Tag: firefly

Today’s Tarot: What it Doesn’t Mean

Wash: “This landing is going to be interesting”

Mal: “Define ‘interesting'”

Wash: “Oh god oh god we’re all going to die”

– Firefly television series by Joss Whedon

The death card usually is an indicator that things are going to get interesting, if they aren’t already.

But, as with the Firefly crew, it might not be in the fiery crash sort of way that you were thinking. After all, it’s pretty bad story telling to kill off all of your main characters in the five minutes of a tv episode.

I remember watching totally enjoyable brain candy movie back in the late 80s where a Tarot reader pulls the death card just as The Warlock sneaks up from behind and murders her. Classic trope. That was before I learned to read Tarot much less read professionally. That classic trope has gone from fairly cheesy to downright laughable.

Everyone knows that the death card doesn’t mean actual death. So much so that revealing the actual meaning has become a trope in itself. The best example of that is Lisa Simpson and the Happy Squirrel card. Makes me giggle every time…

The Simpsons were created by Matt Groening and are the property of 20th century studios

For real, I’ve seen the death card more often at bachelorette parties than any other time. It makes sense. With a wedding, you have a whole group of people celebrating a transition and irrevocable change – a big happy one.

Even if that marriage later winds up in the messiest divorce ever, it still happened. It still changed people from who they were before the wedding. The event goes on their permanent record so to speak.

Transition and change as a death image is a common thing in both fact and fiction. To gain a butterfly, you lose a caterpillar. To gain a cupcake, you lose some flour, sugar and eggs. To gain wisdom blissful ignorance must vanish. Life altering change can be as terrifying as death itself even though change is the essence of life.

Change for the better is a grim reaper no one needs to fear.

Cue the cowbell.

YouChoose Interactive Tarot 20-26 Sept. 2020

As seems to be the emerging natural pattern, just have a quick announcement before moving on to this week’s cards: I’ll be on a reduced Tarot / online schedule Tue-Sat. because family stuff. If you are interested in a reading or anything from the store, don’t hesitate to order. The only change is that shipping & delivery might take longer than usual. Thank you in advance for your patience.

Left: 10 of Cups (grasshopper) Take the leap and dare to be happy. Beware of self-sabotage, and allow yourself to succeed. Don’t be afraid of finishing well. 10 cards, being the largest of the number cards in any suit, are a sort of pinnacle, the essence of the suit in its greatest expression. Taoism teaches that anything in its extreme holds the seed of its opposite. Be careful not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victoty. Finish, succeed, allow your self to be happy.

“People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be” – attr. Abraham Lincoln

Center: 5 of Swords (Goose) Overcoming obstacles is a journey as well as a destination. This card has shown up previously. My hunch this is for emphasis rather than a hint that we aren’t getting the lesson. Historic things have happened between the card’s appearances to show how important the lesson is: Stay chill, stay calm, work the problem. Swords are associated with the element of air and thereby mind and logic and cool intellect. My attention is drawn more to this elemental association than the contemporary relationship style of meanings. Mr. Andrews association with vision quest grabs my attention too. Especially the quest part. Big, systemic problems aren’t solved in a day. They take time, steps, parts, cooperation, and both tactics and strategy. The journey around or through an obstacle may be long and arduous but also needed and worthwhile.

“Let’s work the problem, people. Let’s not make things any worse by guessing. The Lunar Module just became a lifeboat. I don’t care what anything was designed to do.” – Ed Harris playing Gene Krantz in Apollo 13 (movie)

Right: Strength (Lion) This isn’t going to be easy, but when you have the strength to meed the challenges, the hard doesn’t matter. This card is just exactly that sort of reassurance. You have strength, whether you feel it ahead of time or not. If you don’t, get some. The ability to find solutions and to obtain resources is as good as having them in the first place.

“When you can’t walk, you crawl. When you can’t do that, you find someone to carry you.” – from Firefly (TV series) by Joss Whedon

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Persist – with STYLE

 

You know the drill….choose a card. Pause the video if you need some time. Restart it to see the reveal.

 

Left: Eight of Swords. The thread that connects the 8 in all decks it seems is a pervasive feeling of helplessness or a trapped situation. The Pamela Smith artwork suggests an unconventional, ‘outside the box’ solution, even though that wasn’t, of course, the language of the time. The faintness of the sword image in Thom Pham’s artwork might suggest that the barriers are perhaps mental or self-imposed. In any case, real or imagined, if you are feeling trapped or victimized, think of clever work-arounds rather than brute force bash-throughs. Sometimes life needs a little jerry rigging to make it through the day. Just ask anyone who is old enough that the word MacGyver is a verb.

Center: Five of Swords. Adapt. Challenges are ahead, but if you are stubborn, stuck to principle or habit (be it a literal habit, or a habit of thinking) then the outcome is not as good as if you were able to roll with the punches. I’m not super familiar with the Dark Knight movies, but the Keith Ledger version of the Joker is about as single minded as it gets as I remember it. Things are getting pretty Darwinian. Adapt or die, figuratively speaking. 

Right: Seven of Wands. This is a bit of an action hero card. Obyron from Game of Thrones is pictured. Every good action movie has action and conflict, right? Think of the all the pop culture renegade heroes we know and love…Han Solo, Deadpool, Tony Stark, James Kirk, Malcolm Reynolds, heck, the whole Firefly crew…you get the idea. Overcome challenge while letting your individuality show and your freak flag fly. Your greatest individual quirks may well prove to be your greatest individual source of strength just now. So persist and overcome the challenges ahead with humor and with style.

YouChoose Interactive Tarot: Navigate

Video from the TaoCraft Tarot YouTube channel

Left: OK here is today’s pandemic pep talk. More change is on the horizon. It’s a crazy time if you look at things globally or if you are out there in the thick of it doing important work, but everyone else is being asked to hibernate. Hibernators have it easy. Like a bear that was forced to wake up too soon, or a bear asked to hibernate in the summer, you may feel a little off kilter or out of the natural cycle of things. Plod along, grind it out, just keep on staying in your cave and washing your paws. If things can change TO this, it can change FROM this sooner or later.

Center: Ten of Cups. My attention is drawn to the sudden hops that actual grasshoppers make more than long and varied symbolism of grasshoppers that Mr. Andrews writes about in “Animal Wise.” In fact, the energy around this card today reminds me more of Tigger from Winnie the Pooh than a grasshopper. It is also like a gentler version of the “remember to play” aspects of the Fool card that we sometimes see, too. Play hopscotch in the driveway. Spend a little quality time staring out the window. Play a game of Twister. The big picture perspective of the world is still pretty scary, but it is perfectly ok to zoom in to some personal moments. Have a minute of fun and several long minutes taking in and sending out love across the distance. Love can leap anywhere.

Right: The Star. Firefly eh? Good TV show that. I recommend it. But this card reminds me of a different reference. One of my favorites. You’ve heard it before, but it must be a good moment because here it is again all these decades later. Anyone remember “City Slickers” with Billie Crystal and Jack Palance? You could call this idea Curly’s Finger. There is one thing that makes sense out of life … the trick is figuring out what that is. Figure out the one thing that makes sense of it all and you are ahead of the game. It’s only THE one thing if it is YOUR one thing. What makes sense of it all for you? Follow that. Follow the north star, not the finger that points to it.