Tarot Blog Hop: The Fire Tends to All

Welcome to another Tarot Blog Hop.  I am delighted to be receiving the blog baton from Donna Louise Faber and to then hand off to Beauty History Magic.  [If you are finding your way here through Rowan Tarot, you actually should be moving on to http://aniam.co.uk/blog/fire-walk-with-me/.  A little mix up in the blog order.] 

We know the sun as a daily companion and feel its fire.  On May Day, the first day of summer in the Celtic calendar and known as Beltane, we celebrate the life that this fire calls forth from the earth’s trees, flowers, grass, and weeds.  We walk amidst new sprouting shoots and know the gifts of the returning sun.

But the sun is not the only fire in our lives.  There are also secret fires that feed us.

There are fires that burn in each cell of our body.  Ecologist Rachel Carson, noting she is using language that is more poetic than precise writes, “a living cell, like a flame, burns fuel to produce the energy on which all life depends.”  She quotes a chemist who, too, finds the poetry in the smallest circles of life and reminds us of what would happen without their sparks:  “no heart could beat, no plant could grow upward defying gravity, no amoeba could swim, no sensation could speed along a nerve, no thought could flash in the human brain.”

There is a fire at the center of the earth.  The core of the earth is a mass of molten alloy that burns in the thousands of degrees Fahrenheit.  Geologist Marcia Bjornerud describes how the earth’s just-right size allows it retain the perfect amount of energy from its deep unseen core to support a dynamic system for life.  Not only is there a sun in the sky, but there is one deep within the earth.

How do we know of these fires?  Scientists use their instruments to identify and study the cells.  But the quest for the smallest parts of the cell continues; the infinitesimal building blocks of life elude our view for now.  The earth’s core has never been probed, but scientists speculate about it by monitoring seismic waves from earthquakes, for example, and measuring their impact upon the whole of the earth.

And what about our personal fires? 

The Celts loved triplicities and their cosmos was made up of three realms.  Taking our inspiration from them today, we might imagine our personal fires as burning on three levels:  Our Apparent Light, Our Inner Sparks, and OurDeep Core Source.

And the Tarot can be our instrument of measurement, can aid us in our searching, can offer us the evidence of the impact of our fires burning in the world. 

A Spread for the Fire That Tends to All

You may find it fruitful to start by separating your deck into three piles:

1. Your court / people / vision cards to use in the Apparent Light position.  These are aspects of our personality shining forth and being perceived by others.
2. Your numbered cards to use in the Inner Sparks position. These are the actions of your life creating light and heat.
3. Your Major Arcana cards to use in theDeep Core Source position.  They represent this powerful energy at the center of your being that you can be explored but never known entirely.  There is an essence of mystery surrounding this position, just as it surrounds the Majors cards that seem to me to be delightfully impossible to fully understand.

Position One:  My Apparent Light – What is the energy that I am showing to the world?

Position Two, Three, and Four:  Inner Sparks – What are the sparks that are moving me forward in the everyday?

Position Five: Deep Core Source – What is the deep fire that sustains me?

Here is my layout using the Shining Tribe.  I’ll write about it in the comments.

May your fires be well tended on this day and in this season.  And may you shine forth your gifts into the world.  We need them.  Be well!

Please continue your blog hop explorations at Beauty History Magic. 

EXPRESS TAROTBLOGHOP TICKET: If you hit a missing link along your TarotBlogHop, you can get back on the bloghop from this master list. TarotBlogHop Master List, May 2012.

Journey into the Tarot is up!

The long promised site to share my guided visualization journeys into the Major Arcana cards is up! 

You can now visit Journey into the Tarot to hear a sample journey with the High Priestess and to sign up for password-protected access to all the journeys.

About the Meditations:

Deepen your knowledge of the Tarot through audio meditations that include guided visualizations where you encounter the wisdom figures and symbols of the 22 cards of the Major Arcana. This imaginative work with the cards gives you a personal experience of their archetypal energies that will deepen your abilities as a Tarot practitioner and aid your personal growth.  A rich experience for both Tarot beginners and advanced practitioners.

Features:

• Meditations of approximately 30 minutes containing features such as: breathing and relaxation prompts; energy balancing work using the chakra system; and the guided visualization journey into the card.  The site launches with a meditation for each card and more will be added!
• An evolving library of written information about and suggested activities for continued work with the cards.
• Monthly calls with live meditations and a sharing circle.
• 20% discount on any new products developed for Journey into the Tarot or Art of Change Tarot.

 Sign up by Tuesday, May 22 for the special launch price of $29.  (After that the fee rises to $39)

[Note:  Seeker image is from the Gaian Tarot and used with the gracious permission of Joanna Powell Colbert.]

Meditation and Tarot: Support for Deepen Your Work

“Meditation is about being intimate with your deepest self.”  Lorin Roche, Meditation Made Easy

I’ve been exploring and thinking a great deal about meditation as I prepare to launch my Journey into the Tarot site.  And a basic question that I think we often skip over is:  What is meditation?

Is this a depiction of meditation?

Are these two meditating?

And what about this?

I say the answer is Yes!  Yes! Yes!

All the people in these cards are potentially meditating (and meditating in ways that can of be of benefit to those who work with the Tarot).  Though the image of the Gaian 9 of Fire with his closed eyes, crossed legs, and energy-center focus may be the more common image of meditation, the other figures are also engaged in focusing their attention to access deeper states of awareness, tuning into the wisdom of nature, their own bodies, words of feeling and imagination, or the Greater Than themselves known by many names.

I hold an expansive view of meditation.  Rather than being defined by a specific activity or body posture, the meditative state springs from a mix of intention, focused attention, and receptivity.

Celebrate April Fool’s Day with the Tarot!

What better way to celebrate April Fool’s Day than with the Tarot?  As you know, since September I have been leading guided visualizations into the Major Arcana and now am preparing a website to share them (ready by the end of April) but I want to re-record some meditations so I am do 4 of them on Sunday.  You are invited to join in via conference call (no cost).  Here is the schedule:

Sunday, 4/1, at 1pm ET:  The High Priestess

Sunday, 4/1, at 3pm ET:  The Emperor

Sunday, 4/1, at 5pm ET:  Strength

Sunday, 4/1 at 9pm ET:  The Hermit

A couple of minutes before the hour dial into (559) 546-1000 and use passcode 811347# when prompted.

I’d love to know if you are coming.  You can reply below or send me an e-mail:  carolyn [at] artofchangetarot [dot] com.

And there is nothing at 7pm so you can listen into Beyond Worlds – Your Tarot Tribe!

[Note:  This is The Fool from the Rider-Waite-Smith ® US Games Systems, Used with permission of U.S. Games Systems, Inc.

Paint A Journey With New Life

How exciting to once again be part of the Tarot Blog Hop and sandwiched between the energy and wisdom of Amethyst Mahoney and Marilyn Shannon.  Be sure to visit their blogs as part of your Ostara blog hopping adventure.

“The Tarot is a template of the soul’s progress.”  Rachel Pollack

I conceive of progress as spiral shaped rather than linear.  We move through life and encounter lessons.  As we mature, we often re-encounter the same lessons, but the invitation as you travel the spiral is to experience them in new ways and with new awareness.

The Tarot is an excellent companion for this spiral-shaped journey.  As archetypes which spring from collective wisdom rather than individual knowledge, the cards’ meanings are not fixed but contain layers that are revealed as we come to understand these wisdom concentrations in our lives.

There is a popular description of the path through the Major Arcana as The Fool’s Journey that is modern (Mary Greer attributes it to Eden Grey)but certainly has deep spiritual and historical roots (see Robert O’Neil on The Fool’s Journey).  This is a powerful metaphor that has deepened my understanding of the cards, but as I have traveled through the cards during the Journey into the Tarot series the Major Arcana has come into focus for me as three circles offering healing at a deep soul level.  The first circle begins with the unity of The Magician who uses all elemental tools equally and ends with the integration of masculine and feminine in The Lovers.  The second circle opens with the realization of a new kind of Strength and ends with the Death of old ideas about the self and power.  The third circle starts with The Devil’s challenge to integrate even our shadows and culminates with an affirmative answer to the call for individual and generational healing.  The Fool, Chariot, Temperance, and The World are cards of transition and initiation.

Seeing the cards through this lens of healing paints my Tarot journey with new life.

I am not suggesting entirely new meanings of the cards, but rather have found myself drawn to and coming to new consciousness around what is already within the Tarot that can be accessed for the healing necessary for the times we live in.

What healing does the Tarot offer? 

Pathways toward balance and integration.  For so many of us, modern life offers more fragmentation that wholeness, limiting choices between opposites (shall I be rational or creative today?), and the ever increasing speed of day-to-day activities.  In contrast, the Tarot’s wisdom figures invite us to balance and integration and suggest ways to achieve these states.  In the pillars of the High Priestess and Justice we are reminded of the possibility and rewards of standing still between and honoring with what seems to be opposed.  Temperance, grounded by earth and flowing with water, mixes different substances to create the new.  From the Devil to The Sun, the dance of dark and light remind us that both need acknowledgement and we can be released from impossible task of hiding the dark within.

A new vision of power.  The widespread view of power as domination is dangerous.  Our attempts to dominate others leads to resentment and conflict while our belief that we as humans can dominate the earth have the planet’s climate in chaos and threatens human health and safety.  The Tarot’s view of power is profoundly different.  Strength comes from gentleness and flows from an inward journey involving surrender, transformation, connecting to the wider whole, and deep self-knowledge.

Guides for the journey toward wholeness.  The Magician and The World, at opposite ends of the Major Arcana, show us perfect and holistic acting and being in the world.  They embrace all elements, know heaven and earth, welcome sun and shadow, and lead with wands of power representing their own authentic being.  And each of the cards in between might be just the guide that we need to heal a gap felt within the self. Feeling deprived? Visit with the Empress in her abundant fields.  Too many commitments?  Heed the call of The Hermit for alone time.  Need replenishment after upheaval?  Bask in the gentle light of The Star.

The invitation to come alive!   A striving toward life is at the heart of the cosmic experience.  Since the first cells flared forth, the cosmos has been birthing itself from the energy of the stars and the explosions of supernovas.  As I’ve come nearly to the end of the Journey into the Tarot, I’ve found the same dynamic in the Major cards and a constant call to recognize the perfection within and live that perfection in the outer world.  Howard Thurman, the theologian who influenced Martin Luther King, Jr., issues the invitation eloquently:    “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

So in these hours of the Equinox when day and night stand equal but we find ourselves tipping growth, may you go forth and paint your own journey with new life.

I hope you continue your Ostara Blog Hope Journey by visiting Marilyn’s blog.

Multi-Mode Me

I am having lots of fun with the Tarot classes I’m doing through Groundings.  Last night, I developed a worksheet and process for the continuing class to keep going deeper into card meanings, especially as they exist in relationship to each other.  The first part of this work I named Multi Mode Me and I was so taken with the title that I had to share it with you.

The process helps to learn about Tarot and the self, and can be done with conscious-selection of the cards or by surrendering to synchronicity and pulling cards by chance.  In my playing around to prepare for the class, I found that it can be quite interesting to do the process both ways and compare the two.  In my case, the Tarot was kinder to me than I was to myself!

So enjoy and feel free to share any of your reflections in the comments.

Journeying with The Sun

For the past 2 weeks we have been journeying with The Sun (because clouds and snow and storm caused a travel delay for me on the originally scheduled night of the meditation!).  One of the final cards of the Major Arcana, The Sun is positioned toward the end of a journey of growth (cards 1 – 18) and within what I’ve begun conceptualizing as a final circle of healing.  (More on how I’ve come to this metaphor for the Major Arcana here.)

This final circle of healing starts with The Devil and fosters the integration of the dark and the light within.  The Devil is clearly a “dark” card, but the figure pictured on it is often identified as Lucifer, the Light Bringer.  This issues an invitation to recognize the light here even if it is hidden.  In contrast, The Sun is, well, so sunny.  Most often the figures on the card are happy children or radiant men and women revealing in a lush garden.  This card is clearly an expression of joy.

But just as there is light in The Devil, The Sun has its shadow.  In Joanna Powell Colbert’s Gaian Tarot, the radiant woman stands on her shadow, which appears to me to be as the very foundation of her joy. In Lisa de St. Croix’s deck in progress, Tarot de St. Croix, her Sun card has enormous sunflowers but also a dark figure. St. Croixdescribes her process of creating this card: “I knew what I needed to do: make the figure a silhouette. Show that the shining self also has a shadow side. I think this card is about the wholeness of ourselves in nature – that symbiotic union of our brilliance and our humility.”

The Work of the Moon

Wednesday night’s Journey into Tarot session brought us the energy and wisdom of The Moon. In preparing for the meditation, I was particularly inspired by how the moon teaches us about cycles and shows us that dark and light are a part of the whole as in the Gaian Tarot Moon. The work of our lives includes both the void and the peak.

After the meditation I went to bed and dreamed about separating my Tarot deck into 3 piles: one of cards I desired and made me excited; one of cards that repelled or scared me; and a pile of cards that I felt neutral about or indifferent to. I half-woke up and stayed with the dream. I wondered about what to do with these piles. I imaged them telling different stories about a person’s life. I mused about how this might be a Tarot process for self-discovery and healing.

Since this seed idea came from a dream following a Moon meditation I was compelled to follow through! I spent time yesterday fleshing out the process and testing it out on myself. The process that follows can be done by someone who knows nothing about the Tarot just working intuitively with cards or someone with lots of Tarot experience. It does call for an investment of time but the reward is actively engaging with the energy of the Moon for healing and wholeness.

I’ll lay out the steps and then follow with some examples from my own work with the process.

Step 1:  Pick a deck to work with that will support intuitive, gut responses to the cards. This would be a good process to do with a new deck that offers images and themes that you have not yet mastered. The deck should also offer a range of mood and meaning in its imagery. From what I have seen and what people have been saying, this would be a good process to do with your new Mary-El Tarots. As much as you know I love the Gaian Tarot, I’m not sure it would work well with this process as the images most often show healing already in motion / achieved. I choose the Haindl deck with its mystical artwork and intense key words and images.

Step 2:  Do a first, very quick sort of the deck into 3 – 4 piles: one of cards you are attracted to and desire; one of cards that repel or scared you; and a pile of cards that don’t elicit much of response or emotion. If you find some cards that both attract and repel you or that represent something you both hope for and fear, go ahead and make a fourth pile of these. Do this sorting very quickly, without logical thought or counting.

Journey into the Tarot: The Star

Small lights prick the night sky and ignite our imagination.  This light has traveled far distances over millennia to arrive here on earth.  We stand in their ancient glow in our own present moment and sense an eternal flow.

This is not just a poetic idea but a physical reality.  We are made of the same stuff as the stars and all is connected to a common point at the birth of the universe.  In The Universe Story, Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme look at the sweep of existence and offer a new story that weaves together science, cosmology, and history with a poetic and spiritual awareness.  They write:

“In the very first instant [of the Universe’s existence] when the primitive particles rushed forth, every one of them connected to every other one in the entire universe. At no time in the future existence of the universe would they ever arrive at a point of disconnection.”

The Tarot’s Star offers an invitation to this deep connection in multiple ways.

In the Rider-Waite-Smith card, we see a woman standing directly below a large star while pouring water upon both the land and into a pool.  Looking at this image with the lens of Celtic cosmology, she is open to, and the connection point between, the three realms:  sky or the dwelling place of the Deities; the sacred earth; and water or the otherworld where the ancestors dwell.  She unites everything.  There is no separation between heaven and earth, the sacred and the mundane.

In Marcia Masino’s meditations in Best Tarot Practices – that have served as an inspiration for Journey into the Tarot – she identifies the 7 small stars on the Rider-Waite-Smith card as being the Pleiades, Venus’s 7 handmaidens who offered spiritual gifts. Masino then makes a connection between these gifts and the 7 chakras which when attended to and balanced offer gifts of physical and energetic well-being.
I first encountered the chakras years ago I worked with a spiritual teacher with a very eclectic practice.  She led guided meditations and frequently used chakra balancing. She didn’t explain their origin or any rationale behind them.  Although I tend to be someone who likes to learn about spiritual and religious traditions and concepts (see Celtic realms reference above, for example), I didn’t look too much into chakras’ concepts or background.  I just kept experiencing them in the meditations with my teacher and then by continuing them on my own.  Energetically and physically, I experienced a sense of balance and openness both internally as well as externally to universal energy when I did my chakra meditations.

When I began the Journey into the Tarot sessions, I naturally used chakra balancing as the opening to prepare for the active imagination journey into the cards.  I thought I might shift into something else but the chakras just seemed to continue to make sense and I even increased my attention to which chakras might need special attention depending on the card being entered.  (FYI, there is no standard correspondences to the chakras as it is not a system with historical connections to the Tarot, but check out the wonderful work Lisa Frideborg Lloyd’s of Tarotize doing on the chakras.)

You could say that I’ve been feeling my way in the dark with just little flashes of inspiration (stars!) to guide me.  But as I emerged from my own experience of the chakra-inspired meditation on The Star and began to doodle about this post, it hit me:  the chakras resonate with me because they are stars within my body reflecting the stars in the sky.   They draw my attention to my inner constellation of gifts.  As I tune into them and work to clear any obstructions (to shift the clouds!), my unique light woven from these strands shines forth.  These points within us are mirrors of the sky’s constellations that offer us guidance and constancy in their movements.

We are not just connected, we are the same.  We are the stars and the stars are us.

There is a hermetic axiom, “As above, so below.”  I have heard it many times, but having undergone my own meditative experience culminating in a flash of the kind of understanding that comes from mind, body, and spirit, I now know it in a profound way.

I journeyed into the Star and found myself … and you as well.  For it is all of us who have the 7 inner stars’ or chakras’ gifts of  support, creativity, will power, love, communication, vision, and infinite consciousness at the core of being and shining outward into the larger world.  With new awareness comes new reasonability.  Perhaps today is the day that we start to let our actions toward ourselves and others be driven by this awareness that we are all stars.  This is the invitation I found when I journeyed into The Star.

[Note on images:  The first Star card and the 9 of Fire are from the Gaian Tarot and used with the generous and gracious permission of Joanna Powell Colbert.  The second start card is from the Rider-Waite-Smith deck ® US Games Systems, Used with permission of U.S. Games Systems, Inc.]

April Class in MA: Tools for Lifelong Tarot Learning

I will again be leading a three-session class, Tools for Lifelong Tarot Learning, at Groundings at 7 Main St. in Florence.

Tools for Lifelong Tarot Learning will ground you in Tarot basics as well as give you tools and techniques for your continued exploration of Tarot as a tool for personal development, spiritual exploration, creativity enhancement, and discerning the unfolding patterns of life. Sessions are from 6 – 8pm on the 4th, 11th, and 18th of April; hold the 25th for a weather-event day or extra practice session.  Sessions may be taken individually but sign up for the whole series for just $70. Pre-registration required through Groundings (Call 413-320-4919 or e-mail: information@GroundingsLLC.com).

Creating a Spine of Meaning: This is a foundational session for the whole series and can be taken as a stand-alone class. No Tarot experience required! In this session, participants will:

• practice accessing their intuition as a way into the cards;
• get an introduction to the Tarot’s origins and influences (but a very brief one!);
• see how the Tarot’s structure provides a support for developing your personal spine of meaning for the Tarot;
• find resources and continued activities for deepening your Tarot study;
• leave with an information-packed workbook, worksheets for capturing card meanings, and “homeplay” assignments.

The emphasis will be on understanding and developing meanings for the individual cards.

Date: Wednesday April 4th, 6-8pm * Cost: $30