For June: The House of Your Life

Time flies, and coming up this Sunday, June 3^rd, is my next tarot magic workshop at Triple Goddess.  The special activity for June is the Dollhouse Oracle.  By inserting tarot cards into the rooms of the pop-up dollhouses which I will be bringing along, you can see what’s going on in “the house of your life,” as so many metaphors for being are expressed in terms of living spaces and architectural features.  (For an article on the Dollhouse Oracle, go to http://www.llewellyn.com/journal/article/2044, or click on the link in the articles list in the left-hand column.)

We will also be doing the Tarot Round Robin, as I have decided to make this a monthly thing.  (For an explanation of this technique, refer to the post for March 26th.)  The Round Robin allows us to “crowd source to Spirit” by bringing our collective powers to bear on each individual in turn, and it also allows us to familiarize ourselves with a greater variety of tarot decks and other types of oracle decks.  Because we discuss the different cards for each Person’s reading, we also become more engaged with the cards, as well as with each other.

Going back to the idea of the house as metaphor of life: whether or not you’ll be doing a dollhouse reading, it’s interesting to think about domestic and architectural imagery in tarot readings in general.  The tarot decks in my collection actually have little in the way of domestic interior scenes or illustrations of architectural features—though the original Rider-Waite-Smith deck actually seems to have the most, (though more of them exteriors).  Since this is a theme that has not been over-worked, for anyone thinking of designing a new tarot or oracle deck, there’s no reason one couldn’t work in more architectural and domestic material symbolism.

Here are a few examples from card decks that do feature some household scenes:

-- In Ciro Marchetti’s “Legacy of the Divine Tarot,” the 10 of Cups portrays a dog and cat cuddled by the hearth-fire.  This card can hold special meaning for those of us with pet-centric households.

-- The “4” cards, being concerned with material foundations, can denote issues around house and home, so Martin Cannon’s and Ellen Cannon Reed’s “Witches Tarot” features a picture of two children running across the fenced grounds of a stately manor for its 4 of Pentacles.  This imagery recalls both the RWS 6 of Cups and 10 of Pentacles, and is less negative and judgmental than some other artists’ portrayals of the 4 of Pentacles.

-- Although Joanna Powell Colbert’s “Gaian Tarot” favors outdoor nature scenes, the 3 of Earth portrays women making herbal preparations in the kitchen, and The Emperor features a man carving a decorative post for his home.  Also, the 4 of Air features a bird’s nest with four eggs.  This catches some of the tension inherent in the 4 of Swords, because a nest is ephemeral and exposed to the elements, yet it is also a secure and cozy structure.

Collette Baron-Reid’s “The Enchanted Map” oracle has a card labeled “Home,” which is an exquisite illustration of a magically organic dwelling.