Tea-break Tarot School

As I’m writing this we’re approaching Valentine’s Day.  The shops are full of cuddly toys, red roses and boxes of chocolates.  This isn’t the kind of love that this card represents for me though.

This can be a tricky card to work with, especially when reading for other people.  For a lot of people this is the card of “will I find my ideal partner?”  There’s a lot connected to that question.  Because finding the perfect partner for us often means a lot of our own work needs doing first.  It can be difficult to suggest that to people who are desperate to find love, and even more difficult to hear it…also you may notice that many of the “couples” appear to be heterosexual.  I find this jars somewhat.  For a series of blog posts on Queering the Tarot see here.

Overall though this is a positive card, a card of connection, completion, of passion and exictement.  What struck me looking at the cards this time was the word “entwined” the two snakes in the Eight Coins Tattoo Tarot, the couple in The Textured Tarot and The Accurate AF Tarot (I’ll post these pics on Insta). All entwined, wrapped up in each other.  Yin and Yang.  Complementary. Complete.

As well as a card of “relationships” this is also, for me at least, a card of passions.  Imagine that excitement of falling in love, the heart-stopping thrill, the absorption, the risk, the late nights, the aching separations when one of you has to go and buy bread/ work/ travel overseas. Now shift that onto your interests/ work/ hobbies/ art.  This is the kind of passion.  What is it that lights you up like Blackpool Illuminations? What makes you shiny,  lights that inner flame that can’t be ignored?  This is what this card asks.

When you find that, hold it.  It doesn’t have to be a “huge” thing.  It doesn’t have to be a Henry Moore sculpture or the next Guggenheim.  It can be a killer lemon drizzle cake baked to perfection,  a rose tended and blooming, a child taught to write their name, a patient made to feel like they matter, a song written and sung as if you’re the only person in the world, a rescued cat, a piece of collage in your journal, a beautfully crafted silk tarot bag…any of these, all of these, and many more.  I have come to believe that our “life purpose”, our calling, our vocation, which this card speaks to, is us.  There will never be another like you.  To fully embrace and embody your you-ness.  That’s it.

Wow.

Exercise 16

Write down your key words and questions.  Give yourself no more than three minutes…

Then reflect on the above…

How might you embody the passion of this card in your life?

(this may take a bit longer than ten minutes (like a lifetime) so not quite what I said at the start of class **winks**).