new year's eve tarot

a little tarot spread for the last day of 2015, looking forward to what 2016 has to bring... using the star spread from Rachel Pollack's New Tarot Handbook.

A: Hope
8 of wands
entering 2016 there's positive movement in your life. things are moving. this won't be another year of stagnation...

B: Guidance
9 of pentacles
follow your inner guide to satisfaction & fulfillment this year. but also remember to stay present & grateful for where you are, how far you've come, & what you've achieved.

C: Peace
the hanged man inverted
peace comes from moving on. this year you're ready to untie yourself from a binding situation that no longer serves you & let go.

D: Healing
10 of cups
I think of the 10 of cups as the happiest card in the entire deck. your healing comes through happiness & fulfillment but it is also its cause. healing creates happiness & happiness creates healing. cultivate both in 2016. 

happy new year everyone. may 2016 continue to be weird & wonderful for you & bring many moments of learning, laughing, & a lot of burritos.

-N

tarot of terror: the tower

a while back I drew 'the tower' in my daily tarot reading. my initial thought was: oh shit.

but I've been thinking now about the tower for the past several weeks... & it doesn't feel quite so doom & gloom anymore.

in her book, the new tarot handbook (which I highly recommend, along with everything else she's ever written) Rachel Pollack writes:

"the tower does not only mean destruction, it can also mean release of energy or some powerful revelation that changes everything. the change is usually positive, even if it feels painful in the moment."

in my notes I wrote:

"sometimes you need to burn everything down to prepare for new things to grow"

I think of it as a kind of fertilization process. when farmers burn their old crops to ash to prepare the soil for the new plantings. is there pain in this destruction? yes, of course. but isn't it more painful to stay firmly where you are, unable to flex & grow? change is never easy, it certainly never has been for me, but pulling up your roots allows space for new things to take shape.

I've been thinking about that a lot. how to create space for the things you desire to expand. the creating of space seems to be the most important part. you can't fill a vessel that's already full of old ideas & old dreams.

you can't build a new tower without destroying the old one first.

tarot: 2 of swords

what are you refusing to see?

what are you keeping hidden?

what feelings are you rejecting?

today's tarot

go out into the world

communicate

laugh

speak

live

5 of wands, inverted

"learning how to focus energy
or direct enthusiasm in productive ways."

always a lesson worth repeating. 

trying tarot again

earlier in the week I started doing a single card tarot reading every morning. I'm trying to hold myself to it.

The Star,
hope, openness, calm, especially after a crisis or an explosion of some sort.
healing & regeneration.
let others see the real you.
physical confidence.
don't hide yourself for fear of other people's disapproval or scorn.

how do you open yourself up to the world? how do you create that connection?

The Star says: you learn by doing.

samhain tarot spread

Part of my Samhain resolution for the upcoming year is to embrace the dark parts of myself (something I've been needing to do, but was only recently brought to my attention at my astrology session with astrobarry). to that end I thought I'd do a tarot spread revolving around The High Priestess (aka the Female Pope), who is the dark goddess of the major arcana. I used a spread from the book The New Tarot Handbook which I picked up on my last residency at Goddard (it's written by a faculty member). I absolutely love the book (go get it!!) and I've been reading and re-reading it when I'm away from my cards or unable to read for whatever reason (like on long plane flights between the east & west coasts).

I must admit, I haven't been as dedicated to the cards as I was in the past. It's been a while since I've picked them up. So many exterior emotional drains in my life have made it seem impossible to spare the energy to sort through the deck. I was, however, pleasantly surprised with how my intuition came back when I picked up the deck tonight...

See my reading after the jump.