Valentine's Day

You know when I liked Valentine's Day the best?  When my son was in kindergarten and we had to make a card for each class member,  boy or girl.  So we would spend the week before Valentine's day gluing and glittering and adding feathers and buttons. 

It was all inclusive,  sharing and silly.   Perfect!

But often my readers find Valentine's a day of performative pressure.  Will he get me flowers,  will it be a perfect date,  did we get the right restaurant booking,  is my friends insta so much better than mine...  It becomes competitive or alienating,  performative or lonely. 

So my advice for Valentines Day - make some beautiful home made cards for dear friends,  don't stint on the feathers or the glitter and let all the other stuff go.  Let's make it fun again! 

Keep a Copy of your Significant Cards close by.

The Empress is one of my favorite cards,  glowing with possibilities,  fertile,  able to give birth to new ventures,  new life plans,  new babies.  So when people draw it, I often tell them to find the version of the card that they most like,  and use it as their phone wall paper,  or on their computer,  somewhere where they will see it often and be reminded of her energy. 

Of course,  I tell people to do this with other significant cards too,  I’m just using the Empress as an example here. When I was first learning the cards, there were far fewer options, but today there are so many amazing versions of each card, and some will definitely speak to you more than others.

So if you get a particularly significant card, look it up on Google Images or Pintrest.  Read my blog piece,  or anyone else’s blog piece about it,  and keep it close to you.  Let the energy feed you and you’ll get there quicker…

Inspiration

I always encourage people to record the readings.  But after each reading I also give you a postcard and write the cards you drew on it.

 

You can then go and look up any cards on my blog (or any other blog) and I often asterisk the important ones.  I encourage people to find certain ones and print them up and put them by their computers, to remind them of our discussion. 

 

One client just sent me this image – all her important cards, pulled from her own deck, sitting in her work station,  showing her the way…

Celtic Cross 2

Because once wasn’t enough J

When you are interpreting the Celtic Cross, it's not just where the cards lie - it’s how they balance each other, it’s how many of one suite appear, how many of another don’t (ie do you have all wands and no pentacles? Too much fire/energy, not enough grounding…)

The Basis is balanced by the Self – how you make your decisions,  what you remember about your life,  what holds power for you,  is balanced by how you feel about yourself,  how you see yourself. 

Your hopes and fears play against your possible outcome.  I’ve done readings where the recent future card moves to the recent past as I read for the same person 6 months later..

Lots to play with when you look at how the cards fall…

Lots of Knights…

I’ve gone through what every individual card means in this blog, now I am going through what clusters of cards mean… What does it mean if you have lots of knights in your reading? Again, I have to put in the caveat that the court cards are amongst the most complex of the tarot cards and need sensitive interpretation.

You put the knight cards in front of you and the first thing you see is a lot of young men on horses. There is an adolescent intensity here, a rushing towards something, a yearning. In their youth, they are not jaded or cynical, but rather they believe in their causes fiercely, and are willing to fight for their beliefs. And the most important thing the Knight needs to know, with all his action and his feelings – is he riding in the right direction?


The Knight of pentacles is stuck, needing movement, the knight of cups, also known as the seeker of hearts, is more deliberate, and often looking for love. The knight of wands is all energy but often not enough planning and the knight of swords is storming forth with anger and impatience. And all 4 are hoping to make it to Death, the other horseman in the tarot deck, who is riding in the right direction and is all about transformational change.

A Year Ago Today!

I started this blog a year ago today and am so pleased to have come to this first anniversary.

I’m really enjoying going through the cards, one by one, and putting down my thoughts about them. Sometimes I get impatient and want to rush ahead, or bounce to another card, that’s turned up in readings, but I restrain myself and am trying to be orderly.

One thing I really like is when I can recommend to someone to come here and look up a major arcana card they received in a reading. Usually at a reading, I pick a card or two, often a duplicate that showed up in both readings, and send an image of that card so they can think about it later. For the major arcana (and most of the wands!) people can also come onto the blog and look at the text, as well as other images I’ve selected. Soon they will be able to do that for all the cards. Something to look forward to!

Lovely links

While looking for images of the Ace of Wands (that blog will go up tomorrow) I can across this lovely site, with a really beautiful quote, that so clearly expresses my own feelings about tarot cards - so here it is:

"Tarot cards are like people. We get to know them more or less well, but never completely. And like people, they change over time and with experience of them. This is not to say we can't really know a card. Anymore than one would say one doesn't really know one's best friend or mate or lover. Simply that with these cards we form, as with people, many-faceted, living, changing relationships." Roswila

She also has really gorgeous photos of 'found tarot cards' that she sees in the world around her. A nice find :)