CONTINUED TOUR OF THE HOUSE OF 2022

Having walked through the downstairs chambers of the dollhouse symbolizing the magical, metaphorical House of 2022, we now head upstairs.

But before going farther, I want to emphasize that because the Tarot works holographically, in a New Year’s reading to look into my house or your house, issues that affect you or me will be reflected in our larger society—and vice versa.  That’s why I say the divination done here is a way of looking at what is in store for myself, but also in relation to what’s we might expect for the world at large in 2022.  (By the way, if your birthday is January 1^st, any New Year’s forecast will be especially relevant to your year ahead.)

For the upstairs hallway, which pertains to how well one moves through the different compartments of one’s life, (and therefore how well the different areas of one’s life are integrated), I pulled the reversed Herald of Autumn (i.e. Page of Pentacles).  Because this tarot personality is focused on the needs of everyday life, the reversed card may indicate some setbacks in getting around to attend to different needs.  At this point, it should be obvious that a number of the cards that have been drawn can predictably relate to the inconveniences of the ongoing COVID situation, as it surges, subsides, and surges again.

Stepping into the master bedroom, the card drawn is the Two of Autumn, (Two of Pentacles), reversed.  For people in intimate relationships, the card symbolism associated with the bedroom can apply to the quality of the relationship, while for solitary persons, it may have more to do with their ability to rest and regenerate.  In either case, this is not an auspicious card for the bedroom, because it depicts the challenges of balancing one’s own material needs with the needs of others.  The balance is even more difficult as portrayed in the Victorian Fairy Tarot, where an elderly fairy rides a unicycle as he attempts to clutch a bunch of hazel nuts.  Here, the reversed card additionally suggests the graphic image of falling off the unicycle.

The next room is the bathroom, which relates to health and body issues, as well as purification.  The card that came up for this room is the Ten of Summer, (Ten of Cups), which denotes the well-being we enjoy through family and community relationships.  This particular card portrays fairies enjoying themselves as they swim and play in a pool by a waterfall.  (Note the parallelism between the Ten of Summer and the Ten of Autumn, which both portray happy community scenes.)  As this card is very auspicious for health and happiness,  I wonder if this could foretell the end of the pandemic, or maybe we’re all just more health conscious as a result of it.  If aligned with a timeline, this card position relates to Lammas, (the cross-quarter day which falls in August), and this is significant for me personally, because that’s when I plan to retire, so that I can start rebuilding my health (as well as my writing career).

 The final room is the nursery.  If you have children, cards in this position can relate to their concerns.  (Due to the fact that many of us live with other people, we do have to expect that their issues are going to be encountered in certain rooms of the house.)  Otherwise, this can relate to issues concerning your Inner Child, as well as your capacity for creativity and generativity.  The card that came up for this room is the Empress reversed, which is quite striking, because this VFT deck portrays the Empress as a fairy queen surrounded by four children of different ages, who are pulling on her skirts.  I don’t offhand recall any other tarot decks that show the Empress with children, though she is often portrayed as pregnant to emphasize her own qualities of creativity and generativity.  However, because the card is reversed, it could warn of challenges in parents’ relationship with children, (possibly due to the social isolation of the pandemic).  Otherwise, it could pertain to challenges in creative work.  To turn this around to stimulate creative vision and inspiration for the year 2022, we might try reconnecting with the things that gave us joy when we were very young, as these have the power to generate new vitality in older age.

Although that completes the house tour, there was one more card.  While I was shuffling, the Temperance card almost fell out of the deck, and then when I had pulled the eight cards for the rooms, Temperance was the next card in line in the deck order.  The illustration for this card shows a fairy in green, who drips droplets from a green leaf into a green elixir in a golden goblet.  As Temperance is about living in balance and often pertains to health issues, I think this sums up much of the advice offered in this overall reading.

Faeries and Flowering on May 1st

This Sunday is May 1st, popularly known as May Day or Beltane. Because it is the first Sunday of the month, I will be back at the Triple Goddess from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Because Beltane is a big day for the powers of Faerie, I will be demonstrating techniques using various faery oracle cards, and ways that we can relate to our faery friends. As with all of my “magical chats,” even if you came out for previous sessions, feel free to come back, because the cards are always leading us to new discoveries.

The other theme for the day is “the magic of flowering,” as May is a month when the woodland wildflowers, as well as many of our favorite garden flowers, are at their prime, plus the time around May 1st is the Floralia celebration honoring the goddess of flowers. Some people may think that a goddess of flowers would be kind of frivolous, and something of an afterthought in pagan religion, but this is not the case, as this was one of the Romans’ most ancient festivals, and they took this six-day festival quite seriously. According to E. O. James, “there is every indication that it began as a rustic feast connected perhaps with Aphrodite as the goddess of flowering plants (Antheia), held at the appropriate season at the end of April” [170].

Floral imagery is used extensively in the RWS versions of the tarot. In psychological symbolism, flowers can represent processes of growth within the psyche. For example, in discussing the fairy tale “Jorinda and Joringel,” Jungian analyst Sibylle Birkhauser-Oeri discusses how the hero dreams of a blood-red flower which provides a solution to his problem, explaining, “The flower thus represents a natural process of growth which takes place somewhere in the psyche without the conscious mind initially being aware of it” [“The Mother” 54]. In folk magic, (particularly in Mexican and South American shamanism), the idea of flowering relates to manifesting good luck. So, we shall also do tarot readings to discover areas of life where we can experience the magic of flowering.

By the way, I was going through Arthur Edward Waite’s book, “The Pictorial Key to the Tarot,” to see what he says about floral symbolism, when I glanced at his write-up on The Empress card, and saw something related to the magic of opening as discussed in the previous post, but also ties in with the current topic: “In another order of ideas, the card of the Empress signifies the door or gate by which an entrance is obtained into this life, as into the Garden of Venus … ” [83].

Now, I’m sorry to have to announce that there will be no Triple Goddess session for the month of June, because I am going to have to make a trip to California to attend to some family concerns. However, if the plan should change, I will announce that here.

Opening the Tarot, Part III

In the previous post, we were looking at the significance of body language in tarot graphic illustration, in relation to ideas of openness. Taking another look at the Queen of Wands in comparison to the Empress in body language, both have open laps and sit with legs apart, (rather than in a crossed or demure drawn-together position), though their long gowns do drape decorously over their knees, (and the Empress’s lower body is angled to the right, with legs drawn closer together than those of the Queen of Wands). These hints at sexual openness suggests some Aphrodite energy, which ties in with our theme of opening as it relates to the month of April. April is both the month of opening and the month dedicated to Aphrodite and her divine powers of opening, as previously mentioned. In the RWS deck, the Empress is explicitly associated with Venus/Aphrodite, (as shown by her heart-shaped shield with the glyph of Venus on it), while the fiery energies associated with the Queen of Wands suggests that she can be the most passionate and sensual of the queens. Despite this, the Queen of Wands is less ready to engage the viewer than the Empress, for she gazes off to the right, and both of her hands are occupied.

When we look at the body language of the four kings, we notice that the King of Swords looks us square in the face, so he is definitely aware of us, but that sword he is wielding blocks any impulse on our part to go right up to him. In these respects, and in the military accessories, the King of Swords’ symbolism resonates with that of The Emperor, (who often has a militaristic orientation). On the other hand, The King of Cups’ open body language makes him more approachable, in keeping with his traditional “Mr. Nice Guy” personality. However, although the King of Cups is facing forward, he is slightly angled to the right (which is his left), while gazing at us slantwise. This may indicate that, though kindly disposed, he may regard us the Querents as something of a distraction.

The only other RWS Minor Arcana cards where the figures look us full in the face are the Four of Pentacles and Nine of Cups. In the former card, the man is greedily clutching a pentacle in a way that erects a material barrier between us and him. The latter shows a jolly man in front of an open (half-circle) arrangement of cups that suggests hospitality, yet our host’s crossed arms indicates that he is selective about who he invites in. There are other cards that show celebration and conviviality, but have a more closed-off quality. For example, the Three of Cups is a festive card that depicts three women dancing, yet theirs is a closed circle, as if to tell the viewer, “Three’s company, four’s a crowd.”

Although the RWS deck’s use of body language and other imagery makes some philosophical statements about concepts of open and closed, there is no reason that other designers couldn’t deal with these issues differently. This gives would-be designers something to think about, and is a reason for users to experiment with different decks on different occasions.

CORRECTION TO YESTERDAY’S POST--ON YEAR CARDS

When I wrote about Year Cards yesterday, I fired off my post in too much haste, so I didn’t adequately explain the method for calculating year cards, and that in combining numerology with tarot, you can experience year cards going up to the number 21. That is because in the narrowly focused technique I was describing, I was just concerned with the most basic building blocks of peoples’ experience, as personal year experiences are informed by the year as a whole, which is an Empress year, and hence my reason for distilling the birth date and Year Card numbers to between 1 and 9.

So, to clarify the basic year card technique, the way you get your personal year card is you add your birth day and your birth month to the current year. So, for a person born on January 4th, he/she would add 1 + 4 + 2 + 0 + 1 + 0, which gets 8, and corresponds to the Strength card, while a person born on June 23rd would get 14 (6 + 2 + 3 + 2 +0 + 1 + 0 = 14), which corresponds to Temperance. However, if a person was born on January 4th and the current year happened to be 2098, his or her numbers would add up to 24, (1 + 4 + 2 + 0 + 9 + 8 =24), which takes us outside of the tarot deck. In that case, he or she would have to add 2 + 4 to get 6 (the Lovers) for a personal year number. Because 2010 gives us such a low number (3) with which to do magical numerology, most of us won’t have to break our numbers down too many times to get a number below 22.

So that is how you find your personal year card, though there are other nuances. Angeles Arrien, who as I have said I believe invented the technique, reckons the year from birthday to birthday, as opposed to the calendar year. However, others go by the calendar year, and I tend to go along with that, because in our cognitive perception and memory, we tend to experience years as entities. Thus, when Queen Elizabeth had had a particularly bad year, she described it as her “annus horribilus,” and a lot of us think of 2001 in a certain way, due to 9-11.

Now, getting back to yesterday’s exercise that involved looking at 2010 as an Empress Year, and thinking about how that could combine with our personal year card experiences: for the purposes of that particular exercise, I was having everybody condense their year card numbers to one digit between 1 and 9, because as I have said, we were looking at the most basic building blocks of the experience. Also, when you have a year card number or other type of number of 10 or above, you have one of the 1-through-9 numbers as a seed or shadow factor at work. So, a person whose Year Card number is 13 (Death), has 4 (the Emperor) as a background influence--and when you think about it, both Death and the Emperor are concerned with consolidation and setting limitations as a way of forming structures; (a “terminus” is necessary in laying out and defining a structure). Looking at the lower numbered cards as factors in the higher numbered cards, in fact, viewing them as “tarot constellations” is another Angeles Arrien innovation introduced in “The Tarot Handbook,” and further developed by Mary K. Greer in “Tarot Constellations.”

CLAIMING YOUR POWER IN 2010

As we get farther into 2010, we can also think about its tarot card correspondence, which is The Empress (2 + 0 + 1 + 0 = 3, the number of the Empress card). Last year’s card was Justice, and at that time I wrote about how that might have pertained to the new Obama administration and other world trends. As the Empress stands for abundance, as well as the ability to nourish creative visions, let’s hope that this is good news for the economy, as well as a good year for “cultural creatives.”

To get a notion of what an Empress year could mean for you personally, add the day and month of your birth, and then break that number down, if necessary, to a number between 1 and 9. So, March 7th = 3 + 7 = 10 = 1 + 0 = 1. Now, consider how traditional numerological symbolism harmonizes your number with the Empress qualities. So, if your birth day plus month equals 1, the pioneering impulse of the Number 1 unites with the Empress’s creative abundance (3). Adding those numbers, 1 + 3 = 4, we see that your initiative combined with the Empress’s creative abundance will lead to the Number 4’s stable foundations. Because the Number 4 also corresponds to the Emperor card, that brings additional nuances to the interpretation; in this case, the Emperor’s ability to “make it so.” So, in this particular example, while The Empress is the year card for 2010, the Emperor is the year card for the individual whose birth day and month add up to 1. (You get your year card by adding your birth day and month to whatever the current year is, and then reducing those numbers as described.)

What we are doing is looking at how larger Empress Year qualities shape the individual’s experience of his or her personal year card.

I don’t know for sure who came up with the original idea of linking birth date numerology to tarot cards, but I believe it was Angeles Arrien, because in Mary Greer’s 1984 book, “Tarot for Your Self,” Greer demonstrates a number of these techniques, including how to find Personality and Soul cards, and credits Arrien as having taught this to her. You can learn a lot more about creating your “tarot profile” in Greer’s book, as well as in Arrien’s, “The Tarot Handbook.”

To continue with how the Empress year might be experienced by the other numbers:

For the person whose birth day and month add up to the number 2, the Empress’s creative abundance combines with the value you place on relationships, leading to more stimulating and meaningful ways of engaging larger groups of people, (#5). The additional energy of the Hierophant as your year card can help you communicate these things.

For number 3, the Empress’s creative abundance combines with your natural creativity, doubling the benefits and leading to the easy expression of good energies, (#6), often in a community of celebration. The additional energy of the Lovers as your year card can help you harmonize these energies.

For #4, the Empress’s creative abundance combines with your ability to create structure, leading to a workable creative vision (#7). The additional energy of the Chariot as your year card can help you take control of your life.

For #5, the Empress’s creative abundance combines with your versatility in channeling multiple energies, enabling you to achieve critical mass in your ability to influence larger communication networks (#8). The additional energy of Strength as your year card can help you grapple with these energies.

For #6, the Empress’s creative abundance combines with your ability to promote social harmony, leading to a wealth of opportunities, (#9). The additional energy of the Hermit as your year card can help you discriminate, to focus on the more meaningful paths.

For #7, the Empress’s creative abundance combines with your visionary ability to see ahead of your time, leading to pioneering innovations (#1). The additional energy of the Magician as your year card can help you identify resources.

For #8, the Empress’s creative abundance combines with your ability to organize your world, leading to rewarding relationships and your ability to nurture others (#2). The additional energy of the High Priestess as your year card can help you gain the necessary insights.

For #9, the Empress’s creative abundance combines with your ability to multiply your options and resources, leading to even greater creative abundance (#3). The additional energy of the Empress as your year card can help you nurture your dreams.

In the above examples, I arrived at the potential interpretations by blending and harmonizing the qualities of the different numbers and cards involved. Each new year will be different of course, because it involves new numbers and tarot archetypes that are blended in a different mix in a different way. For people who are really into numerology, there are additional levels of complication that could be brought in, but I won’t get into that.

Finally, you can also use your numbers for this year to create a personalized “tarot spell of the year.” So, in the example of a person whose birth day and month add up to the #1, you could lay out The Magician (which is card 1), the Empress (the card of 2010), and the Emperor (your personal year card), and visualize yourself bringing about the changes you’d like to see through actions associated with these cards. Similar principals apply for the other numbers, unless your birth day and month add up to #3 or 9, because then your spell would require two Empress cards; however, it’s OK to just make do with one Empress, or raid another deck.