Royal Musings

I moved from Sydney to London in the early 1990's.   I told people it would have been easier for me if I had moved to France.  I would have known I was in a foreign country then.  But I was Australian and we had shared history and language - and the same Queen! - surely I was 'home'.  England was very different to Australia and for the 8 years I lived there,  it was like wearing a shoe that never quite fit,  and always gave you blisters.  

One thing that was easy to follow was the flood of images about the Royals.  I lived in Notting Hill for a time,  literally across the road from Kensington Palace. Diana and Charles were at the nadir of their relationship and the press was all over it.  To find a topic of idle conversation at a party or a bus stop,  we could talk about the weather or the Royals and often we did both. 

So I've followed the Royals for some time.  After the birth of my son in 1997,  the first time I went out of the house without him, on my own,  was to see the waist high mound of flowers outside Kensington Palace gates, in mourning for Princess Diana.  The thing that struck me most was the smell,  that cloying, rotting smell of dying flowers.  It was overwhelming. 

And I've followed Diana's boys as well,  as a sort of follow on.  I always thought Harry should marry a nice Scottish girl,  to firm up the connection to Scotland and keep them in the loop.  If we were organizing dynastic marriages, that's what I would have done.  But in the real world we marry for love, spiritual connection, healing,  so many things.  And Harry chose Meghan. 

And of course,  every move they made,  every breath they took,  was spun one way or the other in the tabloids.  I kept thinking to myself,  stop monitoring the Press.  That's how other Royals do it. They sweep through their days,  go to their endless openings and closings and meet hospital folk and well meaning government employees and drink endless cups of tea,  and stop for a photograph and then don't read the press.  But Meghan and Harry were too of their generation and simply could not avoid the sordid mess. And it drove them crazy.

If they had retired to an estate in the UK,  to lead their quiet lives,  I would have been 100% supportive.  But they wanted to use the Royal Sussex branding and sell goods on line?  I could see why the Queen would say no to that.   And if they wanted to do humanitarian work,  well surely that's what the Royals do best.  Why leave then,  if you want to use your profile to shine light?  Instead they wanted to be celebrities in California,  and that seemed a far less noble goal to me.  To sell their story/their truth/ their version of events endlessly.  

I often do tarot readings for people who have had really difficult childhoods,  that continue to influence them. And I say you can blame your life issues on your childhood but after 33,  the year of the crucifixion and resurrection, you have to take responsibility for your own actions and can't keep blaming your past for your present decisions.   You can be an adult.  That's a saving grace.  You could have had a terrible childhood but you don't have to recreate it or be guided solely by it.  You can start to make other choices.  

I'm sorry that Harry is collecting grievances and examining them endlessly.  And I'm really sorry that he is doing to others what he claims was done to him - exploiting private conversations,  not respecting others right to privacy.  I fear that this won't stand him in good stead in years to come. 

I hope for all the Royals that this furore will die down soon,  and we can all go back to reading terrible news about war and misery. And that explains why it's so soothing to read about the Royals instead - it feels important,  but it's not.  It's a bit of delicious schadenfreude to read about the miserable rich,  and not focus on how very hard some of our fellow humans are having it right now.  

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What difference does a number make?

I’m Australian, and so 12.12.12 is already done there – which is why I am ambivalent around dates – what is one date here is already over there and has yet to arrive somewhere else.  All we can ever look at is right here, right now.  But memorable numbers have a function – I can say what did you do last December and unless it was your birthday, it might be hard to pull out any real details. 

But if the world gives you a strong number or strong event, you can remember what you were doing in your own life at that time.  I still remember my sister calling me from Australia to tell me that Princess Diana had died, it had been in the late night my time and I was asleep, but it was in the middle of the day in Australia and everyone watched it unfolding in real time. That otherwise random day is etched in my mind. 

So today is a date that people might well remember – what are you going to do to mark the time?  I’m going to write a letter to myself,   that I can reread in later years, to see where I was at, on 12.12.12.  Of course each day is a day you will only see once – so if we give every day that added gravitas, our time will be well spent.

Queen of Cups

The Queen of cups gazes into the fantastical cup she has created. She has all the beautiful cups qualities we’ve met before – she is loving, nurturing and empathic. But she can also have the cups frailties: she can be hypersensitive, volatile, needy. Often a healer, counselor or psychic, this is a woman who seems to know what's wrong even before you open your mouth. I read somewhere that Princes Diana was a perfect Queen of Cups, and that really crystallized this card for me.

I always tell people when they get this card that this woman needs to look up and see what is going on around her, rather than gazing so raptly into the cup of her own making. She is capable of great emotional depth but has to be careful not to fall into her own fantasties.

The Inner Child cards show the Queen of Cups as the witch Glinda the Good from the Wizard of Oz. I read her more as a fairy godmother – incredibly, magically helpful, but also with strange controlling limitations (why did Cinderella’s carriage turn back into a pumpkin at midnight, why couldn’t it have retained its form for the entire night? You can see I’ve given way too much thought to that fairy tale, but the limitations of the fairy godmother always interest me… )