Who are you?

When I was younger, a lot younger, if anyone asked me what my favourite Tarot card was, I always said The Hermit. 

In those days, I acknowledged that I was very hermit-like, and even felt a certain amount of pride in the fact, so naturally, I identified with this card.

Then something shifted. I began to feel that I shouldn’t – shouldn’t – be a hermit. That I should make more of an effort to connect with people, join in, be part of society. I told myself that it wasn’t healthy to identify so strongly with The Hermit. That it was a negative mindset that only reinforced my anti-social attitude. And so, for a very long time, I tried hard to be more outgoing, social, normal…

My favourite card became The World. Not, perhaps, for the reasons my would-be redeemers might have hoped. To me, The World is completion, perfection, the All. It’s already a step beyond the realms of social interaction.

(source: www.queenoftarot.com/tarot_cards/66)

As I’ve gotten older with a capital O, I’ve become less and less inclined to make myself be something that, interaction by interaction, was become more and more obvious I was not. 

And then, a couple of days ago I saw a Hermit card in some online forum or other, and it suddenly hit me, like smack in the face hit me, that I had made a conscious decision, all those years ago, to deny my true self. 

Bugger that.

I still love The World card, but I remember now that I am The Hermit.

Who are you?

Don't worry, be happy

In an effort to get my card reading mojo back I've dropped my Three Deck Rule and I'm back to grabbing whichever deck catches my attention. 

I saw or read something somewhere today (can't remember where now, argh) that reminded me of my Connected and Free Oracle and how, for me, it's THE deck that cuts through all the bullshit and gets right to the issue. So...

I'm clearly being told to lighten up.

I've been putting all my emphasis on Progress and Purpose. I needed to go deeper, work harder, get somewhere with my practice. I needed to Focus!

Wrong tack.

In reality, I need to recapture the joy of playing with my cards, change my perspective, and open myself back up to the flow of the Universe.

If it's not fun, why do it?

I've been thinking, and having thunk...

(This relates back to my previous post, where I began to look at why I don't read with my cards more...)

... One thing that struck me is that I love my cards. Really love them. All of them.

I love to touch them, look at them, aimlessly shuffle them. I've arranged my personal space so that I am virtually surrounded by all of them. They make me feel happy and cosy and safe. Sacred space.

They all have individual voices, and one or another calls to me from time to time. And then I want to take it from its resting place and sit with it, talk to it, look into its "eyes". Do I want to do a reading with it? Not necessarily. Sometimes my hands will pull a few cards without my conscious direction. Other times I'll just commune with its essence for a while.

I'm trying make sense of this by relating it to relationships I might have with other inanimate objects. The only thing that's similar is my connection with crystals and stones.

Sometime I'll deliberately work with a specific crystal, applying its particular energies to a situation. But very often I'll just get the seemingly random urge to put one somewhere in my space or wear one or hold one in my hand for a while. They also sit near me, and are dotted here and there on the decks I have out, not to enhance or protect them, although I'm sure they do, but simply because they called to each other.

Maybe I don't read as much as I think I "should" because my connection with cards is less about divination and more about magick. My decks are sacred objects, talismans, spiritual companions.

And I think that's where I need to start...

Speak up, I can't hear you...

I’ve just made a fairly obvious discovery about communicating with spirit, specifically passed loved ones, that I'd like to share. You probably know this intellectually as well, but it bears saying directly.

Ok, here goes - You need to talk to them Out Loud. They don't just *know* what you're thinking or what you're feeling. You have to Tell Them.

I realised this while I was using cards to communicate with my mother. She showed me that she didn't know how my step-father, her husband, was feeling. Now bear in mind, she's been dead 16 years, but apparently this was still an issue. So I spoke to her, and told her that he missed her, that he still thought about her and cared for her very much. The next morning I drew cards for her again, and the joy expressed in those cards was heart-breaking. And I thought, Well duh, Judy - she didn't know what you were thinking when she was alive. What makes you think she's somehow acquired the ability to read minds just because she's changed her plane of existence?

It's good to talk.

(image source)

Well, I wasn't expecting that.

I bought the Connected and Free - The Alchemist's Oracle* because the artwork appealed to me. It reminded me of the Wild Unknown Tarot, which I admired but wasn't going to buy because the images were so divergent from my understanding of the individual cards that I would have had to read it as an oracle. Better to just buy an oracle in the first place. :)

But I have to confess I had misgivings about this deck when I first flipped through it. I quickly realised that the keywords and the images didn't seem to relate to each other, at least in any way that I understood. Uh oh. How was I going to apply intuition to cards that seem to pull in two different directions? What was I going to do with a DIS-Connected and Free oracle?

My initial thought was to read them much like some people read Gypsy Witch cards. Sometimes the symbol on the card is at odds with the meaning of the playing card inset. For example, No.9 The Birds: "The birds signify dire misfortune and fierce enemies..." This is coupled with the Ace of Diamonds which traditionally and at its most basic represents a letter or a ring. How do you reconcile those two? Well, you could go with the one that "jumps out" at you first when you look at the cards. The Birds meaning may tie in better with the surrounding cards. Maybe the letter meaning will strike a chord with the question. Flexibility.

So with that in mind I figured I'd give the Connected and Free a chance. But first, I'd subject them to Moonlit Tarot's June Deck Challenge questions, and I'm so glad I did. By pulling one card in response to each day's question I quickly realised that the images and keywords, although not obviously related, did in fact play off each other in a unique and compelling fashion. This was one instance where reading the accompanying book made all the difference. If ever a deck could convincingly claim to have been "intuited with the guidance of the Universe" this would be one of them. The connections do seem to emanate from a different plane of existence.

This deck spoke to me in a way I'd never experienced before. It was uncomfortable. It presented me with my fears, those things I avoid or resist. I couldn't *not* see it. And yet with each revelation the interaction felt positive and safe. This deck wasn't out to wound me but to show me the disparate pieces of myself and help me to wholeness.

I can't call this a review - it's just a very personal reaction to the deck. But if you're prepared to see the world and yourself from a different angle, I can recommend it.
(*except that it doesn't seem to be available at the moment 😢 but they might still have copies here.)