Tonight, it's a full moon and she's misty and soft, lighting up the hazy clouds overhead so that the sky is very bright.
This spread is the Full Moon Spread from "Tarot For All Seasons" by Christine Jette. The deck I used was the Druidcraft Deck, via Orphalese, and I enjoyed working with the images on this deck so much that I've ordered one for my own.
Because I didn't have access to the book that goes with the deck, I decided to take a leap on this one and just record my own thoughts without checking any reference material for meanings. That feels risky (don't know why - at most, it means I might miss some measure of meaning. It doesn't make it wrong, but it still makes me nervous to let go of the crutch of the LWB, et al). I'm pretty pleased with the result.
This spread is laid out in a circular fashion, somewhat like a full moon.
1. Relationships: What you need to know now about developing your potential in relationship to others. The truth of current relationships, be they lover, coworker, family or friend.
Six of Cups
A young man with long hair and a small goatee, dressed in a green tunic, is leaning on a windowsill, looking out at a pair of children playing. He appears to be relaxed, content and maybe a little wistful and he holds a cup in his his right hand. The children, meanwhile, are seated on the grass playing with five more cups, filling them with sand or flowers. The children are engrossed in their play which seems to me to mirror the pouring action of the Temperance card - in their play, they are practicing the wisdom that will mature later into art. Behind them, wispy clouds fill the blue sky.
The things that strike me about this card is that the man in the foreground is on the inside, looking out. Nothing can be seen of the room he is in other than that it is dark. He appears to be mostly content and at peace, but his focus is on the children outside. The cup in his hand is ready for him to drink, but he is not paying any attention to it - the children, on the other hand, don't appear to be aware of him at all are are paying full attention to each other and to filling the cups they are playing with. I get the idea that he is the parent - the children look like girls so I don't think they are an image of his past, and yet I think they are reminding him of his own childhood, when he could work with the cups (emotion, especially love) unselfconsciously and fill them full by just imagining that what they fill them with is whatever they want it to be.
My relationships with others tend to be nostalgic in nature - based in large part on shared history and memories of simpler times together. What I need to know when it comes to my involvement with others is that we all carry within us the innocent children we once were. It's hard to be angry or hardhearted to someone if you can see the child they were (I remember reading somewhere a suggestion that you keep a baby picture of the people in your life you were having a hard time with, to remind yourself that they weren't always the grouchy adult you're dealing with now.) and in remembering my own childhood, I can reclaim the ability to love without being cautious or self-conscious or worrying about whether or not I have the right stuff. In their innocence, these children set their intentions and use whatever they have, coupled with vision and imagination, and so their cups are full to overflowing.
At is most basic level, this card reminds me that my relationships with my own children are where I have the easiest time expressing love - there is no little voice inside that tells me that maybe it isn't safe to love them or unwise to express my love for them. I can do so freely without all the tangled up notions that sometimes keep me closed off from other people in my life.
2. The Power of Choice: What decision needs to be mde now to fully express your potential? What will free your creativity?
Queen of Pentacles
A barefoot woman wearing a red dress and green cape with a hood sits on a wooden throne covered in Celtic knotwork, animals (oxen, I think) and a pentacle behind her head giving the impression of a sort of halo. Her left foot is resting on a small rock, while her right foot touches the grass. The woman is holding a large, shallow drum with a pentacle on the skin in her left hand and is keeping rythmn on it with a bone held in her right. A gnarled, bare tree is silhouetted in the background and on the ground tehre are white flowers growing and a grey rabbit hopping by. The sky is the deepening blue of twilight, with yellow light at the horizon.
This is an enormously earthy and pleasant looking Queen of Pentacles. She is not classically pretty, but is beautiful and comfortable with herself. She looks like a mother. Or an aunt. Or that neighbor down the street that shows up with cookies and tea when you're having a bad day and stays around to engage in friendly gossip and make you laugh. I love that she's holding a drum with a bone drumstick - she's the keep of the heartbeat, speeding it up or keeping it at a steady pace as needed. Though the conscious energy of the sun is still visible in the sky, it is giving way to the mysteries of the night and the moon.
What does she tell me about how to fully express my potential? To listen to the rhythms of my heart, to get in touch with the earthy, motherly side of me, to feel the abundance that I have within, and to be comfortable with myself - no need to put on finery and maintain any sort of classic dignity - kick off my shoes, get comfortable and work out my own pattern. She is also telling me to let go of my conscious, logical mind and open myself up to lunar power - to be receptive to what comes from deep inside my subconscious and intuition.
Practically, I might want to start using music - a good solid beat - as a way to access my creative self. I enjoy music, but I don't listen to it as often as I'd like, and I've never been much inclined to make music (unless you count singing at the top of my lungs when I'm driving alone in the car). Purposefully using music to help create an environment for creativity is outside my comfort zone, but maybe that's a good reason to get comfortable with it.
3. Manifesting Goals: What action do you need to take on a physical plane to reinforce your magical workings? What can you do in the mundane world to support your spirit's desire?
Eight of Wands
A young man in a deep blue tunic with red wavy stripes is standing on the grassy flat area at the top of the cliff (very reminiscent of the Fool's cliff). Below him, a large body of water is visible. The man is hurling a wand over the cliff. Seven more wands are planted in the ground next time him, ready to be thrown in turn.
Wands are the element of fire - energy and spirit, and this card is telling me that this energy is a tool I can use to manifest my desires, but only if I am willing to put it out there - throw it out into the world ahead of me. It's not enough to just do internal work and expect that the outer world will notice and respond - before my goals can manifest themselves, I have to supply the power source.
This card seems to me to be a more active and focused way of getting over the cliff than the Fool's innattentive and trusting way of walking off it without noticing where his feet are. Instead, he is not only aware of the cliff, he is using this vantage point as a launching pad, using the heights to take his energy farther. He is also, instead of going over the cliff and falling, sending out his spirit and putting physical force behind it to send it as far as he can. Here, he's not simply wandering through the environment but applying will and effort to get where he wants to go.
This then is what I need to do - apply some elbow grease and do the work necessary to send out my will - set my intentions - ahead of me to mark the way I want to go. I've got plenty of it to work with and don't need to worry about it running out if I use it. That's very hard for me to trust - I tend to hoard my energy like a miser - but if I don't start applying it, it doesn't matter if I have any or not. It does me no good if I don't use it. I need to throw it ahead of me and let its fire light my way.
4. Creativity: The Mother has given you talents, abilities, and gifts. What must you do to fully express them? If you don't like this card, it is because the card shows blocks that you need to address before you can realize your full creative gifts.
Two of Pentacles
A woman is standing at the base of a cliff next to a body of water (the cliff below the card above? Is this where the wands have landed?). Above her, growing from the side of the cliff is a large gnarled tree trunk. She is standing on rock, but there is grass nearby. The water behind her is choppy and there are boats on the water that are either struggling or are sinking. The sky overhead is very dark and stormy and it appears there are high winds. There is no suggestion of that wind where the woman stands though. She is wearing a dress with a rose colored top and a purple skirt, connected by a bronze clasp that looks like a crescent moon, points down. She has long red hair and she is juggling two pentacles. However, her face has a detached and calm expression and she is not looking at the coins she juggles - instead she is gazing into the distance, not really seeing anything, or needing to.
The talents I have within me include the ability to juggle various aspects of my life without dropping things and to remain (sometimes) calm and detached from the storms that surround me. How does this operate as an expression of creativity? I'm not really sure - if is a survival skill, for sure, but what does it tell me about expressing my creative self?
I think maybe it is telling me not to try to wait for the right time, the right setting, the perfect moment of peace and quiet to practice a creative life. I am likely to always have to juggle instead of immersing myself in only one thing. I am also likely to always have a storm brewing somewhere at people around me flailing at sea. (Why likely? Because it's always been that way, to the point where I am ready to believe that dealing with that mayhem is my life lesson, and I am a long way from having mastered it without struggling against it and yelling 'unfair!') This either becomes an excuse not to live a creative life, or it becomes simply a companion I need to accept and practice creativity anyway.
In some ways, the constant wildness is a path to creativity. When everything is smooth sailing and one has the luxury of focusing on only one thing at a time, it's easy to decide not to bother to reach much - everything's already at hand. But when one has to figure out how to work around, or through, or with, the messiness and noisiness and mulit-tasking shown by this card, one has to figure out new and unexpected ways of keeping all the balls in the air. That itself is an exercise in creativity, and it builds that skill to create other things as well.
I remember once being fascinated about an acquaintence who was attending college. She lived in a fairly noisy household, but she was convinced that she needed absolute silence in order to study - not only no talking and no small children running around, but no music, no TV, no... anything. And her family actually tried to accomodate that, but the whole thing was very frustrating to everyone - the family wasn't able to do much of anything in their own home for large patches of time without incurring her wrath, but in spite of all that honest effort, living beings make some measure of noise, so she was always frustrated and tense about studying, talking herself into thinking she wasn't doing it well enough because of the distractions.
Me? I'd have told her to go to the library if I was a part of the family. But if I were here, I think it'd have been better if she'd stopped telling herself that she needed that very limited environment in order to do her thing, and learn how to focus in spite of background noise. We just don't always get the perfect environment we'd prefer and have to make do with what we've got. Declaring that we can't manage to cope if there's anything around us to have to cope with is...well, unrealistic? Very Princess and the Pea.
5. Protection: Shows where you need to establish personal boundaries so you do not give your power away. What do you need to protect?
Seven of Swords
An elderly man is seated in a stone room at a desk that has a stone base and a wooden top. The stonework base is elaborately carved with knotwork and a man's face. On the tabletop is a brass candleholder topped by the same mustachioed face as on the base of the desk and a white candle that looks somewhat like a snack is coiled around the candlestick. There is also an inkpot and the man is hunched over the desk, a white feather quill in his left hand, writing something. His right hand is holding his forehead - he appears to be tired, in pain, or deeply concentrating (or all of the above). Outside the window behind him, a bright moonlit sky is seen, heavily speckled with clouds through which a glowing crescent moon is visible. In front of the desk is a lower table on which three swords are laying. Leaning against the table are four more swords, each with its own unique design.
This man seems to be hard at work, concentrating but growing tired and he is working well into the night. The room he is in is stony and lacking in decorative features (other than the knotwork - and the faces on the desk and the candleholder both look like the man himself - he is featured in the foundation of his workspace, as well as in the working light that illuminates his work) - this is functional space, not aesthetic space. The swords appear to be more of a collection - possibly objects of study - rather than weapons or tools ready to be used. Unnoticed by the man, but helping him by providing light, is the crescent moon of intuition and mystery.
This card seems to be about study (swords = intellectual pursuits) and recording what one studies, and the hard work that does into this. That it appears in a position about setting boundaries makes me think that his tiredness and headachy appearance might be an indication that he's failed to set boundaries for rest and recreation - for looking up and noticing the beauty of the moon as he scribbles away. No doubt, what he's writing about is important, but being a slave to studying life at the expense of experiencing it isn't worth it. I think he would learn more, and faster, if he'd turn away from recording his own thoughts - at his desk decorated in his image, but the light of a candle that is wrapped around an image of himself - and look out at the sky and ask himself how such a slim sliver of a crescent moon can provide so much light.
The message to me here is to not get so wrapped up in my own studies (and that may mean my recent attention to tarot itself) that I forget to pay attention to the wider and deeper mysteries of Goddess and the universe. (Or maybe it's just telling me to go to bed and not stay up all night doing this reading!)
This card reminds me of an old phrase - I don't know the source - "The man wrapped up in himself makes a very small package." I think I need to be reminded, perhaps, not to diminish my power by setting my boundaries so narrowly that all they include is me. And to put down the pen once in awhile and go live life instead of just studying it.
6. Psychic Gifts: How can you best develop your intuition? If this is a court card, it suggests the appearance of a teacher, guide or mentor.
Princess of Swords
A darkhaired woman dressed in a flowing blue dress with a deeper blue cape and a circlet of blue flowers is standing on a rocky area surrounded by heather, snowdrops and other wildfllowers. The wind appears to be blowing. She is holdng a sword, point down, near her shoulder and a length of blue ribbon from her dress is wrapped around it, binding it to her. She is gazing at the sword steadily and with intention. Behind her a bird is flying by and the sky is pale yellow and filled with large yellow-tinged clouds as though the sun is low in the sky - either sunrise or sunset. Her feet are bare.
How can I best develop my intuition? It seems to be through intellectual pursuit - she is binding the sword of intellect to herself. And this is, indeed, a court card, so it suggests a mentor or guide of some sort - possibly a younger woman who can teach me the intellectual background necessary to channel intuitive skillbuilding.
I've signed onto a few mailing lists and started following a couple forums devoted to tarot and pagan ideas. As a whole, they do act as teachers and it may be that someone may become more specifically a mentor. I do have a habit of approaching intuitive things from an intellectualized standpoint (this and the previous card are both suggesting this) and perhaps someone can help me get past that, because I think this is something that doesn't gain much by staying in the intellectualized arena.
7. Blessings and Spiritual Direction: The Mother wants you to celebrate the joy of being alive. What do you have to be thankful for? How can you best express the Goddess in you?
XIX: The Sun
A young boy with a face much older than his apparent years, is riding a greyish-white horse with a wavy mane and an elaborate golden halter covered in tapestry streamers and a golden sun symbol in the front. The boy is naked and is standing in the stirrups and there are yellow rays of light surrounding his head like a halo. Hanging from the saddle is a small harp. The horse is walking through a field of tall grass and wildflowers and there is some kind of rocky structure away in the distance.
What a lovely blessing - no less than the sun itself. Light, radiance, clarity - this is a card that embodies a victorious joy of being alive. What do I have to be thankful for? Life. Truth. The bright light of honest understanding and vision. How can I express the Goddess in me? By shining... by claiming my own truth and not hiding it, or myself.
Here, then, is a child as there was in the first card - but this child isn't role playing, isn't going to outgrow his innocence, isn't practicing power - he is power, and his innocence comes from the purity of one who isn't carrying any lies with him. He has a harp, perhaps to accompany the rhythm of the Queen of Pentacles drum, adding melody to her beat?
He isn't carrying anything - no wands needed because the fiery energy of wands emanates from within him. No swords of intellect because carries ever bit of knowledge there is inside and lives what most people only learn about. This is the outcome and direction - accept no less than a full embodiment of the elements within me and let them shine out in truth from me without hiding them away.
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