All month long I was planning on creating a guided meditation to meet the Lovers but their story was just not coming to me. Meanwhile, the message of the Hermit kept appearing in client readings within my own story. It became clear that Spirit was guiding me to write this meditation for Valentine's Day as I wrote and spoke it in record time. May it guide you home.
When you think of the Emperor card, what do you think about him? Many interpretations of this card include something like, "...an authority figure concerned with society, rules and laws." But what if there was more to the Emperor and more to be learned about your relationship with masculine authority? When I think of the Emperor I often think of a Father Christmas archetype. Obvious in control but full of benevolence and responsibility to guide all. Have you been a good girl or boy this year? The guided meditation is about 12 minutes long and I hope you join us on this journey.
Questions for consideration:
What did the Empower tell you? What story did you decide to tell him and why was it important?
What did he give you and what does it symbolize?
What do you need to do or let go of in order to facilitate or encourage the rich caring work that the Empower wishes to bring into your life?
How may identifying with the Emperor’s energy manifest in your life and how does visualizing him as Father Christmas reconfigure what you have known about him?
When I think about the Equinox, the time of perfect balance and equilibrium, I think about the tarot card Lady Justice.
Lady Justice is also known as Lustitia the Roman Goddess of Human justice with a lineage that includes even more ancient Goddesses who precided over fairness including Dike of Greek and Maat of Egyptian pantheons.
Justice's call is to maintain equilibrium, to make things fair, to be without bias and while we might feel that this balanced state is stable, it is actually a very interdynamic process needing a lot of care and attention to maintain.
So for today I have made for you a guided meditation to help you deepen your understanding and work around balance and also a little sweet, sweet divination, i.e. communication with the Divine!
The meditation is about 10 minutes and I hope you can join us as you recalibrate your sense of equanimity while our very planet suspends between movements. I would LOVE to read your experience with the meditation, please write about your experience and insights in a comment below!
Personally, I find a more helpful word for this card to be rebirth. After a period of trial and perhaps difficulty you are called to stand Judgement and Judgment is passed favorably upon you. You have passed the test. Moving into a sense of completion, you transform into a new form or vision of being.
Undergoing radical alteration creates a more expansive, wise, and vibrant self. All past mistakes and accompanying attachments fall away as you start anew in a the bright light of a new day.
Judgement calls us when we have really decided to move on; its the dawn after the divorce is finally filed after a long and trying marriage, the job left so we can truly find our calling. The call of Judgement is the overpowering sense of the Source giving us hope and allowing us to begin again like spring.
"Come, come whomever you are, worshipers, wanderers, or lovers of leaving... Ours is not a caravan of despair...come, come again, come."-- Rumi
1. I know the Source is working in my life because... 2. Undergoing radical alteration would look and feel like... 3. I am ready to let go of the following baggage, guilt and attachments... 4. I believe that every day is a new day to begin again, tomorrow I endeavor to...
The Devil often appears in a reading when we are indulging in something that is not good for us. The Devil represents temptation, obsession, control, the easy over the right path, giving into sexual urges of a dark nature as well as the being the little devil on your shoulder (i.e. your critic) who works to derail you.
As much and as tempting it is to think of the Devil as an entity outside of ourselves, the Devil more often than not can be found in the closest mirror. Within each of us is the eternal struggle of good over bad from the littllest things (did you let the person into your lane this morning?) to the most earth shattering things that we all know and may be participating in now.
The power of the Devil truly lies in the ability to tempt. The chocolate cake, the accidental windfall, the handsome neighbor across the street are full of pleasure... so hard to say no! So hard to do the right thing! It is sometimes an act of great will to turn down something so easy, so well-paying, so....sexy. But do it we must because otherwise we would lose our sense of integrity, our self worth, our connection to Light.
1. Right now I am being tempted by... 2. I am having a hard time resisting the temptation because... 3. I use the following tools to help me resist that which I know is not good... 4. I allowed the Devil into my life before and while it initially felt great it all fell apart when...
The Empress speaks to the creative, fertile, nurturing and natural aspects of ourselves and our lives. In the big picture sense she represents our home, Earth.
The Empress can be found without exception within every species that replicates itself. She is the true Demeter of Greek mythology, an environmental and Mothering principal interwoven within all human stories, an archetypical constant.
The Empress is bountiful and full, like a pregnant woman in her last trimester, heavy bodied and glowing with life. She is also sense oriented living more closely within the body, like the way every woman knows her baby's intimate and gentling scent. This is a wisdom that is deep, ancient, and truly eternal.
Fertility and creation also extend beyond the biological act of creation; we nurture and care for the planet, our friends, our ideas, our adopted and even furry children. The Empress is so bountiful she is greater even than the biological mothering principal, any act of nurturing and care also represented by her.
1. This is what mothering/motherhood means to me...
2. I care and nurture the following in my life...
3. I care and nurture my planet by...
4. Being sense-oriented looks like the following in my life and I practice it by doing the following...
What are you making of this (maybe?) one life you've been given? That, to me, is the ultimate embodiment of the Magician. While the photo I chose is tongue in cheek, the Magician in the Tarot sense is not one who pulls rabbits from hats or pulls a half dollar from behind your ear. However, the wonder and mystery that one feels when in the midst of truly magic work are all in active play.
The Magician is the active principal, the alignment of what is in the ether: your thoughts, your goals, your values, your sense of self, and the creation of that Being into the real and active world. This is the great principal behind "The Secret", that we can use the very act of our focus to create the things we want on our lives.
We can align how we think about ourselves in the world with what we want. The Magician is powerful, unwavering, and committed.
Through our will we can manifest great change and transformation. Gandhi was a Magician. Leonardo di Vinci was a Magician. The woman who bootstrapped her way into getting a degree with three kids in tow is a Magician.
1. What are you Magicking into your life right now?
2. What requires your total commitment and focus?
3. What is it that you truly want to create in the world, and are your thoughts, values and will in alignment with that, if not, why not?
4. Tell me about a time where by sheer dint of your determination and effort, you became/won/started something others said was impossible or unlikely?
5. Do you realize how truly, tremendously and completely powerful you are?
Originally called Fortitude, Strength concerns itself with the strength that comes over a concerted effort over a long period of time. Strength is controlled, coercive, compassionate, and most of all, patient.
Strength derives from the balanced aspect between the "animal" aspect of ourselves, our inner lions and all of the emotions and urges they bring, and our rational nature as humans.
Strength encourages you to hone the lion's strength to support you during a challenging time. Strength also expects you to reign in your temper, to manage your impulses and keep your focus on the goal using a compassionate application of rational control.
The balance, once achieved, is the apex of fortitude and the kind of strength we all hope to achieve.
1. Do you under or over regulate your lion self? Do you trust your lion nature?
2. What does a well integrated self (lion's strength, energy and emotions reigned in under compassionate control) look like to you? Are you there yet?
3. Do you forgive yourself when you make mistakes based out of emotion or impulse? Are you loving and compassionate to your lion nature?
4. Do you resist rational control and let your emotional self run free (and all it's side effects)? If so, why?
The Wheel of Fortune, or more correctly, Fortuna's Wheel, is a very old concept with many literary mentions in classic Greek literature. The idea of the capricious nature of luck and fate is an old and enduring concept still captured in Tarot's very own Wheel of Fortune. The Wheel of Fortune often represents a change in luck, or a very lucky streak which is about to run out mostly this has nothing to do with you but greater events largely out of your control.
In our modern lives we purchase insurance, wear our seat belts, and take our vitamins. We are obsessed with mitigating any negative effects Chance would like to play on our lives. Alternatively, Las Vegas is the city that reveres Fortuna by never sleeping and about the country lottery tickets purchased to win ever increasing pots of gold we also curry Her favor. Rabbit's foots, lucky pennies, and four leafed clovers are carried to an attempt to sway the direction of the wheel in our lives.
The modern Western world is preoccupied with completely controlling every aspect of life but sometimes Chance rolls the dice and it is your turn: to get cancer, to lose a child, to experience tragedy and loss that often makes no sense and we keep running in our heads over and over,
"How can this be? This is not fair! What did I do to deserve this?" This is the experience of the Fortuna's Wheel spinning against your favor. But when She decides to smile upon you, you find $50 on the ground, you get that job or that house, you give birth to a beautiful, perfect baby. Usually we congratulate ourselves when it goes right and blame God when it does not. But often, it just makes no sense, it is just Fortuna spinning her wheel over and over again.
1. Do you consider yourself a lucky or unlucky person, why or why not? 2. Right now, are you in a period of good fortune, or running through a time of bad luck? 3. Are you a cautious person, or do you let the 'chips fall where they may'? 4. Do you believe that luck is largely an uncontrollable aspect within our lives, or do you believe you make your own luck?
Everyone loves the Lovers. The Lovers card can mean, very obviously, passion, sexual love, rolling about in a field with hay in your hair kind of good times. The Lovers also means intimacy and connection of platonic type; the person who just makes you shine and unfold into your best self when they are around. In our over committed lives its not often, I think, that many of us get to spend time with the one who makes us unfold into our best selves. Or, we miss the one who did.
1. Who are you connecting to in your life in an intimate way and how does their presence allow you to unfold into your best self?
2. What does your sexual life look like right now? Are you happy with it or would you like some changes? What are your hangups around this?
3. Who is your lover? If you don't have a lover right now, think about a lover you have had in the past, what happened, how did that experience unlock an aspect of you?
Favorite Places carrieparris.com Thematic Tarot American Tarot Association Mary K. Greer's Tarot Blog 78 Notes to Self: A Tarot Journal The Four Queens
Tarot Eon Tarotpedia Fool Stop Tarot Blog 78 Whispers The Land of Mystereum The Enchanted Tarot The Tarot School Priestess Tarot
Queen of Wands Tarot in Philadelphia
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