My new IG life

So I've finally created a tarot account for myself on Instagram! I'm there as @wolfofcoins if you would like to find me :)
It's a very good platform for my needs, because I never write very long blog posts anyway. And I like pictures! Lots of pictures :D I don't think I'm abandoning this blog completely, I only wanted to let you know that Instagram is a place were I'm most active at.
And because of social media I'm buying more and more decks... That might be a drawback for my minimalistic side, huh?

"Botanical Inspirations" by Lynn Araujo.

Hello to Mary-El

I have wanted this deck for a long time and I kept convincing myself I don't have to buy it. I kept being convincing for quite a while (some 1.5 years), but finally I gave up and got the deck. Then it sat for over a month on the shelf, waiting for the right moment. Today I decided to start working with it and do an interview spread I found on Katey Flowers's page .

I decided on starting with reading it completely intuitively, without reading the companion book. That's because I have a tendency to get overwhelmed and constricted by very deep meanings I find in books. I need a more relaxed approach at first.

1. What can you teach me? 9 of Wands

To show my fangs, how to be more free and brave.

2. Describe yourself. XVII The Star

I'm an inspiration.

3. Describe me. Page of Swords

I'm in a phase of putting fitting puzzles together, filling empty spaces. At the beginning of my path (so the inspiration is very much needed!).

4. How can we work together? The Fool

In various ways, aiming for deep changes and rebirth.

5. Your strengths. XV The Devil

I'm not afraid to go to dark places.

6. Your weakness. Queen of Wands

I'm not good at being a fluffy kitten. Things might get harsh.

7. Our potential together. Ace of Swords

If we work together, we'll cut to the bone, get right to the essence of the things. Without sidetracking.

So... this looks very promising (just like my reading with TdM promissed!). I only wanted to say one thing about the card stock: it is a bit disappointing :( I'm annoyed by some flawes in laminating, which are very visible on the black backs of the cards. It looks like flawed foil was used. Other than that: very excited to have this deck and to finally start working with it!

Tarot doodles

Do you doodle? I do doodle (another "Buffy" reference here ;)). Sometimes I like to add some doodles to my reading records. It's fun. Do you recognize these cards? :)

They are capybaras...

Queens from Jaśniak Tarot.

From Crystal Tarot.

Magical Forest Tarot.

TdM and Magical Forest.

TdM.

There's the girl with the cup

Sometimes it happens that a particular card starts "stalking" us. It appears in almost every spread, it jumps at us from the deck, it winks to us from the bottom of it (I almost always read the card at the bottom, as a "background/atmosphere card"). It usually symbolises something we should pay attention to, it's like a message to us. For me it's been the Queen of Cups recently. She's also my card for the next month. I wonder what she brings.

And lookie at this cute postcard I bought when I was at Castle Chillon. It reminds me of my cup lady :)

Happy Winter Solstice 2016!

I'm packing today, because we're leaving tomorrow for two and a half weeks - we're visiting our families for Christmas and New Year. This of course means I have to decide what cards to take with me. I decided on this:

Crystal Tarot and Jodorowsky-Camoin Tarot de Marseille

Jodo-Camoin is my all purpose deck I couldn't part with and from Crystal (that I also love a lot) I'm pulling cards for Sacred Days Of Yule Spread by June Kaminski. I started yesterday and plan on continuing till December 31st, so I need the deck with me. I might also do some New Year spreads with it, we'll see!

1. Mother Night of Dreams: - Dec 20th This card reminds us to look for a particular message in our dreams tonight. The ancients believed that our dreams on this night foretold some of the important events in the coming year.

I pulled out 4 of Cups.

To be honest, I didn't feel like my dreams were very profound. I did see my grandfather in the dream and he was telling me that all the signs show that the winter will be very cold. We'll see about that!

2. Yule - Winter Solstice: - Dec 21st This card shows us how best to connect to the Light within and without - it symbolizes the Birth of the Sun.

Today I got 9 of Wands.

I probably should focus on looking for new paths and new ways. I think it's a good message for the new year, especially because that's exactly what I intend on doing. Five of the Wands form a pentagram - it can be a suggestion that I will be under protection and guidance in my search, so I can proceed without worries.

Reading outside in December - tips

My first tip about reading outside is: if you only can, do it! It's a great experience and the message sounds clearer, when you're surrounded by nature. At least that's how it is for me.

Last weekend I went to read outside twice. It's December already, so I got quite cold after a while, but it was totally worth it.

If it's cold outside, I recommend taking something you can sit on (in my case it was a thick, reusable grocery bag :)) and a piece of cloth to spread your cards on (that's no matter what season you have, you always want to protect your cards). Fingerless mittens are a good solution for shuffling cards in the cold - paper gets surprisingly cold! Depending on how long you're planning to be out, you might take a thermos with hot tea or coffee inside. Plus a pen and a journal to write down your readings!

My first oracle deck is here!

Sooo, my very fist oracle deck has arrived! I'm so excited to work with it. I'm not planning to use it for divination purposes, I just want to pull one card every day (if possible) and reflect upon it. The deck is "Soulful Woman" by Shushann Movsessian and Gemma Summers (she has the last name like Buffy from "Buffy The Vampire Slayer"! How awesome is that). My purpose with these cards is to work on my self-esteem and self-love, because I'm lacking these quite a bit. This deck is a bit too "we're a part of the great universe" for me (meaning the affirmations sound too vague and I never know what to make out of such messages), but I'm planning on turning these very vague sentences into something personal and useful to me.

A card I randomly pulled to work first with was number 9 (a-hah! And I wrote about The Hermit today!). I've already started working on it, using colorful pens and pencils and all. To be honest, at some point I got quite moved in the place where I went with my musings. So I'm very hopeful for the future!

I didn't start with the card number 1, because I prefered to work on them in the order I randomly pick. It's more exciting this way. You know how it is with working on Major Arcana, always starting from The Fool and you're fed up with The Fool soon enough? Exactly.

Card Number IX - The Hermit

I did some musings about this card before, but did not post them here. Recently I get The Hermit quite often, so I thought I would write a post about him. Also (and that is the main reason, hehe) I found that a Japanese picture I kept on my refrigerator for quite a while resembles the card and I'm very inspired by Enrique Enriquez idea of seeing tarot in the world around us.

VIIII L'Hermite from Tarot de Marseille, ukiyo-e lady with a lantern, IX The Hermit from Crystal Tarot.

What I struggled with was that 9 is a number I associate with birth - it's the number of months of human pregnancy. Instead of a newborn baby, however, we get a grandpa dressed in a habit. He has a lantern: maybe he's awaking to a new life? Birth is also a shock and a kind of trauma to the baby that was in the darkness and comfy for whole their life. The Hermit is withdrawn and he's looking at the life he left in the past. He has a walking stick - he'll soon walk on, but he still wants a glance at his old shell he's leaving behind.

In the card we can see an old man, round-shouldered with age. Where is he going to in the winter of his life? Maybe he wants to show to other people what he's discovered? His hood is off his head - he's ready for new ideas.

The Hermit is an ascetic, he practices in solitude. He's not afraid to meet his inner self. Isolating himself is to help him find God and himself too.

The counterpart of IX The Hermit is XIX The Sun. The small lantern he's holding will turn into huge celestial body. In The Hermit you're learning alone, in solitude. In The Sun you've got company, you're learning from others. You can see God in another human being and you're much closer to the end of your journey than you were in The Hermit.

In the spreads the card can mean wisdom, experience, solitude, old age, being isolated.

Positive sides: wisdom, experience, self-determination.

Negative sides: loneliness, lack of understanding from others, tiredness.

Card number XV - The Devil

I've written a post where I put some of my thoughts on this cards before, you can find it here.

Today I pulled a card for meditation and it was XV The Devil. And I had some new thoughts.

There's that song by Elvis Presley that I like a lot, "Devil In Disguise" and I did listen to it while writing this post. Devil - the Prince Of Lies, master of deceit... Yeah, I actually think that the Devil is one of the most truthful cards in the deck.

Why is that?

First of all, the tarot Devil rubs our faces in the truths we would prefer to not know about ourselves. He says: "look, look at all this ugliness and awkwardness! Look how false you are". His role is also to unmask false people around us. He points to them, warning us against them. That's because he knows all about baaad things. Look at these three cards: intererstingly the Devil figure has wings on each of them. He is the fallen angel - he has experienced both heaven and hell. He knows it all.

XV The Devil from Crystal Tarot, Jodorowsky-Camoin TdM, Jaśniak Tarot.

What I like about The Devil too, is that sometimes you can interpret him as a card telling you to laugh people in the faces, show them your tongue. Don't care for appearances. Let them be shocked and don't let them chain you up. Also, very important: don't be so serious about yourself all the time! Have a good laugh sometimes :D

And listen to Elvis.

Expressiveness of TdM

Before Tarot de Marseille started talking to me, I wouldn't have thought how talkative it can be! After all, there are no people on number cards. But let me just share an example of a reading I have just recently experienced.

The question was why a certain person acts in a certain way towards the querent. I got three pip cards (oh noes!) and the message was in fact very clear.

I got 4/Swords, 8/Swords, 9/Coins. Each and every card has something trapped inside! A flower, a precious coin... imprisoned. The person is feeling hurt, vulnerable, not ready to take part in wordly things. After the reading I got a confirmation that it is actually true. Those chatty pips!

St. Catherine's Eve

It's St. Catherine's Eve today! In the old Polish tradition, it's the time for fortune telling - particularly for unmarried men, about their future wives. Since I'm neither a man nor unmarried, I decided it's just a good time for fortune telling. And my tarot agrees with me!

I did a daily draw today and here's what I got: 7/Coins, XVIII The Moon, III The Empress + Queen/Swords.

I think it's about leaving the mundane for a bit (7/Coins) to go deeper into the intuitive world (XVIII). Perfect time for divination! The two women of the last two cards correspond with two dogs/wolves from The Moon. The floral motif from 7/Coins lookes like the crayfish. Everythig is pointing to the XVIII card.

Also the Empress struck me as very resembling of St. Catherine that I saw on a painting. The crucifix/scepter with a cross, the crown, holding a wheel/shield, being royal... She lacks the sword, but look, the helpful Queen is handing it to her!

M&L?

With my tarot passion rekindled, my hunger for new decks has also awoken. To to be expected.

I managed, however, to stop myself from buying new tarot decks - I've ordered two oracle decks instead! Can't wait to receive them. They will be my first ever oracle deck experience.

The dangerous thing is, my old unconsummated love for a tarot deck is alive again. I have a weak spot for decks that are pieces of art and this one is just... I can't put it into words. I mean the "Mary-El Tarot". I looked at it on the Internet many times loving it, but I never bought it because I had the feeling it won't work for me as a regular reading deck. Like I ask a question and get all those seraphim, firey lions and I totally don't get the message. However, now I've started to think I could do some meditations with it, using also the companion book it comes together with. I could expose myself to this stunning imagery putting a card on the desk and so on.

Then I asked my Tarot de Marseille about the matter. The question for the upper row was "how would my meditations with 'Mary-El Tarot' go?". I got 3/Coins, Le Mat, 7/Coins. For the lower row: "what would the effect be?". I got 2/Wands, Ace/Wands, King/Cups and additional card to see what he's looking at: 9/Swords.

It looks surprisingly promissing! Like I will start a whole new thing and I will feel uncertain and unsure, but also excited and will have the feeling I'm gaining something.
It would help me overcome some blockades (2/Wands being crashed by the huge branch of the Ace) and allow me to analyze my emotions (King/Cup looking at 9/Swords).
Oh, man... Now I have to get it, don't I?

Different faces of the Star

Hello everyone!

Somewhere deep inside I knew I would come back. It's been over a year since my last post. There were various things going on in my life and tarot was not so present during that time. But now I feel that it's time to come back to tarot world.

I have calculated my year card for 2016 (by adding the day and moth of my birthday to the numerals of 2016) and it seems it's XVII The Star. It honestly seems right, because then 2015 was XVI The Tower and 2014 XV The Devil. These were very difficult years for me, and full of radical changes. I'm still recovering. And when I looked at The Star from my favorite Tarot de Marseille deck, it looked to me like she's pouring a lot of dirty water to the sewer. I know it's against the traditional view of crystal clear water... But that's how it looked to me at the time. She's cleansing her life. I need to get rid of many painful things and take the next step.

I took the Star cards from most of my decks and spread them on the table. They all seem to be saying the same thing (except for the "1001 Nights Tarot", but this deck doesn't talk to me anyway).

2017 should be XVIII The Moon... Shoud I worry?

Tarot. The Open Reading - review

These are only a couple of thoughts I had about "Tarot. The Open Reading".

I liked the book very much. The author draws the reader's attention to many various ways to read what the cards want to tell us - how the figures and objects in the spread correspond to each other by gestures, glances, colours and shapes that patches of colours create. I think the author reads the pips in a less detailed way than we do when we read scenic pips like RWS. He sees them more like smaller pieces showing a bigger picture. However, he also gives in his book interpretation for every card and what's interesting - he has an interpretation for a reverse card, if the card can be reversed at all (some of the pips are so symmetrical it's hard to see whether they're straight or upright).

About the suits: Dr. Yoav Ben-Dov seems to refer to classical playing cards suits where we have black and red suits - and where black suits are believed to mean struggle and complication and red suits are about love, company and money. Thus he sees Cups and Coins as "soft suits" that show more pleasant things and Wands and Swords as "hard suits" that show us our challenges and limitations.

The book was interesting for me also because the author is a disciple of Alejandro Jodorowsky and he refers to his teachings frequently. In suits he sees correspondences to the elements, directions, parts of human body etc. and he points that we can put the suits into the order according to them. For example:

Coins=body=legs, that ground us, that give us the base. Without a body there's no emotion, no desire and no intellect.

Wands=desire=pelvis, where our sexual desires dwell.

Cups=emotion=chest, where our heart is.

Swords=intellect=head.

What I didn't like and thus skipped that chapter - detailed instructions for how you should do a reading and what to avoid (like use blue bag for your deck, but not red, better use matches to light the candle, than a lighter). I believe that to be a very personal thing and nobody should give such detailed instructions about it. I'm also not into "magical ritual" kind of thing, so these parts were not interesting for me. 

I must also say that the deck that the author has restored is great, I like it very much. I have the Jodorowsky&Camoin restored deck and I love it to bits, but maybe one day I will also buy the CBD :) What is lovely about the CBD, is that Dr. Ben-Dov altered the expressions of the figures a bit - and they don't look so stern; they mostly smile gently.

Iron Woman

I wasn't feeling very well and a blood test showed that my iron is low again. I'm planning on going to a doctor when I'm back to Switzerland, but I thought I could ask the cards what psychological factors can increase my problems with iron. For the physical part, the doctor will tell, so I laid only one card for that. 

1. What are psychological reasons for my iron problem? 5 of Cups, 6 of Swords, 4 of Cups

2. What are physical reasons for my iron problem? 7 of Cups

3. What can I do from the psychological point of view to improve my situation? 10 of Swords, Queen of Swords, 5 of Wands

You know that sometimes the cards can give an answer to a different question that was asked. I think that's the case here with the 10 of Swords. I asked about psychological point of view, but the 10 of Swords evidently wants to warn me that I should start supplementing iron! The ten swords piercing the man are the iron I need.

As for the first question: I'm clearly still not in good shape, my depression is still out there and it's eating me from the inside, weakening my body.

Question two: probably my organism has problems with assimilating iron.

Question three: I should continue working on rationalizing my worries and fears (Queen/Swords) and be more playful (5/Wands).

Reading outside the box

...meaning outside of the box of your house :)

Have you ever read cards outside, where nature is so inspiring?

I tried it today, because the weather finally stopped pretending it's still winter and showed us a more spring-like face. 

I highly recommend reading outside. The mind opens in a different way and the surroundings are very refreshing.

What will you need for that? A spread cloth, maybe some stones to keep the cards from flying away if it's a windy day (I don't recommend reading cards on a very windy day though) and maybe something to eat and drink - because why not make a small picnic once you're outside? ;D 

I must say that since I trimmed my Universal Tarot deck I like it much more and want to use it! So I took this deck with me to the woods, found a nice stump and placed a small towel on it. After the reading I lay with my eyes closed and my face to the sun, listening to the birds singing and the pines rustling... A great early afternoon!

How to improve a deck you don't exactly love

There was a moment in my life when I rediscovered tarot and it was a whole new world in which Internet was easily accessible. I discovered books about tarot and that they mostly used Rider-Waite-Smith deck that I didn't know before (I've seen Tarot de Marseille somewhere and I owned my Jasniak Tarot) - so I wanted a deck that will be like RWS, but maybe a bit prettier. For unknown reason I thought that Unversal Tarot by Lo Scarabeo will be the one. I had no experience and saw only a couple of cards in the Internet - so I bought a deck that I now find totally not fitting my taste. I have some sentiment towards this deck though, because I took it with me to the tarot course I attended - and since it's an RWS clone, it was a good choice for that purpose.

Now I store this deck at my parents' place, so I have an "easy" deck at hand when I visit them for holidays. I have so many beautiful decks now, that in comparison the Universal looks really poor. So I decided I will trim it and thus improve how it looks like. And it does look better! Well, the Page of Pentacles still looks like some kind of a savage (why??), but many, many cards are improved when stripped of the ugly, white frames with names in six languages.

Take a look yourself.

Before:

After:

A new book

My new tarot book has arrived!

It's "Tarot. The Open Reading" by Yoav Ben-Dov. In this book he explains his way of reading tarot - what interests me the most is his way of reading the pips (although I'm sure the other chapters will be very interesting as well). He seems to use a visual way to assign meanings to the pips, e.g.:

"4 of Swords - Restriction. The static number 4 brings out the blocking and limiting aspect of the Swords. Two pairs of curved swords create a solid border around the center. In the middle, a branch in side view completely fills the enclosure. It looks constrained, with a narrow top flower and the tip of the right-hand leaf touching the swords. Emerging on the left of the branch is what seems like a tiny white berry on a stalk". Then he gives interpretation for the card in the upright and reversed position.

Looks interesting! More on the topic when I've read the book!

Both the CBD Tarot (Tarot de Marseille restored by Dr. Yoav Ben-Dov) and the Jodo-Camoin deck I own are restored from the Conver deck, so they are similar enough for me to use my deck to work with this book :)

Who am I right now?

1. Who am I right now? IX The Hermit, Queen of Cups, 2 of Cups

2. What phase in life am I in right now? 8 of Coins, Page of Cups, 10 of Cups

There are many Cups in this spread (4 out of 6 pulled!). I'm in a very emotional stage right now. I'm learning how to manage them, I analyze my emotions - but I'm not very social.

Simultaneously, I'm in the phase of building and working on my relations with my family - with my husband (10/Coins) and my son (Page/Coins).

How to improve my tarot skills

1. What is my strong side in tarot? King of Coins, Page of Cups, 2 of Wands

2. What is my weak side? XIX The Sun, 2 of Coins, 6 of Swords

3. How to improve? 4 of Cups, VII Chariot, 9 of Swords

I'm methodical and I try to use various techniques (Kings/Coins), I put my heart into it (Page/Cups) and I'm always searching for new ideas.

What I lack is self-confidence (XIX), I'm afraid of making mistakes (2/Coins) and I'm barricading myself on a boat on the sea of intuition (6/Swords).

I should relax more (4/Cups), become more daring (VII) and stop worrying too much! (9/Swords) ;)