{"id":38054,"date":"2011-05-08T09:49:31","date_gmt":"2011-05-08T14:49:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=38054"},"modified":"2011-05-08T09:51:30","modified_gmt":"2011-05-08T14:51:30","slug":"the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-may-8-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/reading-tarot\/the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-may-8-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, May 8, 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free\u00a0tarot spread generator<\/a> using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread.\u00a0This article<\/a> tells you how to use the spread. You can\u00a0visit Sarah’s website here<\/a>. –efc<\/em><\/p>\n

By\u00a0Sarah Taylor<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

A period of struggle to bring something to life has cast you into the shadows so that you might undergo some soul-searching; a rebirth beckons to you.<\/em><\/p>\n

The fact that this week’s reading contains two major arcana cards (the cards that delineate the soul’s evolution as we move through life) means that something significant is at work here. My sense here is that it is primarily an inner process rather than an outer one — although it might be reflected in your outer life, especially where The Empress comes into play.<\/p>\n

\"7<\/a>
7 of Pentacles, The Moon, The Empress from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck. Click on the image for a larger version.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Seven of Pentacles speaks of a moment of coming face-to-face with the realisation that your efforts to bring something to fruition in the material world have not been as successful as you had hoped. What comes to mind for me here is the parable of the man who sows his seeds upon the rocky ground. At first, the seeds burst into life and start growing quickly; but the flourishing is short-lived because there is nowhere for them to take root. They are cut off from a source of sustenance and quickly wither. And so there is a period of contemplation — perhaps a period of mourning — as you step back and regroup. This is your communion with The Moon.<\/p>\n

The Moon is very much an ‘inner-focussed’ card. It speaks of a time where things are cast into shadow, familiar paths and landmarks unclear. It is a time when, as with walking in the moonlight, your pace necessarily needs to slow in order that you adapt to your surroundings. It is also a time where you need to learn how to discern the voice of your intuition from the fear-mongering that your mind can indulge in when the world darkens.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Moon can conjure up thoughts and feelings that are unsettling: both the crustacean and the baying dogs, one with its teeth bared, symbolise this experience. But what you are really dealing with here is the uncovering of the part of yourself that is the repository of instinctual, perhaps primeval, thoughts and feelings. And all the while the Moon itself dominates the scene — calm, meditative, a gently protective and nourishing influence, its beams becoming golden drops that rain down on the land beneath.<\/p>\n

The introspective light of The Moon can help you to face those facets of yourself that are more easily ignored and reasoned away in the broad light of day. The Moon is time away to attend to your inner life when what you had worked so hard to develop and grow was not as productive as you had first hoped. The Moon is an invitation to excavate the rocky ground so that it is able to bear fruit, so that the seeds that you sow in your life not only find root, but thrive.<\/p>\n

And so we come to The Empress — in one respect almost the antithesis of the Seven of Pentacles. Here, the natural world is fecund, fed as it is by the ground it grows in, by the water — representing emotions — that flows unfettered in the background, and by The Empress herself, who is the embodiment of balance: masculine and feminine (the scepter and the symbol enclosed by a heart), the cycles of life and death, the earth and the stars.<\/p>\n

The pomegranates on The Empress’s robe are a visual reminder of the myth of Demeter, goddess of the harvest, and her daughter Persephone, who was abducted by Hades, and then released from her capture in the underworld on condition that she returned there for four months every year. When she surfaces every year, the world, barren in her absence, springs back to life.<\/p>\n

I feel that this myth is echoed in these three cards, and that a time of barrenness and of plumbing the depths of the soul are a necessary part of your emotional, psychological and spiritual development. The pentacles in the Seven of Pentacles — standing alone as they are on the card, unsupported by the vine or the parched environment — are integrated into the yellow globe and the path through the darkened landscape of The Moon, and finally come in to their own in The Empress — as the head of the sceptre, as the circle in the symbol that supports The Empress herself, as the yellow spilling into the wheat and the sky.<\/p>\n

Now there is the invitation to a sense of belonging, of being grounded, nurtured and in the flow of life, and, consequently, of deeper meaning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free\u00a0tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread.\u00a0This article tells you how to use the spread. You can\u00a0visit Sarah’s website here. –efc By\u00a0Sarah Taylor A period of struggle to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":470,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[183],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38054"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/470"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}