Tea-break Tarot School

A little time to ground before we begin today.  Take three deep breaths.  Come back into your body, feel the seat, allow a few moments to become aware of sounds around you, sensations in the body.  Listen to this and pause…

Now set the intention that you are safe, protected and much loved.  If you work with visualisations set yourself inside a giant, light-filled soap bubble (like Glinda from the Wizard of Oz…)

This is, for me, one of the most challenging of the major cards.  I was brought up in the church and in my teens attended several charismatic/ evangelical churches where I heard all kinds of scary teaching about the devil.  This figure shadowed my spiritual journey for a long time until I left church and chose to reject that teaching.

Look at your Devil card and the image.  Often there is a male figure or a horned demon.  This figure sometimes holds two people by chains.  There is a sense of being trapped, tied up, imprisoned.  In the Gaian Tarot the figure is hunched up on the ground and trapped in bindweed, smothered.

The images are often sinister, speaking of shadows, secrets lurking in dark, dusty corners…but these aren’t monsters under the bed, or fairy story baddies.  For me this card is about what keeps me tied up, locked down, small, scared, or in unhealthy and destructive patterns of behaviour.  It’s the card of addictions and choosing to let these rule me rather than get myself free…

Exercise 25

Firstly a bit of honesty.  This isn’t a comfortable card; it challenges.  Where in your life might there be unhealthy patterns?  You don’t have to write it down, or share it all over social media, you have to look at yourself in the mirror and admit it’s there…

If you feel it would be helpful you might like to try this:

A simple ritual to help break chains…remember this is the intention, where the magic begins, the work follows after, intention then action…

You will need:

• Thread-  embrodiery silk or kitchen string are good (if you like to work with colour then black or purple are great but anything will do).
• A candle (black, purple or white or anything you have to hand…)
• A pair of scissors.
• A piece of paper and a pen.

What to do:

• Light your candle.
• Say out loud, “I am safe and protected”.
• Hold the piece of thread in your non-dominant hand.   Imagine this is the cord which ties you, give it a name, e.g. “this is the cord of my overworking”. Feel how that addiction affects your life and health and wellbeing, how it dulls your magic.
• When you are ready to cut the cord, and symbolically set yourself free, take the scissors and snip the cord in two.  You will discard this later.
• Take your piece of paper and write down an intention; something along the lines of “I hold the key, I choose to be free.”
• Close your sacred space by blowing out the candle.
• Place the intention where you can see it while you’re working with it (this could take a while!)
• Discard the thread.  You don’t need that anymore.