{"id":41010,"date":"2011-07-03T11:18:55","date_gmt":"2011-07-03T15:18:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=41010"},"modified":"2011-07-03T11:18:55","modified_gmt":"2011-07-03T15:18:55","slug":"the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-july-3-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/reading-tarot\/the-weekend-tarot-reading-sunday-july-3-2011\/","title":{"rendered":"The Weekend Tarot Reading — Sunday, July 3, 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

Change is here — in fact, it is taking place already. It might feel like something that grounded you to what was life as you understood it to be is now being stripped away, which itself is a form of death. But look up, and look around: something new has come in. Something that takes you closer to your true nature. You have the opportunity to integrate this, balance it, and express it through you; and in so doing, you change the world. <\/em><\/p>\n

\"Death,<\/a>
Death, The Lovers, Temperance from the Rider-Waite Smith Tarot deck. Click on the image for a larger version.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you have been following the tarot readings over the past few weekends, you might be unsurprised to see The Lovers making its third appearance in three weeks. If this isn’t a sign of looking into the mirror and working with powers available to you to integrate something within, then I don’t know what is.<\/p>\n

What this reading also focuses on is balance, which goes hand-in-hand with conscious integration. Balance is implied in The Lovers, but it comes into its own in Temperance, the third card in the reading. And this emphasis on balance — a sense of a gaze towards the other that is both deep, measured and steady — feels entirely appropriate given that we are being led towards the mirror and the invitation to look into it is by Death — herald of change that is often penetrative, and invariably unavoidable.<\/p>\n

Like few other cards, Death has the ability to send shivers up the spine. It rarely suggests physical death — but I’m not sure that it is fear of physical death that really lies at the heart of the emotion this card brings up in so many of us. I am coming to see that often our bodies and our minds cannot distinguish emotionally between physical death and the experience of death that we feel when a part of us or our experience falls away because it no longer serves us.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

To our egos, intent on survival and with a predisposition to hold to the known rather than plunge into the mystery, that falling away can feel absolute because we are so focused on the end itself — which is palpable — while any sense of a beginning is hypothetical, as yet based in faith and not fact. This idea is emphasised by Death itself: the figure of death, clad in black armour, sitting on a red-eyed steed and carrying a standard in its bony hand, is so compelling that we might be forgiven for not giving much consideration to the other figures and objects around it. We are so focused on what we believe death to be that we ignore the very signs of life that it brings to us.<\/p>\n

In front of the horse’s head, in the background of the card, two monoliths frame a rising sun. These are the same towers that we find in The Moon, indicating the pathway through the darkness. The dawn may be in the distance, but it is there nonetheless, and the yellow of the Sun is reflected in the clothing of the religious figure supplicating death, and in the bones of death itself. Death also shows us that life is possible. For now, however, life might feel as monochrome as death itself — our lives cast into sharp relief where we see only extremes, ignoring the subtle signs that something different is on the horizon.<\/p>\n

For, in The Lovers, that Sun has grown to the point where it forms the full backdrop to the central figure of the angel, the man and woman standing in its rays underneath. It brings the tree on the left into fruit; it ignites and feeds the flames of the tree on the right.<\/p>\n

Then, in Temperance, it seems to be descending behind the mountains on the left of the picture. It has risen, reached its zenith, and now it is setting. This, to me, indicates a defined period of transition, an encounter with something new, and then the integration of that encounter — all the while underpinned by a sense of balance. Death rings in the changes. Its card is less symmetrical than the other two. Death predominates in the upper left diagonal of the card; the smaller human figures seem to be gathered under it in the bottom right diagonal. They do not meet death as an adversary. Rather, they meet it with reverence and surrender.<\/p>\n

Once we have surrendered to inevitable change, then we can look around us and see what is new that is being reflected back to us — both from outside, and from within. We are being guided by our connection to the divine. We are, in essence, having an encounter with the divine through something, or someone, else.<\/p>\n

And then, in Temperance, when we are able to find a point of balance through that encounter, we become part of the flow of all things: the two figures in The Lovers — polarity incarnate — are vessels in Temperance through which consciousness flows. The angel, previously separate from the figures and floating in the skies, now holds the two cups and has taken on a more human form. It is as if the boundary between what it is to be human and what it is to be divine has blurred. The angel’s feet mirror those of the man; the white of its robes takes my eye back to the horse — the harbinger of change — which has been assimilated; it retains its wings and its head radiates light. An Earth angel.<\/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 tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc By Sarah Taylor Change is … 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\/41010"}],"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=41010"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41010\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41010"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41010"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41010"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}