The pajamas went out in the boxes of household items and clothing for the VietNam Vets pickup the following week, good riddance. Otherwise, the June new moon was glorious, with Venus and Jupiter riding high in the evening sky and the backyard all a-glitter with fireflies.
What does this have to do with tarot, you may well ask? After the fall, I went into a rather despondently dreamy state for a few weeks because I had to make some changes, physically, which of course affected all levels. I kept working with the Smith-Waite tarot, which I love dearly. In retrospect, the Pestle of the Moon wasn't such a fiasco after all. Even though I had to stop because it was giving me nightmares, and some of the connections between cards, the Yeats poem, and the images for meditation just didn't make any sense to me. Now that I look back, the nightmares were probably my own deep seated fears and bugaboos bubbling to the surface. I still don't understand a lot of what I experienced, but I believe I did the right thing by quitting. It was getting very uncomfortable. I realize that not everything in this journey will be sweetness and light. I did the best I could.
I continued using the Smith-Waite as a daily meditation guide, drawing three cards on the new moon, and one for daily meditation each day. The three cards, ostensibly past, present and future, soon revealed themselves to be: 1)new and waxing moon; 2)full moon; and 3)waning.
Surprisingly, the July new moon reading gave me all Cups. I rarely get Cups in my personal readings. I'm not a very emotional person, tending to be rather more analytical and intellectual. Cups were overflowing all over July, though. First there was 4 cups on the new moon and waxing phases, as I came to terms with the results of my fall, feeling like a failure, disgusted with myself, refusing to see the good side of it, if indeed there was any. The whack to my back and ribs seemed to knock loose all kinds of pent-up emotions and made me question a lot of things about myself and my way of life, balancing all that with the rest of the world around me. I even questioned being vegan, which is often challenging, as those who are not vegan can probably imagine. The King of Cups was for the Full Moon, then the good old 6 of Cups.
It seemed like the 4 cups was supposed to be a "faery gift" but I missed it. There were signposts I kept stumbing upon, drawing me to "faery", which is really where I started into my Craft. I even came across an article about Feraferia on Facebook, and felt sad somehow because it referred to Feraferia in rather condescending tones reserved for old psychedelic hippie delusion cults, the harmless (and meaningless?) kind, as if it were a relic, at best. Among my earliest jaunts into what I consider "the Craft" was a long and happy correspondence with Feraferia which taught me a great deal about nature religion and what some might call the faery ray. These are my roots. I can't go back there, though, all the people are now gone to the Summerlands or otherwise lost to me in space and time. 6 cups, too, should have been a gift but I just couldn't pick up on it. I was taking long naps in the daytime when I should have been pulling the weeds out of my little fairy garden. I was in a depression, washed out to sea with an unaccustomed tidal wave of emotions.
That was goodbye to Smith-Waite tarot. The daily cards were all tens or otherwise pointing to the end of a cycle. The Devil card came up twice! It was time to cut my losses and move on.
I thought about going back to the Sacred Rose, which is a very faery deck. This idea stayed with me up until the moment I opened the drawer where I keep my decks - and I ended up taking out the Celtic Wisdom one instead. Going back through the book to refresh my memory, I found an outline for a year-long working which seemed like just what the doctor ordered. It was on Lughnasadh, which is the time of renewing vows and promises. The working consists of meditation sequences based on the ogham trees, sabbats, and figures from Celtic myth. I started on Lughnasadh, which begins with 3 cards from the Knowledge suit (Earth/Pentacles).
One of Pentacles is the Lia Fal or Stone of Destiny. Two is Dialogue of Knowledge, which pictures the young "grass-beard" poet Nede and his mentor, the elder poet Ferchertne. The Woman of Knowledge (Page of Pentacles) is the third card - lo and behold, it is Airmid, the herbalist of the Tuatha de Danaan, a personage with whom I've always felt deep kinship in the sense of Anam Cara. It is easy to listen for Airmid's voice. I touch base with her almost daily.
Synchronistically, the first day I started this meditation, I cut my forefinger by accident (or by design) which was exactly what I'd pictured doing earlier that day as I visioned myself picking the bramble branch of Muin (the ogham tree for this phase) to set on my altar. Ok, this is the time of sacrifice, Tailtiu's funeral games and all. (Lugh's foster mother, in whose honor he started the first Lughnasadh, died of exhaustion after clearing a forest for farm lands) I decided to go out and pull up all the jagger weeds from the neglected garden along the side of my house, partially as a kind of penance, partially as an affirmative action to support my new Celtic Wisdom endeavor. That was rewarding. I was also inspired to dig out my box of colored pencils and a large sketch pad which I hadn't touched for a couple of years, and create my own drawing of The Perfecter card - which along with The Soul card, serves as guide and focus for each of the meditations in this year long cycle. The directions are to lay out the 3 meditation cards on the Perfecter card, but there isn't enough room for that. It felt good to draw with the colored pencils again, and I finished my Perfecter last night, a big achievement that helped me to feel a lot better about myself. And I have a nice large Perfecter on which to properly place the cards.
It seems like I'm on the upswing "after the fall" at this point. Still in a state of transition but no longer feeling overwhelmed by the necessity of it. I'm moving in new directions and recovering old creative outlets. Embarking on a year long committment is a big step, especially considering I abandoned the Pestle of the Moon project before finishing. At this point, the Celtic Wisdom path feels right and all the signs and omens are encouraging.
