TarotBlogHop Archives < Page 2 of 2 < Arwen, Professional Joy Seeker

Imbolc Awakening the heart

PREVIOUS | MASTER | NEXTOur blog hop wrangler, Joy Vernon, tasked us with this theme:

“…the still point of the center of the fixed stimulates germination and the awakening of the heart.”

I thought about it a long while. Thought I had a blog idea after someone attacked all Tarotists as abominations, but then I decided not to give that crazy any more space in my head.

I thought I might blog about saving a dog only to have to release it to animal control to be euthanizes. I opted to not burden you all with that sorrow.

Then last night just as I was going to bed, I realized what I wanted to share with you. My muse gifted me with a spread for you. I will do a reading for myself via video (below). Here is the spread.

Germination Spread

Seed: This card represents something you want. You can choose it intentionally by going through the deck until you see/feel/sense/know the card you need. Or you can draw it at random.

Soil: This card represents what surrounds your SEED. It is what supports this need of yours, this want. It is the nutrient-rich darkness that all ideas/dreams/whispers must exist in as it begins to burgeon with all your expectations and hopes.

Water: This card represents what you will have to do to bring your SEED to life. Here is your sweat, your salty tear, your moistened mouth as you wet your lips while you hunger for this SEED to burst forth into the light.

Sun: This card represents your heart, your heat, your very spirit. This is the warmth of your love, the heat of your desire, the brilliant inferno of lust for this SEED you have planted.

Time: This card represents what you will do while you wait. Waiting is a part of all things in life–especially growth. We cannot force things into being. We cannot reach beneath the soil to firmly yank the small green sprout upwards. But while we wait for our SEED to grow, there are things that we can do.

I invite you to do your own germinating as you continue your hop through the kickoff of our fifth year of the Tarot Blog Hop. This started as a seed itself. A discussion on Facebook led me to asking a question that then led me to inviting others to join me on a group exploration of one question. You can see that here.

Here is me doing my own Germination reading. (don’t forget to come back to continue the hop, y’all.)

And please? Leave comments as you go. Share the posts that speak to you. We do this as a community for you and for ourselves. Comments tell us you were here. Sharing tells us we touched you on some level.

May your seeds grow. May you find the courage to weed out the ones that don’t have strong stems. May your year bring you all the joy you deserve.

Seek joy, y’all. Pass it on.

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Tarot Blog Hop Yule Office Party

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So what happens when a bunch of Tarotists get together for their virtual office party? That’s what I asked of my fellow Tarot Blog Hoppers for this Yule Tarot Blog Hop. Join us for eighteen tales of “that one time, at our office party…”

I hope I don’t end up with a lampshade on my head!

I decided to share a silly Tarot spread to help determine how to have more fun at your own office party.

What to wear to the office party
Who to bring as your date
What gift to bring for the White Elephant game
Who to keep an eye on at the party
The best outcome of the party

So the Five of Wands is what I should wear. Something sparkly that catches the attention of everyone…maybe even starts a small riot? Diving blouse it is!

And the Ten of Wands is my date? Well that’s my poor, overworked man who is buried at work right now but apparently he’s coming with me. Sorry honey!

And the best gift for the White Elephant is Death? Cool! I guess I’ll be wrapping up that ceramic sugar skull. Wonder who will end up with it.

Whoooo boy! Who do I need to keep an eye on? Why that Six of Wands person of course. You know them…they are always bragging about how good they are and what amazing things they’ve done. 😀 I may want to learn how to emulate that confidence.

The best outcome of the party that features a bunch of Tarot folk? Why the Moon, naturally. There will be cards and readings and laughter and predictions about what an amazing 2016 we will have.

My sincere gratitude to everyone who has participated in a Tarot Blog Hop these last four years. 2016 will be our fifth year. I wonder what subjects we will blog about next year.

Happy Yule, y’all! Happy Everything.

Seek joy, y’all. Pass it on.

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MidFall/Samhain Tarot Blog Hop

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I am this year’s wrangler for our MidFall/Samhain Tarot Blog Hop. I asked everyone to focus on this topic.

***Commune, Communicate, Commemorate with those who have gone on before us. ***

It’s Samhain or MidFall. This is the last of the three harvests in the Northern Hemisphere and the advent of Spring in the Southern hemisphere. It is a time that I know as being a thinning of the veil…a time for the honouring of those who have crossed over before us. This will be a hop focused on communing, communicating and commemorating our loved ones.

My offering is this YouTube video that I did this morning. It is an All Hallow’s Eve tradition for me. I cast my circle then did my New Year’s reading using Joanna Powell Colbert’s Elder of Fire spread. All links are in the drop-down box beneath the video. Just click “More”.

Arwen’s Elder of Fire reading.

Now I invite you to hop through to the rest of this Samhain Tarot Blog Hop. If you find a broken link, just go back to the post you came from and click the Master List link to skip that one.

Seek joy, y’all. Pass it on. Blessed Samhain to you.

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Mabon Hopping: Getting Creative for the Tarot Blog Hop

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Hey y’all. It’s Mabon today. In my tradition that’s the feast of the second harvest. Many of my fellow Wiccans think of it as our time to give thanks for what the year has brought us.

I wanted to do that now. I am in a place of amazing good right now. I have moved to New Mexico to live with my husband. We have a roof, food to feed ourselves and our pets. I have a husband who buys me things like bird feeders from garage sales because he knows how much I love watching the birds.

Right now I can look out my office window to see two house finches and a sparrow on one of those feeders. They are amusing me because they are squabbling over territory. I want to talk to them to remind them that there is food for all here at our home. The birds might not be as amused to find that we call their feeders “bird tv” since the cats love sitting in the windows to watch them.

Our TarotBlogHop wrangler is that lovely Utah harpist and poet, Aisling. Check out her poetry book here or her simply magical harp CD’s here.

She asked us to think about Mabon then create a card that spoke of the season. I was going to do the Empress but the Seven of Pentacles called to me. My card is created in GIMP using a photo I took of my own cherry tomato plant (2011). I reminds me that each blossom and small fruit is a supernova of energy. They represent the work we put in and the reward that will come.

I’d like to invite you to also join me on my YouTube channel where I am offering videos on how to read Tarot intuitively as well as other subjects. I also do deck reviews there. I am covering new decks and old as well.

Happy Mabon, everyone. Seek joy, y’all. Pass it on.

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The Dark Side Of The Sun: Tarot Blog Hop: Lammas

It’s not that I hate the sun…Joanne’s blog hop theme just made me look at things a bit differently.

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Joanne asks: So, give us your take on the influence of the Sun and/or Mercury in the Tarot or your favorite oracle deck. Pick a specific themed deck or go for one of the basics, talk astrology, or not, your choice. Tell us about a card or a spread that illustrates the properties associated with these celestial objects. There are various possibilities, particularly with Mercury, but there are also deities in different mythologically themed decks besides the Sun card (although you could also go there) that could shed some light on that symbol as well. Do a little research, consult your intuition, and teach us. 😉

First, welcome to our Tarot Blog Hop. If you want to join us, come find us on Facebook. We’d love to have other community-minded bloggers!

[Tweet “Hooray! It’s #tarotbloghop day. Sun, Mercury + 18 bloggers. Fascinating stuff, y’all.”]

Joanne’s theme was hard for me. I am going to have to confess something here. I am not a Sun lover. I don’t like summer. I rejoice at Litha because the long hot days are going to be over eventually. Mabon is one of my favorite Sabbats because it is the harbinger of fall. I. Do. Not. Like. Hot.

Except in food, that is. Spicy food makes me happy. 😀 Burned flesh does not. I’ve had 2nd degree burns from the sun due to my Casper like coloring. We joke that I have two colors–white and red. Oh and that lovely in-between peel.

So the Sun to me is not always a good thing. In Tarot, it tends to be one of those cards that most see in a very positive light. I’m going to turn that around to discuss the dark side of the Sun. Yes, with a spread. 😀

First a few words about these shots of the sun. I took all of these the last days of July and the first days of August 2015. I shot them with an iPhone 6 using the app Hipstamatic. I’m taking an EXCELLENT eCourse with Mellissae Lucia. You should definitely check it out. So much fun and not a bunch of Fstop this etc. Very intuitive stuff. Nest iPhone Image Adventure starts in September. Don’t worry Android users…Vintage is a very fun app for your phones. Someone in this class is doing it with her Droid. I’ll be in the next class too. Join me.

Dark Side Of The Sun

1. Sunburn: What are you overexposed to right now? What do you need to limit in your life?

2. Burnout: What is taking up too much of your energy right now? What do you need to pay attention to as an energy sinkhole?

3. Drought: Where are you not getting enough “juice” in your life? What do you need to get more of in order to thrive?

4. Solar Flares: Who or what seems to be flaming out of control in your world? Can you do anything about it or do you just need to set firmer boundaries?

5. Heat Exhaustion: What are you doing too much of? This is most likely a physical activity. Or it is something you are not doing enough of.

It’s not that I hate the sun. I’m just not its biggest fan. Now hop on to the next blog to see what my neighbor has to say.

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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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TarotBlogHop: Imbolc

NEXT | MASTER | NEXTOracular Anomalies is the subject we’ve been given for this Tarot Blog Hop. Did you know that this is the beginning of the fourth year of this? I’m so pleased that what started as a community-building exercise has gone on for this long. We’ve seen so many amazing voices join this chorus. I’m blessed to be a part of such a vibrant community. Like to join us? Go here.

As I thought about the topic, I had to look up the definition of anomaly. I had a good concept since I am a child of the original Star Trek series. “Mr. Spock, what do you make of it?” “It’s an anomaly, Captain.”

One of the definitions is “strays from common rules or methods.” Right. I see this a lot. Many consultants, readers, coaches, whatever name we want to call ourselves, try to set ourselves apart by pointing out how different we are. How we are anomalies in a sea of anomalies.

I mean, let’s face it. How do you stand out in a crowd of unusual? This is the thing that has my mind buzzing right now. There’s an inherent part of me that loathes promotion by demotion. By that I mean the need to sing my praises by putting down someone else. Or a group.

It’s something I work at but by the very nature of the beast, I fail at. For instance, I see someone on the Book o’ Face who is bitching about how he doesn’t like so-and-so doing something. But he doesn’t say this TO so-and-so. He says it to a locked down group of friends.

I get upset about him not saying something to so-and-so. I go to my Book o’ Face to post. My post says those who don’t go to the source are perpetuating the problem.

Um, Arwen? You just did the same damned thing.

So I’ve just stood out for the wrong reason. Back to anomaly me. How do I stand out in this fabulously flawed fellowship? Without putting down others? Is it even possible in our world of “my detergent cleans better than yours?”

Well this is a divination hop, right? Let’s ask the Tarot.

Anomaly Spread

1. What area am I most unique?
2. How can I play up that uniqueness?
3. How can I stand out the best?

Using the Chrysalis Tarot (U.S. Games Systems, Inc.) I got cards that made me smile.

1. The Pilgrim is how I am most unique.

2. The Poet is how I should play up that uniqueness.

3. The Mime is how I can stand out the best.

Without further commentary on these cards, I’ll just say, “MOOOOMMMMM! The Universe is mocking me again.”

If you have input on these three cards, feel free to let me know. I need to go practice my “I’m in a box” routine.

Please enjoy today’s TarotBlogHop. Use the links below to navigate your way around. If you get lost or find a broken link, use the Master List link to find the next blog.

As always, seek joy, y’all. Pass it on.

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