Updates and Random Musings on Tarot

Can't wait until the last movie comes out! Picture from here.

In customary fashion, time and my million daily demands got the better of me this weekend, and I did not get to writing and accomplish everything I wanted. However, I have several items of very wonderful news! First and foremost on my mind right now, is the results of our branch night! I managed by a miracle to get my first choice, so now after graduation I’ll be commissioned as an officer into the Military Police Corps. I am incredibly excited. I actually cried during the ceremony when we finally got to find out our branches. Most of my friends were happy with their fates as well, so all in all, a very emotional weekend, but a very good one.

In other news, I did a New Moon tarot reading for some insight into the month ahead, and I’m pleased with the results. I just did a three-card spread, with no particular position designations beforehand, to better see the relationships between the cards themselves. The first card I pulled, which I placed in the center, was the Hierophant. The second, which I placed to the left of that, was the Nine of Chalices. The final card, placed on the right, was the Eight of Chalices. None of the cards were reversed. The spiritual undertones of all three cards said pretty clearly to me that my inner well-being will be the focus for the coming moon. I got a very positive feeling from the cards, and since deeper spiritually is precisely where I want to go, we’ll see how this pans out. I’m looking forward to the journey inward (although the presence of the Hierophant, to me at least, seems to suggest some sort of traditional perspective or religious authority, which could perhaps complicated the otherwise tranquil, blessed state implied by the other two cards).

Tarot is something I’m starting to put a little more stock in than when I first started. I’d fiddled around with online Tarot sources, but it always bothered me that so much of it was random algorithms, and I figured I would get more out of the experience if I were able to physically throw my own energy in there…so I bought a book (Tarot for a New Generation by Janina Renee) and a deck (The Celtic Tarot) and just threw myself into it. At first, when I did random readings for myself, I always felt like the Tarot was telling me more what I wanted to hear, than what necessarily was true or what I needed to hear. However, as I practiced a little more, and as I gained more experience reading for other people and being able to look objectively—but still intuitively—at the cards and filtering their traditional meanings through a case by case lens, I think I’ve developed a way to distance myself from, well, myself when reading. Thus, I think my personal readings are getting a little more on track and catching up to the accuracy of my readings for others.

I’m not sure which theory of Tarot’s origins I buy into. There’s so many floating around, all of them interesting, most of them entirely implausible. The one that seems most likely to me is that the cards originated as simply a card game, depicting different symbols and societal structures at the time of their origin (perhaps Egypt, as I’ve sometimes read, or perhaps Italy, as what seems to be said most often). Then, over the years, roundabouts the time of the Neopagan resurgence in Western culture probably, someone saw something, liked it, found a system that worked, and now we have the Tarot as a means of divination. Regardless of its origins, I think it’s a pretty fabulous process that opens the world of divination to almost everyone willing to try. I know it’s helped me in my other areas of divination as well. Since I’ve started reading the Tarot, I’ve been actually seeing things now in then when attempting to scry in crystals or glass or water. I’m not REMOTELY what I’d call adept, but I feel like I’m making progress, and that if I could only devote more time to my practice, I’d maybe one day move closer towards something like what my ancestors must have been able to do. I truly believe that humanity has a well of power within us, if only we knew how to properly access it. That said, I doubt I’ll ever tap into my full potential. I don’t think anyone can, except for perhaps Olympic athletes. I certainly don’t rank among them. I certainly don’t rank among the great mystics of the ages, either, nor will I ever. That is not my calling. My calling is somewhere between Warrior and Huntress and Scholar and Bard and Artist and one of these days, I’ll know what everything means. In the meantime, I’m just Anden, trying to figure it all out.