calamity's child

more heart opening, all the time.

a reading, about a possibility: ends with lust as the the most the relationship has to offer. . especially interesting because it’s all about letting things run wild, letting the strictures fall away. also interesting because it’s got this bright light surrounded by watery green blue; fire of water, always. everything in my life is fire of water.

this is the key to emotiveness, of the kind of emotive transformation i need. letting something run its course, and take me along with it. this card, lust.

eta:i just found this, marked drafts, but the incompleteness seems fitting. i’m sure i’ll be back to this card later, but i wanted to let this sit. in the cab, the other day, on my way home alone after a night of dancing, the cabby turned the radio up as mary j blige was singing “real love, i’m searching for a real love. someone to set my heart free, real love.” and i was feeling it so deep. but now that i look at this, i think that’s not it. i think what it is that i’m searching for is lust. it’s this, the sweeping away and captivation. i don’t want to be held by it right now. i want to get lost in it.

i’ve been falling way behind on my major arcana project. i’ll get back on it this week, i promise.

in the mean time…

i’ve been doing a bunch of two-card readings for myself lately. the hanged man has been popping up again and again and again for me, usually in reference to what my main thing to work through right now is all about. yesterday i was doing a reading about what i need in my sex life – card one: what do i need right now? card two: what’s going on in my heart?

it was a really good reading.
card one: 3 of cups – abundance. i need abundance in my sex life. abundance with my self or with others, i asked the cards, and received two cards: the nine of wands (strength) and the 9 of disks (gain). the funny thing about getting these cards is that they are, respectively, saggitarius and virgo, my asc. and sun signs. the 9 of wands is specifically sag in moon and the 9 of disks is virgo in venus (where my virgo actually is anyway). it seems to me that the cards are telling me that both are needed, but that i should focus primarily on myself right now. it’s interesting that i pulled cards that are so obviously me, and about uniting these two elements of my self.

card two: not shockingly, the hanged man. i pull the hanged man for everything. except this time it’s interesting because normally, i’m just asking questions about what i’m stuck at, what i’m working on. but here i’m asking a specific question, and i still get it; i wonder if this is the issue in my life that is biggest, and therefore i’m getting the hanged man in my general readings, or if i’m at a hanged man kind of place in everything. i should follow that up…

this card here is also interesting because i’m at something of a crossroads in my sex life. there’s a shift from falling hard and fast for people with whom it will be impossible to maintain a relationship, but with whom i have amazing sex, to trying to figure out how to have real, sustainable emotional intimacy with people with whom i have sex. the one person with whom this kind of intimacy is even hinted at, i run away from him at the slightest hint of intimacy. not a good thing. but the hanged-man-y thing is that i just admitted all this to him, and told him i’m trying to be more available in these ways (to intimacy, to sustained relationship), even though we all know i’m gonna run away again when i get scared. so this is interesting.

so…i need abundance, i need to love myself, i need to let people love me – that is all what i need in my sex life. but it is also what i need in my heart. those things have always been separate for me. how do i bring them together?

i’m interested, right now, in using tarot to learn more about how to eek out diff. issues i’m having with sex. it’s compelling because i spend so much time thinking about all this stuff, but such a hard time connecting with my actual feelings about it all; tarot helps me to look at that stuff directly, and to admit what i actually know about sex and feeling and desire. it’s hard for me to go there. but clearly i need to.

i have been doing some work lately on opening myself to dreams. for most of my life, i haven’t remembered my dreams at all. the past few weeks, however, have been a dream explosion. from dreams that i can’t tell from my daily life to super traumatizing dreams about abuse to anxiety dreams about money and back again to daily life dreams. often i am with close friends/family in them, which is nice. for the longest time, my dreams about abuse was this one recurring dream. the ones i’m having now aren’t about that at all. i can’t tell if it’s a blessing or a curse.

the point is, though, that something deep is going on in my intuitive life, and it’s causing all kinds of things to bubble up to the surface. i did a reading about what’s going on today: is all this about things that have happened to me or about a process i’m going through (for which i got the moon). a clarifying question: so, this is a process, but what’s it about? (10 of wands: oppression). it’s about me stifling my intuition and the things that need to work themselves out in my intuitive/emotional/psychic world. obviously. what lies at the other end of working through this? (the hanged man). of course it has to be the hanged man. will this be the end of my hanged man or the start? (the ace of wands). the start. of course. all this is going to give me firey energy for getting through my hanged man, though? that’s interesting.

anyway.

i reorganized the blog, and tagged things that were on it from before, when i was in seminary. i kept the things that felt relevant and interesting. then, i used the blog as something of a sounding board for writing projects, so i’m going to return to that, too, having this be sort of a catch-all for all the work on spiritual practices & deeper thinking about religion/theology & politics.

i wish there were some really amazing post feminist (of the postmodern, not the paglia, variety) reflections on building spiritual practices. that would really be helpful right now.

when i was pulling cards today i asked my deck: what is the intense barrier i have put up against intimacy all about? the first card i got was the magus, which we’ve already visited (although that was with the rider-waite deck, so it might be a good idea to re-visit, but i’d like to get through the rest of the major arcana before i go back to the cards i did with the r-w deck). so i pulled another card, and got the hermit. it’s interesting, because they definetly share a lot. and hermits, historically, have had roles in their communities as priest/healer/magician. i alternate between feeling like i should hermit more and less throughout my life; i don’t know right now if it’s about being a hermit or breaking thoruht the hermitage. maybe it’s a bit about reconciling myself to the fact of it and learning how to build intimacy that feels honest and open and compassionate without being contrived for pushing too hard.

anyway, this card;
the hermit figure has its back facing the reader. they are wearing red, and are very old. their hand holds a lamp that is lit by the sun; it throws light at angles everywhere. it bounces off and forms prisms. they are surrounded by grass that is growing everywhere. it is so lush. they face a clearing, and in the clearing is a green egg/orb around which is wrapped a snake. a gem or skull of some sort, in purple, rises towards the hermit from the left corner, in an arc. in the right corner is a three headed dog. the hermit’s sign association is virgo.

i was talking with my friend about the hermit card a while ago – it is her year card. she was talking about feeling like it was appropriate because of some new need for solitary time & other things that people associate with hermits – solitude, quiet, self-sufficiency, etc. i agree that those are features of the hermit, but there are some other things about the hermit, historically, that are very important. hermits have always been peripheral members of their communities. they lived on the borders between a more organized community and the land that lay beyond it. in ancient egypt, that was the desert; in medieval europe, it was the forest … you get the point. the hermit provided a very important social function in that they usually filled medical, spiritual, or educational functions in the town. they were the wise people, and often traded their services for other goods. they spent most of the time in isolation, but it was definetly punctuated by pretty intense and important involvement in the life and well-being of the people in the towns near which they lived. at no point have hermits ever been truly self-sufficient.

perhaps this is part of hwat this card has to teach me about my wall to intimacy. i am not self-sufficient. i have always known this to be true materially, despite the many ways in which i held myself and my family together as a child. i did so by accessing the care and resources available to me, though. i think it realistic, however, that i actually believe that everyone around me is fundamentally un-trustable, however, and that i have been left to get throguh this world alone. i need to get through that and start building the trust necessary to be an essential member of my community. i have located myself on the periphery of emotional engagements in my friendships; too skeptical, too fundamentally distrustful, to move much beyond that. but maybe it’s only in the risking that i can actually build the kind of intimacy and trust i know i crave. i’m scared, and sure, about how i might do that, though.

perhaps the how is why the magus comes up in this for me, though. the snake, the three headed dog, the skull/gem/orb in the hermit all point to mystery and magic. in making myself available to mystery, to the unknown, to intuition and spirit, perhaps i’ll also make myself available to risk in my relationships.

there are deep shifts needed in my life. i wonder how i will make them. slow process, its the name of the game.

i saw this card when i was pulling out my major arcana cards and thought that it might end up being my card for today. it wasn’t such a surprise when it was. i actually quite like this card.

the background looks like spiderwebs, with a spider on one side, and something caught in the other. A ram stands in front of a tree in the center of the card. the tree has saturn-esque rings circling the top, and the ram is wearing some kind of crown. he is old has has a third eye. a staff stands in front of he ram – on each side of it are wings and snakes come off the sides. the trees roots are made of two globes full of people. the globe on the right has people working with each other to stand up out of the gobe, trying to get at the ram. the globe on the left has people praying to or projecting themselves up to the ram.

it is not altogether an ominous card, it’s more of a trickster card, i guess. the goat is looking at and through the reader, himself sure of the range of possibilities, but goading the reader into choosing for themselves, somewhat eager to see what the reader will choose. the webs behind the ram indicate mystery, and also possible entrapment: what snares lie in waiting? it doesn’t seem to be directly about evil, but more about challenge. how do you get to where you want to go? with others or by yourself? what pushes you to where you want to be? yourself or others? are you using people? are you deluding yourself? what are you seeing clearly? what do you refuse to see? i think those are the central questions of this card. in that sense, this card is about befuddlement. there are some cases in christianity where the devil is talked about as separation from god. i think this card is about separation from oneself, from one’s heart of hearts.

this is my first post using the thoth deck. again, i wrote this on the airplane, this time on the way back from san francisco.

today’s card is the hanged man. which is c’s year card. i sent her a whole thing i wrote about this card & we just talked on the phone a little bit about it. it’s not surprising that i would draw this card.

the thing about the hanged man is that he is fixed in time and place by the very things he knopws to be true about & relies upon in the world: breaking out of his restraints requires a whole new set of tools and visions. the tools and visions that build a new vision of life, which he receives upon righting himself and breaking free. they go together: there is no liberation without cultivating the new tools. there are no new tools without a new vision. there is no new vision without being trapped, flipped upside down, immobilized by the old visions & tools. nothing works anymore. everything must change.

in the thoth deck, the hanged man hangs from a foot tied to an ank anchoredi n the middle of a sun at the top of the card. head, hands, feet are enclosed by circles, representing light, vision. rays make a triangle from head to hands: hands are placed in each bottom corner. below the triangle is a half moon, black, in which there is a snake: wisdom, trickery, courage, intrigue, mystery, the goddess. a half moon, large, in the opposite direction goes from the middle of the head to the bottom of the card, in blue=water, the depths, intuition. there is nothing in this card that invokes rationality or air. it is all intuition, feeling, judgement, a weighing of the situation as it stands, but in a physical, rathere than purely intellection, sense. there is little fire energy – just patience, and calm. an acknowledgement of stuckness, and a willingness to be sitll in it, to take what the situation has to offer.

it is a beautiful card.

i was in seattle last week, and then in san francisco. i did this reading in the plane on the way home to seattle. it’s using the rider waite deck. while in the bay, i met with jessica lanyadoo, the intuitive astrologer, who’s totally amazing. she recommended i get a thoth deck while i was in town, and that i stick with 1-3 card readings, which i have done/am doing. here’s the reading for last week

the magician stands poised in the middle of the card. before him is an altar on which sits a wand, a pentacle, a cup, and a sword. they are there for his use, but he’s none in his hand, having mastered all of them: he doesn’t need them right now, but will select one as it is needed.

he is androgynous, with long hair and bangs. the floor and ceiling are lush and covered with roses and lillies. these are sweet flowers, touching deep inside and healing old trauma, broken hearts, childhood terror. they help to right your heart to yourself. the roses dangle from the ceiling, nearly touching his hand. one hand is raised to the heavens, holding a candle, lit to call upon our recent ancestors & the gods. the other points to the earth and those long past. the magician stands here between those past & the present, between earth & the heavens, and in this space between, he masters and transforms the elements.

the look on his face is earnest, though not commanding or angry. he is serious about what he’s doing & about his position. the sign of eternity, infinity, is above his head. do i remember right in also associating this with an early form of the halo? in any case, it already represents his work & being as in the service of the universe.

the magician is ruled by no one. he acts in the service of the universe, the ancestors, & the gods; the earth & the heavens. but he is bound to no god, direction, or sign. the roses & lillies are there as his allies, and as evidence of the transformation the magician offers: deep healing.

there’s this tarot exercise where you pull out a card and then tell the story of what’s happening in that card. i’m trying to learn the major arcana right now, so i think that part of what i’m going to do in this blog is do this exercise, maybe once a week. i’m using the original ride-waite deck. you can see all the major arcana here.

the question i ask the deck while i’m selecting the cards is about which card of the major arcana tells me most about where i’m at right now.

today’s card is the emperor.

the emperor is sitting in a thr that is made out of stone. there are ram skulls carved into it, in profile on the top right and left corners (with the horns pointing out) and facing the audience in the front. the background is red and yellow, and there are what appear to be mountains in the background. the emperor is holding a gloden staff that has a flat piece topped with a circle in his right hand, and in his left hand is a gold globe. maybe a flask? or a time piece? he is wearing a crown with red and gold jewels in it, and is wearing armor under his robes. he has a stern face and is cleary waiting.

the emperor is waiting for a report of what is going on with his latest charge. he is epectant, but worried. he seems to be weighing possibilities in his hands – to make a move or to stay where he is. he’s anticipating a move, though, and is in a ready position. it seems that he has made up his mind and has a clear vision of what he would like to see happen. he is ready and anticipatory, and comes at those who approach him with the full force of his assessments and visions. he doesn’t really like to wait around; it makes him uncomfortable. the red and gold in this picture also show the poles that he balances between, much as his attire does: gold and the robes show us a place of more calm warmth. not neccesarily a hearty, warm, caring welcoming, but definetly a welcoming of whatever comes at him, cordialness, and a measured openness. the armor and the red tones show us that he’s ready for a fight, and on his toes. he is quick to assess his company’s motives and will meet them where they are (though will not necessarily give tehm what they way). he is wise and old, but is not at all humble.

astrologically, i would associate this card with aries.

(in checking out some sites on this card, i find that the card does indeed correspond with aries, and the element that i pointed to but didn’t necessarily name explicitly is that the emperor is also about playing the games of daily life.)

this card is totally apt for where i’m at right now. i am, in many ways, playing this character as i meet people and figure out my life in philadelphia. it’s a kind of default position out of which i operate when i’m feeling scared or threatened or tentative. this is the face i put on to help me navigate the world. it is also interesting that this is the card that i drew today for this question because aries is my moon sign, so i would guess that this card tells me a lot about how my instinctual emotional reactions. i’ll have to think more on this.