Reality, Swords + Self

How the Five of Swords is like a reality tv show.

[Tweet “How the Five of Swords is like a reality tv show. “]

Dreaming Way Tarot Five of Swords
Dreaming Way Tarot

#affirmation Today’s card is one of the mental cards. The Five of Swords can often indicate mental battles. These battles may not be real but we give them power by paying attention.

What are we paying attention to?

Other people’s opinions. They are entitled to their thoughts just as we are entitled to ours. Ours should have no more weight in their world than theirs in ours.

By acknowledging that our thoughts are powerful for ourselves rather than others, maybe we can stop wasting time worrying about what others do with their lives.

And likewise.

How much time do we waste watching shows about other people’s lives? Reading articles about other people’s lives? Discussing what other people are doing with their lives?

Me? I’d rather eat bugs than talk about housewives of any town or spoiled children or (fill in the reality show of your choice).

So turn your thoughts to your own doings. Focus on you. Bring your attention back to the one person you do have control over. Make changes. Celebrate differences. Explore your own wonderful self.

Here is your affirmation for today:

I carry my own thoughts. I release others to theirs. My world is made better by focusing on what I can do. I embrace others then release them to their own work. I am a strong, capable human being. My work is good. My life is good. My place in the web is good. Loved and loving, I love each of you.

Seek joy, y’all. Pass it on.

Five of Swords, , USGame

#dailyaffirmation
#affirmations
#tarot
#seekjoy

Choose Your Weapon

I’m fairly thick-skinned with most but those closest to me can hurt me the worst with this. I have to monitor my reactions and decide which sword I will pick up.

image
Today’s card is a reminder to me that I don’t have to accept all invitations to arguments. I know a few people who seem to relish picking at flaws of others. They love to point out any mistakes. Perhaps they see it as a way to help others improve. For me, it can hit me one of two ways.

I can see it as an opportunity to review things in my life for improvement.

I can see it as someone needing to feel superior because their own life isn’t fitting their needs.

Really depends on the context and how often it occurs as to which I see it as.

I’m fairly thick-skinned with most but those closest to me can hurt me the worst with this. I have to monitor my reactions and decide which sword I will pick up.

Will I pick up the one that allows me to parry back sharp and swift?
Will I pick up the one that lets me thrust straight to the heart in defense?
Will I pick up the one with the blunted tip so that I only bruise in return?
Will I pick up the one that requires two hands and all the force I can bring?
Will I pick up the ceremonial sword that shows I am ready to learn new moves?

I can attack back (and is it really back if the person truly means well but delivers poorly?)

I can stop and listen to my own intuition. A self-check to see if the advice is warranted is never a bad thing.

This Five of Swords from Lisa Hunt’s Fairytale Tarot reminds me that the sword I choose today will have repercussions. I must breathe. Maybe even count to ten or perhaps one hundred. Swords tend to have more than one way to cut–pointed tip, sharp edges, double edges. As the one wielding the weapon, I am the most qualified to NOT use it.

So what about you? What do you think? How do you react to criticism?

Five of Swords, The Fairy Tale Tarot by Lisa Hunt, Llewellyn 2008 (out of print but available as an app for your iOS phones. Not sure about Android. :D)

Seek joy, y’all. Pass it on!

Nags, Hyenas + Sharks

Here the energy is represented by a Goddess I didn’t know. Hailing from Japan, our dark-haired beauty is known as Harionago. Her message is “The situation is

DarkGoddess_5AirToday’s card makes me want to just smack the smug off her face. Wait. Haven’t I pledged to eradicate violence from my words? Sigh. That’s a lot harder to do than I thought.

But back to our Five of Air from the Dark Goddess Tarot. This card is traditionally a card of spite and strife as the Five of Swords. Many renditions show the aftermath of battle where there is a winner who has suffered losses they haven’t yet realized.

Here the energy is represented by a Goddess I didn’t know. Hailing from Japan, our dark-haired beauty is known as Harionago. Her message is “The situation is without honor. Engage at your peril.”

The wordsmith in me immediately translates that into Harry Nag. 😐 What can I say? My mind is a wonderful and sometimes really strange place.

She has arrows in her hair and arrows flying off her own hair. Or are those serpents tongues or tails? Above here are five lovely cherry blossoms but I feel she’s more thrilled about the two that have fallen to the ground.

This is NOT a nice woman, y’all. She is someone who takes pleasure in other people’s hurts. She is out to cause harm because it feeds her.

Yes, the is the Japanese Goddess of Mayhem and Mischief. I know someone like this. This person is actually well known in my circle. She really enjoys stirring the pot by needling people. She’s happier when someone else is sad.

Do you know someone like that? Someone who finds themselves elevated only when they put someone down? How do you deal with them?

When I run into this Harry Nag online, I try to route around her. I have participated in events and groups where she is. When I can maintain my cone of silence, it’s all for the better for me.

But she always finds a victim. Or rather, a target. The people she’s gone after aren’t victims because they aren’t weak or beaten. They are targets because she circles them like some hyena trying to nip at their heels.

Yes, I think that’s my new name for her–Harry Nag. For me, I will continue to create a space where she is not welcome. I will call her out by name if necessary but for now, I’d rather not bring that sad shark to my waters. It’s so bothersome to have to rap them on the nose all the time.

Your journal prompt is “How can I attract positive people to my world? What are creative ways I can release the negative ones?”

Five of Air, Dark Goddess Tarot, Ellen Lorenzi-Price, 2013

Seek joy, y’all. Pass it on.

Demeter, Helicopters + Hades

Do you think I’ll be welcome in Hell for what I said about helicopter moms?

DarkGoddess_5Coins001Today’s card features a Goddess I have mixed feelings for. I mean, yes, she’s all home and hearth and field and grain. But boy, did she put the hover in helicopter mother!

Most of us have a passing knowledge of the story of Demeter and her daughter Persephone. If you heard the version that I did, Hades is the big bad boy who stole her baby.

Well, let’s stop and think about that.

Here is Demeter gracing the Five of Earth. This card traditionally means loss of home and loss of money. Loss of family as well. So she is a good one for this card.

However, before y’all yank out your hankies to wipe your eyes, let’s consider this.

Persephone was abducted, or so we are told, by that rotten old Hades. Then her mother goes into serious shut down mode (no, that’s not a U.S. government dig) over this loss. Instead of doing something productive, she stops working.

Now, when Demeter stops working, it’s bad, y’all. No crops. No food. No nothing. So Zeus had to get involved. I see Zeus as the Olympus CEO. So he has to have a meeting with Demeter about her attitude.

When she tells him what’s what, he goes to his brother. His brother claims Persephone is happy where she is. Heck, she even ate some food.

That’s bad. You eat. You stay. Kind of like at a fairy banquet. Good news is she ate six pomegranate seeds (must be one of them-thar new-fangled diets, yo.) So Zeus mediates the conflict.

The final decision? Six months up and six months down–what you might call a split work shift.

I think Persephone was happy with her husband. I think our pretty little virgin Goddess got tired of being under mama D’s thumb and struck out on her own. I think the whole abduction thing was just a smear job by her mother. And it’s easy to do a smear job because most of us never go to the source being smeared. We just nod our heads and agree with the smearer. (Why do I suddenly want a bagel and schmear?)

The Five of Earth energy can be about loss and lack. But how often do we consider what caused the loss and lack? So someone’s parent kicked them out. Do you really think it’s all one sided? Sometimes it is (I personally know someone who was beaten and thrown out at the age of 14 for coming out to her folks). But I think more often than not, it’s a combination of things.

So today’s journal prompt may not be an easy one. “What am I doing to foster my feelings of lack and loss? How can I reroute that thinking into positive avenues of change?”

Seek joy, y’all! Pass it on.

Five of Earth, Dark Goddess Tarot, Ellen Lorenzi-Price, 2013

http://www.darkgoddesstarot.com

Celebrate What You Don’t Have?

Today’s card reminds me that my attitude can absolutely affect my pocketbook. I drew two cards at random from Roxi Sim’s gorgeous, colorful Pearls of Wisdom Tarot. I meant to pull one, but two insisted on coming out so two is what I’m working with.

I was struck by the differences in these two cards. In the Ace, she is celebrating all the things abundance CAN bring. Not has. Can. This is a card of potential, you see. It’s the beginning of what money can do. And not just money, but for this post, I’m going to stick with that.

Then move your eyes to the next card. Dying plants in the upper corners. A waning moon in the sky. A dark closed in room where two people fail to appreciate what they do have as they mourn what they don’t.

PearlsofWisdom_1Pent5Pent

Look at these cards again. In the Ace, all of the things are in the border. They aren’t hers yet. They aren’t real. They are in the works. They are possibilities. Her face is open. She is smiling. She is reaching up to the pentacle above her head knowing that the light flowing from both sides is her path to prosperity. All she has to do is walk it and believe in it.

The Five of Pentacles is so different. There’s food on the table (pears). There’s beautiful flowers (daisies). There’s even money and jewelery. He even has a pearl earring!

But there’s no joy.

Why is that? Is this card the “keeping up with the Joneses” card? I mean they both have clothes and a roof over their head. Sure, the candle is nearly out. The pearls show some missing so maybe they had to be spent? The money bags are nearly empty. But they are so closed off in this image. What can flow in or out when they are so closed?

I have this in my own life sometimes, don’t you? Days where I look at my bills in comparison to my bank account. Days where I wonder how I will make it to work because the E on my gas gauge looks like a T-Rex ready to take me down.

I have to go back to a saying a learned from my friend, Ruth Glendinning.

I walk in abundance.

Abundance isn’t necessarily cash in hand, darlings. It’s just having enough of what i need with some left over to share. And I do share. I give where I can including folks standing on the corner. No, I don’t want to get in a discussion about whether or not they “deserve” my help. Everyone deserves help–from Bill Gates on down. What that help looks like may vary of course. GRIN!

So here’s a challenge for you today. Take three minutes. Yes, 180 precious seconds of your day. Make a list of what you have. Not of what you want. Of what you have.

  • Food in the fridge?
  • Pets on the couch?
  • Books to read?
  • A TV to watch?
  • A computer to read this on?
  • Friends who make you laugh?

You feel me? Make a list of what you have. Call it “My Abundance List” and add to it every day. You will be surprised how abundant you can feel when you realize you have a toilet bowl plunger when you need one. 😀

Seek joy, y’all. Walk in abundance. Pass it on.

Ace of Pentacles and Five of Pentacles, Pearls of Wisdom Tarot, Roxi Sim