Tarot Tuesday

The Devil

The keywords of the Devil include...money matters, feeling the burden of the material side of life and the desire for physical and material things. Feeling of frustration and oppression. A tendency to collect and hoard money and material objects... lust and sexual obsession. Wow, that's a heavy list! 

The lesson the Devil  tries to teach us is one of simple awareness and human empowerment. Once we begin to realize that darkness or the potential to do evil is a natural part of each and every member of the human race, we can then begin to gain mastery over it. All human beings have the capacity to get the upper hand over this by tapping into the goodness that also dwells within us all. 

Once a person becomes properly self aware to the point where they are no longer controlled by the pull of addictions, wants and greed, it  allows them to gain freedom from fear of being controlled by other people, as well as other forces that are always at work in the world at large.

When the Devil card makes an appearance in a tarot spread, it is typically letting the querent know that he/she is currently in a situation that has robbed him/her of control over their own life in one way or another... most likely through their own mistakes (or perhaps mistaken perceptions). However, the appearance of this card also signals the possible start of a chain reaction that can lead to no good if it's not nipped in the bud sooner rather than later.  

Poorly thought out actions lead to loss of control and loss of control in turn leads to insecurity, depression, and further inactivity. Once elements like that set in and begin to affect a life, it can be very difficult to turn things around.

The solution to this problem is for the querent to reclaim control over his personal power and identity. The Devil can only conquer you if you believe it can. This is a call to leave ignorance, indolence, and materialism behind. True happiness and success results from getting in touch with the spiritual being at one's core and realizing that strength comes from within... not without.

The Star And The Emperor's Shadow

Once upon a time, in a land very far from here, there lived the Star.The Star radiated with her own inner beauty and had the gifts of pleasure in nature, reasoned intuition and of shining hope. Those who experienced difficulties or were depressed or unwell traveled from far and wide to ask the Star for healing. There was something about her twinkling light that drew them out of themselves and up into a higher plane, because as we all know, with our eyes heavenward, we no longer feel the distress of earthly woes.

One day, while filling her shiny silver pitcher with water at the tranquil pond of hope, a small band of the Emperor's Knights happened to come upon her while riding their horses back from battle and were struck by her ethereal and somewhat other-worldly presence. All the harshness and density of their everyday lives seemed to slip away and they began to feel uplifted and blessed to be in her company. One Knight, so taken by her radiance, dismounted his big black horse and approached the Star.

"What are you doing maiden?" he asked and the Star answered simply with the beautiful clear voice of a soprano "I am filling my pitcher from which I renew joy and hope to my garden." The Knight's grief and despair that had overwhelmed him from the many battles he seen, instantly vanished and a sense of hope, enlightenment and great happiness filled him. He became filled with purpose and that knew he must tell the Emperor of the inspiration and enlightenment that he had found when hearing the maiden speak.

Now the Emperor who was short and pudgy, hard and aggressive and prone to sudden fits of irrational rage, had become very disenchanted with life after claiming the throne from his controlling and very rigid father (who recently had met with a sudden and untimely end during a jousting exhibition in which he arrogantly bragged of his military prowess.) The Emperor had long ago given up his sense of wonder and adventure and had become entrenched in stubbornness and took great pleasure in choosing domination over  balanced authority when dealing with his subjects.

When hearing his Knight's tale, a plan began to take shape in the shadow recesses of the Emperor's brain and he went to bed that night plotting of just how he might possibly squelch these silly, nonsensical, fluffy bunny qualities that his Knight had claimed that the Star possessed. After all, he couldn't let this maiden influence his subjects in such a manor, giving them hope and confidence in themselves, challenging his heavy handed control. "There must be a way to stop it...but how?" he grumbled.

(part two next Thursday)

"Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value."-Albert Einstein

Tarot Shadow Work- Regression

Regression, if only I were young again...How often have I thought about better times long, long ago when all was right with the world and things were pleasant...*sigh*  Okay, reality check here, I'm rapidly approaching the big 44 here soon and if I  remember correctly, the good times were pretty darn crappy.  So, enough of the "Peter Pan" defense mechanism and the brief midlife crisis moment..

Do we find ourselves stuck in this type of thinking, where the situation we're in becomes so frustrating and stressful we find ourselves clinging to the wish that we could be young again...? Have we had any tantrums or stomped off with the threat of moving in with mother lately, simply because things did not go our way...? Have we looked in the mirror and discovered three new grey hairs, so off we went to the local grocery store to buy some hair dye that may or may not match the actual color of our hair as we remember it...?

These are all little ways of regressing and refusing to confront life's problems and assume responsibility for our choices in a futile attempt to control the hands of time. Looking at these behaviors as rational adults, we can see the immaturity and the fear behind it but how do we get to the point of moving past all these behaviors and reach the point in which our Shadow selves are no longer shadows?

In my case, I know what most of my weak spots are but there are those grey areas (and not on my head) that I still have issue with getting a grip on, like my temper. I love control... control is safe, if I don't have it, my temper flares up...I know what to expect when I'm in control and there are no surprises but do I really have control...The realistic answer is no, life is what it is and no man (or woman) is an island, especially myself. Taking the twenty two Major Arcana, I shuffle and concentrate on what I need to know about regression in my own life.

The card I drew is The Devil, who's shadow qualities are: Failure to love myself,having an issue with power (controlling or being controlled) and being too serious about life. These cards can be so uncannily accurate sometimes! Thinking about how this applies in my life right now, I can see that The Devil is trying to tell me that at this moment my issues with control are at play and offers me insight as to how I might address this in my current situation.

Change is inevitable and as much as I dislike change (understatement of the year) I must be flexible and adapt. I am forced to ask myself, "Why am I resisting this change and what made me thing that I may have any control over changes at all?"  The situation I recently moved away from was very stressful so those worn out old tapes  from childhood began to play in my head of a time when coping was not so easy to accomplish in the chaos of an alcoholic home.

I'm grown now, and there is no longer a need to feel in control... I am able to make choices for myself and I have the ability to make good, sound choices based on my understanding of life from an adult perspective. I am able to distinguish the positive changes from the kinds of changes that are unhealthy for me. It's not an easy road to walk but  taking one step at a time  is a great start and before I know it, those grey areas will become less and less grey.

Tarot Shadow Work- The Pain

This week, we move to the fifth position in the Star of Recovery... pain. The card I drew is The Fool which has the shadow qualities of lacking playfulness, rigidity and not listening to your inner voice. I personally am terrible at trusting my instincts or "gut" feelings because I learned not to trust my judgment and rely on those adults around me for their assessment of any given situation. That kind of blind faith in others' leadership is not always a good thing as in my case of an alcoholic home. Perceptions and the general view of life were distorted and looking back, I did not realize how that would affect me as I grew older.

The World card, missing the joy of the moment, affected my ability to experience joy because I was always worrying about what was going to happen next...how do I prepare and will it be another drama filled  situation. This created a certain amount of rigidity within me and allowed me to feel a like I may have had a certain amount of control over what was taking place in my life. Hindsight shows this feeble attempt to control my surroundings followed me to this day and it's difficult to just stop and realize it's okay, nothing terrible is going to happen if I take time out and just have some fun.

The human spirit needs joy and playfulness in order to remain healthy and I really try to stop myself when that old tape recorder starts replaying all those old messages in my head. I am learning to grow and move past that pain and anger and just stop and smell the roses. Suppressing ones gut impressions and keeping such a tight reign on oneself can result in many ailments like ulcers, high blood pressure and even stroke. It robs you of that childlike ability to approach life from a playful perspective and can make you old before your time.

Next week is the sixth position...The Gift Of Wisdom

Out Of Control

In any recovery process, we learn about ourselves and how to come to terms with addictions, abuse and neglect issues. Sometimes we are not able to even recognize that there might be damaged areas within ourselves that need this healing process. Most often this part of our self is called "the inner child," Carl Jung referred to it as our "divine child" but whatever we choose to refer to it as, until we start this healing process we will struggle with unresolved issues and conflicts.

In her book "Tarot Shadow Work, using the dark symbols to heal," Christine Jette discusses ways to discover this inner child or shadow as it is called in her book, by using the major arcana to bring to our conscious mind those shadows that have followed us since childhood. By using six cards from the Major Arcana in the layout of a star, she encourages us to examine areas in need of healing.

I did this activity myself recently and I will share the first positional card I layed down, The Tower. This cards shadow meanings include avoidance of change, being conventional to the point of being rigid, seeking permanence in impermanent things and destroying the possibility of new growth by rigidly holding on to ideas or attitudes. The positional question is "Denial, what negatives or positives do people point out to me that I have trouble accepting?" Whew! Now that's a huge can o' worms there buddy!

When meditating on this card and the question, it suddenly came to me that I have always hung on to my outdated ideas or beliefs instead of taking the time to examine why I was even holding on so tightly...which leads me to the "fear of change" shadow meaning. I consider myself to be a survivor after living through a tumultuous childhood but never really caught on that sometimes change is good and the false sense of security I created by keeping these ideas, always led to the Tower effect...imaginary securities came crashing down around my ears and I was left not knowing why.

The problems or conditions that I avoid (like the plague, I might add) are those that force me to change...almost as if I might have some sort of control over these changes that are for the better just because I had no control as a child. I must realize that as an adult, the Universal Mind knows exactly what I need and if I would just let go of that false sense of control, I might find my life richer and more fulfilling.