Daily Draw - Dreamer Five

Hope Discarded

This is a hard card to write about.  It's painful, frankly, to even look at.  Dreams are so precious, and to have to walk away from one is nearly the same as trying to sever a vital piece of oneself.

What we have to ask ourselves when faced with a card like this, is if the dream truly no longer serves our highest good, and therefore must be let go of in order to move forward and make room for what would serve us better, or has the journey become hard, and our spirits low?  When it's the first, let it go, and feel no guilt, although perhaps no one understands better than I how much easier that is said than done.  Guilt is essentially the fuel my life runs on.  But if it's the second, if it is still a viable dream, a needed one even, but we are worn down, we need to face that, too.  We need to find our Galadriel, that we may be gifted the light that remains when all other lights are extinguished.

For me, this card today is a reminder to tread lightly on my dreams, to allow them room to grow, to be gentle, and to keep the faith.  It's a reminder that letting go, while it may seem easier in a given moment, is a far deeper pain than continuing on.





This card is from the Tarot of the Sidhe by Emily Carding for Schiffer Books.

Comfort Me - The Warrior

I feel like crap.  I'm a writer and I am sure there must be a more elegant way to term that, but frankly I feel like such crap I can't be bothered to reach for it at the moment.

Or I am too lazy to.  One or the other.

I thought about what I could do about that, and wine loomed large, as well as a box of Twinkies, a vile treat I normally would never allow to cross the threshold of my door, let alone my lips, and I briefly considered yelling at Him for no apparent reason, because that seems to make some women feel better, but I am garbage at work anymore if I have more than a glass and Twinkies taste of nothing so much as chemicals to me, so who would I really be punishing by devouring a score of them, and I love Him, and it's His house, and I have high hopes of getting a little something something later, and yelling at him for no discernible reason seems counterproductive to that goal, so what's a girl to do?

Ahh, tarot, my old friend, on our new terms, standing in the light, following our truth, and all that- comfort me.  Please.

The Warrior.  In this deck, Emily Carding has replaced Aces, the raw primal of a suit, in this case, Fire, with a figure drawn to showcase the essence of the thing.

The message for me here is multi-fold, the first one being that if I am a warrior, as my recent reading suggests, then I am immune to feeling like crap.  Or if I am not, at least I am too strong to let it bring me down.  For long, anyway.

The second message I see relates to the explosion of the volcano.  That kind of energy is very real, and so forceful it literally changes the world all around it, but it is certainly not calm.  I feel dis-settled and on edge and full of nerves, possibly in part of the preparation of the imminent explosive force.  On the eve of a volcanic eruption, it would probably be more unnatural to feel comfortable, cool, and collected.

Thirdly is the message of the card in its' divinatory meaning- creativity, lust, driving passion.  For love, for life, for food and drink, family, art and beauty, nature and knowledge.  Yes, to all of those things, and yes to all of life.  The suggestion I see, and even more importantly, feel, is that the answer to my crap-feeling is not to do less, but to do more.  I want to back away from the creative process at the moment because I have reached a place where I am uncertain of myself, and I am telling myself that putting bacon, or smoked tempeh, as the case may be, on the table matters more, and that I am selfish for wanting to be able to do that through the joy of doing what I love most in the world, and that it simply not possible.  I feel a great deal of fear and apprehension around the whole subject, and the message I am getting is that rather than turn back, I have to press into that fear and face it head on.  That is the way through this trial.

"You block your dream when you allow your fear to grow bigger than your faith." 

~Mary Manin Morrissey

Some dreams are too big to be blocked, and faith, unlike fear, needs only be fed a little.





This card is from the Tarot of the Sidhe by Emily Carding for Schiffer Books.

The Next Step

This week I will using the recently released Tarot of the Sidhe by Emily Carding.  This is the 78 card version from Schiffer books, which is lovely and very inexpensive from Amazon.

I have not been blogging, not been writing, not been doing much of anything, really, except hanging onto at least one of my children by the skin of my teeth.  This child seemed bent on destroying the world, himself, and everyone who got in his way, but things seem to be on an upward swing for all of us now.

I was also having a bit of a dark night of the soul kinda thing with tarot, not to be overly dramatic, but I was all out of faith, for myself, most of all.

I also fell in love, which while wonderful and fantastic and amazing, has proved to be quite time consuming...

So, shuffling my new and amazing deck, I asked what comes next for me and tarot.

Judgment- the traditional imagery of this trump is Gabriel blowing his horn, awakening the dead to a new life in Christ.  Morbid, yes, I think so, but central to the idea of Christianity is the shedding of the old skin, old life, old sins, old way of doing things, and walking in faith into a new one.  Jesus and I are not currently on the best of terms, so I prefer this faery woman.  Is she beautiful?  No, not to my eyes, though regal and majestic fit well.  It may be a mistake to expect our angels and deities to be beautiful when what we really need is powerful.

What I see most of all is her, and her companions, far in the background, holding steady in their truth.  What I feel this means for me, as a tarot reader, as a person, is that now is a time for me to put to rest everything that has not been working for me, and to let truth be my guidance from this point forward.  I'm ready to let my past be part of me, but no longer define me.  As it relates specifically to tarot, I am ready to follow my own rules, and begin a new, more fulfilling journey with these seventy eight cards, seventy eight insights, seventy eight whispers.





This image is from the Tarot of the Sidhe by Emily Carding for Schiffer Books.