The Background
I’ve been feeling pretty pessimistic lately. Andrew still weighs heavily on my mind, and I’m finding out slowly just how deeply I had entrenched him into my life. I was really pretty torn up when he left me, and everything was made worse when I found out that he did so simply to be with someone he was already nearly dating behind my back. Last night, however, I found out that they were moving in together in New York, despite all his plans to move out with me in Colorado. Feeling deeply hurt, I stopped watching his journal, and blocked him from communicating directly with me. I had done my best to wish them luck, and now I feel as if I’m just having my nose rubbed in the ruins of our relationship, so I’m breaking off all contact. I’m telling myself that I need to do this in order to get over him and move on with the rest of my life, but really, I’m sure it’s little more than a passive aggressive way for me to get back at him for telling me he’d keep in touch and then doing this.
All of this seems rather petty in light of my growing feelings for James, and the concerns I have with him now. That he moved away from me shortly after we got together certainly isn’t helping things. It’s not the reasons that he moved that bother me, of course, simply that, after my previous relationships, adding that extra element of distance makes me very, very nervous for the future of this one, even if it’s only down to denver. I can hardly move down to join him until I’m finished with school, too.
Finally, the added financial burden of my own tuition is beginning to worry me a good deal more. I seem to be stuck in this ceaseless cycle of sleeping in too late and spending all the money I make on things I don’t really need, whereas I really shouldn’t let my wants hinder my needs. I may want that new rifle, but I need to finish school!
All this pessimism has served to do little more than block my creativity. I have written only about 30 measures of real music this summer, as the weight of my emotions keeps forcing me to stop before I feel like I’ve accomplished much.
As may be evident, I’m having a real problem with movement and the inability to move. I feel stopped up in many ways, as if the world — particularly those close to me — race on by without me. And so I laid out the cards…
The Drawing
With my dark mood, I chose Aleister Crowley’s Thoth[@tarotThoth] deck to do the reading, figuring that the bright and attractive colors of the RWS deck didn’t quite match what I was feeling. I wasn’t feeling simply down, either, or I might’ve chosen the Aquarian deck for its dreary, clouded look. I wanted the sharp, geometric shapes and smart color choices of Lady Frieda Harris’ cards to fill out my mood.
I shuffled and shuffled and shuffled until I finally felt I was ready, and then went through the process of drawing the cards shown to me so long ago. Since my emotions where seemingly holding up my life, looking for resolution, I let them choose the cards, fanning them between my two hands until I felt that little tug at my subconscious, saying ‘draw that card!’. My intellect continued to take the back seat as my fingers arranged the cards, face down, into the pattern that I thought they would best fit when flipped, and for the most part, they chose well.
The pattern started with a card in the upper left, leftmost of a row of three cards that moved down and to the right. Directly above the last card and in line with the leftmost card was another, and directly to the right of that was a card with another one overlapping the upper-right hand corner.
From left to right, the cards were:
- 6 of Wands, ‘Victory’
- Queen of Disks
- 5 of Wands, ‘Strife’
- Above the previous card, 6 of Swords, ‘Science’
- To the right of the previous card, Princess of Swords
- Overlapping the upper-right hand corner of the previous card, 4 of Wands, ‘Completion’
The Reading
The theme of movement became more and more evident as the cards were flipped over, one by one, starting from the left of the board. Wands is the suit of fire, that which is never still. If nothing else, fire moves downwards and outwards as it consumes, while air, water, and earth can all be relatively motionless.
While the wands start out as a roaring bonfire of problems, the dwindle down toward the Ace to the quiet glow of a candle’s flame, and the six is right when things begin to turn towards calm. As was mentioned before, fire moves downwards as it consumes, and, in fact, the first thing that I noticed about this card was that the small flames in the vertices of six crossed wands look as if they’re forming an arrow pointing downwards, or else that they’re small concerns settling down to the bottom of the container, relaxing. This, I feel, is what I may be going through now. Despite the problems it caused me, the recent break up is starting to become less pertinent, I am learning to deal with James’ new distance, and I do see that it is possible for me to pay my tuition.
Taking this as my cue, I turned over the next card to the right and slightly lower than the six, revealing the Queen of disks. Of all of the cards in the Thoth deck, this one is my favorite. Many of the minor arcana cards are little more than pip cards, and most of the court cards of other suits are dynamic, busy images, whereas the Queen of disks sits serenely. Hers is the knowledge of magic of nature, and she sits ensconced in her angular fronds, looking out over a dry valley with a snaking river. This, I think, is the very description of peace in wisdom. She is content in life, but not uncomfortable without, a balance of emotional and intellect that echos through all of the disks. This card shows me what I’ve wanted to be ever since I saw it, and I feel that I’m starting to settle towards it, getting closer to that ideal.
I turned over the two cards next to it at the same time, as they were in the same vertical plane. This revealed two more cards of movement. The Golden Dawn (the society of which Crowley was a member, and the source of inspiration for this deck) label for the lower card is strife, but not only does the card not give the impression of strife, but the other common interpretation gives a different impression, as well: that of striving. The 5 of wands is a card of battle, but the card of discourse and games, where there is action, even against another person, but purposefu and with rules, not unfair, uncivil acts of strife against another. Its lower indication indicated to me the subconscious or unconscious, showing me how my emotions where striving against each other and against me, but that it was fair, there was a reason, and that its not strife without rules.
The upper card, the more conscious of the two, is in elemental opposition to the Queen of disks. That is, swords and disks, air and earth, do not mix well, and this alters the meaning of the cards, bringing out the darker side of both the Queen and this, the 6 of swords. It shows that, while the Queen may be comfortable with the idea of that lifeless desert behind her, she remains forever ensconced in the life-filled oasis. To apply the analogy, I may find the idea of that barren desert of completely settled emotions perfectly acceptable, but I’m too caught up in my ways, too blinded by intellect, internalization, and change to let my emotions settle down — I may internalize a lot of things, but I’m letting that hinder myself as the world changes around me.
The Six of swords itself is another card of movement, but rather than physical movement, this is the movement of an idea or emotion through time, such as the path that mourning takes. Something isn’t quite right with the path as it is, though, with the influence of the Queen: the swords are the suit of silence, and that has me stuck. Having to take all of this emotion from the breakup into myself without saying anything is damaging the way I move through my life, hindering that necessary passage of mourning while keeping the emotion smoldering. This shows the need for communication and action — the card being above that subconscious five suggests its more conscious and active role — in order to help these issues resolve themselves.
So what about the last two cards? I turned them over to find the Four of wands covering the corner of the Princess of swords. The Princess of swords, as the earthy side of air, shows the fixation of the volatile, the ideas made real (she even wears the visage of Medusa on her helmet). This, to me, was a strong suggestion that I needed to apply my ideas, to bring them to fruition. All of the cards before me were giving me a path and this was saying that, if I followed that path and brought it to reality, it would be the basis for the card that was above and overlapping the Princess, the Four of wands, labeled ‘Completion’.
More than simply the end of a process, this card shows integration. The four wands form a square, their points form an octagon, they are bound in a circle, everything is integrated. This is not saying “Do these things and everything will magically be resolved,” this is saying “Everything was, is, and will be interconnected, forever.” If I look to change myself, something else connected to me will change; if I move forward in my life, I will move forward with a whole host of opportunities and emotions. I have always been ‘complete’, whether or not I have a problem, and I’m certainly realistic enough to realize that as soon as these problems are resolved, a new set will have cropped up for me to deal with, but that’s okay, they’re a part of me, and as soon as I can learn to integrate them into myself (perhaps by doing what the cards have suggested), it will be easier for me to accept that.