I know in this economy, a lot of people really need more guidance, not less. Yet how is it possible to get that guidance when you can't spare the money? It's bad enough to have to struggle to pay the bills when people don't even know what they are going to do about their jobs, etc.
However, a tarot card reading can actually be one of the few things that is well worth the investment in yourself that it involves. It is money well spent because the advice you receive may very well change your life for the better, help you make the right decisions financially, emotionally help you when you are in that bad place that the lack of money has put you into in the first place.
There is a saying in certain 12-step fellowships that when you least feel like going to a meeting, that is when you MOST NEED to go to a meeting. This is also true of getting a tarot reading. At those very times when you feel overwhelmed and like you can't take the time to go get one, that is often the time you need it most. And while you may not be able to afford to get that reading, well it can in many cases be as simple as one less meal eaten out, and eating at home instead.
Because I know how difficult it is to do this, I am offering my $25 reading special now through the end of June. Hopefully there will be a Paypal button embedded in this blog post so anyone who wants one can click straight through. I do my readings via online chat, so you get the ability of having instant feedback while you are having your reading, and you can log the chat so you can save it and print later.
Here's hoping we are able to be helpful to each other during this economic downturn....
Yours in Tarot,
Gina M. Pace (aka Wicce), creator of the Pagan Tarot, published by LoScarabeo, and former webmistress of Wicce's Tarot Collection, one of the internet's largest former tarot review websites
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Thoughts on the Moon in Tarot.
One of my tarot students asked me this question the other night, and I thought it was worthy of a post... as I feel that I am still fleshing out the answer to this question. It's a deeper symbolism than at first suspected, and keeps bringing up more material to the surface..... thanks Lee for asking about it!
In my tarot class, we are using the Rider-Waite tarot deck for study. We're actually going pretty deep, I am only getting about 5 cards per week done LOL so we are working fairly intensively with each card. I am pleased with this progress, even if it means the class will take longer to finish (I don't hear anyone complaining that they don't want to go into extra innings)
We were looking at the 8 of Cups, and Lee asked me what the symbolism of the moon was. I stopped, not so much because I didn't know the answer, but because it was something I hadn't really articulated yet and wasn't sure how to really target it.
The Moon is a deliberate symbol in this card and in most of the cards where it shows up. Pamela Colman Smith's artwork is very thorough in its meaning; each and every detail in an image has a reason for being there and a connection both to the meaning of the picture, and the meaning of the card itself in readings. In fact, I consider this one of the most brilliant decks in print, for that very reason. Smith is known to have "channeled" much of the material for this deck, going into a meditative trance and envisioning an image before drawing it. Often music made up a part of her rhythm for creation of a card. Therefore, the details of each image are startlingly pertinent on many levels.
Thinking about Lee's question, and about the symbolism of the Moon overall, I said, "What is the Sun? What is the Moon?"
Both are astronomical bodies, one of which we are in orbit around, the other in orbit around us. Both illuminate our skies and our lives, the Sun dominates the daytime sky, while the Moon has dominion over the night sky. But that very thing they have in common is also the very thing that defines their difference..... the Sun is an actual star, emitting light waves and heat and radiation towards our small planet and everything else that is in orbit around it. However, the light we receive from the Moon is.... REFLECTED from the Sun. The Moon has no light of its own, it is merely taking the light from the Sun, which is out of our line of sight at the time we see the Moon, and shining it back down at us.
Reflected light, time to reflect.... the Moon showing up in a tarot card reading, whether on the actual Moon card, or as a symbol on another card's image, one of the first things you can do is take a moment and think about how its main quality is REFLECTION. And so of course, the card asks us to pause and reflect.... but it's not just a simple matter of thinking, meditating..... no, this reflection is due to a change in the angle of perception.... so we're not just reflecting, we're taking another look at the situation we're reading about, we're getting a different perspective, looking at things in a different light.
One of my favorite things to point out to clients in a reading when the Moon card comes up is the way that when you see things in real life by the light of the Full Moon, they often look two dimensional in the darkness. Everything has kind of washed-out colors, if not downright grayscale..... everything looks like cardboard cutouts..... perspective is changed, even lost at times. You may be driving along a night road, and everything on the side of the road looks like it is made of flat paper standing up on the side..... it's harder to gauge distance, harder to know what reaction time will be for things, etc. So we must be both more cautious and pay more attention.....
I also like the fact that, even though you may be completely, fully aware of the layout of an area, like a road through your neighborhood or your backyard garden, in the darkness, lit only by the moonlight, it is easy to get disoriented and lost. I mean literally you could have placed every single one of those flagstones on the path of your garden, you intimately know every inch of it, and yet, you can get disoriented and stumble into the rosebushes if you're not paying careful attention. This is because of the changed perspective.
In similar fashion, though you could know exactly where everything is in your bedroom, you can awaken in the middle of the night and be frightened out of your wits by seeing the Boogeyman standing there across from you in the room, staring at you! And yet, when you turn your lights on, you realize it is really only your bathrobe hanging on the back of your door. When you turn the lights back out, you still see your bathrobe, because once your consciousness has emerged from the darkness and is enlightened to what the reality actually is, you cannot "unsee" the bathrobe and go back to seeing the Boogeyman..... and so it is with the Moon..... what you reflect on, what you see, the changed perspective you bring to the situation at hand, once you have seen the changes, once you realize what is actually going on, the truth can never be hidden from you again.....
Once you have taken the Red Pill, you cannot go back into the Matrix.....
Yours in tarot,
Gina M. Pace (aka Wicce), creator of the Pagan Tarot, published by LoScarabeo, and former webmistress of Wicce's Tarot Collection, one of the internet's largest former tarot review websites
In my tarot class, we are using the Rider-Waite tarot deck for study. We're actually going pretty deep, I am only getting about 5 cards per week done LOL so we are working fairly intensively with each card. I am pleased with this progress, even if it means the class will take longer to finish (I don't hear anyone complaining that they don't want to go into extra innings)
We were looking at the 8 of Cups, and Lee asked me what the symbolism of the moon was. I stopped, not so much because I didn't know the answer, but because it was something I hadn't really articulated yet and wasn't sure how to really target it.
The Moon is a deliberate symbol in this card and in most of the cards where it shows up. Pamela Colman Smith's artwork is very thorough in its meaning; each and every detail in an image has a reason for being there and a connection both to the meaning of the picture, and the meaning of the card itself in readings. In fact, I consider this one of the most brilliant decks in print, for that very reason. Smith is known to have "channeled" much of the material for this deck, going into a meditative trance and envisioning an image before drawing it. Often music made up a part of her rhythm for creation of a card. Therefore, the details of each image are startlingly pertinent on many levels.
Thinking about Lee's question, and about the symbolism of the Moon overall, I said, "What is the Sun? What is the Moon?"
Both are astronomical bodies, one of which we are in orbit around, the other in orbit around us. Both illuminate our skies and our lives, the Sun dominates the daytime sky, while the Moon has dominion over the night sky. But that very thing they have in common is also the very thing that defines their difference..... the Sun is an actual star, emitting light waves and heat and radiation towards our small planet and everything else that is in orbit around it. However, the light we receive from the Moon is.... REFLECTED from the Sun. The Moon has no light of its own, it is merely taking the light from the Sun, which is out of our line of sight at the time we see the Moon, and shining it back down at us.
Reflected light, time to reflect.... the Moon showing up in a tarot card reading, whether on the actual Moon card, or as a symbol on another card's image, one of the first things you can do is take a moment and think about how its main quality is REFLECTION. And so of course, the card asks us to pause and reflect.... but it's not just a simple matter of thinking, meditating..... no, this reflection is due to a change in the angle of perception.... so we're not just reflecting, we're taking another look at the situation we're reading about, we're getting a different perspective, looking at things in a different light.
One of my favorite things to point out to clients in a reading when the Moon card comes up is the way that when you see things in real life by the light of the Full Moon, they often look two dimensional in the darkness. Everything has kind of washed-out colors, if not downright grayscale..... everything looks like cardboard cutouts..... perspective is changed, even lost at times. You may be driving along a night road, and everything on the side of the road looks like it is made of flat paper standing up on the side..... it's harder to gauge distance, harder to know what reaction time will be for things, etc. So we must be both more cautious and pay more attention.....
I also like the fact that, even though you may be completely, fully aware of the layout of an area, like a road through your neighborhood or your backyard garden, in the darkness, lit only by the moonlight, it is easy to get disoriented and lost. I mean literally you could have placed every single one of those flagstones on the path of your garden, you intimately know every inch of it, and yet, you can get disoriented and stumble into the rosebushes if you're not paying careful attention. This is because of the changed perspective.
In similar fashion, though you could know exactly where everything is in your bedroom, you can awaken in the middle of the night and be frightened out of your wits by seeing the Boogeyman standing there across from you in the room, staring at you! And yet, when you turn your lights on, you realize it is really only your bathrobe hanging on the back of your door. When you turn the lights back out, you still see your bathrobe, because once your consciousness has emerged from the darkness and is enlightened to what the reality actually is, you cannot "unsee" the bathrobe and go back to seeing the Boogeyman..... and so it is with the Moon..... what you reflect on, what you see, the changed perspective you bring to the situation at hand, once you have seen the changes, once you realize what is actually going on, the truth can never be hidden from you again.....
Once you have taken the Red Pill, you cannot go back into the Matrix.....
Yours in tarot,
Gina M. Pace (aka Wicce), creator of the Pagan Tarot, published by LoScarabeo, and former webmistress of Wicce's Tarot Collection, one of the internet's largest former tarot review websites
Monday, May 2, 2011
Thoughts on Grief, Loss, and the Tarot
Part of the reason I have not written anything in the past couple of weeks is due to a string of technical difficulties, but by far one of the most difficult situations lately was the loss of my aunt and uncle in the recent spate of tornados, rains, flooding, and such down in the southern states.
When you look at a map of the areas hit by the storm cells, the westernmost points were located in northwest Arkansas, where my aunt and uncle lived. Moving eastward through Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, the storms also moved up the coast and the northeastern most points were here in Pennsylvania, where I currently live.
Many good people lost their lives in this series of storms. Many more lost everything they owned, or struggled with some form of damage.
My ceiling leaked and in many places my carpeting may well be ruined, but when taken into perspective the loss is nothing compared to the deaths of my family members.
I decided that I would pull some tarot cards in order to make some sense out of what had happened. Not just for myself, but for everyone who had lost someone in this time. Interesting cards came up in the reading. Not the Tower, or the Death card, which you might expect, but instead I got the 7 of Wands, the Moon, the 9 of Wands, the 5 of Cups, the 8 of Cups, the 10 of Swords, and the 9 of Pentacles.
Looking at these cards in the Rider-Waite deck, which is the deck I reached for when I felt low.... this deck has a sense of history and support and feels like coming home whenever I feel at a loss or when I am in doubt. I have a long familiarity with it and I don't have to struggle to think about what each card means, it simply speaks its message to me.
The 7 of Wands, feelings of struggle and being overwhelmed and bombarded, even though you have the high ground, immediately jumped out at me. We tend to focus on the negative in times of struggle, and often we need to be able to put ourselves in a bit of perspective. Granted, that man on the card could be pulled down into the army below him, but he does hold the high ground. Similar energy is associated with the 5 of Cups. We have a choice to make, whether to continue dwelling in sorrow for the love that is lost, or we can pick up the pieces that are good and continue forward. Yet not to skip the grieving process, it is necessary and healthy to spend SOME time looking at what is gone and completely feeling and understanding the loss.
The 9 of Wands was fitting for me as well as for a lot of people. It just seemed this week like the bad news kept coming, and coming, and coming. Then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, the Royal Wedding, and other good news to follow. We feel a bit overwhelmed by everything. We are safe, but we are wary. Continued weather reports of more rain and more bad weather leave us edgy and out of sorts, on the defensive.
The Moon and the 8 of Cups both point to feelings of focusing too much on the loss. I felt strongly as though these were a caution not to get too swept up in the whole thing. Sometimes it seems appropriate to drop out of life for a while when things get too hairy, and for those who are closest to the loss (in my case, my cousins) there is going to be a sense of being isolated within their own world for a while. We can offer support, but we cannot go inside their hearts and heal the pain inside.
The 10 of Swords. A gruesome image, certainly, but one that indicates a sense of finality. No matter what the battle is, it is over. We would really like to believe that at least for now, we can stop holding our breath and waiting for the next big blow. It is critical to our functioning that we know that it will not be ceaseless in its battering of our emotional reserves. The 9 of Pentacles, ironically, showing us a contented, happy, secure lifestyle, nonetheless has its own set of walls to keep the world out. It may be a long time before the process is complete, and while we are doing our own set of emotional repairs, we may still be closeted inside our own lives for some time, allowing ourselves the luxury of privacy and the ability to find solace within as the wound heals from the inside out.....
Yours in tarot,
Gina M. Pace (aka Wicce), creator of the Pagan Tarot, published by LoScarabeo, and former webmistress of Wicce's Tarot Collection, one of the internet's largest former tarot review websites
When you look at a map of the areas hit by the storm cells, the westernmost points were located in northwest Arkansas, where my aunt and uncle lived. Moving eastward through Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, the storms also moved up the coast and the northeastern most points were here in Pennsylvania, where I currently live.
Many good people lost their lives in this series of storms. Many more lost everything they owned, or struggled with some form of damage.
My ceiling leaked and in many places my carpeting may well be ruined, but when taken into perspective the loss is nothing compared to the deaths of my family members.
I decided that I would pull some tarot cards in order to make some sense out of what had happened. Not just for myself, but for everyone who had lost someone in this time. Interesting cards came up in the reading. Not the Tower, or the Death card, which you might expect, but instead I got the 7 of Wands, the Moon, the 9 of Wands, the 5 of Cups, the 8 of Cups, the 10 of Swords, and the 9 of Pentacles.
Looking at these cards in the Rider-Waite deck, which is the deck I reached for when I felt low.... this deck has a sense of history and support and feels like coming home whenever I feel at a loss or when I am in doubt. I have a long familiarity with it and I don't have to struggle to think about what each card means, it simply speaks its message to me.
The 7 of Wands, feelings of struggle and being overwhelmed and bombarded, even though you have the high ground, immediately jumped out at me. We tend to focus on the negative in times of struggle, and often we need to be able to put ourselves in a bit of perspective. Granted, that man on the card could be pulled down into the army below him, but he does hold the high ground. Similar energy is associated with the 5 of Cups. We have a choice to make, whether to continue dwelling in sorrow for the love that is lost, or we can pick up the pieces that are good and continue forward. Yet not to skip the grieving process, it is necessary and healthy to spend SOME time looking at what is gone and completely feeling and understanding the loss.
The 9 of Wands was fitting for me as well as for a lot of people. It just seemed this week like the bad news kept coming, and coming, and coming. Then, all of a sudden, out of the blue, the Royal Wedding, and other good news to follow. We feel a bit overwhelmed by everything. We are safe, but we are wary. Continued weather reports of more rain and more bad weather leave us edgy and out of sorts, on the defensive.
The Moon and the 8 of Cups both point to feelings of focusing too much on the loss. I felt strongly as though these were a caution not to get too swept up in the whole thing. Sometimes it seems appropriate to drop out of life for a while when things get too hairy, and for those who are closest to the loss (in my case, my cousins) there is going to be a sense of being isolated within their own world for a while. We can offer support, but we cannot go inside their hearts and heal the pain inside.
The 10 of Swords. A gruesome image, certainly, but one that indicates a sense of finality. No matter what the battle is, it is over. We would really like to believe that at least for now, we can stop holding our breath and waiting for the next big blow. It is critical to our functioning that we know that it will not be ceaseless in its battering of our emotional reserves. The 9 of Pentacles, ironically, showing us a contented, happy, secure lifestyle, nonetheless has its own set of walls to keep the world out. It may be a long time before the process is complete, and while we are doing our own set of emotional repairs, we may still be closeted inside our own lives for some time, allowing ourselves the luxury of privacy and the ability to find solace within as the wound heals from the inside out.....
Yours in tarot,
Gina M. Pace (aka Wicce), creator of the Pagan Tarot, published by LoScarabeo, and former webmistress of Wicce's Tarot Collection, one of the internet's largest former tarot review websites
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