Tag: meaning

The One Measure

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Today’s card is Judgement from the major arcana.

The word judgement has to do with assessment and decision making as in “use your own judgement.” But like everything it has a dark side. Good judgement implies wisdom and experience. Poor judgement implies mistakes in reasoning and decision making.

Simple enough, right?

Judgement is my grand nemesis in the Tarot deck. To my mind, it is the essence of that inward looking personal growth and spirituality versus outward, social religion. In my experience, Tarot is all about the former and not the latter. The Judgement card is one of the cards most strongly allied with the Christian influence in the cultures where Tarot first gained popularity. Angelic and “Judgement Day” images are on this card in almost all decks that I’ve seen except for a handful that deliberately step away from the Marseille and Waite – Smith imagery. The Witches Tarot, Animal Wise Tarot, and the Osho Zen Tarot are my favorite examples of this deliberate separation.

In addition to pushing my personal psychological buttons and activating my religion allergy, the downside of all the judgement day/ angelic/consequences images is the way it can slip into judgmentalism rather than reason and judgment. Zealotry and blind idealism can slip in very easily here.

The up side to this line of thinking is the idea of second chances. The judgement card is also associated with a fresh start after paying your dues. It’s about cleaning up the mess you made and moving on.

On one hand you have judgement and reasoning. On the other hand you have judgement day and judgementalism. On the other other hand you have second chances and taking responsibility for your actions. How do you bring all of that into one card?

Compassion.

It is the one measure of it all. Good judgement is guided by compassion. Judgementalism is kept at bay by it. Compassion grants second chances.

Compassion is the ultimate judge and judgement. If it isn’t compassionate, it isn’t good judgement.

Thanks again for watching, reading and listening. See you on the print side!

Cardless: Thoughts on an anniversary

What a year.

Perception of time is so fluid and so individual it’s no wonder humans created clocks and calendars just so we can navigate our way through the tine drop of time we are given for our lifetimes. If nothing else, the year of the pandemic has taught us that. After all it’s been blursday the 363rd of Marchish for about three years now, hasn’t it?

Let’s set the cards aside for a moment. I have an interesting intuition flexing exercise for you: Look back over the past year since the global Covid-19 pandemic was declared, but look at it exclusively through the lens of intuition. What were your intangible, intuitive perceptions over the course of that time? When and how did you become aware of them? What did life look like intuitively to you in January 2020? March 2020? Summer solstice? Fall equinox? At the American election? The holidays? January 2021? How did the intuitive feelings connect to actual events as they unfolded? Did you learn anything about your intuitive perceptions in the empathic pressure cooker that was 2020? Seriously, I’m interested in your meta-assessment of your intuition this past year (stay private – you don’t have to share details) The comments are open if you’d like to add your two cents to the topic today.

I live in the eastern United States. The cultural zeitgeist energies and emotions were so strong last year that looking back at the intuitive landscape has a certain tangible quality, almost like the memory of actual events. In my mind’s eye, I can still see the mental images of a U.S. map with little black tornado shapes spinning and wiggling and moving around all over the map. I remember the image of the ocean with a hurricane on the horizon. I remember a shimmering iridescent soap bubble or force field whenever setting empathic boundaries came into the conversation. I remember the image of survivors peeking out of storm wreckage. I remember the map again with the little tornadoes fading to grey.

Part of me wants to take pride in how well the images matched the events that unfolded after – I’d call the insurrection riot a hurricane among many, metaphorically speaking. It feeds into the cassandra complex my ego has brewing. Actually, it was just a clear-eyed view of energies that were current at the time of the mental image. It was in no way prophetic or predictive, just as Tarot and intuition always is. It helped me to do good readings for clients. It helped me know when to feed the spiritual side of life and when to stick to my knitting (literally) and take care of practical things. Sensitivity to energy helped me to ease up on the spiritual stuff (especially when it was getting way too judge-y and taking on a fearful edge) That is exactly what Tarot and intuition is supposed to do both in ‘normal’ times and times of extreme duress. It gives a read of where we are and suggests a better way forward. Tarot and intuition didn’t predict a damn thing in any of this. Still, intuition worked. We all have it. You can use it too. All you have to do is take the lid off and give your ESP a little bit of TLC. (Of course, me and my ego are happy to help you in that process)

If it is any consolation, though, the image today is a clear map and the wreckage is gone. My attention is drawn to the physical (perhaps another aspect of all the coins/pentacle cards that have turned up during the past year) There have been storms and fires and floods and accidents the same as any other year. Those literal changes and disasters increase the pandemic disaster exponentially for those who experience those losses too. The change is even more heartbreaking and profound for those who have lost loved ones. The fortunate rest of us, whose closest loved ones and physical environment is as intact and unchanged as it would be after any other year can take consolation in that. Look out the window. For the vast majority of us, the streets and houses are all the same as last year. What we DO and how we do things has changed quite a lot. Sure, there are plastic shields and hand sanitizer dispensers in the stores, but for most of us all of the physical infrastructure of our lives has been left untouched by the pandemic year.

I have another suggestion for today. Find something familiar. Any tangible thing that is the same as it was in the before time. A place. A park. Your home. Your backyard. An article of clothing. A favorite song. A coffee mug. Anything. Drink in the familiarity. Ground and center yourself around that. Life, attitudes, energies – many things have irrevocably changed in the past year. Soak up some comfort and courage from the stuff that hasn’t.

On second thought, maybe Tarot does have a card for this. It is one of life altering change, some tragic but some also for the better.

In memory of those lost. In gratitude for lessons learned.

public domain card image

Today’s Tarot: Frosty Fall

The Five of Pentacles makes me feel sad today. It has tendrils of tragedy, misfortune, and fear. It is one of those things that makes me stop, and as we have talked about before, take a little inventory. Is it me? Is it any sort of real threat? Is there something I’m missing or need to do? Or is this an energy from outside myself, a purely “the current zeitgeist is ringing my bell” empathic feeling. It seems to be the latter. I have to travel for family reasons but there is no logical, physical reason that would explain the card’s vibe. This is a coins/pentacles card. As a reader, not only is it always good to stop and consider if a strong emotional reaction is product of our own psychology (as opposed to a purely intuitive reaction to the card) but the suit of pentacles or the suit of swords points to the real world and cold logic straightaway.

Given all of that, I don’t see any real world, my issue, or logical reason for this visceral sort of reaction to the card other than maybe the continued political news here in the U.S. Maybe I’m reacting to the passing of Justice Ginsburg …but there is so much else so wrong and has been for nearly 4 years now.

The card has more of a sense of more foreboding now that I write this than it did at first blush when I filmed the card-draw video. You all know how writing is a more potent connection to intuition for me than working with YouTube is.

The parable of the grasshopper and the ant comes to mind….as does the squirrels and chipmunks busting around the neighborhood in a prehybernation frenzy. The “Pre-hibernation Week” episode of Spongebob was pretty close to reality from the look of these guys.

Today’s Five of Pentacles gives us the same advice. Fall is a time to harvest and store and budget and take care. It might be a hard winter. I hope I’m wrong, but that hurricane on the horizon feeling is back. If it is wrong…great. If not, be safe and be well.

Please prove me wrong.

Today’s Tarot: Universal Experience

How compassion can flow

It’s a fundamental idea. In Buddhism, the first noble truth is the existence of suffering.

Or, as the T-shirt defining Taoism says, shit happens. The five of pentacles in Tarot reminds us of the same thing. Difficult things happen to all of us sooner or later. It isn’t for us to judge the type or magnitude of that difficulty relative to our own life experience. It is enough to know that a fellow human struggles. Big or small, serious or trivial, true crisis or laughably minor, real world challenges and emotional upsets are a universal experience. Or to put it in t-shirt terms, shit happens to absolutely everybody at one time or another.

The card doesn’t stop there. It calls us all to compassion, sympathy and empathy whenever and wherever the aforementioned shit happens – always, everywhere.

There is much going on. The energy environment (I can’t tell if it is local, regional, national or global) is starting to feel like it did back in January or February, on the cusp of the maximum lock-down we had here in the U.S. I’ve been repeatedly, for months been getting the mental image of a storm on an ocean horizon and a sense of foreboding. Over the past few days it is as if the outer bands of the storm are starting to touch shore. Yes, I’ve probably been watching too much news, and yes, it probably is tied to the toxic mashup that is American public sentiment right now. If you are to any degree empathetic or energy sensitive, now might be a good time to batten down the hatches, grab your favorite protection crystal and start reinforcing healthy boundaries between your energy and external energies. Healthy boundaries are crucial.

Compassion flows best when it flows both inwardly and outwardly at the same time.

Today’s Tarot: Stick to your knitting (metaphorically speaking – or not)

The Eight of Pentacles is about due diligence, effort, work, study, etc. Todays energy is very aligned with that. Even though the eight is silent on outcome in contrast to the ‘reap what you sow’ vibe that we have seen recently in the Seven of Petacles. Today’s card is short term planning, not long term planting.

Today is a day to put your head down, and stick to your knitting. WHAT that knitting IS can vary a great deal from person to person. Maybe your “knitting” today is protest and vocal activism. Maybe your “knitting” is disaster recovery. Maybe your knitting is rocking a baby to sleep for a nap. Maybe your knitting is just getting through your workday. Maybe your knitting is actual knitting.

Whatever your task may be, today’s energy is a reminder to let our mind rest where our physicality lies. It is exhausting to emotional or enthusiastic or passionate all of the time, even when things are good. More so when they are not. There is a certain deep, spiritual rest in doing simple tasks that don’t need a lot of thought and ask nothing of our emotions. Actual knitting is very meditative in that way. It is very much in the Zen frame of mind. In the words of Alan Watts “Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is to simply peel the potatoes.” Or, in the words of the proverb “Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.”

In still other words: Today is a day for mindfulness and the simple comfort of simple routing tasks. Underneath the tedium and sometimes boredom is a resevoir of quiet mindfulness and comfort when you are of a mind to feel it that way.

Ragged Reality

Reality may not be pretty. “Think positive” some say. What about about being positive things are bad? A problem can not be solved unless you accept that it exists. A problem can not be solved well unless you see it as it actually exists and understand the resources that are available. Problems aren’t the problem. Avoidance, denial, minimization, projection, fear, anxiety, anger, hatred, resentment; these things are problems.

Constantly playing the victim and eternal pessimism are asking for a problem. Denial and Pollyanna positivism are asking for a problem.

Staring reality in the eye, rolling up your sleeves and getting to work is asking for a solution.

Today’s Tarot: Logical make

The Ace of Wands is picking up a thread of energy from yesterday’s Page of Swords. There is still a sense of thinking and an intellectual process of some kind. The Ace of Wands is all about creativity, but in this case is a practical creativity and the logic of making that steps forward. Adam Savage’s excellent book Every Tool’s a Hammer comes to mind. He talks about the problem solving aspects of art, making and creativity in general. Flights of fancy are one thing. In imagination, anything is possible. It takes some serious problem solving and logical making to bring that imagination to tactile, usable life. Creativity combined with making an idea into a real thing is a whole-brain process. It requires us to connect disparate dots, plan, use logic, organize and experiment.

Just because something has never been done before doesn’t mean that you can’t do it now. Just because no one has done something before doesn’t mean that you can’t be the first. Just be ready for some industrial strength problem solving. Dream the dream, then create the logical make.

Today’s Tarot: Brains!

All of the page cards denote learning of some kind or another. Swords are associated with the element of air, and the mental/intellectual realm. This seems to be where the card is going this morning rather than a more modern, relationship driven meaning (your relationship with authority, culture at large, etc.)

If your emotions rule, and you are by nature heart over head, this is a caution to rein that in a little. Look before you leap. Like IBM used to say: THINK.

If you are naturally head over heart, this is your lucky day. Cleverness wins. If this was a Harry Potter movie, Hermione would save the day (again.) Being an “over-thinker” might not be such a bad thing at the moment. Especially if your thinking takes you a few steps ahead, as if you were playing chess.