Today Card 3 of the Hermit spread of Ellen Lorenzi-Prince

Card 3 – What road I take

Inventor, Man of Crystals: it tells me I have to decide for myself what road to take.

Where do I begin my search? 

Commencement, Four of Worlds, connected to the Emperor (planning, putting ideas and goals into practice), the Aries card, Spring-card: Start, new beginnings, take a first step.

What is my first step? 

Two of Worlds, Reflection: the Winter-card connected to The Priestess (thinking before you act, contemplation, introspection). Seeking understanding and insight.

So these cards give me action and reflection: Balance again.

On the next 2 questions I received The Seven of Worlds card and the Tower card they look a bit similar.

What is the road that is right in front of me?

Seven of Worlds, Breakthrough, connected to the Chariot (movement, self-realization): expressing my strengths and passions, go for it. I will find the road which is right for me.

 How can I know it’s the right road?

Here I received the Tower: it will strike me like a flash of lightning. Leaving behind the old, starting the new: leaving behind the things which keep me confined and limited, committing myself to spiritual growth.

With card 3 I get the feeling it’s all up to me what to do and what to decide. Keep, my balance.

Regarding to yesterday’s Art card, the card following the Death card: Transformation, Optimism, union of opposites.

The feeling I get from this spread is that the lectures I will attend this fall and continuing the shadow work will be good for me.

I will continue the spread later because of lack of time now.

Today I pulled The Fool from The Inner Child cards and inspired by the lesson of the Strenght I pulled a Totem Animal as well. I pulled The Bird.

On the card of The Fool is Little Red Cap looking at a butterfly. Looking at a butterfly that’s what I did this morning:

Today is Mother’s Day in The Netherlands. I received a butterfly as a gift, a bead for my bracelet. This morning during my walk I was looking at it every time because it is so beautiful.

I probably pulled the card of The Fool also because next Friday I am going on a holiday. After a long rainy winter we decided to go south because we really needed a bit of sun. So next Friday we are leaving for Spain. I have not been in Spain  very often. A long time ago, about 20 years ago, we travelled through Portugal and Spain. One of the places we visited was Granada with The Alhambra, a Moorish citadel and palace. It is one of the most famous items of the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian historical legacy. It was really beautiful. I remember it was very warm even hot and after visiting the Alhambra we drove up in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada after half an hours´ drive we stood in the snow. Such a contrast from the heat in the snow!

This year we won’t go that much south, we will be in the area around Tarragona. We are hoping to visit Montserrat. Famous for  The Montserrat Virgin who was found in a cave on top of the mountain in the 800's. It was a site of pilgrimage and a monastery was founded there several hundred years later. The monastery of Montserrat  is so high up that you can see planes flying far below. The beauty of the cathedral, the mountains, and the music must be overwhelming.

Also a bit more to the south there is a travelling route through the mountains with several Cistercians Monasteries. We are very fond of mountains so this is also one of our destinations. Being nature lovers we also want to visit the Ebro Delta with lots of bird species there.

So wandering round like The Fool, feeling free as a Bird. I am really looking forward to it.

I pulled Four of Spears, La Cote Male Tail & Maledisant. 




This is the equivalent for Four of Wands.

The meaning is Prosperity. Celebrations. Past efforts come to fruition, bringing great satisfaction.

And this last sentence is the meaning of the card for me today. This morning I brought the typed lesson of the Chariot to

ladyofthemoor

 It’s always nice when something is finished and looking good, it feels good, it’s bringing great satisfaction.

In the accompanying book I find the story of La Cote Male Tail & Maledisant:

The court celebrates the wedding of La Cote Male Tail and the Damsel Maledisant.

As a young man Breunor had come to Arthur’s court, hoping to become a Knight of the Round Table. He wore an ill-made coat, and because of this was nicknamed “La Cote Male Tail” by Sir Kay.

La Cote Male Tail hoped to prove himself by accepting the Adventure of the Black Shield. This was the most dangerous undertaking of the time, and to make matters worse, the young knight had to endure the cruel tongue of his lady guide, aptly named Maledisant.

Despite La Cote Male Tail’s heroics, the damsel rebuked him at every turn. Maledisant later regretted this, ad during the course of the adventure she fell in love with the champion. Victorious in his trial, La Cote Male Tail was made a Knight of the Round Table. He then married the damsel Maledisant, whose name was changed to Beauvivante, reflecting her new demeanor. Lancelot, friend and mentor to La Cote Male Tail (as he continued to be called), gave the newlyweds the Castle Pendragon and surrounding lands.

From: A Keeper of Words, by Anna-Marie Ferguson, page129.

Quite some years ago I visited The Yorkshire Dales and Cumbria, the Lakedistrict, places of utter beauty. In these surroundings we find Pendragon Castle.

For information about Pendragon Castle follow the links beneath:

http://www.visitcumbria.com/pen/pendragon.htm

http://www.telfordsites.co.uk/photos/pennine/PendragonCastleNotice.jpg

My day card is Fortune, again from the Voyager Tarot.

The card looks very rich with the gold and the gems.

Also there is a butterfly right in the middle.

Jupiter is on the card: one of my favourite planets in astrology, Jupiter is in my first house on my birth chart. Jupiter the ruler of the ninth house, where my Sun, Mercury,Venus and my North node are.

I associate Jupiter with expansion and wellbeing, happiness.

The card tells me I am a fortunate person and it’s good to be aware of that!

I asked the cards:’What do these projects bring me (typing Tarot-lessons, editing, scanning tarotcards, looking for images on the net).

I pulled 8 of Wands of The Voyager tarot, the card is called Harmony.

There are musicinstruments on the card, bamboo, rainbows.
The 8 of Wands for me means activity, something growing, action.
Here on this card I see the rainbows as a symbol of hope, promise and renewal. Music brings me joy. And the bamboo is growth. 
Confirmation again!

I received such a beautiful card yesterday when finishing a project.

So my question for today is:

How do I feel when I am starting a project?

I was very curious which card to receive and I decided to pull another card from the beautiful and very interesting Shining Tribe Tarot

by Rachel Pollack.

Today I received ‘The Magician’.

Needless to say but I simply love projects and this card confirms that.

Creativity. Using my talents. (As a child I learned from the bible that it’s very important to use one’s talents.) 
But it’s always a process of learning as well one of the main objects in my life!
So really appropriate to receive this card.
'The Magician' is my soulcard another reason why this card is very important to me,

Below there is a copy of the entry for The Magician from the book The Shining Tribe Tarot by Rachel Pollack, page 18/19:

He turns on the lights.

He waters the desert.

He raises the storm.

He cools the hot earth.

He starts up the engines.

A masked shaman, the Magician stands in a desert, while behind him we see a dark river and then the scattered lights of a dying city. Without awareness of Spirit, civilization withers and finally crumbles. This card, therefore hints at a crisis not only in the life of the culture, but also in that of a person, even while the picture emphasizes the resolution of the crisis. The crisis is one of emptiness, a long death of the soul. The medieval Grail myth created a metaphor for this state – “the Wasteland,” a term T.S. Eliot borrowed for the title of his great epic poem on the spiritual crisis of Europe after World War I. Many readers and critics consider “The Waste Land” the greatest poem in English from the last century. Tarotists  know the poem for its “Madame Sosostris, wisest woman in Europe, with a wicked pack of cards” . Eliot wrote that the Greek seer Tiresias was “the most important person in the card of Shining Woman, but he also is the Magician. A more active figure than Eliot’s character, the Magician initiates healing by drawing down the spiritual power of the “world above,” that is the world of the sacred.

The Magician does not respond to spiritual crisis by attachment to an organized church. Instead, he trains himself to become a channel for divine energy. One reason that we see him as card 1, the Fool’s first encounter, is that the Magician is both the beginning and the end, the willingness to learn and the achieved mastery.

The Magician restores life by channelling Spirit into the world. He raises his magic wand – a simple twig – to bring down the lifegiving power of heaven. His left arm extends downward, for he does not seek this power for himself. He acts only as a vehicle to bring the life energy into existence. And so the flower grows at the touch of his finger. This selflessness is what makes the Magician possible, for if he tried to hold the power in himself, or even used it only for personal gain or power over others, it would corrupt him and even threaten his sanity. Spiritual power is real.

The Magician often is one of the favourite cards of artists and writers, who know very well the experience of a power, or energy, moving through them, of themselves as the vehicle for something that wants to come into existence and needs a human being as a conduit into the physical world.

The Magician pose, one arm up, the other down, appears in traditional art throughout the world. In some Algonkin rock art such a figure represents a shaman. Because the gesture is so vital a simple hand in a drawing can symbolize shamanic power, a fact that tells us something about the prehistoric painted handprints found everywhere on rock walls and caves. Close your eyes and stand in this way and you will feel a sense of openness in your body, an energy moving through you.

The twig is one of the four Gifts from the Minor Arcana, the Gift of Trees. The other three appear on his right. They are the bowl for Rivers, the flute for Birds, and the oracular stone for Stones. The Magician knows and uses all the gifts of existence.

Above his head we see an abstracted bird and two roundels, joined by a jagged river of gold containing a fish, a toadlike stick figure, and a vulva symbol, all images of the Goddess of death and rebirth. These things show the Spiritworld, the source of the Magician’s magic. The roundels are dark and light, symbolizing the duality of existence. Above, the river connects them. Below, we see two Shining Vision glyphs, one dark, one light. Like the roundels, they signify duality, including light and dark, active and still, male and female. Separate, the both stand on the green road of life. Later in the Sun card, they will join together.

Divinatory meanings: Creativity, lifegiving energy, art. Using your power to help others. Consciousness, action, connecting the different levels of being. The card may signify a strong response to a spiritual or emotional crisis. It can be a confirmation that the person is doing the right thing, or a recommendation to make such a response.

Reversed: Suppressed energy, feeling blocked, weak. Unwilling to upen up, unwilling to take action, denial of responsibility. Alternatively (with cards indicating stillness) a time to avoid action. It is important that the person not feel helpless or like a victim.

After finishing typing the lesson of The Lovers for 

ladyofthemoor

 I want to pull a card of one of her decks.

I decided to pull a card from The Shining Tribe Tarot of Rachel Pollack. I do not know this deck, so I copy the text from her book for my own benefit so I can reread it later.

I pulled Ace of Rivers.

The flow of his mouth

moistens our skin,

waters of memory,

waters of vision,

waters of light.

As in several other cards, here we find a multicultural mix of images. The woman and the eland are taken from the elegant Tassili rock frescoes in the Saharan Desert. These great pictures were painted thousands of years ago. The head from which the river issues comes from a carved piece of flint uncovered at the great mound of Knowth in Ireland. Knowth is gigantic, a humanmade hill that covers more than an acre. Modern archaeologists describe Knowth as a burial mound, though its two cavelike passages mark the sunrise and sunset on the two equinoxes. The spiral eyes (the carved head displays a spiral at the back as well) suggest transformation through awareness, while the open mouth emphasizes expression.

Many of the earliest human creations, such as pots, of drawings, or carvings, show a God or Goddess, or an animal, with an open mouth. Neolithic potters sometimes made their vessels in the form of birds with open mouths. As Marija Gimbutas says in her great work The Languague of the Goddes, the mouth symbolizes the vulva, the womb of the Goddes as the source of all life. It is not just the womb, or creation from reproduction. When we think of the many mythologies that describe the Creator bringing existence into being through sound (“And God said, ‘Let there be light.”’ we realize that the open mouth suggests creation through expression of consciousness. The river here flows from the head, and the human and the animal come to drink, to nourish themselves, both with actual water and with the divine energy that makes life possible.

This card is about nourishment. As an Ace, it depicts whatever is most basis and lifegiving. This will not be the same for everyone. For some it may be lovers or friends, for some physical activity or travel, for others art, still others prayer, meditation, or study. What matters is that we go to the source, the wellspring of whatever gives us life. When we see this card it tells us to find what nourishes us and drink deeply.

The animal and the woman represent different approaches to nourishment. The animal is instinct. When we find what makes us feel good we drink deeply and satisfy our immediate needs. The woman carries two water bags. As humans we know to store up experience and  call on memory when we move in the world.

The landscape contains four post, marking the seasons. Despite Knowth’s link to the equinoxes, the card, in its gentle warmth, belongs to summer. A fish with a spiral swims upstream. It symbolizes the soul returning to its origins, either in death or more simply, in meditation and love.

Divinatory meanings: A peaceful time. Life flowing with good experience. Knowing where to go for nourishment. Satisfying deep needs.

Reversed: A need to return to your own sources of strength and understanding. Think of what feeds your soul, what will water whatever has become dried out in your life and Spirit.

From: The Shining Tribe Tarot, awakening the universal spirit by Rachel Pollack,

page 134, 135.

To me this card shows an overall feeling of wellbeing and because it is an Ace, for me it symbolizes starting something new as well. Finishing a project is the start of something else.

A beautiful card!

I did a two card spread from: “Reading psalms with tarot” by

ladyofthemoor

Psalm 139

For the Chief Musician. A Psalm by David.

1 Yahweh, you have searched me,

And you know me.

2 You know my sitting down and my rising up.

You perceive my thoughts from afar.

3 You search out my path and my lying down,

And are acquainted with all my ways.

4 For there is not a word on my tongue,

But, behold, Yahweh, you know it altogether.

5 You hem me in behind and before.

You laid your hand on me.

6 This knowledge is beyond me.

It’s lofty.

I can’t attain it.

7 Where could I go from your Spirit?

Or where could I flee from your presence?

8 If I ascend up into heaven, you are there.

If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there!

9 If I take the wings of the dawn,

And settle in the uttermost parts of the sea;

10 Even there your hand will lead me,

And your right hand will hold me.

11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me;

The light around me will be night;”

12 Even the darkness doesn’t hide from you,

But the night shines as the day.

The darkness is like light to you.

13 For you formed my inmost being.

You knit me together in my mother’s womb.

14 I will give thanks to you,

For I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Your works are wonderful.

My soul knows that very well.

15 My frame wasn’t hidden from you,

When I was made in secret,

Woven together in the depths of the earth.

16 Your eyes saw my body.

In your book they were all written,

The days that were ordained for me,

When as yet there were none of them.

17 How precious to me are your thoughts, God!

How vast is the sum of them!

18 If I would count them, they are more in number than the sand.

When I wake up, I am still with you.

19 If only you, God, would kill the wicked.

Get away from me, you bloodthirsty men!

20 For they speak against you wickedly.

Your enemies take your name in vain.

21 Yahweh, don’t I hate those who hate you?

Am I not grieved with those who rise up against you?

22 I hate them with perfect hatred.

They have become my enemies.

23 Search me, God, and know my heart.

Try me, and know my thoughts.

24 See if there is any wicked way in me,

And lead me in the everlasting way. 

From: www.ebible.org

The questions of the tarot spread:

Card 1 verse 1-17: God who knows me and sees through me,

an image of me in my current situation:

The Devil

The ultimate  shadow card yet again.
At the moment I am reading Christine Jette’s : Tarot Shadow Work and I am 'encountering' my shadow and I do hope to learn from this process. Reaching wholeness, integrating my shadowside.

Card 2 verse 23-24: God who guides me, fathom my heart, see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way. The path I should follow:

Page of Pentacles

This card tells me to take this path one step at a time, to follow this path in a very earthy way. To be conscientious and purposeful. To take risks and see the darkness in me.

Today’s card The Devil

I pulled the Devil probably because my shadow side is a lot on my mind off late and it does really interest me.

I would like to have things out in the open, but sometimes my mind runs away with me.

It creates fears which do not exist.

I am projecting thoughts on someone which are not true at all and that feels rather silly. I am making problems which do not exist. Making life complicated and I do wish it to be simple and harmonious.

My sun sign is Capricorn with Saturn as its ruler.

On the right hand of The Devil is the glyph of Saturn, so there are ties with my sun sign. I ones read a book about astrology which said that it’s very important for Capricorns to examine their shadow side because Capricorns tend to be stubborn, not flexible at all.

So for me there is a special need to examine and integrate my shadow.

Yesterday I received a very interesting book as a gift from ladyofthemoor: Tarot Shadow Work written by Christine Jette and I was thinking why her name sounded so familiar but there was an article on page 233, ‘Working with shadows’ in Llewellyn’s Tarot Reader 2006, which I had read and I also did her Birthday spread last year (very interesting).

I looked up the card of The Devil in Christine Jette’s book and the first sentence already confirms what I wrote earlier: “being chained to your fear, thoughts, and feelings”.

That is so true.

I really do hope this book will help me to find “the shadow gifts of the Devil”:

“Removing the blocks of fear and separateness, causing great growth”.

I think it already helps a bit to write this.

And again I am astonished how The Tarot cards ‘turn one’s attention to the sore spot’.

It really works.

This morning I pulled the Wheel of Fortune

Last week I pulled this card and today again.

So what is the card telling me.

The feeling I have today is that I am at the upper side of the Wheel.

This morning we had a very beautiful and inspiring lesson with the Inner Child Cards at  

ladyofthemoor

So overall a great day.

Today I pulled the World card of Rider Waite.

I had just finished downloading some images for the lesson of The Lovers for ladyofthemoor

I downloaded images of Hermes, Adam and Eve and also an image of The tree of life of Klimt and I think that’s where the World card came in at its simplest.

I would like to explore the world, go to Vienna and see Klimt paintings, not from my computerscreen but hanging there on the wall in the museum.



The Tree of life of Klimt



One of my favourite's The Poppyfield of Klimt


I think it has been  more than 20 years ago I visited Vienna. We were in a hotel in the centre just a 5 minutes walk from  Stephan's Kirche.

I really liked the Coffeehouses where they served lots of types of coffee and you could read all the different newspapers which were available there.

 










For now I have to be patient and wait for my holiday in May, so not  very long to wait.
And today at last I have normal sized pictures!!!(lol)

I pulled my day card and it was the Wheel of Fortune.

I saw it is a day with ups and downs.

One of the ups was a nice encounter I had with an elderly gentleman (77 years old he told me during our conversation).

He told me a part of his life’s story.

What I found very interesting was that he had lived in Austria for 5 years. And it was really nice talking with this gentleman about Austria.

He had lived in Klagenfurt in southern Austria in the county Carinthia.

As I travelled a lot in Austria we talked about all the cities: Vienna, Graz, Salzburg, Innsbruck, Bregenz we had visited both. Lovely memories came back of very interesting holidays.

During my holidays in Austria I went to opera’s in Vienna, Graz and to opera performances on the lake in Bregenz. Long walks in the mountains. All very fond memories

The elderly gentleman will go there this summer, he said it will be his last holiday in Austria visiting old friends and saying his goodbyes. His youngest son will accompany him and he was really looking forward to it.

Somehow it was a little sad, knowing it will be his last holiday there.

After wishing him a very pleasant stay in Austria I went home and looked for photographs:

Spring in Vienna, I wished I was there.