Four of Arrows: Rest

My morning routine for the last week has been to wake up as early as I can manage (without making my fibro pain and exhaustion worse) and write three pages in my journal, then draw my card for today.

Today’s journal entry was all about how I need to work harder today than I did yesterday.

And then I drew this card.

Recharging after a period of stressful activity, work or emotional trauma. Allow time for the imagination to sojourn into the otherworld to renew and rejuvenate vitality.

Not what I hoped for.

Not what I think (thought?) I need today.

But one of the themes of this year is ‘coziness’ – nesting, finding ease and balance in my internal ecosystem.

Today will be busy – there are things I can’t avoid and can’t put off – but I’ll look for ways to rest in the gaps, rather than looking for ways to fit more work in.

And maybe I’ll set a firm bedtime for myself and go to bed early. It’s harder when the kids aren’t sleeping, but it might help.

I do love the arrows in this card, too. Danger thudding into the ground all around. That’s how I feel when I rest. That’s why I rarely do rest. It would be nice to learn how to trust that I can sleep even when it seems like my to do list is firing at me.

Knight of Vessels: Eel

It took a while to get to this card this morning. I had a rough morning. I am struggling.

I haven’t been asking a question with my daily draw this week. Just shuffling with the intention of learning something and then seeing what comes. But today I had a question – ‘what will get me through this day?’

And everything this week has been so airy – all Arrows and up in my head (except yesterday, of course, which I still don’t know how to integrate) and as I cut the deck and was ready to pull the card I thought, before I could stop myself (why did I want to stop myself?), ‘please give me some water.’

And then this eel!

So strong. So joyful and full of intention.

And then I saw the sword on the rock – air AND water!

It just felt really comforting.

The guidebook is full of meanings related to agreement, compliance, accord, union, arrival, purity of intent, quests of personal revelation, deep feelings expressed with sensitivity. The Eel, says the book, is a wise protector.

And the eel is associated with the Morrigan, whose been coming up recently for me.

I have a lot of thoughts about how to apply this to my life but here’s what I’m committing to: I will spend some time today writing, expressing my emotions. And I will have a bath, to find myself some of that watery comfort.

The Wheel, The Guardian, and Endurance

(The picture is sideways because the upright/reversal thing felt important but not straightforward.)

I drew 10: The Wheel today. Change. Cycles. Fate and choice interacting. (I am enjoying all the ways in which this deck interprets archetypes differently – the different names and meanings of the cards.)

There’s a lot going on in the card. To be honest, it doesn’t really resonate with me. So, to help me get a better sense of what to do with this, I drew some commentary cards. (If I’m honest, I found The Wheel an irritating draw this morning. I am feeling very frustrated with the interaction of my choices with the systems around me – with the way that my choices feel so right for me and yet are not making it easier to navigate this capitalist hellscape. I have internalized, even though I hate it and challenge it externally, the idea that if you do the right work – if you follow your heart and your passion – the money will follow. So, Wheel, where’s my money?! And I also found the setting of the card grating. I want to be outdoors! I want to be in the woods doing crafts and communing with nature – my life arranged so that I have long days in a cabin writing, and Skype coaching sessions, and trips into town to meet with clients and travel to conferences. This card looks like a window into a life I want.)

Anyway, commentary cards.

15: The Guardian. Fear and deep knowledge at the entrance to the cave.

And Five of Stones: Endurance. Also at the entrance to a cave.

So I wonder what I am afraid of, what I need to endure, what dark cave I might choose to explore – make a change, turn that wheel, make a choice.

~

I’m not really sure.

I know that I had some kinda feels about those two commentary cards – a sense of calm yesness to the idea of that Guardian, that reminder of my endurance.

But this morning’s cards aren’t speaking to me as clearly or as cleanly as I’d like.

I’ll have to take these thoughts forward into the day and see what happens.

(On which note: Jealousy on Monday ended up making a lot of sense as my sister and I navigated a difficult conversation about our fears for the upcoming project – that sense of scarcity was there, and leaning into the creative and giving nature of the project helped. And Balance yesterday also made a bit more sense at the end of the day, when I made a choice to stop working and take the last part of the evening off. So, we’ll see what happens with these.)

14: Balance

My card for today is Balance.

The write-up in the guide is all about how humanity has destroyed the balance with nature and it is a crime beyond comprehension. It was a rough read first thing this morning.

As I sit with this card and this thought and this day (which will be full of meetings and admin work and catching up on all the things I don’t want to catch up on), I feel the anxiety in my belly.

I know I need balance but I don’t know how to achieve it.

I know I need to take the time to reflect, to introspect, but I don’t know how to find that time.

I know I need to find my inner peace and stillness, but I don’t know how to find that while I’m also struggling so hard to make ends meet.

This feels like the right card but I don’t know how to act on it.

And I feel sad about that.

(It’s also interesting that this is the first card outside of the Arrows and it’s still a very airy card. Up in my head? Indeed.)

Three of Arrows: Jealousy

My card today is the Three of Arrows: Jealousy. The guidebook describes a ‘tension of emotions creating fear, jealousy or envy between people.’ I really appreciate that the guidebook includes acknowledgement of how jealousy can have its origin in lack, scarcity, and injustice. It even references broken economic systems.

When I pulled the card this morning, I felt immediately let down.

Yesterday’s draw of the Kingfisher was so encouraging, and the guiding questions actually did shape the discussion my sister and I had of our project.

Later in the day, in a moment of emotional struggle, I pulled another card. The Five of Arrows: Frustration. The write up spoke directly to my experience – ‘Take a deep breath and steady your mind and see clearly what the goal is.’ I did, and it helped.

But what do I do with today’s card?

I can’t see where it applies to this day, to this moment.

As I write this, I realize that I’ve said, ‘I just feel so much envy lately’ about twenty times in the last two months. Envy and jealousy, growing out of my own sense of financial precarity (which is getting worse) and physical pain (also getting worse) and to-do list overwhelm (also getting worse, especially with my Masters program starting now) and my business not taking off as quickly as I want (and feel that I need) – I have been struggling. Every time a friend has a success, I feel that stab of envy. And it mixes with my joy for them in a way that feels so overwhelming. I am sincerely happy for my communities and for the people around me who are finding stability and success and ease. And also I am deeply sad for myself, and I want that for myself.

Life feels hard lately.

The financial stuff especially. It just feels so hard.

So… hmm.

The guidebook suggests that:

The healing balm for envy is humility, acceptance, and forgiveness, even in the face of bitter rivalry and anger, just as the constant refocusing of your energy into a positive and creative momentum in your own life is the best healer for the effects of jealousy.

I can definitely stay focused on my positive and creative momentum. And I guess I’ll watch for opportunities to practice acceptance, forgiveness, and humility today.

It is such a hard topic and a hard feeling, and it has been with me for so long – this feeling of being deep within scarcity.

Do I read this card as validation of my struggle?

Do I read it as condemnation?

It definitely feels judgemental and hurtful, and I think maybe that’s the best opportunity in front of me right now to practice finding a new narrative. Because it doesn’t have to be condemning. It can be validating and encouraging.

So, I’m going to try to reach for that.

King of Arrows: Kingfisher

This is the first card I’ve drawn from my new Wildwood Tarot.

I’m in Canmore right now, with my sister, working out the logistics for a new collaborative project. I opened my deck last night, looked at all the cards, read the intro. They weren’t ready to shuffle yet, so I left them overnight.

This morning, I journaled and it was a hard process of coming back to the page, bringing my anxiety and fear and shame and overwhelm, writing about how I feel so lost – I wrote, ‘I want to sink deeply into the peace of this moment – this is exactly the kind of thing I want to bring more fully and more often into my life. This moment, this setting. But instead of sinking into this, I am tossing around on the stormy surface of my mind, thinking about everything I need to do, everything I am behind on, everything coming up that I am going to fail at. I am thinking about failure a lot.’

After journaling, I was going to get to work. But I walked past the coffee table and there was that deck. Waiting. Ready now.

First, I divided it up.

The core of me, and then my elements. Air, fire, earth, water.

I split the core of me across the elements. Starting with fire – finding myself in my passions. Then earth. Then water. Then air, last.

I split my earth across the stacks. Bringing grounding into every part of myself.

I split my fire, lending passion to each piece of me.

Then my water.

Last, my air. Finally able to see how this thinking/overthinking self is still a part of each piece of me.

Then I combined them all and shuffled, split the deck, and pulled this card for today.

From the guidebook:

This tiny bird, both sexes covered with the colours of the rainbow, is equally at home in the air or in the water. …

You may need to exercise judgement, power, force of will. …

Finding a way through chaos by calm clarity. Being watchful. The need for good counsel. Discerning the truth of a situation. Finding an impartial standpoint. Being fair/unfair. An urge to buck the system. …

What must you focus upon clearly? Who can give you good advice? What wise words will help this situation? What is your duty to society?

Considering how much I struggled to accept any air this morning, how I was seeing my mind as the stormy surface and the threat, this feels powerful. It is possible to be in my mind and still access my intuition and my heart.

The bird is bright and strong and determined.

The questions are relevant to my day and to this work.

It feels good.

Steampunk Strength

I took today off(ish) – I still had a lot to get done, but I let myself focus on the things I wanted to do.

One important project was to get started on tidying up my bedroom so that I can set up a small desk and have a space to write, where I can close the door and have some quiet to work even on days when the kids are here. Right now my office space is in the dining room, and that’s fine when the kids are occupied or not here, but it doesn’t work when they’re loud or need attention.

As I was organizing things, I came across the Steampunk Tarot.

I bought it over a year and a half ago and had never opened it. I bought it at a difficult period in my life and it never felt like the right time to open it and use it. I bought it for the wrong reasons – it was supposed to be something that would help me bond with my partner, at a time when he was still unsure whether being with me was the right thing for him. I bought it out of desperation, and the hope that I could, by offering enough fun bonding activities, force the connection.

I should have trusted that the connection wouldn’t need to be forced, and I should have known that forcing it wouldn’t be the right way to approach it anyway.

Thankfully, even though I bought the deck for the wrong reasons, I never opened it and tried to use it the way I had first intended. Instead, it sat in its cellophane for a long time, until today.

Today, it felt right.

I was here, at home, alone. The house was quiet. I cleared off some space on the kitchen table, opened up the deck, and shuffled.

It felt really good.

The cards felt good.

The steampunk design felt good.

It just felt like the right time to meet this new deck.

When I was done shuffling, I cut the deck and drew a card.

Steampunk strength

From the book (edited):

“Thank you for your kind aid. Instead of devouring you, I will serve you.”

Core meaning: Calm control and healing that brings strength.

Cards from older tarot decks show a human wrestling a wild lion. This expressed the idea that people had a wild, or evil, side of themselves that must be constantly fought, repressed, and controlled or it would take them over and utterly destroy them.

This woman suggests a different tack. She believes the lion that stalks her is simply a symbol of her shadow self. In Jungian terms, the shadow self is comprised of all the parts of ourselves that we dislike, don’t value, and are ashamed of. These parts, she says, are not bad in and of themselves; rather, they are aspects of ourselves that have been wounded.

She counsels that we approach our inner monsters with compassion, because that makes it easier to determine what caused the damage in the first place. Once we identify the root cause, we can remove it, just as she has extracted that gear from her lion’s paw. Yes, it hurts, and yes, it is scary. The lion will probably roar – you may even get scratched or bitten. But it must be done, for only then can healing begin. From this healing comes strength.

What we hid from – our anger, our fear, our emotional needs [I would add, our trauma] – we now welcome and learn how to express in our lives in a healthy and useful manner.

When confronted with the Strength card, you are well advised to tap into your deepest inner strength and express it with calm compassion. The infinity symbol in this card represents your connection with all aspects of yourself. In this card, it creates amazing strength. Find that connection; feel that strength.

This was both exactly what I needed to hear, and exactly what I have been talking about recently. It felt like such a lovely confirmation.

I’ve spent a bit of time with the book and it just feels so good. I love steampunk aesthetic, and I love the ways in which steampunk culture has the potential to envision inclusive and socially just past-futures. (That said, I don’t love how a lot of steampunk culture ends up being very colonialist, white supremacist, heteronormative, transantagonistic, and misogynist.)

I’m so glad I found this deck today, and had some time to spend with it. I am pretty excited about seeing what stories we can tell together, and I love the reminder to find wholeness and integration, to make space for my monsters and to find strength in healing.

Business communication spread

I picked up Sasha Graham’s book 365 Tarot Spreads, and today’s spread is a 9-card business communication spread.

Since I’m continuing to navigate the early days of my new business(es) (check out my website! support my Patreon!), it seemed worth doing.

1 – What is my vision?

The Fool. Yes!!! This is my heart card. And it feels so right for my work now – leaning into vulnerabilities, finding creative ways forward, navigating new stories and helping other people find their way through self-care and self-storying. Transitions, and the beginnings of journeys. Courage. Willingness to step forward, to take risks, to fail and to try again. Yes.

2 – What opens my perception to hear others?

The Hanged Man. Staying still, looking at things from new perspectives, letting myself be present with the discomfort and with experiences that are outside of my normal. I like this.

3 – How do I present myself in the best way possible?

Six of Cups. Reaching back into my memories, engaging my sense of playfulness, sharing my history and building community. Grounding myself in my roots (and finding my roots – I also read this as an invitation to explore my own cultural history as well, and to mine my memories for richness and depth when it comes to self-care strategies and narratives).

4 – How do I maintain clarity?

King of Wands. Stay focused on moving forward, ground myself in the fiery energy of the wands and be confident in my approach. I read this as a reminder that I do have the skills that I need, and that clarity comes when I stop doubting myself and hesitating.

5 – Do I adequately express enthusiasm?

The Hermit. I think this pairs with the King of Wands, and is a bit of poke at my deep reluctance to do any real marketing or promotion. How can people find me, and work with me, if I’m hermiting away for fear of failure? There are times when The Hermit is a great card to sit with, but here I think it’s a reminder to not engage so much of this hidden and inward-turned energy.

6 – What helps me negotiate?

The Wheel of Fortune. Flexibility and an awareness that things change. I read this as encouragement when it comes to my growing focus on the Patreon rather than the standard services-for-payment business, because the Patreon is much more in line with my socialist leanings and my desire to make my work freely available, so that people can find it regardless of their changing circumstances. It’s also a reminder of why sliding scale is built into everything I do.

7 – Am I following up in the best way possible?

Four of Wands. This is such a sweet and encouraging card – especially in the Shadowscapes deck, in this position, in this spread. The leaping gazelles are graceful and coordinated, and the card’s focus on peacefulness, restfulness, and stability is really encouraging. Often, I feel like everything is chaos and struggle right now. This card suggests to me that even though there is chaos and struggle, for sure, I am doing the best that I can in this situation, and my ongoing efforts are coordinated and there is some grace underneath all the flailing. This is a sigh of relief.

8 – What stands in my way?

Queen of Cups. This card means so much to me, and in this position I really had to stop and reflect on it. Are my emotions standing in my way? No. But, given how immobilized I have felt at points in the last few weeks, I think my desire to master my emotions is standing in my way. I need to embrace more of The Fool’s energy, and allow myself to be early in the journey. The desire to not move forward unless I can move forward with mastery is getting in my way.

9 – How can I use communication to grow my business in the best way possible?

Hilariously, Seven of Cups. I read this more as the deck sassing me over my lack of a clear focus, and perhaps as an invitation to embrace that lack of clarity and just be open with my potential clients about the false starts and uncertainty – about both the lofty visions and the confusion.

I find it interesting that this business communication spread didn’t include any swords or any pentacles. Nothing about airy element that governs communication, and nothing about the earthy coins that look at material positions and possessions.

It’s all Cups and Wands and Majors – heart and hand and the journey. Feeling my way forward!

Stay with the trouble

stay with the trouble spread

One of my favourite spreads is this three-card spread.

The first (top) card is the situation, or me within the situation.

The card on the left is the wrong path, or what I should be careful of.

The card on the right is the right path, or what could be helpful.

When I pulled these cards yesterday, I had a super intense reaction of joy to the Knight of Wands. Finally I’m away from the fives! Finally it is my time to act! To move forward confidently and assertively! The embrace action, and the forwardness of a Knight!

(Note, that card’s on the left. I am not great at left/right. It took me a solid minute of delightedly imagining myself charging forward before I realized my mistake.)

Once I did realize my mistake, I was a little bit crushed. More than a little bit crushed.

But my approach to tarot has always been that the cards offer a conversation, a map, an invitation. They do not dictate absolutely, and they do not close doors – they offer ways of seeing, ways of knowing, ways of moving forward.

I try to approach every tarot spread with some openness, some reflectiveness.

If, after breathing with it for a moment, I really had felt like the Knight of Wands was the right path, my personal approach to tarot leaves the option open to switch those cards around. I have had very positive experiences with shifting the narrative in a spread by moving cards around, drawing new cards, and engaging in the conversation.

But, sitting on my “read as soon as possible” bookshelf is Donna Haraway’s book Staying With The Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. As I looked at the Five of Wands – yet another five, my third in three readings, challenges everywhere – I thought about Haraway’s book. I wondered if there is wisdom in staying with this trouble.

This morning, after another night of staying away and thinking about gender things and parenting things and oppression things, and dreaming about my dogs who have been gone a long time – after another difficult night following weeks of difficult nights – I pulled Haraway’s book off the shelf.

Trouble is an interesting word. It derives from the thirteenth-century French verb meaning “to stir up,” “to make cloudy,” to disturb.” We – all of us on Terra – live in disturbing times, mixed-up times, troubling and turbid times. The task is to become capable, with each other in all of our bumptious kinds, of response. Mixed-up times are overflowing with both pain and joy – with vastly unjust patterns of pain and joy, with unnecessary killing of ongoingness but also with necessary resurgence. The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present. Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places. In urgent times, many of us are tempted to address trouble in terms of making an imagined future safe, of stopping something from happening that looms in the future, of clearing away the present and the past in order to make futures for coming gnerations. Staying with teh trouble does not require such a relationship to times called the future. In fact, staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salcific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings.

Donna Haraway, Introduction, Staying With the Trouble

“Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places.”

Oof.

Right in the feels.

And so, this spread that suggests staying with the trouble, that keeps me in the fives of the deck, ends up feeling right in an uncomfortable and hopeful way. Make trouble. Stir up potent response to devastating events. Settle troubled waters. Rebuild quiet spaces.

The ideas of settling troubled waters and rebuilding quiet spaces echo back to that Five of Pentacles earlier in the week. Find ways to bring peace, quiet, and calm to my home base. Set boundaries around how much the trouble agitates at home and in my relationships. Find connection, and create quiet spaces within which that connection can flourish.

And the idea of stirring up potent responses to devastating events calls back to the Five of Swords, and the idea of choosing the fight and knowing the cost.

The way forward, the right path, is the Five of Wands. Staying with the trouble.

And myself, at the centre, The Magician. Intention. Will.

As Beth at Little Red Tarot says,

Begin, now, with what you have.

A phrase I’ve been banging on about lately. This Magician doesn’t have much in the way of material resources. Yet they have everything they need. This is a perfect, poised moment, having gathered their personal resources – the four elements hanging from those wings – they now reach for the fifth. This is the moment of asking, the very moment of intention setting. You can already see the magic happening – that green ball or energy, levitating between their hands, the lemniscate glowing above their head. Something exciting is about to happen… because The Magician wills it so.

In this card, I read an invitation to maintain balance – to keep each of my many selves present. Not to get lost in one specific fight or one kind of “trouble” – to keep each element in balance.

And I also read an invitation to stay focused, and to remember my power. To draw on the resources I do have, rather than getting lost in hopelessness thinking about the resources I don’t have. To be creative, inventive, intentional in my actions.

To stay with the trouble, but to keep an untroubled space within myself.

To be with it, and not to be it.

It feels useful, and helpful.

It’s a narrative I can work with.

It’s a map to self-care that I can read, a way forward that makes sense to me.

Still in the fives, but recognizing the potential that comes with that challenge.