The Hush
Standing still
the world
is filled
with movement
as branches sway
and
leaves whisper
and the grasses
hiss
like a quiet
shush
as if trying
to quiet them all
to silence.
Month: November 2020
Self Care Saturday (On a Sunday)
These Saturday readings are (not usually) bearing in on any one thing or event in my life, as the question used is asking for a more general outlook. This is a self care exercise, and is not meant as a predictive reading… although that, too, happens on occasion.
The question is… What do I need to focus for self-care through the week ahead?
Earth – Seven of Diamonds atop Strength and Fuzzy Dice – It’s okay not to know everything that’s coming in advance. Remember that a part of strength is staying steadfast in moments of uncertainty. Your path is a long journey and there will be many times of uncertainty along the way, but with a foundation of your inner strength and conviction you will always be able to carry-on.
Air – Five of Clubs and Stray Sock – Standing up for what you believe and can sometimes make you feel very alone. Especially when you can’t manage to sway people to see reason, logic, or your own perspective. Don’t struggle in these alone times, but rather understand that this too is a part of your growth and brings meaning to your life. The universe has a plan.
Water – Eight of Clubs and Guestroom atop The Letter – It’s possible that this week you’re going to be feeling as if your emotions are trying to beat the crap out of you, or are going to fast for you to keep up with. These are the times that you need to reach out and get help. Don’t let the uncertainty swallow you up and create sleepless nights as a result.
Fire – Two of Swords and TV Dinner – Over the next week there will be a variety of different difficult choices to make. This isn’t the time to half ass things. Make sure that you’re paying attention and really thinking through your choices. This is about more than going with your gut.
Waning – The Elixir Witch and “No enemy can withstand a heartfelt cup of tea” – Although there are still some things you need to get done, like every year at this time of year, spellcraft needs to take a backseat at the moment. There’s just not enough time and not enough focus to continue on with it until after the holiday season has drawn to a close.
Waxing – The Crow Queen and “She is observing simply, she’s a witness” – Stay out of the business of the heartbreak of others right now. You have too much on your plate to be dealing with other peoples problems at the moment.
Take Away – This week might bring about worries about the future and a feeling of isolation, but remember that that is a feeling and it isn’t based in fact, just reactionary emotion. Set aside the distractions that pull your attention from what needs done right now. Everything else will wait while you put your all into what demands the lion’s share of your focus.
DECKS USED: GLOBAL FUSION INTUITIVE TAROT, EXTRAORDINARY ORACLE, MIRROR OF MAMA SHAMANA ORACLE
Enthusiastic Overburdening
Today’s meditation was just under ten minutes long, and was a guided meditation with interval timer for my piriformis stretches.
The topic of today’s guided meditation was about individuality. It was about not just following your own inner compass, but marching to the beat of your own drum.
To be fair, I didn’t really relate all that much to the pep talk. I’ve never really had much of a problem with peer pressure or felt the need to conform to the norms and expectations of others outside of my extremely overactive work ethic in relation to my father’s voice in my head. It was still a wonderful message, though, and one that I wish more people were comfortable with. That is… individuality over conformity.
Today’s draw is the Ace of Swords, which is traditionally a representation of the seed of new beginnings in the area of one’s thoughts, ideas, intellect, communication, and ambitions.
What stands out to me in the imagery of this card is the woman’s posture, and the size of the sword and crown that she holds. I know that in the image she is actually bowing to the sword and crown, but when I saw this image this morning… that is not what I saw. Instead, it appeared that she was struggling to carry those items.
This seems like an awful amount of weight for the girl to carry, and she appears to strain under the weight.
The message here is about how much you take on… and only taking what you can sustain. It’s all well and good to be bombarded with great ideas all the time, but when you start too any of them at once, suddenly you find that none of them end up completed.
DECK USED: TRADITIONAL MANGA TAROT
LionHart’s As Above So Below Challenge Prompt
Venus Question: How can I begin to do more of what I truly love?
Reading Summary: Allow your emotions to play a part (Ace of Cups), savor them (Nine of Cups), and create that sense of homecoming for your emotions like what you already feel for your creativity (Four of Wands).
Take Away: If I want to do more of what I truly love, I need to open up to my emotions more and allow them to have a more welcome and permanent place in my life. Right now I am still exploring them, but I’m not really comfortable with them.
By allowing my emotions to have the same type of value that I put on my creative spark, it will open me up to more opportunities for doing more of the things that I love.
DECK USED: ELEMENTAL TAROT
#DiscordTarotolicsNov2020 Challenge Prompt
Question: What do I need to focus on for self-care for this new moon?
Reading Summary: When it comes to dealing with your past (Six of Cups), take your time (Seven of Coins) on deciding what you want to deal with (Seven of Cups). Remember that it’s okay to set it behind you for now (Five of Cups), because sooner or later it will come around at a time you’ll prepared to deal with it (Six of Spears).
Take Away: What I need to focus on for self care this new moon has to do with leaving my past in the past for now.
I need to accept that I’m not yet in a place where I can deal with these things, but that by setting them aside to wait, I will allow myself the time I need to sort through everything and pick where to start with better clarity later on when I’m in a better place.
DECK USED: CATHARSIS TAROT
Heal & Transform November Challenge Prompt
Question: What physical daily habits or routines need reevaluated?
Reading Summary: When I feel the tendency to tense up and hunker down (Four of Pentacles), this is not the time to retreat but rather it is a time to open myself up and share (Six of Pentacles) with Gideon what I’m feeling so that he can help me deal with things (King of Cups).
Take Away: I’m not sure I would have considered this a daily habit, but it’s true that my natural instinct when I am feeling vulnerable or overtaken by emotion to curl into myself and “show my shell” like a turtle rather than dealing with those emotions or even bothering to give them a cursory examination.
The cards here indicate something I know, but that I need to be reminded of often as I try to change this well known habit. It is a reminder to reach out for help instead of closing myself off… and specifically to reach out to Gideon for his help in exploring and understanding the emotions and triggers that cause me to try and close myself off in the first place.
DECK USED: DARK WOOD TAROT
#ConnectWithYourDeckChallenge by E Roebuck-Jones
Question: What three to five qualities do I feel I want to embody?
The Hanged Man – I want to be able to take in different perspectives and always seek a deeper understanding. The more perspectives I see, the more I understand. The more I understand, the better person I become.
Page of Swords – This also means that I seek to be the perpetual student, always learning new things and exploring new ideas beyond my current knowledge base.
King of Swords – But at the same time, I want to be able to share my knowledge with others and inspire them to learn as well and expand their knowledge as they seek out their own answers.
Nine of Wands – I also desire to continue protecting and defending my personal values, and those things and people that mean the most to me. Sometimes this can feel like an uphill battle, but if it’s something I value enough to fight for… then it’s worth it.
King of Rings – I feel a deep seated need for stability and security, grounding and strength through a strong foundation beneath my feet. I don’t mind moving slow at getting there, as long as I am making progress in the right direction.
DECK USED: MARIGOLD TAROT
Gideon’s Challenge
A Moment of Temper
Deep rumbles
thrum in warning
of a storm to come
as dark eyes
cloud darker
brown to black
and features harden
from softness
to sharp angles
of a man starved
Take a breath
and turn your face
up
to let the rain
wash it away.
Photo © ZenStatePhotography
Morning Bonus Read – Situational Projections
The prompt for this reading came from one of my Discord servers and is as follows:
“There is a LOT of energy in the world this week. We are all carrying and absorbing a lot of anxiety, relief, uncertainty, etc, I’d guess. It’s crucial during these kinds of times to try to pay attention to our intuition underneath the anxiety, although this can be tricky to do. This week, pick one (or more) situation in your life that you need to make a decision on this month, and do a situation-action-outcome reading on it. The goal here is to get clarity and give our intuition (or spiritual guidance) a voice even in the midst of uncertainty and anxiety and big emotions.”
I chose to allow the cards to choose the situation discussed in the reading. Therefore, the cards pulled for “situation” are used to describe the situation that becomes the topic of the reading as a whole.
Situation No. 1
Situation – Two of Spades atop Ten of Hearts – Struggling with decision-making when it comes to working on my emotional growth. I’m so used to using logic and discounting my emotions that sometimes it’s extremely difficult for me to allow my emotions to filter into the decision making process. This means that I end up stuck and stagnant rather than moving forward. This is a problem I struggled with through the summer months and feels… unfinished.
Action – Two of Clubs – Taking the time to plan and strategize rather than just ignoring the problem or moving forward without a plan. I haven’t quite figured out how to do this yet. I think it has to do with making sure I’m focusing on where I want to go, though, instead of becoming distracted by that feeling of lack of progress and ending up stuck there.
Outcome – King of Diamonds – Taking control of my goals and being able to accomplish them from the rooted place of a stable foundation. The King of Diamonds indicates that allowing my emotions to have a say in my decision making process won’t steer me off track regardless of the fact it feels like it might.
Situation No. 2
Situation – Ten of Clubs – Overburdening myself is a situation that I find myself in a lot. Like… A LOT. Although, this summer I did make a few changes that seemed to help a good deal with my cycles of burnout and recovery.I managed to make it through all of the summer without a single burnout episode, actually, which is kind of unheard of. But now with the holiday rush upon me, I know that the old tendency to burn myself out until I’m not just overburdened but no longer able to function is on the rise.
Action – Nine of Diamonds – Pretending everything is all right and good and that I’m in a good place instead of looking at the problem. This is my main way of functioning through discomfort, whether that discomfort is pain or exhaustion, or any other number of situations. The problem is? When I do this it creates a well of closeted and walled off emotions, because I have to numb my insides for it to work.
Outcome – Four of Hearts – Delays due to dejection are the results of this unhealthy way of dealing with my tendency to overburden myself. As I am susceptible to clinical depression, dejection is not a safe thing for me as it allows the slope down into the pit of depression to become slippery, and the more slippery that slope becomes then the faster and easier I slide down into the pit. This reading is a warning about what not to do… and what to watch out for.
DECK USED: BAG OF BONES PLAYING CARDS
Stepping Up
Today’s meditation was just under twelve minutes long and was a guided meditation with interval timer for my piriformis stretches.
I really connected with the focus of today’s guided meditation, which was about not fighting so hard against pain and suffering, but instead allowing it to flow through you. The example used in the guided part of the meditation was a man dying of thirst finding a river, but unable to bring the water up to his lips because his hands were too busy trying to grasp the water tightly.
The thing is? When dealing with physical pain? This is absolutely true. You cannot heal physical pain by fighting against it. Tensing against pain only makes the pain worse, tensing when you fall only makes your injuries on impact worse. So it makes sense to me that it would be the same mentally as well. I just wish it wasn’t so hard to ease my grip in that area.
Today’s draw is the Justice card, which is traditionally a representation of “balancing the scales” between right and wrong, fairness, cause and effect situations, and the law. So at it’s core, this card is about balance and the constant adjustments that life and the world go through to keep everything in balance.
This might seem a bit strange, but what really stands out to me in the imagery of this card today is that the color of the figure’s shoes in the image match the gems in his crown. Also, that his one eye looks like it’s twitching.
These elements speak to me about the fact that sometimes you have to do more than think and intellectualize how you feel about things and how things should be. Sometimes you have to get off your ass and do the work to make things fair and to make sure things are balanced. The eye twitching is an indication of stress, speaking of the fact that making that transition from “I think it should be this way” to stepping up and making sure it is can be stressful. That doesn’t make it any less important, though.
DECK USED: TAROT OF THE LITTLE PRINCE
LionHart’s As Above So Below Challenge Prompt
Venus Question: A reminder of my personal values, my happiness, or how to remain aligned with what makes me feel good.
A Reminder of My Personal Values
The World atop Three of Swords – Even through the hardest of times when I’m feeling down and struggling with my negative inner dialogue, its important to remember where I’m going and that the ultimate goal on my journey is about bettering myself along the way.
Often I become far too focused upon money and material security and the inner voice in my head berates my ability to get done as much as I feel I should be able to have accomplished. But it’s important to remember that my true path in life is not about monetary and physical accomplishments, it’s about improving myself and becoming a better person.
A Reminder of My Happiness
The Emperor atop Two of Pentacles – Having control over the balance between responsibilities and personal life is extremely important to me, and when I feel that independence I am at my happiest. It makes me comfortable and happy to know that my life is my life and not controlled by others. I might make some mistakes, and I might tip those scales too far into the work side more often than I should, but the fact that I have the choice and the control to do so really is one of my greatest joys and comforts.
A Reminder of How To Stay Aligned With What Makes Me Feel Good
Eight of Pentacles atop The Sun – What makes me feel good about myself is my expertise. Being able to sink into those things that I excel it brings me a great deal of joy. It’s important to remember that the things you do are also things that bring you joy. Your actual -work- was once just a hobby and even now that it’s also work doesn’t mean you can’t bring the joy you always felt in creating beautiful things into the process.
DECK USED: TAROT DE LOS MUERTOS
#DiscordTarotolicsNov2020 Challenge Prompt
Question: My Desire / An Obstacle In My Path / The Solution
My Desire – The Star – More time dipping into spirituality and my connection with nature. Hope is like a wellspring of fresh air swirling through the spirit, and a lot of times I find myself so pessimistic that my hope falls down the drain and is lost in the weeds. I would very much like to spend less time focusing on my worries and more time focusing on my spirituality and, with it, my hopes for my future that are not monetarily motivated. I’m all too aware that the world runs on money, but my desire is that it wasn’t such a huge focal point in my life.
An Obstacle In My Path – Three of Pentacles – Work. Duh. *LOL* As I mentioned above. The world runs on money. I know that. Everyone knows that. And in order to have security and stability, which are two things I’m very much into having, you have to work either with or for others in one manner or another. It’s just the way it is.
The Solution – Six of Wands – Do the work that makes you happy and draws others to you. If you enjoy your work, it’s a little less work than it would be if you don’t enjoy it. So if you want to bring less monotony and more spirituality into your life, you need to focus on making your work more fun and more play and more pleasurable.
Twisting the Leaf 