21 Ways To Read A Tarot Card -- Step NINE

Verdi

Thanks Dave for the imput. Your right of course. Its great doing this course. So thanks for staring it, giving so much encouragment to everyone who does it: A medal has now been put on your chest: A really good guy, the best!
Verdi :)
 

Prism

Tarot of Prague -- The Hermit

9:1

a. Where have I been that reminds you of this scene?

There were neighborhoods in San Francisco that had little houses that looked kind of like this. When I lived there (decades ago), I went through a somewhat difficult breakup. What made is especially difficult was that we had mostly the same group of friends. So in order not to be around him, I had to give up my social circle. In retrospect, I can see that was all for the best, but at the time, I felt very sorry for myself, on my own, walking the neighborhoods of San Francisco, which, although it doesn’t really look anything like this street of Prague, it has some neighborhoods with little brightly painted houses.

Snapshot: I remember sitting in my little apartment, writing in my journal, trying very hard to write my way out of my misery. It was a solitary journey in and of itself, and it really did help me pull myself back together.

Snapshot: One Sunday I was walking to a movie by myself. From about a block away I saw my old boyfriend approaching with his new girlfriend and another friend. I wanted to turn a corner, but of course I couldn’t do that. So we exchanged a few words and I felt horrible.

Snapshot: My mom and my aunt sublet an apartment one February in San Francisco. I remember talking to them one night about their old boyfriends, and they both said they never totally got over them. I remember walking home after this conversation and wondering, sadly, if that would be true for me too.

b. Who do I know that this man reminds you of?

He reminds me most of Richard Harris playing King Arthur in Camelot, even though he didn’t look like that until he played Dumbledore in Harry Potter. But dressed like that, the Hermit looks like Merlin, and even though I don’t know any of these people, it reminds me of how much I loved reading The Once and Future King and how much I loved the movie of Camelot. I wept at both of them and I really could not accept that the legend of King Arthur (the once and future king) wasn’t true.

Snapshot: I remember being around ten years old, when my baby cousin died. It was an accidental death that devastated me. I could not believe or accept that he was actually dead. Similar (only from a ten-year-old’s perspective) to what Joan Didion describes in A Year of Magical Thinking.

c. When have I felt lonely?

When I was a little kid we lived out in the country, and I didn’t know any kids my own age. There were no preschools or anything like that. My siblings were a lot older than I was, and so I would spend a lot of my time alone. I lived a lot in my head. I’d go for what seemed at the time like long walks, making up a more exciting life for myself as I went along.

Snapshot: Me playing with dolls and being embarrassed about it when my older brother was around. I felt like I had to act older than my years in order to deserve my sibling’s attention.

9:2 I need to look at my conflicting feelings about being alone. I’m married and live with my husband and son (my daughter is in her first year of college), and I work full time, so I often feel like I don’t get to spend enough time alone – like I’m always being pulled in several directions and not giving enough time in any of them. On the other hand, I’m really frightened of being left alone when I get older. My mother was a youngish widow, and she was not as independent as I would hope to be. I never enjoyed living alone myself when I was single. I would say that fear is the strongest emotion surrounding this issue for me, and I would love to overcome my fear of being left alone.
 

SistaSpirit

21 Ways...Step Nine RWS The Emperor

Step 9

Questions:
1. How did I become so self righteous and authoritarian? I felt like that was the only way I could keep my family from descending into chaos. I was very insecure so I felt the only way to keep order in my life was to rule my family with an iron fist.

2. What will help me to become more loving toward others? Accept who I am and love myself unconditional.

3. How can I become more open hearted? Do more for others and show more compassion and less judging.

Memory: My mother being highly critical of me I never feeling like I had her approval.

What do I need to look at right now? Lack of confidence.

Strongest emotion? Sadness

Snapshot: My mother telling me all the things wrong with me, when I thought I had dressed nicely.
 

dadsnook2000

For SistaSpirit

You have been really working hard at this, and pouring yourself into the process fully. Mary Greer has an out-of-print book called Tarot Mirrors --- I find that the Tarot is indeed a mirror in its uncanny ability to present us with views of ourselves and of others that goes beyond what we would expect. The degree of insight we find in the cards is in proportion to our self-honesty and openness.

It seems to me that you are embodying the best of what the rest of us have been giving and seeking for ourselves. Keep up the good work. Don't move so fast that you rush past the insights and meditation that seems to come from the cards --- sometimes in the days that follow a reading. Dave
 

SistaSpirit

Thanks

Thank you for your comment and encouragement.

I'm fully retired and have set aside a few things in order to focus on this study group, thanks for hosting it.
 

dadsnook2000

It is not as advertised

Retirement is not as advertised. I no longer "work" either, but I am very busy. I believe that others view a retired person as a "resource". If you let it get out of hand then you go crazy keeping up with other people's rat race. My wife and I are raising grandchildren in addition to all the other activities that life is made up of. I had taken a year off from Tarot and this site, as well as many other involvements, just to get rebalanced and set some priorities.

It started with a nice summer at the beach in Maine last summer, resuming my book (I'm writing the last chapter now), and getting the grandkids redirected through high school, cars, licenses, part time jobs, etc.

In any case, it's nice to be involved with Tarot again. I've got a couple of Tarot parties coming up and spring is coming. Cheers. Dave
 

SistaSpirit

You are so right, only the pay stops. What is important for me now is to follow my passion and that is TAROT!!! Although I have been studying Tarot since 2002 I feel that I have barely scratched the surface.

I have read, re-read and consulted Pollack (several of her books), Greer (several of hers as well) Amberstones correspondance course (sadly I did not finish) Bunning, etc. I have taken workshops with Pollack and Amaral. The more I study the more I realize what I don't know.

Reading all the posts as I go through the chapters is very helpful. I'm so glad you started this group.
 

Probie

Greer (2006) 21 Ways - Step 9

Rider-Waite-Smith
7/The Chariot


9.1.1

Q: What happened to make the young man so insecure about being “the real deal” to have this role?

A: Some people that were his superiors said he wasn’t good enough to fill roles like that.


I remember being very young and my mother saying some cruel things to me. Later I realized this was a projection of her own insecurities onto me, but it’s still hard to pull them off of me. I also had a mirrored situation from a squad leader and team leader (team leader = immediate supervisor, squad leader = next level of supervisor) in the Marines who echoed what she had said. In all those cases, I put those people out of my life but yet why do I still hear their voices and give them a hearing? I don’t know why, it hurts, and I should let them go but some reason I don’t.


Q: How does the young man use acts of kindness to gain strength over himself?

A: He uses experience to teach himself to be a servant and put others before himself.


I have a couple thoughts of being selfish and spending money on me, but then my spouse has to do with less because I did that. So I get what I want, but she then has to do with less or even without some really basic things like good work clothes that aren’t threadbare. These wants then end being things I don’t use or end up selling on eBay for 50% of what I paid for them.


Q: When have you felt so responsible for so many other people?

A: This is something I feel quite a bit. I feel like I gain self-meaning and purpose through service to others.


This is something I have thought about recently. I started out serving in the Boy Scouts [of America or “BSA”] with volunteering to help the community through both larger social action issues and personal service as well. I visited an elderly man once a week for a whole year at a nursing home that started out as a 4 week requirement for a merit badge and then later did my Eagle Scout project at that nursing home by planting a tactile & olfactory perennial herb garden. After high school, I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps to defend a way of life where people can think for themselves and to protect a place where diversity is honored. While more needs to be done, it is better than a number of other places in the world where even to think differently is punishable by death. In my undergrad, I volunteered in rescue missions and homeless shelters as well as doing street outreach. I just don’t know how to *not* be involved in some form of service to others.

It is just who I am, but then I have to learn to balance better than the “service to others” versus “extreme selfishness” that hurts my family. Somehow I need to learn how to do “service to others” with “healthy self-care” that doesn’t go overboard.


9.1.2

I think my biggest concerns are the three outlined above: false insecurity, selfishness, and balancing service with self-care. While they may seem like three aspects, I think they all come together like this.

I feel insecure and worthless about myself, so I compensate through service to prop up my self-esteem. Then I feel I’m just giving to everyone else, so what about me? I throw a big pity party and invite my good friends Visa and Master Card to go on a shopping spree with me to get things to fill up what I feel is an inner depletion. This then cycles again.

So by taking the insecurity out of the thrust behind service, I can enjoy it more as well as curtail it within proper boundaries. Then I won’t burn out as much and can have a better self-care plan. Further by having a good understanding of this [and a small budget for spending], I can curb spending so it doesn’t become destructive to me and mine. This then becomes a strong foundation on which I can build on versus feeling like I’m in a deficit position.
 

Ivy Rhiannon

Step Nine

Druidcraft Tarot - The Fferyllt

Q1: What area of your life do you wish to transform?
A: I wish to become the woman I set out to be 3 years ago.
Snapshot: Me outside in the blanket of night arms up stretched towards the sky reciting poetry to the face of the moon.


Q2: Why do you wish to transform this area of your life?
A: Because I am tired of being an undependable person, a woman who doesn't keep her word, a shite friend, a dreamer and not a doer.
Snapshot: The past years of hesitance, fear, doubt, and lack of confidence.


Q3: Do I have the strength of will to persevere through the coming changes?
A: As the fferyllt has already told me I am only bound by the limitations I set for myself. I believe that I can get through this change, and reach my goals because I refuse to limit myself.
Snapshot: Remembering my vow.


Step 2: What area in my life do I most need to look at in relation to the previous steps?
My spirituality is what is in focus here. I have wanted, dreamed, planned, and waited a long time for the courage to be myself. Now I have the fferyllt, the moment of perfect balance and transformation. This is the shift! :D
 

pacificwaters

Step Nine: 21 ways

Card: Queen of Pentacles (RWS)

As I read through this step I realized how this step is going to help introspect with certain self emotions. To be frank I had never looked at the cards from this angle, I mean going in detail with the purging of emotions...

9.1

Snapshot 1:

What are you thinking so hard about?

Whenever I see this card nowadays it reminds me how hard I am thinking about the personal crisis that I am in.

I have mentioned this before in the previous steps and mention it again how I have been staying as a forced bachelor for the last 15 months. How I have been wanting my married life to return back to normalcy but no efforts are making it happen. No matter how strongly I decide that I would get it out of my mind by diverting into other activities, I just cant help get it out of my mind. And I am forced to have these questions at the back of my mind and for which I have no answer – Where did I go wrong? When I thought everything is going so well, why this calamity? And no matter how hard I try, these questions don’t leave me. And then I just keep thinking again and again, and the unending cycle continues….!

Do you think that thinking so hard would help?

It just won’t help, I very well know that.

I know thinking is just adding to my mental tensions, but then I just cant get it out of my mind. The event that led to the present moment comes to haunt me, and I know it is going to leave a very deep scar throughout my life whether we patch up or don’t. Thinking just doesn’t help, but then if only it was easy to stop thinking, sort of like remove the CD and put in another CD when you don’t want to listen to the particular genre of music. If only I could do it.

How long do you intend to carry on like this?

My patience has been tested. I might take a defining step soon enough.

I know I have been just sitting over the matter for a long time, rather I have been forced to be very passive. Enough is enough. Being separated from my kid just because someone decides to behave as per her whims is what I can no longer tolerate. If whims have justifications, well its ok, but then whims are always baseless. I might as well take the legal route soon enough.

Overall emotion: Sadness as the moments which caused it and being punished for no fault is eating into me. Its time I did something to stop “thinking” and rather decide on “doing” something.

Snapshot 2:

What does the abundance strike you about?

It reminds me of the best picnic/outing I had when I was in my teens with my family.

About 12 years back I had been to the Andamans (an island) that was absolutely heaven back then. The blue waters of the seas through which you could absolutely see through, touch the fishes and the corals as you snorkel, and the other natural beauty was something that is still fresh in my mind as if it was just yesterday when I had gone to the Andamans. Never ever had I seen natural beauty at its best as I saw in Andamans back then. And this was a picnic/outing where I didn’t have to care anything about. My parents were there to take care of us – we (me and my sis) could be carefree, instead of what we have to be today. The carefree attitude seems so very lost today in this scheming world.

Do you want it back again?

I would definitely love to rewind into the past.

As much as I would want to go back into the past and be carefree as I was, I know it is absolutely impossible today. Maybe we could have an outing together again, we do have it rather whenever possible. But then those moments, are absolutely unforgettable. Moreover after the tsunami and the human safaris which are bringing the Andaman administration a bad repute, I wonder if the paradise that it was then, is still one today as well. Maybe I better stay with the memories, than have them disturbed with another visit in recent times.

Why don’t you go somewhere else and try to replicate the experience?

Easier said than done. Some memories just can’t ever be replaced.

Back then I was a teen with no fear/tensions about what and how my actions could affect the future. Considering some acquaintances we had there, we got the best of all action. Today when I decide to go on any such outing, I need to think of so many things – whats the budget, how will it affect my loan installments, can I be as free as I was back then, etc etc. The old carefree attitude has been replaced by an attitude where you have to think before you act or do or plan something. The nurturance and protection which I had back then, well today I have to nurture others, obviously unless it is an all boys trip ;). But then I don’t think any outing of mine can ever replace this outing that I had long back. The 2 week excursion back then seemed so small.

Overall emotion: Nostalgia with a bit of sadness at being unable to relive that past happiness.

9.2

The card imagery is pointing to quite some actions that I need to look into. While on one hand, what I chiefly think is that the card is telling me to stop thinking. Its high time action is practiced rather than being passive. Get off your chair and do something instead of just fretting over the past. The card also tells me how I tend to keep thinking about the past (good and bad memories). Its time I thought less and just enjoyed the present however it may be (can't believe that I am giving myself such sane advice :) )!!

Felt strange when I started on this step, but I loved this step for the introspection it offers..!