Birthdays are like little personal New Year’s celebrations. They’re recognition of another good spin around the calendar, great times to rejoice and to reflect.
In honour of my own birthday, which happens tomorrow, I came up with a quick 3-card Tarot spread meant to explore how to best take advantage of my solar return.
It’s called the Happy Birth Day spread …
1. Happy – what’s the smoothest road to happiness for me this new year?
2. Birth – what positive new aspect of myself should I encourage to be born?
3. Day – how can I make today a fabulous and joy-filled one?
Even if it isn’t your birthday, you can try out the spread. Instead of ‘Birth’ you might insert ‘New’ and ask – what can I make new today?
Every day is an anniversary of last year. You can always find reason to enjoy, celebrate, and refresh.
Disturbed by fear-inducing superstitions surrounding things like Friday the 13th, black cats, broken mirrors, and the like, my very own black cat, Carl JK, suggested I share the following Clear Away The Fear Tarot spread.
Sometimes the things we’re afraid of are well worth being concerned about. Often though, we create fear from nothing.
The Clear Away The Fear spread is meant to explore areas in our life where false fears or superstitions might be holding us back from enjoying ourselves as fully as we can.
So take this Friday the 13th to try it out. Clear away your own fears, or at least look at them closely enough to make sure they’re worth your time.
Oh yes, and fear not the black cat. He brings good fortune.
Clear Away the Fear Tarot Spread
1. In what area of my life am I harboring superstitions or what might be irrational fears?
2. What about these fears have legitimacy?
3. What about these fears are creating a false state of panic?
4. What can I do to confront and deal with my legitimate concerns?
5. How might I replace the false fears with courage and positive action?
In complement to my Mother’s Day spread from May, for Father’s Day today we have a Father’s Day Spread.
It’s meant to be used in relation to your own father, or to anyone who has been an important model of stability, hard work, and personal authority in your life – even a woman.
The grand father in the Tarot is the Emperor.
At his best, he’s a character of strength, integrity, leadership, and power directed by love.
He knows what he wants, and does what’s necessary to attain it, especially in the name of protecting his home and his family.
Though fathers aren’t the only people who bear these traits, today we give thanks to those fathers who do, and to everyone else who takes on the role with honesty and compassion.
My own father has been a powerful, loving, and steadying influence in my life, keeping me on track and getting me to think and laugh along the way.
I’m very lucky and can’t thank him enough for everything he’s done. He’s the Emperor at his best.
So thank you Dad!! And to all the Dads out there, thank you!! Love and honour to you all!!!
Fathers’ Day Spread:
1. What have I learnt from my father?
2. How might I best incorporate that lesson into my life?
3. How might I acknowledge and or thank my father for this gift?
4. How can I get in touch with my own paternal nature?
5. How can I share the best of my paternal nature with others?
In honour of the Sun moving into Gemini yesterday, I thought we could celebrate with a Tarot spread – a Gemini Tarot Spread to be specific.
In Tarot, Gemini is ruled by the Lovers and often represents commitments, communication, relationships, and decision-making.
The Lovers
Though this is a great time to explore any of those topics, it’s the area of decision-making that I’d like to focus on in today’s spread.
Looking at all sides of an issue is one of the gifts of the Gemini energy, and in turn the Lovers.
But that same gift can also be a challenge when it comes to making a choice. Too much information can be confusing.
To help pull out the relevant issues in a decision-making situation, here’s a simple spread meant to examine two options (though of course you can add as many options to the lay out as you’d like).
Try it out …
Gemini Decision-Making Spread
1. What am I trying to do? This card is meant to look at the big picture, or the ultimate goal of either option.
2. Describe my options (2 cards) – Before you pull these cards, decide which of your options will be described by which card, ex. Option A: I take the job at company XYZ, Option B: I keep working freelance.
Check to see not only how each card describes what the options might look or feel like, but also how they relate to the first card you pulled.
Does there seem to be a connection or is the option described taking you somewhere completely different than you mean to go?
3. What are the challenges of Option A? What are the challenges of Option B?
4. What are the benefits of Option A? What are the benefits of Option B?
5. How am I likely to feel going forward if I choose Option A? How am I likely to feel going forward if I choose Option B?
Again, look to see how these cards not only describe how you might feel, but also how they compare to the other cards in their group, the other group, and the ultimate goal of your decision.
The exercise demonstrated in the video below is kind of interesting.
In it a woman holds a Tarot card she’s randomly chosen from the deck. Without looking at it, she concentrates on what she feels or senses around the card and jots down some words that come to mind.
She also draws out images she’s ‘getting’ from the card without actually seeing it.
It’s not a fast paced clip and the results aren’t earth shattering, but when it comes right down to it they are kind of remarkable.
I don’t know the people who made this film, so I can’t verify whether what’s going on in it is real or not. But I’ve done similar exercises myself and have achieved very similar results.
There are a lot of different ways to incorporate timing into your Tarot readings. Some are more complicated than others, but all of them can work.
You can designate cards in a spread to represent time periods, like last week, this week, and next week.
You can assign seasons to the suits, perhaps winter for the Swords, spring for the Cups, summer for the Wands, and Pentacles for autumn.
If you use the Golden Dawn system, you might follow their astrological assignments to determine when something happened or will happen in the future.
To learn more about that system, take a look at Douglas Gibbs’ excellent tutorial on the subject at Tarot Eon.
Timing might also be determined by the numbers on the cards themselves. Maybe the Major cards could represent months, while the Minors represent weeks.
In that case the Hermit could signify 9 months down the road or in the past, while the 7 of Pentacles would suggest 7 weeks.
Combined with the seasonal suit system, the 7 of Pentacles would then be pointing to the 7th week of winter.
Another way to determine timing in Tarot is to use the spread demonstrated by Lunar Wisdom in the video below.
It’s basically a yes/no spread that she uses to look over periods of one week at a time. I really like it.
As might be guessed from the title, it’s about the unconscious, and how much of what we experience in our conscious lives appears to arise out of or be directed by this mysterious and uncharted part of ourselves.
It’s really interesting stuff, and I highly recommend the book. Reading it made me want to ask my own unconscious what it thinks of itself. To do so of course, I turned to the Tarot.
The card I pulled when I asked ‘what is the nature of our unconscious?’ was the King of Cups.
In it, a king sits on a slab of concrete in the middle of an ocean. A fish pops out of the water to his right, while a boat sails past on his left.
What a perfect card for my question.
This is the emotional King, the one who communicates through feelings more easily than with logic. He intuitively senses how to navigate his way, and works very well with symbols and nuance.
And you could say that within this question, the King himself might represent consciousness. He’s the part of us that experiences sensation. He acts and emotes.
The ocean on the other hand, is like the unconscious. It’s deep, and dark, and for the most part unknown. Anything might pop up from under the waves or float by.
If we look at it this way, it’s also interesting to notice that the King takes up so much of the picture, when in fact he’s so little compared to the sea below and around him.
It’s similar to how we experience our consciousness relative to our unconscious. Our conscious mind seems to think it’s the one directing the action, or at least is the most important element in the picture.
Really though, it’s likely just a tiny speck on a giant ocean.
Since this is The Tarot Room, I thought we might seek out an obscure place in Tarot, and wondered if we could find something unfamiliar in the landscape of the very familiar RWS deck.
The card I randomly drew for this journey was the 6 of Swords, a very appropriate card.
It shows three people travelling by boat, perhaps on their way to an obscure place of their own.
Though the trio in the boat seems to be moving past them, I can’t help but notice the two islands in the background of the card.
I’ve never really considered these islands before. What a perfect obscure destination for today.
Since I can’t crawl into the image, I did the next best thing and pulled a card asking … what’s on the two islands pictured in the 6 of Swords?
The card I got was the 10 of Swords – pretty scary, we might not want to go there. The card shows a guy laying face down with ten swords in his back. There’s water behind him and dark clouds above.
Hmmm … not exactly what I expected. It looks like there’s been a murder of some sort on the island, or at least within the context of Tarot, the death of an idea. Swords represent ideas, thoughts, and ways of thinking.
The 10 of Swords specifically points to the end of a particular paradigm, or view of the world. When it appears, there’s no holding onto how you used to see things. The choice is only to move forward, with a new direction, and sense of purpose.
Not unlike the sense of direction and purpose exhibited by the three people in the boat. They know not to waste their time on distractions and won’t maroon themselves on the island.
Like the card they represent, they’re thinking is clear, balanced, and focused. They move steadily towards their goal while staying evenly afloat. Emotions and thoughts are in a comfortable union.
So it turns out that our obscure place might be obscure for a reason, and I for one don’t plan on going back. It taught me a little more about the 6 of Swords though, and for that alone, our Obscura voyage was worth the trip.
