Ostara

I'm back on the hop! And just in time for an Easter-themed post.

This time the theme for the Tarot Blog Hop is Ostara: Paint a Journey with New Life.

As I am mostly a Tower girl and a Tower reader (I rarely get people who are curious about a career change or home improvement. As Kali's sometimes willing minion, I mostly read for people who are one more bit of bad news shy of coming undone). So first I had to have a little giggle over the theme.

However, undaunted by current life circumstance, the Tarot reader rides forth to meet the challenge of Paint a Journey with a New Life. This time, I have chosen to do a spread.

I'm calling this the Ostara spread and am adding it to the Little Golden Book of Spreads. For those of you new to this blog, I'm a bit of a create-your-own-spread nut. Today is no different.

Also, I'm a bit of an organic reader. I let the vision dictate the spread, then work out the message later. (I just heard the screams of a hard core traditionalist in the background. Please refer to the "Psychic Tarot" book in the upper lefthand corner and make a hasty exit at this time if you were hoping I was going to solemnly intone the Rider-Waite meanings or even read out the Tarot of Transformation meanings of any of these cards. Love you all, bow to your superior accumulated knowledge, am actually in awe of it. But we don't serve that here.)

The intent of the above spread was Painting a Journey with New Life.

Lay the above spread starting at the lower left (the cards should slightly overlap). When you've laid three cards up the left side, continue back down (cards 3 & 4 are touching each other, 5 & 6 continue down the other side to mirror cards 1 & 2 opposite). Card 7 is drawn last and placed at the top.

Cards 1 & 6 (and 2 & 5) represent needs (1 & 2) and resulting actions (5 & 6) that were attempted in the past to bring about life change that did not pan out. In the second attempt (2 & 5), you can see you were brought closer to your goal, even if the action itself did not result in the life journey you were looking for.

Cards 3 & 4 represent an open path that would get you onto the life path you wish to be on. Card 3 is the need (as Cards 1 & 2 were past needs) and Card 4 is the action (as Cards 5 & 6 were actions taken based on past needs).

Card 7 is a message from the Divine regarding your life path.

I like this spread because it honors past actions as necessary in having gotten one to this point (even though they didn't pan out at the time), as well as offers advice on which of the many paths open to you on this point you should concentrate on. We all have a multitude of spokes that keep our wheel balanced and rolling. From the big issues: Do I need to concentrate on my career? My love life? My family? My health? To the more precise issues: Should I get a hobby? If I take on another hobby, how will that affect my social life? My time with my husband? My time to make healthy food that nourishes my body rather than running through the nearest drive-thru to conserve my time and energy?

It's often difficult to decide, or sometimes even notice, in the hectic whirr of it all which spoke might have weakened and needs the most immediate attention.

In order to create new life, move forward, and strengthen your path, this spread or any healthy dose of Tarot will help you see what needs doing and envision a healthy, balanced road ahead.

***

If you haven't already, please visit Kareena who came before me:

http://kareenatarot.blogspot.com/2012/03/tarot-blog-hop-ostara-paint-journey.html

Or continue the hop by visiting October:

http://readingsbyoctober.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/tarot-blog-hop-ostara-paint-a-journey-with-new-life-26-2/

What Would You Attempt to Do if You Knew You Could Not Fail?

One of these days, I am going to look up the astrology of this year (Tarot reader = yes. Astrologer = no.) and figure out why it has been systematically kicking my behind. I feel like I'm getting completely re-organized from the inside-out, and as a person who's already done that a time or two over the last 30 years (heck, over the last decade!) I would kindly like to ask the universe to knock it the heck off!

When I headed off to college in the last waning months of the year 2000 (little suspecting what a terrible, terrible choice in colleges I had made), my mother gave me a very solid, rectangular, metal paperweight engraved with the saying, "What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?"

My mother and I both thought the answer was obvious. She said, "Everything!"

I said, "Nothing."

Which, to this day, perplexes my mother. I understood her answer - knowing you could always succeed, what wouldn't you try? Trapeze artist, hula dancer, astronaut, hot air balloon guide. Guaranteed success, why not?

I, on the other hand, could not imagine what was to be gained without risk. If I knew everything I undertook was going to be successful, why expend the effort? Knowing the outcome robs life of its mystery and guaranteed success removes that refinement that only comes from failure.

By far the most worthwhile undertakings of my life have had in them the most risk. Tarot was a risk of faith. Guatemala was a risk of safety. Writing was a risk of security. The Center was a risk of community. Spain was a risk of sanity. Finance was a risk of purpose. I have learned more in attempting these than simple success could give me.

I have been blessed with the ability to succeed at many things, but not at everything, and I have to say I'm rather grateful for that. Without failure, why would we strive? Without risk, how would we value gain?

Here's an exercise. Draw a card with the intent of exploring how failure has enriched your life. It can be a specific failure or failure in general. You may just find what you see as failure was simply risk taken in pursuit of greater gain.

Keep striving, my friends!

How Can I Be the Best Candle?

Welcome new friends. Hello to the old. I decided to participate in a Tarot blog round robin around Imbolc. The theme you see above is "How Can I Be the Best Candle?"


I gave it a good month's worth of thought. I tossed around several ideas, such as how fascinated I am that a candle represents all four elements in one form (fire on the wick, earth in the wax, water in the melted wax, air consumed by the flame). How strongly I feel that the challenge of the Hermit (the light for one) is to become the Star (the light for many). I even thought of several tenets of being a good Tarot reader. All of them were fine ideas. None of them spoke to the heart of what I felt it was to be the Best Candle.


So, I asked for clarity. And once again, I walked into another one of those "be careful what you wish for" situations.


As most of my loyal followers know (hi, Mom!), I don't support myself by Tarot or writing. When I do mention the day job, I refer to it only as my "Clark Kent" job. I tend to mention it as little as possible.


For who would suspect, despite ten books, the best possible Tarot mentor, and some very stout encouragement from every English teacher I had from fifth grade up, that I, Melanie A. Howard, would ever spend 40 hours a week...


As a claims adjuster!


Ladies and gentleman, the secret is out. I spend the vast majority of my time making money for money's sake. I work for a finance institution that hires out to other finance institutions and handle five times as much money in one day than I make in a year.


In my list of jobs, it is by far the one I have been best at. I was a fine children's book editor. I was a good teacher. I am an excellent writer and a sincere Tarot reader.


But I am remarkable at finance.


As the months after my return from Guatemala turned into years, I wasn't sure whether I was more surprised or horrified by this glaring reality. After all, what was I building? Who was I serving? How could I possibly be enriching the world?


It's easy to forget sometimes, in the world of "good" and "evil," that not all of us get to be the candle planted righteously at the head of a nonprofit organization serving widows and orphans. Someone is the candle on the other side of the phone line explaining how to reboot your internet, how to work your steering wheel touch controls, how to return the dress that was so cute in the catalog but hideous in person. Someone is the candle who arranges a payment plan for you when your life takes a turn, reverses the overdraft oopsie you didn't mean to make....


... and reviews the settlements received on an auto account in the event of an accident to make sure all parties paid correctly.


The Best Candle lights the Best Candle in others and illuminates the dark places. Whether your candle is in the Sistine Chapel or at the register at a gas station during a power outage, the purpose is the same. Shine a light wherever you are planted.


***


For those of you following the Imbolc post cycle, I invite you to click on to Michael Banuelos:


http://moderndayoracle.com/

If you did not just come from there, the blog before mine was:

http://personaltarotwithmatt.com/blog/

Thankfulness Spread

There was a rumor that this Melanie engineered spreads, but no evidence of it has been seen in quite some time. Fear not, the spreads continue, and really are catalogued in the little golden book.

I was going to do the following spread on Thanksgiving, but I was so disheartened by the materialistic display surrounding Black Friday (did anyone else notice how Thanksgiving basically got mowed over this year?) that I couldn't summon the proper frame of mind. When I engineer a spread, I do a little "gee, wouldn't it be cool if..." but I do a real spread. I don't feel it honors the vision to just lay the cards out willy-nilly in the pattern just to record it. I want to know what message it brings.







I call this the Thankfulness Spread. Mostly because I have a hard time spelling cornucopia.

(For those with a nice monitor, yes, those are glass pumpkins underneath a glass tabletop.)

If you can see, this spread begins with the Page of Coins and ends with the Four of Coins. Which is perhaps a little backward in how you'd think of the cornucopia - starting at the mouth and going to the tail - but that's how it turned out (I don't question, I just record). There are nine cards in this spread.

Card 1 (in this case the Page of Coins) represents the seeker's awareness of his or her own gifts/his or her personal, internal relationship to and treatment of those gifts.

Cards 2-8 are a listing of the many gifts and talents life has offered the seeker (and looking at my own, these may be gifts the seeker may not be aware of, may have disregarded, or may not have looked at in the light of it being a "gift").

Card 9 (in this case the Four of Coins) represents how the seeker is putting his or her gifts to work in the world.

So, save this one for next Thanksgiving or trot it out when you feel you need to get back to the intangibles. And be truly thankful.

The Baby and the Bathwater

A friend of mine once told me that I never change. My grandfather, God rest his soul, theorized that people don't change - they just become more who they are. I'm not sure what's going on astrologically (despite being a Tarot reader and a rather adept psychic, I prefer to be completely surprised - I only look for hints when I feel it is necessary), but since about last August, I've been caught up in some sort of strange turnabout where I keep looking at my life backward instead of forward.

I'm a soldier through it kind of girl. Forward, always forward. I regret little because I realize at every point of the path, I was who I was and made my choices based on where I was and what I valued at the time. I don't often wistfully look back with starry-eyed "what if." I simply take what I learned from success or failure and apply it to future situations.

This new perspective of looking backward to see what I may have left behind is therefore both bizarre and disturbing to me. I'm not sure if this is happening because I am two years overdue for my two-and-a-half-year escape and reinvention cycle that has occupied the last decade of my life or what exactly is going on, but whatever it is feels large and important and is progressing at an annoying crawl. I do know I've had the itch to leave Minnesota for the last two years, and that this time for reasons unknown I've been compelled to stay.

And now this strange, sucking vortex of the past has hold of me. In my forward march, I keep telling myself that what is left behind is not important. Obviously, if it isn't part of my life anymore, it isn't meant to fit in my life, and the Universe has dropped it that I might make room for something else. Usually, if I'm having a fit of nostalgia, one half hour at the piano where I remind myself just how unskilled I really was is enough to cure me of backward thinking. This time, it won't let go.

I keep running into situations where I need to question what I value. Where I not only need to remember the bad structures I'd built in my life that required demolition every time I left "home," but the good structures I'd also had in place that went down with the rest of the building. It seems some things I'm meant to relive and revive - the good and the bad. To what purpose, I do not yet know.

I do know my inner soldier is tapping her foot, checking her watch, and wondering when the next flight leaves.

Work

Last night we had the Women's Gathering in Hastings (3rd Friday of every month) and the theme was Remembering and Synchronicity. I made Macaroni and Cheese for the occasion (we try to coordinate the food) and didn't burn it! I also led a Synchronicity activity involving Tarot.

Using the Tarot of the Crone, I spread out all the cards in a line and told the gathered to choose one that would provide insight into something you once had or were that would help your current life if you could incorporate it back in.

I didn't just officiate, I chose a card, too. Mine shocked me. Then pissed me off.

The others got messages about power and connection and reclaiming. What did I get? The Five of Disks - WORK.

I swear, if you could have but heard the SCREAMING in my brain at that one. But for those who couldn't, it went something like this: "Work?! WORK?!! I swear to the SWEET JESUS if I work any harder it is going to KILL me! Remember that night off I had this week - oh wait, I don't because I didn't HAVE one. And you, Universe, DARE to imply I am not working HARD enough?! SCREW YOU!!"

Today, I'm going to get a massage. I might see a movie in the theatre for the first time in months. I might even go shopping just for the hell of it.

And... after making all these plans... it occurs to me the Universe is not above a little reverse psychology.....

Personality

Last weekend was the Women and Spirituality Conference in Mankato again. I've been every year (except the year I was in Guatemala) since Nancy taught the High Priestess. This year, she taught the Wheel. (For those of you who know me well, work out the irony of me missing the Lovers.)

I love the conference, I love the people, I love the atmosphere, I love spending time with family and friends. It's always one of the best weekends of my year. Plus, I get to read more and learn more Tarot! And get exposed to things I've never heard of, such as dowsing.

For the last few years, I've brought my cards and done readings and the Blessing and Breathing Center table. I don't do many readings in a year - this is Minnesota, spit in any direction and you'll hit a reader of some kind, especially at the Women and Spirituality Conference - but I always know the ones I do are because I was exactly where I was supposed to be for exactly the person I was supposed to be there for.

My cards do not act like cards that only get about twenty uses a year, however. Go into a room full of all Tarot people, and saying your decks have personality gets you a sagacious nod. Say something like that at your office, and they call the men in white coats. Still, they have distinct personalities, especially my three or four reading decks.

At the conference last weekend, I'd set up my little table with the New Star deck, the Tarot of Transformation deck, and the Legacy of the Divine deck. I read with those three almost exclusively now. The New Star was sitting furthest to a left. A friend of mine and Nance's came over and set her coffee down on the little reading table.

Now, I can "hear" them, sort of like a little echo in my head. I knew the New Star, my harsh grandmother deck, was annoyed. It is a relatively rare occasion for someone to admit to me that they can hear them, too. About thirty seconds after the coffee went down, up the cup went again. Apparently, my New Star deck gave one heck of an energy flash about it.

I thought it was hilarious. It was also nice to know it wasn't just me who "heard" them.