It's not ALL in the cards. (a.k.a How I Read the Cards)

I do not ascribe any divinatory power to Tarot cards or people who read them.  Reading Tarot cards, for me, is nothing more than using images from the deck and some historical information about those images to get the mind to open to new ways of looking at a situation.  I'm not sure how this works, but it does not require any special abilities, though intuition, some level of intelligence, and life experiences do seem to add a lot. A recent examples shows what I mean.

Background:  At work we have seen many changes recently, especially in the overall organizational structure.  Most of us were not happy with these changes to such an extent that no one in our unit of nine people wanted to take on a newly formed coordinator position.  As the weeks passed I began to wonder what would happen if we didn't have someone step forward.  I had to seriously consider taking it myself and decided to get out the cards.  

I did not ask "Should I take this position?" or "What will happen if I take this position?"  My reading of the Tarot is much less amazing, I'm afraid.  I simple quieted myself down and drew three cards and asked "What do I need to think about when considering taking this position?" The three cards served as placeholders to guide my thinking about the things that had had happened up until that point, how the current situation was, and what I might imagine for the future of this position.  This is, of course, a Past, Present, Future Spread, but I shy away from that name with its assumption that there is something in the cards that will "speak" to my personal past, present, or future.  I drew the following:

The One of Cups:  A very emotional situation, but one without focus. Emotions in their nascent form. My colleagues hadn't really laid out what was so terrible about the new situation, but their anger was reactive. Emotion in its raw form.  I realized that my coworkers were still very angry about the decisions that had been made recently.  Any discussions seemed to always degenerate into bitch-sessions, without anything substantive about why the new organization was so bad. I had to get away from that kind of thinking about this situation.

The One of Swords:  A quick decision made with the intellect.  It was clear that something had to be done, someone had to step up and take the coordinator position.  I needed to decide if I was going to be that person.  I thought about how this job would affect me, about the different work I would be taking on.  The problem was I was trying to outguess so many future scenarios that I wasn't being practical.  Make a decision one way or another!

The Four of Swords:  A stable, grounded use of the intellect...and the danger of relying only on the intellect.  Taking on the position meant being rational in decision making and not falling prey to the drama surrounding the situation.  And at the same time, I could not be deaf to the view of those who were still feeling so wounded by what had happened to our unit.  The Four of Swords is in some ways confident in its use of the intellect.  But the danger of that is not being aware when a new, unexpected and perhaps irrational element comes into the picture.

It has been three weeks now since I took the position. So far, so good.  I know there are challenges ahead, but somehow I feel confident I can handle this and will look back on this as one of the best decisions I've ever made.

Goin' Papal

Whenever my card of the day is the Pope, I usually think of other people, wise people or teachers in my life or historical teachers that I might be currently reading about.  It might even be just some teachings without a specific person attached to them.

Today, that's not the case.  I look at the card and think of myself in my career as a teacher.  My eye is drawn to the fact that the Pope seems to be more in tune with one rather than the other.  Does he favor one over the other?  Is he more effective with one than the other? This has always been a problem for me.  Don't get me wrong:  I'm fair with respect to workload, grades, etc.  I want every student to succeed and have always been more of a "guide by the side rather than a sage on the stage"...long before that phrase became popular.  

The Pope reminds me to think about how I don't always know how to work with the students who are underprepared, overworked, and dealing with a host of non-class related issues.  What "sage advice" do I have to offer those students? It's so easy to teach those who are prepared.  But how can I be more of a true teacher for students whose lives are filled with all kinds of non-education related stress and struggles?  

 

Perhaps France

I got back to my art journal this weekend.  Why does it take a rainstorm for me to do that?

Books, books, books

Will I ever be able to stop buying and reading books?

It's not about the cup.

Cups have been a big theme lately in my daily card pulls, but the King of Cups is always a welcomed sight.  I think what appeals to me most is that he isn't looking at the cup; he's almost ignoring it. I also like the large, open hat. There's something so open (open-minded?) and free about it.  It speaks to me of possibility.   Is it possible to put our emotions aside and not be so burdened with them?  To not allow them from taking over everthing?  I think so.

So often we think that we aren't in contol of our emotions.  Indeed, a phrase like "an emotional rollercoaster" brings to mind something we can't control.  We're just along for the ride and have to endure the ups and downs.

The King of Cups tells me something different, namely, that my emotional response to the world isn't the meaning of the world.  I can deal with my emotions by asking myself why I feel x, or what might be another way I could look at x that would bring about a different, more mature and even authentic emotional response. Can I even take the emotion out of the situation and see it uncolored by my feelings?

Can we get better at this as we age?  I would like to think that my responses will continue to become more regal and not so self-absorbed. 

What's love got to do with it?

The Ace of Cups got me thinking about love and how cynical I can be about love.  OK, maybe not cynical, but at least skeptical.  Wary.  Society seems to give us mixed signals about love.  In some religious traditions love is a gift from God.  We have phrases like "to fall in love" and "to be blinded by love."  Then there's the image of Cupid's arrow.  But this whole love mindset seems to be so passive and arbitrary.  It's something we have absolutely no control over.  At the same time society asks us when we're going to find Mr/Ms Right and settle down-- as if we were in control of this.  

So I'm taking the love out of the cup and replacing it with compassion.  And as this is the ace of the suit, I am reminded of potentiality.  Compassion needs to DO not just BE.  Just having the compassion doesn't guarantee anything will come of ut. Even when it's difficult to identify compassion in ourselves, we can ACT and SPEAK compassionately.  Compassion is easy when we see a child in need or even homeless person asking for money.  But can we still DO compassion when it comes to our ex causing all kinds of drama?  Can we find some compassion for people from the opposite end of the political spectrum?   Is there even a shred of compassion available for members of ISIS?  

What can we do daily to fill the cup, our hearts,  with compassion so that it spills over and becomes active?  Can it start with compassionate words and then actions?  It's not all that easy, but it's much more promising, and certainly more fulfilling, than waiting around for Mr. Tall-Dark-and-Handsome or the female equivalent.

 

Get a grip!

And then we have those weeks.  

I don't see Tarot as predictive or divinatory. I see how the cards can relate to personal life and lead to  reflection. Still, the Tower, or Maison Dieu, was the card I chose on the day of the car accident, and the Three of Coins was on the day of an important meeting I was chairing and hoping to keep all sides coming together, and, and, and... Let's leave it at that. There was coincidence. Synchonicity for some.  Whatever.  

What got me most though was that the handle of the sword on the Three of Swords kept sticking out to me.  As my eye wandered all over the card hoping for some meaning, it kept coming back to the handle. And then it was obivous. Get a grip!  It's not all that complicated.  Just control those things that you are supposed to and it'll all be fine.  And  I did just that.  What started as a complicated week on Saturday, filled with all kinds of BS, became so much more manageable when I just took hold of those things that I knew I could. 

Let's remember this.  Do you have a grip on the things that belong to you, the things that are within your control?  Does this realization temper (sword) all of the nonsense that seems to be flying around?  Sure, that Three of Swords can be rather practical, but heck, isn't it a reminder that ultimately we are the ones in control?