Storm Coming? Passing?

SteampunkTarot_2PentaclesToday’s card reminds me of something I heard today. The quote was by a man named John O’Donohue who died in 2008. He said

“The normal way never leads home.”

I learned two things when I heard that. The first was that I needed to get his work. The second was that I had no definition of what home might mean in that quote.

Living in Austin, I can certainly identify with the idea of not being normal. I’ve decided that if I ever do leave this mecca of weird, I will go to another mecca of diversity and unusual. I need to be where the norm is to be uniquely myself.

I am not like you. You are not like me. Like everyone else, we are unique. Isn’t that an amazing concept? Consider it for just a minute. No one on earth is just like you. No one has your life experiences or your truths or sorrows or joys.

Many of us have similar. Many of us have shared in the same experience. But how many of us have come away from those shared experiences with different outlooks?

When I went ocean kayaking with my best friend, we fell in. Whether we fell in courtesy of me or her is a matter of opinion. I’m willing to believe her when she says I tumped us in. I saw a WHALE. (Tumping is what I was taught you do when you turn a boat over. 😀 )

So my experience of being in the water THISCLOSE to a humpback was thrilling as well as humorous. But what was Cai’s experience? I know that when I was pointing out how close the whale was, she somewhat tartly pointed out that I should be getting back in the kayak so she could too.

It may have been April and it may have been slightly brisk in the water that day.

But our experiences were not the same. Neither of us was angry at the other. Far from it! We laughed our butts off. But I think you would hear two different stories from that day that we went swimming quite unexpectedly with whales.

The Two of Pentacles from Aly Fell and Barbara Moore’s fantastic Steampunk Tarot shows a woman on an old-fashioned bicycle. There is a neon lemniscate acting as the chain. She appears to be riding on water or clouds. The sky above her shows a storm breaking. Or is it gathering? Is she finally leaving shelter to head on her way? Is she hurrying for shelter before the storm hits?

Your personal story will lend flavor to this card and every card in a spread. As a reader, you must acknowledge that. Some of it will need to be put aside if you are reading for another, but if you are reading for yourself, understanding how your own mood can blend into the cards is key.

So, when you look at this card, given your current mood and understanding of where you are, is she fleeing the storm or has the storm passed?

Here’s some of John O’Donohue’s work [aff].

Two of Pentacles, Steampunk Tarot, 2012 [aff]

3 thoughts on “Storm Coming? Passing?”

  1. I see her riding through the storm, cos that’s what she has to do! My dad used to love the expression: “Come hell or high water.” She’ll use that lemniscate’s infinite energy to keep going, either way 🙂

  2. Ah, the storm has passed but it is building again. It’s the nature of the end of the year in teaching. Students are tired, tense, and unwilling to work. Teachers are tired, tense, and exhausted. We care more than they do at this point. I wish I were the woman on the bike, especially with the purple on the card. Thanks for doing what you do. I enjoy your blogs but have been busy to the nth degree.

  3. It appears to me that the storm is ending, the sun is beginning to shine as the clouds break apart, and she is continuing on her destination. She just passed through another little, possibly scary, roadblock in life.

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