reminds me of everything I have put to rest: old projects, withered relationships, lost jobs and neighbourhoods, secrets and regrets and so much more. As long as I haven’t buried them properly, they sometimes still try to haunt me but when I am sure I’ve closed the lid of the coffin and filled the grave with dirt and the occasional flower, my mind will be at peace again and what I have buried will decompose and make the burial ground even more fertile than it was before.

The Three of Earth elaborates a bit more on this subject. Here we see someone planting his seeds in the fertile ground of our graveyard. He has to sacrifice his acorns in order for a tall Oak tree to grow there. Without death, there is no life. And so we come full circle. No, death shouldn’t frighten us but rather make us curious about what comes next.  What does life still has in store for us? Yes instead of letting ourselves being haunted by the past we’d better sow our seeds for a promising future

Father of Swords – Don’t get too emotional too soon

Today’s card is the Father of Swords from The Wild Unknown Tarot.  Father Owl looks stern and strict but his standoff demeanor is softened by the beautiful colors of his sword. 

This sword tell us he has seen it all, experienced  a lot and all of this has made him a wise and knowledgeable father. One you can go to in times of need or trouble. You can talk with him about anything. Pick a color and he will tell you tales you never heard before and give you advice, gladly and sincerely.

I wonder why he has showed up today and I pulled Death. This is a card a of transformation, closure and letting go. Whenever we are confronted with the Death card it is so easy to shift  in full emotional mode but Father of Swords reminds us stay clearheaded and  to remember other Death occasions which weren’t all together as bad as we feared they would be.  Death is what it is, unbiased and a part of everyone’s life whether we like it or not. Death is the only certainty we have in life. Maybe Father of Swords’ gift of perception and looking at a situation from all angles can be very helpful for us to learn to accept this undeniable fact of life.

My thoughts on The IG Tarotspective Experience

my setup and six decks that might play along

In less than three days July has come to an end, so several new tarot challenges for August are promoted on IG. Among them is the Tarot “Experience” called  #tarotperspective   created by Kelly from @thetruthinstory and Patrick from @inthe78cards The fact that they call the Tarotperspective an experience was the reason I wanted to find out what this was all about. I’ve come to realize that I am not that good with IG challenges. Such a challenge is often a collection of 30/31 prompts to draw your daily card with. It puts too much pressure on me and when I am not able to complete a challenge it feels a bit like failure.
This Experience is supposed to be different. The goal is to choose one core deck and two additional decks. From the core deck you’ll pull, after shuffling, a card and from the additional decks you'll find its counterpart. When you sit with these cards you’ll experience how your understanding of the card you've pulled will grow and  become more layered. There are no prompts or questions. You don’t have to show up every day and you're free to tailor this Experience to your own liking. Some people  chose more than two additional decks or some will rotate them weekly.

Example with the Death card

For me it is certain I will pick the Original Rider Waite Tarot  as my core deck. The Rider Waite Tarot is the deck I started out with many years ago. It is a highly trusted, well read, and deeply loved deck. I want to broaden my perspective of the archetypes in this deck. I want to deepen my relationship with its characters and I want to add some fresh insights to the mix of meanings I have for each card of this deck. The more I think about it the more excited I become to participate in this challe… no, experience!

I am not sure which additional decks I will choose. Perhaps I will choose several and let

empty beds

my intuition guide me which decks want to enlighten me about my daily draw. Or I might just end up using two of the ones I’ve picked; we’ll see.

If you are on Instagram maybe you would like to join in and if you’re not, you might like trying to do this for yourself

Death – Listen to the wisdom of Owl

Today is the last day I will be working with the tarot of the Sidhe by Emily Carding for a while. I’ve been working with this deck exclusively for the last ten days, which is a lot longer than I usually work with a deck. Overall it felt good.  A great advantage of working with one deck is that you really get a feel for its imagery and its use of symbols;  I always could understand and speak the French language better after our vacation than on the first day we’d arrived in France.

For today I’ve drawn Death: It is a timely card for me. The last few days have not been that easy but I feel a lot better already.  Again I had to let go of some old beliefs, unreal expectations, grief and love, in order to be able to move on again. It seems to me life often consists of a sequence of Death and Rebirth. Just like the cycle of the seasons but I think this Death- Rebirth cycle moves even faster. It feels almost like a clashing of waves on the beach. Sometimes you even don’t have the time to get dry before the next wave hits the shoreline.

In this version of Death we see an owl flying in front of  lots of butterflies. They all are leaving the burial mound above which a crescent moon witnessing this event Their life has been transformed. They have moved from one stage to another. The caterpillars have disintegrated almost completely in their chrysalises in order to change into a butterflies. I wonder if they would have been afraid,  if they knew what they had to go through before they could become a butterfly.

It looks like the owl is showing them the way out to their new transformed life. He is holding a salmon in his claws. This salmon (a symbol of wisdom) has sacrificed his life for the owl so he can share his new received insights with the butterflies.

I wonder what wisdom Owl is offering them…?

Death is more than catching butterflies

For today I've drawn Death from the Crystal Visions Tarot. I like this version of Death a lot. It has dark and light in it and depicts sadness and hope. Recently I've read a really great post about Death by Olivia from First Earth Tarot.

She emphasizes the necessity to see Death as so much more than a card for new beginnings. Of course we all agree that if you want to give way for change often some things have to end first. But ending parts of your life which have been dear to you for perhaps many years is raw and painful and there is sadness, fear, grief and not knowing what to do or where to go next.

The body of the woman is merging into stone while the butterflies, a symbol of transformation, fly away. There is even moss growing on her leg so she must have been there for a long time, The Angel of Death is standing beside her, following the process. Because that is, in my opinion, the most important aspect of the Death card: going through the process. The death card is more about the work than about the reward afterwards.

I have had a lot of “Death” experiences in my life and only afterwards I was grateful for every one of them, but during these periods of intense pain and sadness I didn't find a single butterfly.

“What a caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly” R. Bach

(The text on the stone says: Life is changed not taken away)

Unexpected Samhain reading

October 25: In the autumn hedgehogs do need  lots of food to build reserves for hibernation. In late November they go find a place to sleep. Which cozy warm place  can I make for myself now winter is coming?

Druidcraft Tarot

First I've pulled Death from the Druidcraft Tarot. That didn't feel right at all. How can Death be symbolizing my warm cozy place. So I pulled another card as a clarifier: The wheel. Not so cozy either. Honestly I am lost for words at this moment. But these are my cards and I’m sure they can teach me something….

To be able to enjoy the warmth and coziness of winter I want to achieve a relaxed state of mind; not too much worries and difficult decisions on the lurk

Death can help me with that. This card is all about letting go what serves me no more. And I tend to cling on to old stagnating problems, patterns and worries. (eight of swords). Or perhaps I can confront some of them in a healing way and put them in my cauldron of rebirth so their energies can serve me in a more healthy way.

The wheel is also all about patterns and cycles, harvesting and letting go and then moving forward. This cards teaches us also about inevitability. Sometimes life is what it is and we just have to accept it. The woman in the card is drawing her circle and she is making a place for herself between the worlds. She’s putting up a boundary between her and the rest of the world. In her hand she’s holding  the symbol of the wheel of the year. 

Druidcraft Tarot

This wheel teaches me to find the patterns and cycles in nature as well as in my own life. And on a very basic level, the drawing of the circle tells me that I can set up my cozy place where ever I am as long as I'm happy and content and I belief in my own worth and strength

Writing about these two cards is helping me to find meaning for myself right now. If I want to enjoy the coziness in my home and with my family I have to set out time for myself to explore The wheel of the year’s cycles an patterns as well as my own. And while doing so I want to try finally to let go of some old pains and grief and limiting beliefs.

This reading feels for me like a Samhain reading. The time of year to start over from scratch; to dive deep in the dark caves of my soul in winter and find there the seeds for new live in spring.

These two cards will be on my altar until after Samhain that’s for sure.

It is funny In the beginning of this post I just hardly knew what to write and now I am so sure these were the right cards for me J