Tag: lovers

Tarot Blog Hop: What's in a Name?

Introduction

As the heat of the summer bears down upon us, our wrangler Jay Cassels gave us the fascinating question of “What’s in a Name?” as a challenge.  He said, “This month’s hop is in many ways following on the idea of timing posed in our last hop at the Solstice. The Wheel of the Year now places us at Lughnasadh or Lammas as it also known. The idea of names got me to thinking about the power that names hold and also the confusion that they hold as well. For this hop, I am asking participants to explore this idea; as always I have presented a few talking points/suggestions but also left it open for the writers muses to take them on whatever journey has come to mind as well…” He gave us several options, but the one that resonated with me was “Challenge yourself: Discuss, show and tell us what life would be like through the cards, if you changed your name…”

I didn’t have have to wonder if my life would change if I changed my name, because I did legally change my name eight years ago after my divorce. My birth name was Lorraine Carol Collins, I became Lorraine Carol Enos when I was married, and I legally changed my name to Raine Clara Shakti after my divorce because I no longer wanted my ex-husband’s name and I wasn’t really my daddy’s little girl anymore. I wanted a name that reflected the bold and independent woman that I hoped to become. I chose Raine as a nod to my birth name and because it means Queen in French, I chose Clara because she is a saint who helped me gain clarity, and Shakti because she is the Indian Goddess of Female Empowerment. At the time of my divorce, I needed to claim my power and so I deliberately chose a powerful name.

A little research revealed that one method to figure out your tarot card based on your name is to associate each letter with a number from 1 to 26 (A=1, B=2, etc.). After assigning each letter to a card, add up the value for all the letters in your name. If this number is 1-21, the number equates to the corresponding tarot card (1=Magician, 2=The High Priestess, etc.). As there is no way to get zero using this method, if the sum of the numbers equals 22 it equates to the fool. If the sum of the numbers associated with your name is over 22, then add the digits until you get a number under 22. Here is an example using my birth first name.

After figuring out the formula, I decided to see if the numbers reflected my move from my father’s daughter, to my then husband’s wife, to being my own independent woman and the results were fascinating.

My First Names (Lorraine & Raine both equal 11)

One of the most interesting things I found in my numerical journey through the tarot was that both my birth name and my chosen name equated to 11 which is either Justice or Strength depending upon the deck.  As I was looking through decks this morning for inspiration and to reflect upon the qualities of those two cards, I was drawn to meaning of the Justice card, depicted by cannabis, from Herbcrafter’s Tarot.  “Seek the truth, make informed decisions, and consider the consequences of your actions,” according to Lathisha Guthrie.  Reading this, I felt as if my existing definition of the justice card as being about balance and truth took on a new meaning.  When I reflect on Justice as related to my personality, I realize that when I am feeling balanced I do work to find an equitable solution and to find what the right action truly is.  However, when I am out of balance, I am more act to seek blind vengeance than justice.  This card serves as a reminder that my true nature is to seek the truth and to really think about things before making decisions.  It is also a reminder of the importance of balance.

The only deck I have where 11 is actually strength is the Tarot of the Sidhe, the deck I usually work

with for shadow work and that is appropriate here because a lot of times I’ve let my strength reside in the shadows as I let myself and other people convince me that I was weak and needed to be taken care of.  I’ve been reflecting upon this a lot as I’m contemplating taking a job as a director and the very word director takes me back to a conversation I had with my father when I was in my 20s.  A woman had applied to a director position in the company I was working with and my father said that she should not get the job because there were men who needed that job to support their families.  As I think about that conversation, I realize that there have been times in my life when I have self sabotaged at work because I didn’t think I deserved or should have a higher level position.  The strength card tells me that I have more strength than I give myself credit for.  I was also struck by what Emily Carding wrote about this card as she said that finding strength is about facing our own fears and our own dragons.  That rang so true for me as my dragons were the inadequacy drilled into my head by other people, but since I have realized those are illusions, I’ve been able to claim my strength.

My Birth Name (Lorraine Carol Collins = 9)

The Hermit speaks of solitude and withdrawal.  This is the card of going within and choosing to listen to our hearts versus the voices of the media and the external world.  There are so many Hermit cards that I love and that speak to me, but for this blog post I’ve chosen the Hermit from Tarot de St. Croix as I love the image of her coming out of her cave, from her place of contemplation into the world.  In so many ways, the Hermit is my true nature as I much prefer introspective solitude than the bustle of the crowds.  I would much rather curl up with a good book than hit the clubs.  However, the Hermit is also bittersweet to me as it was the taunts my ex would fling at me when we were fighting about going out.  He’d call me a hermit and the way he said the word made me think of madmen holed up in mountain cabins.  Since we have divorced, I’ve been working to reclaim the meaning of the word as someone who seeks introspection and who does inner work.  It’s odd as I write this to think about whether one of the subconcious reasons for changing not only my last name, but my first name was about distancing myself from my ex’s hurtful words.  However, the truth of the matter is that we can never truly leave our past behind and the hermit reflects my truest nature.

My Married Name (Lorraine Carol Enos = 14)

I struggled with the relationship between Temperance and my name while I was married as

Temperance implies balance and the magical alchemy that occurs when two things come together and are more than the sum of their parts.  My marriage was not that.  It was a violence mixture of love, hate, passion, and violence.  Much of it caused by my ex-husband’s undiagnosed mental illness and ego and my desire for a marriage of equals and not a marriage where I played second chair.  However, as I’ve reflected on this, I realize that temperance reflects the hopes and dreams I had on the day I took my vows and got married and when I look at it from that perspective, Temperance makes sense.  I normally don’t read cards reversed, but I can’t help reading the meaning of Temperance reversed and I realize that Temperance reversed truly does describe my life when I was Lorraine Carol Enos.  As Phillip Carr-Gomm write about Fferyllt, which is what Temperance is called in the DruidCraft deck, “You may find yourself involved in arguments, or feeling restless and frustrated.  You may also find that you are going to extremes of behavior or feeling fragmented.”  That sums up my marriage nicely as I was constantly frustrated and I was so stressed and on edge lately as I never knew what would make him angry.  As a result, my behavior alternated between being kind and loving and trying to get on his good side to being angry and pissed off because i was so unhappy.

My Chosen Name (Raine Clara Shakti=6)

After calculating the number for my birth name and equating it to the Lover’s card, I immediately thought of the traditional meaning of the card which is choices and not really about love.  On the surface alone, this was a lovely correlation as Raine Clara Shakti was a choice.  I deliberately chose to name myself after a Queen, a Saint, and a Goddess in order to claim their power.  At the time I chose my name, I was feeling powerless and choosing my name was a deliberate act to reclaim my power.  My gut instinct also told me that the Lovers card is about balancing our male and female characteristics and that also made sense as moving out of my divorce and into the world as a single woman, I was claiming myself as a whole person and not someone who was defined by another.  Interestingly, as I was looking at cards and through LWBs, I came across The Vision Quest Tarot, which is a lovely deck that I don’t use very often.  Gayan Silvie Winter and Jo Dose wrote, “To be able to surrender completely, you must be at the height of your strength.  Most people think only the weak surrender.  But the opposite is true.  You have to have the fortitude to let everything go and to fall into Love itself, without expectations without knowing whether the beloved will respond in kind or not.”  This struck me because it reflects a lot of the work that I’ve been doing lately as I work to come out of my shell and open myself up to to love.  I’m finding that it does take a lot of courage to say, I’m willing to open my heart up and choose to risk heartbreak.

Summary

Journeying through my names and realizing the numerical connections to the cards was a fascinating bit of excavation as I realized how my names have reflected who I was at the time.  It also makes me wonder what the magick of the universe is that makes that happen.

Tarot Blog Hop: Don't Fence Me In

The theme of this Blog Hop was taken from the title of the old Gene Autry song “Don’t Fence Me In.”  While our wrangler, Joy Vernon,  gave us some suggestions for how to approach this prompt, she also gave us permission to let the prompt inspire us and take us wherever it would take us.  This is one of those prompts that has been bubbling in the background since I first read it and I wasn’t exactly sure where it would take me.

It ended up taking me back to my roots in DeKalb, IL, which is the home of barbed wire (there’s a museum and everything).  I knew that somehow I wanted to incorporate barbed wire into my prompt and also the theme of breaking free from the things that keep us fenced in.  When I sat down in front of my computer to put together a layout, it all came together into the Don’t Fence Me In Spread below.

The deck I chose to use for this reading was Leeza Robertson’s Animal Totem Tarot because animals should be free and not fenced in and because animals are much better at not overthinking things that we are.  I also love this deck because it is a reminder that the deep lessons do not always come cloaked in darkness, sometimes they come through loud and clear from playful and happy decks.

The swan lovers tells me that it is my own lack of self worth and self love that is keeping me fenced in, especially where love is concerned.  I do not believe I am beautiful enough or sexy enough for love.  Leeza Robertson says, “During this phase of outer evolution the swan must trust that there is nothing missing it its life and that who it is, is perfect by natural design, regardless of the outer reflection others see.  This element of inner beauty and 
inner wholeness is crucial to the power of the Lovers card.”  This is powerful stuff indeed and tells me that it is not truly something physical keeping me fenced in, but my own beliefs about my physicality.

The dragonflies on the seven of cups tell me that it is my lack of alignment between my emotional wants and my intellectual thoughts that is keeping me caged.  Leeza says, “The Dragonfly connects the energy of the air with the creative power of water, letting you know that thoughts and dreams really can become real.  But first you have to use the energy of the Dragonfly to align your emotions with your thoughts.”  All I can say about this is WOW! because when I am really honest with myself, I can see that this is true.  Emotionally, I want to find the love of my life, but when I think about the reality of marriage, living together, etc., I find myself not wanting to share my house, my bank account, etc. with someone else.  I really like my independence and having a relationship would cut into that to a certain extent.  I think the truth of the matter is that I need to let the relationship that is right to me come to me and not get all caught up in the restrictions.

 The pigeon is telling me that sometimes we need to accept that we are down and bloody and that staying in the same situation will just result in people continuing to drive swords into us.  Sometimes, we have to cut our losses and  move on.  Leeza says, “Your supply has run dry and it’s time for you to face it and move on.  Staying where you currently are is only going to bring you more misery.” This is an interesting read on the ten of swords and it makes me wonder what emotional place I’m supposed to move on from.  My best interpretation would be that it is time for me to move on and let go of the pain of the past.  I need to stop being a victim and stop expecting that people who have never given me validation in the past are going to suddenly start validating me.  That is not going to happen and I need to let go of that need.  Part of me is staying small because that is what they expect of me and moving out of my little fenced in area will make it that much harder to reconcile with them.

There are multiple ways I could read this card.  The first is that this represents where I am right now as literally two days ago I decided I would start each day by meditating outside in the morning to receive the sun.  I would actively make time to open myself up to receive.  However, the lesson of the lemur may be that I need to balance my receiving with pulling back.  Leeza says, “Sun literally transforms the energy of those things in its presence so they can be luminous.  But the sun can also burn, kill, and destroy, for it is nothing more than a contained ball of fire, spewing its energy throughout our galaxy.  Lucky for you, the Lemur is here to teach you how to deal with this unpredictable force.”  I read this as telling me that I need to be cautious about going from all the way closed to all the way open or I will get burned.  My other, and immediate, interpretation of this card is that I need to start sharing spirituality with others instead of always making it a solitary endeavor.  I guess the reality is that both of these are valuable lessons for me.

The message here is that I need to actually pick a destination and not let the tides decide where I want to go.  The message of Stingray is, “Gracefully I make my way through the sea.  Far and wide, near and far, but always with a destination in mind.”   This is a powerful message for me because while my life looks successful on the outside, I haven’t fully committed to what I want and taken steps to go after it.  There is a part of me that is afraid that if I do commit 100 percent to what (who) my heart desires and I don’t get what I want I will be devastated.  Stingray is telling me that I need to commit and that while I may get blown off course, I will know that I have committed.

Being uncaged and free means that I and I alone am responsible for my actions.  Being uncaged means that I have to take responsibility for myself and can no longer play the victim.  I have to grow up and work with people to find a solution that works for everyone versus having my own way all the time.  Crane tells me that “Balance is not just about being even.  Balance is about finding the middle path or making it back to one’s own center.  In order to find true balance, one must make sure that one’s center is not corrupt or contaminated by the ego.”  Letting go of ego is difficult because it means I have to find balance within myself and balance in the larger world and sometimes those things seem impossible.

This card for me is about being comfortable in my own skin and accepting myself as I am.  It’s not about watching my weight or torturing myself into anyone else’s idea of what a woman’s perfect body should look like.  It is about loving myself and my body just the way I am.  It is about accepting I will never be a size six and reminding myself that anyone who cannot accept me just the way I am can just go F* themselves.  That doesn’t mean I don’t want to be healthy and take care of my body, but it means loving myself just the way I am.  Although the book meaning for this card is all about intellectual appetites and consuming a lot of information before making a decision, Leeza does have this to say, “The great Panda likes to eat–a lot!  In fact, it spends most of its life eating.  You don’t get that cuddly by restricting your calories.” 

The simple answer to this is to play like children play and to let myself be free to trust other people and myself.  The message of Otter is, “Everything we experience i this physical form is part of a game we call life.  yes, the biggest play of all is the life you came here to live.  But you didn’t come here to play alone, as this particular game is not a one player game.  You came here to play with others.  Playing with others is not only good fun, but it’s what the soul came here to do.”   This is a powerful reminder that I need to get out there and start making friends and start making time to play.
This was an amazingly powerful and deep reading as it reinforced some new behaviors that I’m working on, like meditating in the sun and making time for others, and gave me so new things to think about.
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Ritual to Honor My Father

My father died the day after Thanksgiving in 2008.  I’d known it was coming as he had lung cancer that had metastasized through his body.  I was living 200 miles away and traveling even farther away for work every single week.  I made the trek to visit him as often as I could, but it never felt like enough.  I knew the end was coming when I visited him and he was a shell of the robust, loving man who had raised me.  This was also the start of a devastating period of changes in which I could only react and had no time to mourn.

The call that he was gone was devastating, but not shocking as I knew the call would be coming sooner rather than later.  However, there was no time for my own sadness as I had to drive the 200 miles through teary eyes to help my mother deal with her grief as she’d lost her mother less than a week before.  I had to become the supportive daughter and not allow myself to be the grieving child.

I was strong for my mother, I was strong for my children, and I was strong for my now ex-husband.  I was the one who provided the shoulder to cry on, who prevented my mother from buying a junky used car the day after my daddy died, and I was the one who gave the eulogy at my father’s funeral.  I was also the one in the year after my daddy’s death that counseled my mother, loaned her the money to bury my father, and was there for everyone else.  I never let myself mourn because there was no time.

Fast forward a little over a year and I got another call that rocked my world, my husband had had a massive coranary and I needed to be at the hospital immediately.  Once again, I was the one who dealt with the details. shored everyone up and never let anyone see my tears.  I sat by his side, cheered him up, bathed him, and did whatever else needed to be done. 

My payment for the days spent by his side was his pronouncement four months after his heart attack was that he wanted a divorce.  I was hurt, I was angry, I fell apart, but all too soon I had to pull myself together and be strong for my kids.  I had to figure out how to keep them in college, get them settled in off campus housing, and deal with all the other realities of life.

It was ten years before I finally felt strong enough to mourn my father.  I cried for my loss, I cried for my children’s loss and I started to remember the good as well as the bad.  My family has always done ritual on Halloween and remembered our beloved dead, but I was ready to go deeper and to truly grieve and comfort the lost little girl inside.  Around that time, I came across Lisa de St. Croix’s Ancestor Workshop and it resonated with me. 

I took some time to gather mementos and photos of my father, I meditated on his life and our relationship, and I found the cards that represented both him and me according to Lisa’s advice and I found cards I wanted to use to meditate on.  It was a little weird because my dad’s card was the lovers and that felt really uncomfortable.  I finally pulled the lovers from the Animal Totem Tarot and I used the Hermit from the Druid Craft Tarot for my birth card. 

As I reflected on the cards, the assignment was to write a message to my dad from the Hermit’s perspective and to me from my dad from the Lover’s perspective.

The Message from Me From My Dad

You are too much of a hermit and you withdraw too much.  You need to let people in.  People will disappoint you, but they will also bring you great joy.  Love is a choice!  Choose to open your heart and let people in.  You deserve Love!  Choose it.

My response as the Hermit

The world is too painful of a place to open my heart.  I’m much more comfortable in my own company.  Choosing love is scary.  However, I know I’ve already chosen love with my kids.  Loving Cam and Sean brings pure joy along with the heartache and I remember that, I remember love is worth it.

Interestingly enough, since I did this ritual, I have been seeing and finding turtles everywhere.  Turtle was my dad’s nickname and when I find those turtles, I’m reminded that he is looking out for me and that love never truly dies.