euripides
A few days ago I drew a perplexing card. Like I just *couldn't* see it's relevance. Maybe I could have read it as the standard LWB type meaning, but that was neither the vibe I had on the the day, nor did it feel like a right meaning for the card - the 'standard' meanings just didn't seem to fit at all.
So I put it away. I picked up the deck again today and thought, you know, I should think about this card. So I looked for the artwork, because an aspect of it was resonating with me, and found a webpage that talked about the character of that specific card and its 'shadow meaning' - and just slightly diverged in aspect such that I had a 'penny drop' moment of understanding. And so it went from being a 'wtf is this card even' to 'this is deep', in terms of a really important insight into my own behaviour.
And really, this was not the sort of 'seeing what I want to see' reading but an 'opening the Johari window' moment, what would normally perhaps be a difficult observation to hear, or to make sense of, but which is really a 'why have I never recognized this before' shift.
In this case it was someone else's view of the cards, and not even in the context of an actual reading, that turned on the lighbulb, but I've had a similar (though less dramatic) insight by simply giving myself time to revisit a spread.
How often have you found that you've returned to a reading, or perhaps picked up an old entry in a tarot journal, to find that it suddenly made sense after all?
Often when we focus too hard on a problem, we get stuck in a pattern, only seeing the same (wrong) solution. When we let our mental wheels spin for a bit, while otherwise occupied - doing the dishes, driving - we allow our brains to test out other connections, look for other patterns that might match. So I would say, when you're stumped, perhaps don't be too quick to give up or draw a 'clarifier' (aka 'confuser'). Look around at variant meanings, and just give it some time and space.
So I put it away. I picked up the deck again today and thought, you know, I should think about this card. So I looked for the artwork, because an aspect of it was resonating with me, and found a webpage that talked about the character of that specific card and its 'shadow meaning' - and just slightly diverged in aspect such that I had a 'penny drop' moment of understanding. And so it went from being a 'wtf is this card even' to 'this is deep', in terms of a really important insight into my own behaviour.
And really, this was not the sort of 'seeing what I want to see' reading but an 'opening the Johari window' moment, what would normally perhaps be a difficult observation to hear, or to make sense of, but which is really a 'why have I never recognized this before' shift.
In this case it was someone else's view of the cards, and not even in the context of an actual reading, that turned on the lighbulb, but I've had a similar (though less dramatic) insight by simply giving myself time to revisit a spread.
How often have you found that you've returned to a reading, or perhaps picked up an old entry in a tarot journal, to find that it suddenly made sense after all?
Often when we focus too hard on a problem, we get stuck in a pattern, only seeing the same (wrong) solution. When we let our mental wheels spin for a bit, while otherwise occupied - doing the dishes, driving - we allow our brains to test out other connections, look for other patterns that might match. So I would say, when you're stumped, perhaps don't be too quick to give up or draw a 'clarifier' (aka 'confuser'). Look around at variant meanings, and just give it some time and space.
