Ostara Archives < Arwen, Professional Joy Seeker

Spring! Tarot Blog Hop 2016

Money Money Money and Tarot is our topic. That damned Ania was anti-bunny this year so she’s forcing us to talk about money and oracles. 😀 Okay, so she’s not really forcing us but I thought I’d whine a bit.

Money and this Pisces are not the best of friends. I am very fond of spending my money. My darling husband is more a fan of keeping the stuff. We usually find a common ground. But when we don’t? Oh good gods, y’all! It’s fireworks then–and I don’t mean the fun kind.

It’s the kind that breaks things. No, we don’t throw stuff, but trust and love can get damaged when money comes up.

While this isn’t a spread per se, these sets of questions are designed to get you talking to your partner (or partners if you are in a poly group). Use it as a springboard for fine tuning your own money relationships. You can use them for opening up communication. Please note that if you get triggered easily, you should find a good therapist to work with you and your partner. Money is one of the deal-breakers in many marriages.

(For Poly folk, just add a card after Person 1 and Person 2.)

Person 1: What is your biggest block around money?
Person 2: What is your biggest block around money?

Person 1: What is your biggest financial dream?
Person 2: What is your biggest financial dream?

Person 1: How do you relate to money?
Person 2: How do you relate to money?

Person 1: How do you want Person 2 to think about money within your relationship?
Person 2: How do you want Person 2 to think about money within your relationship?

You can create your own dialogues as well of course. Just stay open to the idea that you are exploring this with your other half. Don’t make it a war, please.

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Spring2015 Tarot Blog Hop

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It’s Tarot Blog Hop time again! Our wrangler is Ania. She’s dared us to throw caution to the winds and get creative. She asked us what cards we thought might need to be updated, removed or even added to reflect our modern society.

[Tweet “Come join in the #TarotBlogHop fun! Check out what changes we think #Tarot needs.”]

My first thought was “Nah, I’m good.” I’m not a huge fan of change (shocker!). I like things to just keep going as they go. But as I considered the topic, I realized that one of the reasons I love the Gaian Tarot is that the creator, Joanna P. Colbert, didn’t just rename the Court cards. She also assigned two male and two female characters to each.

Rather than all male knights (or even all female knights), we have the Explorers with Earth and Fire being women while Water and Air are men. The page category has two little girls for Water and Air while Earth and Fire are represented by boys. She didn’t even stick to the genders of the suits. And it works very well for me particularly since I have a large LGBTQI client base.

She also changed the names of the courts to Child, Explorer, Guardian and Elder. None of those are gender-biased. So my thing that I would update/change in Tarot is the propensity towards gender-bias in the Tarot. There is at least one card in the Gaian that is fairly gender-neutral for me. That’s the Teacher. Sometimes I see an old man. Other times it’s an old woman who stares out at me challenging me to learn the lesson of this card.

I think it might be fun to name the Court cards Seed, Root, Sapling, Tree. Then you could have the growth of the page, the seeking of the knight, the nurturing of the queen and the completion of the king. For me, I tend to translate the court cards in my head back to the attributes of page, knight, queen and king. No matter what they are named. So with decks like the Chrysalis, no matter the best intentions of the creators to move away from the traditional names, I still revert to them. Mentor, Muse, Mystic and Messenger are the courts in that deck. And it holds to the gender-bias. Even in the Fifth Tarot (which has a fifth suit) there is a tendency to have all males or all females.

So, the thing I would change about Tarot would be the need to lock ideas into gender-biased cages. Haven’t we proven that men make great nurturers and women are superb engineers? Do we really need to keep having this conversation?

Back to Tarot! Court cards should, for me, represent human types (maybe even stereotypes to some degree) but I think it’s important to remember that gender doesn’t own something. That’s why we can have female prime ministers, male nurses, etc. Here’s to living life as you are called to live it rather than as some societally-mandated role. And here’s to decks like the Gaian that don’t assign one gender to each court. Let’s have more!

And if you are looking for a way back to joy, I can help. Let’s do a Joy Recalibration together!

Ready to take it to the next level? Come join the . Hear Dr. Bernie Siegel, Heather McCloskey Beck, Dr. Martha Reed and more for free. I’ll be there as well to share how you can create affirmations to help you on your journey.

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Clutter, Yoda & Drama

Continuing on with the Ostara spreads from the Tarot Blog Hop, I move to one that addresses Spring cleaning on a personal level. Donnaleigh’s Clutter Spread tackles not only what energetic clutter can do but also what you might be missing by hanging on to it. So I thought I would turn to the next deck in my stack of “those that need to be reviewed.” I still have to actually write reviews for the Mary-El and the Rosetta.

But now I need to delve into Continue reading “Clutter, Yoda & Drama”

Secrets, Crossroads & Suspension

Well, I find myself at a bit of a crossroads in life. Lucky for me today is a great day for that. Happy Spring Equinox, y’all! It’s a day of balance and of new stuff. I love Easter as well. I’ve always been a great fan of dying eggs. A coven I was in did a very cool thing where we wrote messages on eggs with wax (clear) candles. You couldn’t see the message. Continue reading “Secrets, Crossroads & Suspension”

Ostara & The Court of Cups

In the Wiccan religion, many of us associate directions and elements and even tarot suits with certain times of the year. Ostara is a holiday of spring and life and joy. Its direction is East. Its element is Air. There is a sense of youth and fun and birth happening at Ostara.

In Tarot the suit of Cups points to the West. It’s about water. The time of year is Autumn. Here we have a season associated with aging and quiet introspection and death. It is the polar opposite of the rites of Spring. So what do the two have in common? Continue reading “Ostara & The Court of Cups”