Oxygen
So long spent
encased in ice
the dark cold
a cling
against flesh
against soul
and yet
the thaw comes
in small increments
and through
frozen embrace
a small tendril
just a tip
finds fresh air
and breathes deep
Morning Bonus Read – Monthly Key Spread
Key to Your Heart: What will Guide you to make decisions that are aligned with your heart and your truths this month?
Lily – Maturity. Make sure that you are thinking through your decisions and not just leaving things up to chance or personal whims. Be especially thoughtful, responsible, and mature in considering what you need to do and how you need to go about doing it this month.
Anchor: What will ground you in the face of anxiety, stress, overwhelm, and existential dread in general?
Clover – Luck and optimism. It’s far too easy to let your worries and fears sneak in and start screwing with you, but keep in mind that just because you worry about something doesn’t make it into reality. By leaning into a bit of faith concerning luck and encouraging yourself to keep an optimistic mindset, you can circumvent fears and keep them from becoming self fulfilling prophesy.
Star Wand: What accelerates your magic, creativity, and manifestation powers?
Tree – Spiritual connections and longevity of practice. Lean into the things that work for you spiritually and reconnect with your path and practice. When you are more deeply connected to your spiritual path and your practice, your magic, creativity, and manifestation powers flourish. Throughout this month, as you pull out of the pit of your depression and rediscover your equilibrium, it is important to make sure you connect back into your path and practice instead of setting these things on the back burner.
Blessings from the Stars: The Universe has got your back – how will you be supported this month?
House – You are blessed with the security and stability of a home, and roof, and support of those that live there with you. In the chaos that the world can sometimes throw your way, this is where you need to return to recover and retreat to find peace.Â
One Trick Up Your Sleeve: A life saving idea or inspiration for any unexpected challenge or difficult moments?
Stars – Again we find the advice is to lean into your optimism and allow hope to thrive. Allow moments of inspiration and intuition to help guide you, and keep your perspective uplifted and bright as you work through challenges and difficulties. Positivity is your friend this month, so lean into it and let it help you get through these moments.
Emergence Pt 1: What is emerging within you / within your reality right now?
Rider – As you climb further up the walls of depression’s pit and find the light, vitality and a renewed energy will continue to grow within you. You will see the light more clearly, feel it more distinctly, and be able to take from it what’s needed to rekindle your passions toward your purpose.Â
Emergence Pt 2: What are you expanding towards?
Coffin – There is a warning here that without the armament of positivity and optimism you risk moving in the wrong direction and sliding back toward depression and negativity. You have a chance to adjust this trajectory, but it will take connecting to the elements mentioned above that include a conscious effort towards optimism, a reconnection with your spiritual path and practices, and allowing hope to have a place within your life and outlook while grounding yourself in measured and mature decision making practices.
DECK USED:Â LITTLE LULU’S LUCKY LENORMAND
Even the Strongest Pace Themselves
Today’s meditation was skipped as the girls just would NOT let me have some time alone to get it done. I may try to do a ten minute shortie before bed though.
Today’s draw is the King of Pentacles, which is a representation of a projective alpha energy, personality, or person in the area of one’s finances, resources, home life, health, manifestations, and the physical world. This often translates into themes about taking charge of one’s finances, responsibilities that come with wealth, and stepping in as the head of the household.
What really stands out to me in the imagery of this card today is the grapes and the skulls. It’s not surprising that the card would contain thriving grapes winding their way through the imagery as this card is a strong indication of growth, maturity, and abundance. The skulls were a bit more of a surprise though, and together they give the impression of hardass ruthlessness to me. The whole “my way or the highway, or heads will roll” sort of thing.
When combined with the Thera-Pets card for today, the message that I find in these cards is that sometimes you have to straighten your spine and take control even when, perhaps, it isn’t what you’d prefer to do. In those times, it’s still okay to do your best, but not over tax and overwhelm yourself to the breaking point. Even leaders need to breath and even the strongest authorities can’t wring blood from a stone.
Do what you can, and it will be enough. The only authority you have to impress is yourself. So lower your expectations to a realistic level and interject a bit more understanding into that push for more.
DECK USED:Â LAZY CROW TAROT AND THERA-PETS EMOTIONAL SUPPORT ANIMAL CARDS
The Marching Into Darkness Tarot Challenge Prompt
Question: How do I allow the negative thoughts or words of others to affect me? How might I change my reactions to that?
How do I allow the negative thoughts of others to affect me?
Eight of Pentacles
The Eight of Pentacles here is a reminder that you have been working with this particular issue with your therapist ever since your face was scarred. You are not psychic and cannot read minds, thus the issue here is “mind reading” of the psychotherapy variety. When you were first scarred, you did a great deal of this, interjecting your feelings about how you felt concerning your appearance into what you believed others thought of you when they saw your face. After many years of working with your therapist on this issue, it is no longer a huge issue. You know how to deal with it when it rises up, and have become an “old hand” in this area at making sure that you do not assume what others are thinking about you, often by asking outright when needed.
How do I allow the negative words of others to affect me?
Five of Cups atop The Emperor
This, unlike perceived thoughts, is something more solid and can affect you in a negative way when you let it. The key words there (as indicated by the Emperor) are “when you let it”. Sometimes people’s negative words don’t affect you at all, at other times they do. This is about how strong and in control of yourself that you feel in the moment, but has nothing to do with them at all. When you are feeling vulnerable, people’s negative words can affect you intensely and cause hurt feelings, melancholy, and dissatisfaction. When you are feeling strong, on the other hand, they don’t affect you at all other than in an analytical “examination of if there’s truly an issue” sort of way.
How can I adjust my reactions to something more healthy?
Death atop Two of Pentacles
The horses here in these two cards combined with the mutual direction they face indicate movement forward into the future.  The death card is a reminder that all things change with time, whereas the Two of Pentacles beneath it indicate that you have the ability to control certain aspects of your life throughout the process of those slow shifting changes and direct your energy how you wish. The message here is to “keep on keeping on” and allow the feelings stirred up from negative words to slide off into the past as you continue forward into the future. Leave them behind and keep going, as it is not their judgements you need to worry about.
DECK USED:Â PAULINA TAROT
#DiscordTarotolicsMar2021 Challenge Prompt
Philosophical Question: Is patience and inherent virtue, or is it learned behavior?
Reading Summary: Patience is used in order to get what we want (Knight of Cups), seize control of our lives (The Chariot), or wait out the impetuousness of others (Five of Wands).
Take Away: Patience is not something we are born with but something we learn. It is a method of behavior that is learned in order to mold the world around us into something more in line with what we want out of life. Some learn through experience that being brash and loud and impatient gives them what they desire.
Others learn that patience has the rewards they want without the need for conflict and chaos. This is something learned through experience and observation of others. Thus, patience is not something we are born with, but is learned behavior.
DECK USED:Â LAZY CROW TAROT
I dusted off the coffee table, which is much more of an endeavor than you might think because my coffee table is about the size of a small dining room table and it’s filled with decks and jewelry making supplies as well as an adhesive workstation, etc. So there’s a lot of organizing and shuffling stuff around involved in the process.  The dust there has been bugging me for a while tho, and no one else will touch it because they fear relocating something I need and then won’t be able to find when I need it.
Gideon’s Challenge
The Sentinels
Among skeletons
they stand
proud and strong
full and weighted
by wet fluff
impervious
to the chill
Fenced in
but lush
they are
sentinals
in a world gone
baren
and cold
Photo © ZenStatePhotography
Tea Time… Worldwide
Today’s meditation was just under nineteen minutes long and was the next installment of the mantra meditation series that I have been following along with in the Oak app.
The meditation was very relaxing and I’m starting to suspect that the reason I’m struggling with my meditation so often in the past is because I’m not doing it for long enough. Ten minutes might be more viable as far as time and scheduling goes, but I feel like I’m getting more out of the longer meditations that I’ve been doing over the past few days. You wouldn’t think that the addition of just five or ten minutes would make that much of a difference, and yet it feels like there is a definite benefit and increase in quality to the longer meditations than my shorter ten minute ones.
Today’s draw is the Six of Pentacles, which is traditionally a representation of generosity, sharing, and leveling out the scales between the “haves” and the “have nots” through the process of giving and receiving.
For the longest time when I was young, I didn’t like tea. I didn’t drink it and I thought it was nasty. ALL tea. It didn’t matter if you added sugar, honey, sweetener, etc. And god forbid lemon (as I’m allergic to lemons). It didn’t matter if it was hot or cold, herbal or black. I didn’t like it.
This was long lamented by both of my parents, who said that everyone drinks tea… all around the world. When I see this card, I am reminded of my mother’s words as she insisted that tea is the common denominator between races and creeds. (Of course her words ended with, “so why should you, just a little boy, go against the world’s equality?”)
In a way, they were right. Although everyone around the world does not drink tea, there is a significant swath of those that do that go beyond countries and borders, continents and ideologies. There are tea drinkers in (nearly) every culture on earth and I would (without having any real research on this) be willing to venture that other than water, it’s the most consumed beverage in the world and has been for hundreds of years (or more).
In time (in my 20’s) I learned to enjoy tea, although I only drink herbal teas and avoid anything with caffeine. In fact, I drink tea every morning along with my first meal of the day. And what I see in the message of this card, combined with the Thera-Pets card for the day has to do with how long it took me to actually appreciate tea.
No matter how much pushing and shoving, begging or insisting my parents did? Back when I was a child I had absolutely no taste for it. I didn’t like it (or any hot beverage, for that matter). But in time, in the future, I eventually found my way to it at my own pace in my own way.
Don’t worry if you can’t get into whatever it is you (or others) think you should get into or get done today. If it’s meant to be? You’ll get it done when the time is right. It’s okay if it’s not right this moment.
DECK USED:Â TAROT OF MYSTICAL MOMENTS AND THERA-PETS EMOTIONAL SUPPORT ANIMAL CARDS
#ConnectWithYourDeckChallenge by E Roebuck-Jones
Question: How can better I listen to my inner voice?
Reading Summary:Â Painful moments (Three of Swords) are new opportunities (Ace of Pentacles) just waiting for you to reach out and take advantage of them (Strength).
Take Away: The thing about painful moments? Is that it is in those moments that opportunities are born. The problem is that we’re so distracted by the pain that we miss the opportunity entirely. Later on we may look back and go “damn, I wish I’d handled all that differently” but in the moment? It can be hard to see that we’re being handed an opportunity for something new to emerge in our lives.
To increase my intuitive abilities and begin to hear that inner voice more clearly, the cards indicate that I need to remember the above about those moments and begin looking for those opportunities. Don’t get so focused on the pain that I end up forgetting to keep my eyes open and let an awareness of what is being offered pass me by.
DECK USED:Â THE SHIMMERING VEIL TAROT
#DiscordTarotolicsMar2021 Challenge Prompt
Question: What can I do to encourage that arrival? (Built off of yesterday’s read.)
Reading Summary: Think over your options before you make a decision (Two of Swords). Take control of your motivation and your inspiration and use them to create forward motion (King of Wands). Lean into what’s familiar and allow it to not just guide you but lift you up when you need a little extra boost (Six of Cups).
Take Away: Yesterday’s reading was about making clever, intelligent, cunning, strategic, good choices that then create fertile soil for good things to grow from. The advice today on how to encourage this outcome is that I need to really take time to think through what I’m doing and stay focused on the direction I want things to go in while I do so.
There is a correlation between the first card and the third card through atmosphere and color that also speaks of needing to keep an optimistic outlook while I mull over these decisions, and allow what is familiar in my life (my values and moral compass) to guide me when I’m feeling torn or confused.
DECK USED:Â TAROT OF MYSTICAL MOMENTS
I went back to the store a second time when I realized that I’d forgotten to buy Imodium. I think this counts because I really didn’t want to go back and considered just saying “fuck it” and suffering with the stomach ache instead of returning to the store again.
Gideon’s Challenge
I Climb
Fluffly tufts
of soft white
cling precariously
to delicate spines
like my fingernails
digging deep
into the walls
upon which I climb
searching
for the light
but only finding
a small glimmer
from time to time
to dazzle the eye
