Pentacles – Cairn by Cairn

Deliberate Draw: Sage of Pentacles

First Impressions: Wisdom, at peace with the world, power

Book: Rules with steady hand and kind heart, no need to prove himself to anyone

Guidance: Find your own stable center

Journaling

Interesting card for me to pull as I’ve been feeling very centered lately. My loving kindness practice has really helped me to be more self possessed and in control of my emotions. It has really helped me let go of the need to be loved and admired. I think the root of it is that I’ve realized that I can love and admire myself and that’s okay. I don’t need anyone else’s approval but my own and realizing that has helped me let go of clinging and needing to be with someone. I’ve realized that I am the master of my own universe and that I am responsible for my actions and there is no one else to blame or to look for for approval.

Knowing that I can make my own decisions without having to pander to anyone else’s thoughts or concerns is amazingly liberating.

Ten of Earth

Ten of Earth
Dark Goddess Tarot

First Impressions: My first impressions of Ala are that she is stiff and statue like and is not interacting with her people. She also is very much a goddess of fertility with the prominent breasts and the design painted on her stomach.

Book: Kin and Kind, living and dead are all part of one another, totality of the earth in all its variety and appearances, Goddess of morality and judgement, keeper of customs and laws.

Guidance: Let relationships go as needed, do not seek vengeance, celebrate good fortune, celebrate those whose work you admire, keep and renew your relationship with the earth

Journaling:

This reading hits where I’m at today about the need to let go of people without vengeance. It is about shedding the ties that no longer should be binding us. My tie to John is a big one as he hurt me badly. I had an interesting dream last night. I dreamed we were sleeping together and he made an amorous advance. Initially, I responded to him, but then my dream rewound and I asked him if he loved me or if I was just convenient. When he didn’t respond, I knew everything I needed to know. This helped me to realize that our issues were not all about me and that he really does see women as objects.

January 20, 2018

As I read this, I’m realizing that my relationship with the earth also needs to include my relationship with my body. This was an incredibly hard week and I lost my connection to both the earth and myself. I spent most of my week in my head dealing with issues and lost track of the world around me. I didn’t make time to go to the ocean or to ground myself and I’m paying the price. This week may be just as insane, but I need to make time to ground and take care of myself.

Siren of Earth

Siren of Earth
Dark Goddess Tarot

First Impressions: I don’t like this card at first glance because it looks as if her face is on her ass. However, when I look more closely, I realize her face is on her stomach as it is about the bawdy and wonderful things that Baubo does. My initial thoughts on this were thinking with other parts of our body than our heads.

Book: This is the life in the belly: raw, ridiculous, sublime; Goddess of the belly laugh, power of laughter to activate the power of creativity. This is the time for feminine renewal and sexuality

Guidance: Laugh and smile deliberately, explore your body, explore physicality, be outlandish

Journaling:

I love the reminder to be bawdy and explore my uncivilized self. I’m not sure how I feel about being in the company of women as that’s always been disappointing for me. I’ve never been comfortable with women. I feel relations with women are stilted and as if they don’t get me. I’ve always been much more comfortable with men. Of course, today it is much too cold to be bawdy about anything! The wood room is freezing and I don’t know if I’ll ever be warm!

January 2, 2018

It’s interesting as I reflect on this as to why this card makes me really uncomfortable and it goes back to a lot of interactions with other women. Oddly, in these interactions I was the prude:

When I was a preteen or a young teenager we were at my Grandmother Babcock’s house making butter and she said something about not getting pregnant by holding a pill between my legs. At the time, I had no clue what she was talking about, but it made me uncomfortable.
My mother was talking to a friend while I was in the backseat of the car when I was 10 or so and she said something about my dad reaching for her breast and grabbing a roll of fat instead. That made me incredibly uncomfortable.
When John and I were first dating, we went to Joan and George’s and Vicky and Joyce were talking about my breasts and how they had kept growing. That was so awkward and made me uncomfortable, but when I protested I was told I was too sensitive.

In my mind all three of these interactions were really inappropriate and made me feel uncomfortable. I have no problem making impersonal bawdy comments, but two of these were directed at me and the third was by my mother…ick. John also made me uncomfortable because he’d have really inappropriate conversations with the kids and when I asked him to stop, he refused and told me I was too sensitive.

What I’m realizing this as I read this is that I’m not really a prude and I don’t necessarily think other women are prudes, but I want agency over bawdy conversations and I want my feelings to be listened to and to not be told I’m too sensitive or that I need to lighten up.

Wow! Pretty incredible what the cards tell us when we pay attention and listen.

Witch of Earth

Witch of Earth
Dark Goddess Tarot

First Impressions: I initially thought this card was showing Inanna welcoming a lover in a cave, which would be Ereshkigal’s domain. However, she is welcoming a lover in a bower, drawing him with her loveliness. Inanna always speaks to me of death and rebirth.

Book: Make magic in your partnership with natural forces, storehouse where grain was stored awaiting transformation into grain, Inanna’s body was one with the earth.

Guidance: Learn your plant allies, express your creativity through baking, or other trans-formative actions, approach everyday tasks with a sense of service.

Journaling:

One of the things I have been working on is to approach life with a sense that we are all in this together. I’ve also been working hard to foster kindness, especially with people in service positions. I know people often look down on service workers and/or are nasty to them, but anyone doing an honest and hard job deserves to be appreciated. It doesn’t take any more effort to be kind to people than to be nasty and I feel so much better about myself when I am kind.

December 27, 2018

In some ways it feels weird to equate kindness with Inanna, because I always think of her and her sister together and she definitely was not kind to Ereshkigal. She went down and invaded her home with her uppity attitude as if she was the queen of the underworld and had the right to treat people like crap. In my mind she deserved to get her comeuppance as she was a bitch.

However, my personal feelings about the myths aside, when I think about the sign at the Ritz-Carlton, “Ladies and Gentleman taking care of Ladies and Gentleman.” That slogan put people on an equal footing and conveyed the message that everyone was worth of respect. I try to approach life like that because I am no better or worse than anyone else, I’m just a person trying to get by.

I have to be honest and say that if anything, it took me a long time to get over the thought that I was worse than or less than other people. I always thought that I deserved the scraps and that it was okay if people disrespected me. I’ve put a lot of hard work into changing that impression of myself and most days, I feel good about myself.

Five of Earth

Five of Earth
Dark Goddess Tarot

First Impressions: Demeter is so sad and desolate on this card. I feel the barrenness of the earth as if all of the life has been taken away. This is definitely a card of loss and the need to come in from the cold. There is a different kind of barrenness outside my window today as it is cold and snowy and the darkness is creeping over the world even though it is just 4 pm.

Book: Give no part of yourself to that which does not sustain you.

Guidance: Accept the fallow times as part of the cycle, release expectation

Journaling:

I love and needed to hear the messages of this card today. I am so impatient that I fail to see all the wonders around me. I get so caught up in the hustle and bustle of every day that I often forget that the best things in life take time. Demeter also reminds me of the importance of taking time to mourn and be still within myself.

December 13, 2017

Although it wasn’t the main plot line on NCIS NOLA last night, the interplay between Dwayne and his dad was meaningful to me. The idea of being free of a parent is so liberating. I think I have been trying so hard to be the “modern woman” that I’ve forgotten you can have love and a career. Interesting that this is all coming up around Demeter, who lost herself in grief for her daughter.

December 18, 2017

All I need to do is to be myself. I don’t need to make up for anything or to prove anything to anyone. I just need to be me.

December 27, 2017

The message that all I need to do is be myself is so powerful and it is a lesson that I desperately needed to hear. I get so caught up in trying to live up to other people’s expectations that I forget that I just need to live life for me. I think that is why I am so adamant that my blog is mine and mine alone. It is not meant to be a place of wisdom for other people, although I am always willing to freely share what I have learned.

Inequality in the Sixes

I woke up this week and realized I’ve lived my entire life as a six. Before the self love crowd starts getting on me about denigrating my appearance, let me clear I’m not talking about how I look, I’m talking about tarot cards. As I get more and more familiar with tarot, I’m learning to really pick out patterns and apply them to my own life. It also helps when the cards smack us upside the head with something again and again. For me, pulling the sixes over and over again has helped me realize all the ways I’ve fostered inequality in my life.

Financial Inequality

Druidcraft Six of Pentacles

The six of pentacles is about financial inequality. The first six of pentacles card I saw was the six of pentacles from the Druidcraft deck and I hated the card because to me it was all about people asking more from a poor old man than he had to give. I shuttered every time I pulled that card because it reminded me of all the times I’d been asked to give more than I had. As I studied (and acquired) more and more decks, I realized that most decks showed a more affluent person giving money to others and not a beggar being asked to give up his last dime.

Although the traditional image was less disturbing for me than the Druidcraft deck, it still represented financial inequality as someone with a lot of money was giving to someone with less money. I thought about the very few times in my life I’d been receiving from others and about how difficult it was to ask for a handout and admit I couldn’t make my own way.

Hansen Roberts Six of Pentacles

I also thought about the many more times I had been on the giving side of the equation. Being on the giving side of the equation brings with it its own set of issues. As a parent, we have all of the money and it is our job to give it to our children as needed. However, I know from my personal experience there’s been a lot of times where I’ve fallen back on the “we can’t afford it” line instead of being honest with my kids and saying we could afford it, but I don’t think it is the best way to spend our money. An unfortunate result of the “we can’t afford it” line is that my children have developed poverty consciousness and think we can’t afford anything. I’m working hard to change that by being honest about when we really can’t afford something and when it is not the best use of our money.

Unfortunately, we live in six of pentacles society where money is a measuring stick and people who can bring in more money are rewarded more than others even though a person making less money may be making the bigger contribution to society. Executives are paid more than teachers even though teachers make a far more valuable contribution to society.

I fell into the money as a measuring stick mind set during my marriage as I made significantly more than my now ex-husband and toward the end of our marriage money became a weapon of control. My feelings were since I made the money I got to choose where to spend it. I chose not to look at the other contributions he made and based it solely on who made the most. One of the lessons I learned from my marriage is that money is not the only measuring stick and that I need to look at people more holistically.

Emotional Inequality

RWS Six of Cups

When taken at face value, the six of cups is a charming card with an older child giving a smaller child a cup of flowers. The card seems to be about nostalgia, about having a big brother to take care of you, and about a happy childhood or, as one site says, the card is about simple goodness. And all of those things are true, but there is a darker side to the six of cups.

I did a spread where I asked what I had learned about love from various couples and for one couple the six of cups came up. Looking at the textbook definition of goodness and happiness, I was confused as I’d know that this couple had a miserable marriage where she made the money and he took advantage of her. I had an ah ha moment where I realized that the six of cups could also be about emotional inequality with one person being more invested in the relationship than the other or about one person taking advantage of the other person.

I gained an even deeper understanding of this card when I kept pulling it when asking about my relationship with a certain someone. At first, I viewed it as a happy card, but when I started to compare it to the two of cups which shows two people sharing a cup; I realized that when it came to adult relationships, this card was either about one person being rescued by another or one person taking advantage of another. When I truly reflected upon my relationship with this person, I realized it was both. My friend is a guy who likes to rescue damsels in distress and a lot of our relationship was built on that inequality. On the flip side, I know that he likes to rescue damsels in distress so if I was feeling a little sad or lonely, I’d be the damsel in distress and he’d rush to my rescue.

Those realizations made me really think about the type of relationships I want in my life and even more fundamentally about who I wanted to be in my own life. I realized that I don’t want to be a damsel in distress. I want to be an equal so I want a two of cups relationship and not a six of cups relationship.

Status Inequality

The six of wands and the six of swords represent the two sides of the status inequality coin: the six of wands shows the exalted hero riding in to the cheers of his adoring fans and the six of swords shows the gondolier as servant being ignored by his passengers. As I reflected on these cards, I realized I’m more comfortable in either of these roles than in a role as an equal.

Six of Wands

My roles as consultant, teacher, and leader reflect the six of wands as I love to stand at the front of the room and lecture and give advice. It’s not only the praise and adoration I love, it is the disconnection. I don’t have to engage in real conversation with people and let them in. As I look back over my life, I realize I’m really comfortable in the roles of organizing and teaching because they give a purpose to my interactions. When I’m teaching, I’m talking on a specific topic and even if I don’t have a prepared speech, I know the material well enough that I can speak convincingly. I’m also passionate enough about what I do that my lectures appear to be heartfelt, but they’re really not because it’s difficult for me to truly let people in and engage in a heartfelt conversation. Being above the crowd insulates me from other people’s messy feelings and emotions.

Six of Swords

If being a six of wands lets me be above the fray, slipping into the six of swords persona lets me fly below the radar. As long as I do my job and meet my obligations, I don’t have to engage with people on a personal level. I take their orders and don’t let them in to see the real me. I’ve been working as a consultant for the past six years and that’s the perfect job for an introvert who doesn’t let people in because everyone knows the day I walk in the door that the gig is temporary. I’ll be there for six months or so and then I’ll move on. There is no point to getting close to people because I’ll be gone soon.

A Lonely Way to Live

Living as six is a very lonely way to live because there aren’t true heartfelt connections of equals. Everything is about dominating or being dominated and at the end of the day it is about fear. Fear of not being good enough and fear of letting people in. So my challenge is to dig deep within myself to find the courage to let people in so I can be a two of cups instead of a six.

Knight of Pentacles

First Impressions: This is a beautiful card and I love the colors. One of my first impressions is that the knight is riding into battle into the sunset. Despite being a card of swords and decisiveness, this card is kind of dreamy and romantic. Reversed, this card is about losing control.

Book: Stifling anger, staying silent, lack of commitment, vengefullness, continue to have thoughts and attitudes that are causing you problems.

Guidance: Listen before speaking, speak your mind.

Journaling:

I am seething right now and the problem is that I don’t even know who to be angry at. I guess I’m angry at the universe because I don’t have the one thing that I truly want in my life. I want love. I want someone to care about me and to worry about me. I don’t want more responsibility in my life. I don’t want to be A’s teacher. I’m sorry, , I am saying what’s in it for me and finding the answer to be nothing. I know people have guided me and mentored me, but I have nothing left to give right now. I’m totally tapped out and I don’t have the energy.

And yes, I’m really angry. It is another Christmas and I’m all alone. I want someone to share my life with, I’m tired of being alone and living alone. This is no fun.

They just gave me an interesting message that if i want someone to snuggle with, I need to create room to snuggle.

January 25, 2018

Interesting rereading this as I’ve been really working to get rid of the clutter in my life. A big part of my putting my journals online is so that I can get rid of the emotional baggage. As I read through all of these entries, I’m looking at what the lessons are and letting go of the pain that goes along with the journal entries. I’m also working on cleaning up my space and getting rid of things that I don’t need or that no longer serve me.

Daily Draw: Queen of Pentacles

First Impressions: One with the earth, earthy sensuality

Book: Warmly in a relationship with the earth, high value on stability, domesticy

Guidance: Take pleasure in small daily rituals, love your life

Journaling

I love this card because it helps me feel grounded in the earth and connected. I feel this way when I do reverse corpse and feel myself in touch with all the good stuff that life has to offer. I am so glad that I pulled this card today because I needed to be reminded of what an amazing place our earth is and what our place in it is.

May 25, 2018

I drove through Lakewood Cemetery today and I always feel so grounded when I go to cemeteries, because I am reminded that nothing I am going through matters all that much in the big scope of things. We are born, we live, and we die. Our job is to live our best lives while we are alive. We need to love other people, be kind to people, eat healthy, and be the best people we can be. Sometimes we fall short of those ideals, but when we do, we need to pick ourselves up and keep trying.

I know that I am not a perfect parent and there are times when I am unkind, when I tease the kids too much, or when I do other things that are not nice, but I acknowledge them, apologize and try to do better. And that is why I am different than the bitch. She would never acknowledge how she hurt me and she would never try to make it better. Even when I sent her a letter and outlined all the ways that she had hurt me, she never responded. I think that hurts almost worse than what she did because it feels like I don’t even matter enough for her to apologize to or try to make amends too. She acts like she is so F*ing hurt that I’m not talking to her, but she refuses to do anything to fix the situation.

It is as if she is so stuck in her mentality that she is the “elder” (what a joke) so she doesn’t have to do anything or treat me with respect. It is as if because I am her child, I do not deserve respect. That is so full of garbage and the complete antithesis of how I treat Sean and Cam. I know they deserve respect and I know that I am not deserving of respect just by virtue of being their mother. If I did not treat them with respect, I would not deserve respect from them. That is the complete opposite of how I was raised and she cannot understand that way of thinking at all

Two of Pentacles

Two of Pentacles
Hanson-Roberts

First Impressions: The pentacles are in an infinity symbol like on most decks. There are boats in the background. The boy has his eyes closed. Overall, this two of pentacles appears less stressed/manic than the two of pentacles in other decks. This deck makes me think about juggling or managing multiple projects and/or priorities.

Book: Balance, trust, playfulness, need to seek balance, calm yourself, keep a sense of humor, you may have two many balls in the air.

Guidance: Conciously seek balance, find ways to balance work and personal, keep your sense of humor and don’t lose site of the fact that most things in life are not that serious.

Journaling:

Interesting card to pull and to meditate on. The message that I’m getting is that sometimes I’m juggling and keeping things alive that I should just let go of. There are things that are just not worthy of my time and/or attention. One of those things right now is being pissed at Meg about Gateway. I’ve said my piece, now I just need to let it go and see what happens. There is nothing that I can do to change the situation today so I just need to focus on what I can control and let go of the rest. Sometimes there are balls that it is okay to drop.

December 23, 2017

I’ve gotten much better at dropping balls that no longer have meaning for me and that aren’t worth my time and energy. Worry is one ball that I’ve been working hard to let go of. There are so many things in life that I cannot control and spending time worrying about them just doesn’t help matters.

My quest for the love of a particular someone is also something I need to drop. I need to quit obsessing and just see what happens. I’ve spent way too much time and energy focusing on him and I need to let go. That’s a big part of the reason that I’ve been working to let go of Chicago. Going back there keeps me entangled and that’s not healthy for me. What will be will be and I need to let it go.

I also need to let go of John. I really do hate him for what he’s done to me and how he hurt me, but carrying that crap around is not healthy for me. He will get what is coming to him and what his Karma is. I just need to let go

Child of Earth

Child of Earth
Gaian Tarot

First Impressions: This card is a card of innocence. I love how big the apple is compared to the child’s hands and how he looks so studious. This card makes me think of intensity, protection, a child’s heart, contemplation, innocence, and being aware

Journaling:

Exploring the earth, happiness, being attuned to my intuition and divine wisdom and knowing in my soul what makes me happy. Letting go of pretenses. I know what would make me happy: coming home every night.

May 8, 2016

This card is about exploring, but it is also about innocence and trusting the universe to provide. Maybe I need to trust the universe to provide what I need and to quit trying to control everything.

January 2, 2018

As I reflect on the almost two years since I pulled this card, I’m realizing that the message was to get tuned into earth and to let go of all the crap that has built up in my soul and is keeping me separated from my intuition and from my innocence. It is innocence that helps us reclaim our connection to the divine by eliminating all the doubts and fears that keep us from believing that there is something bigger than ourselves out there. When we are able to let go of that fear and find the happiness within our soul, we can find that divine spark within ourselves and within others.