May 8th, 2013 - Wednesday - Queen of Swords

May 8^th, 2013 – Wednesday – Queen of Swords

Aleister Crowley and Lady Freida Harris Thoth Tarot card Queen of Swords, a court card comes up today.  The journey of disappointment in what is going on was followed by an expansion into loving acceptance of our feelings.  Yesterday a very important lady encouraged us to be careful: we might have bit off more than we could chew. I of course told you to bite off even more and grab more and see where that tiger took you!

Today we get the Queen of Swords.  By taking the Tiger by the tail yesterday, we’ve moved into a more expansive space.  Check out this queen.  She’s up in the sky, sitting on her throne.  She is laid back, she’s open, she’s got a sword, and a head she’s just cut off.  That young Princess who grabbed that Tiger by the tail has become a powerful QUEEN.   I love this picture of power, this laid back, I take no bullshit approach.  She’s got the power, but she’s relaxed in it.  She’s up in the sky, she SEES things.  She’s smart too, very intellectual.  All the patterns and all the magic are visible to her and she can piece it together and make sense of it.  This is a position of Authority and Power.  She knows what she knows… she’s confident in it.

This woman cuts away the bullshit, cuts away the deception.  She sees clearly….

So what does this card mean for you today?  How can we use this to open further?  What information are the angels, gods, demons, and devils trying to tell us?  How does this help us? 

Truth and Freedom…  that’s what the card  is telling us…  Seeing clearly leads to freedom.  We've been doing that all week… seeing clearly what is really going on.  There are people in your life who are not what they seem.  You expected totally different things from them.  You thought they were your friends.  You thought they had your back.  You thought they were grateful for the sacrifices you made.  You were wrong.  They didn't.  They see you as a threat and they manipulated and moved you aside.  They back stabbed you. 

This is the truth… and you SEE IT NOW!  And it hurt, we accepted that, and in accepting it now we see clearly.  The new path of the Tiger is laid out, we jumped on it, and today we are sitting here in a relaxed, open position.

Look at that woman again.  She’s relaxed.  That’s you.  You know the truth. You know who betrayed you. You see clearly now.  You see your own faults as well.  And in that clarity you are free!  The hurt is passing and it’s being replaced with power, expansion, and freedom. Your heart is open.  You were true.  You were open.   And you have been given your throne.

Today feel deep into your soul and claim your power.  Claim it for your own. You are RIGHT.  You see clearly.   You are on.  The old oppression of the way things were is not working.  You are FREE to move into a different direction.

I’ll be interested to see tomorrows card.  I think tomorrows card will reflect whether we all settled into our Queen of Swords Power, or we backslid into egoic disappointment over the betrayal. 

May 7th, 2013 – Tuesday – Princess of Wands

May 7th, 2013 – Tuesday – Princess of Wands

Tuesday morning dawns with the Princess of Wands, the Thoth Aleister Crowley Tarot Court Card… and we got this lovely lady reversed.   Have you ever over committed?  Gotten a little excited and said you would do something that you can’t really follow up on?

What is this card trying to tell us?  If we believe the patterns, the angels, the universe, tells us things through these cards then what do we need to hear today?  We’ve gone through Disappointment and then the Empress, all of them telling us we need to FEEL things we just didn’t really want to feel… maybe we did that.  Maybe we are coming out the other end of this openness training, and feeling good, and now we are thinking, hell yeah, we can take on the world!

The fire of this card is amazing.  That little lady has taken the tiger by the tail and is going for it.  She is powerful, but she’s also grabbed onto something VERY powerful!

And today we are just being warned.  Obviously we’ve listened somewhat to the multiple ‘encouragements’ to not hide our feelings and open up to energetic flow.  No wonder, the Princess of Wands is going to deliver some ENERGY.  But… we got to be careful.

This feels like someone raining on my parade, but it’s really not.  It’s the angels, the universe, the goddess, Jesus, or whoever it is you worship and who is drawing the picture or writing the story telling you to take it nice and slow. 

We’ve all had experiences where we got a little excited.  Where we were kids in the candy store.  That’s what it’s going to feel like today.  You’ve been waiting for things to life, you’ve opened your heart and then you were asked to open it again.  And then again.  And you keep feeling it and going okay, when do I get to play?

Now you get to play… but you are being asked to play carefully.  To expand at a reasonable rate, and to be very careful.  This kind of guidance is priceless.  In my own life as I feel into this I’m profoundly grateful for this little Princess and her energy and her boldness… but I’m feeling the warning.  Feel things out and taking that tiger… but being oh so careful. 

In the deepest of spiritual practices… according to A Day in the Life of Tarot… you probably already know what we are going to say though…  maybe it’s a GOOD idea to overreach today.  Sure… we are being warned:

But this is LIFE.  This is magic.  This is playing fully.  We’ren’t we just asked to open fully?  To open bigger and feel it all and now we are being told to be careful?  WTF?  Well… sure, it’s good advice… but hey… you don’t have to take it. 

How many times do you find a tiger?  How many times do you have this enthusiasm? 

I’m just saying you opened a can of worms here and maybe you should play?  At least push the envelop a little.  I know, your trusted psychical advisor is saying forget the warning and push on anyway?  It’s only a tiger….

May 6th, 2013 – Monday – The Empress

May 6th, 2013 – Monday – The Empress

Good Morning - After a very disappointing weekend (grin) you get the same message from a different angel this morning. Mother tells us to stop shielding our heart, open, and risk. The theme of opening continues... Love.

The Empress is the Third Trump Card in the Thoth Tarot Card deck by Aleister Crowley and Lady Freida Harris.  She is ruled by Venus, and embodies the feminine mother.

Mommy has come to give us a message today.  And it’s not much different than the one we got from the two reversed disappointment cards.  We are not allowing ourselves to be feel something.  The disappointment card told us what… we are hurt by others.  Very hurt.  And so we are shielded.  Mother is telling us that we now need to open, not just to process all that pain and become an adult and move on, but now she’s telling us the end result:  So we can LOVE. 

The finale reason to practice opening, to feeling everything, letting it pass through you and not to hold on to it, not to make any stories, is so you are free to LOVE.  What else is there?  The masculine imposition on the universe is order… grids… time and space.  That’s what consciousness does.  It puts order to things in order to make things make more sense.  To give you a vision, a movie to watch, a story to live.

But the feminine mother wants to love.  She remembers we are all one, and she wants you to open.  Yes, life sucks sometimes, yes she will stab you in the back and kill you in the end (we all going to die), but she wants you to love her and yourself and everyone around and everything around you in the swirl of all that is appearing.

Mother WILL protect you today.   Mother will love and nurture you, but she wants you to open your heart and love through all that is happening.  She’s there for us, she IS us… We are her… things are swirling, but love IS… as we appear, we are all one, so love is really all there is.  The practice of opening your heart and feeling out to everyone and everything is the only real practice you need.  Sure you can learn to breath deeper, you can learn skills in love, but none of that compares to an open courageous heart.

May 5th, 2013 - Sunday - Disappointment

May 5th, 2013 - Sunday – Disappointment

Well my good friends on the journey, how did you deal with your disappointment yesterday?  Because we got the exact same card reversed today…  That suggests that somewhere inside… we are hurting, but are not feeling it.  Not allowing it in.  Not experiencing it.  We are closing down and shielding ourselves from something.  Someone has hurt you.  Something isn’t going your way.  And you are pretending it’s all right.  Shielding yourself from admitting it.

And the card is offering a little advice:  Open to it.  Feel it.  Accept how badly you have been hurt.  I had an experience once, after my wife died, where I idolized her somewhat.  I tried to be honest about my wife’s faults, especially as I raised our three children by myself, but I also tried to minimize the pain I felt over the whole situation.  I soldiered on.  I kept going.

Two years later, I had a break down.  It was a long time coming, but I realized in one single crystal clear moment… I was HURT.  This shocked me.  Two years later, you think you are okay.  But it opened my heart and went BOOM. I was a wreck for a whole day. I couldn't stop FEELING it.  It just rolled through me over and over again.  I had heard of people storing grief and it building in their body, but I was more used to seeing it come out as ‘anger’.  But this just came out a pure grief and disappointment.

I don’t know that you can ‘force’ yourself to just open and feel that way. I’m really glad it happened to me because once all that grief was gone, I was honest about how hurt I had been, things really did change.  And I've learned a lot since then, and one of the things I’ve learned is to do my best to stay open in my heart at all times and feel everything that happens as an ongoing process.  No more shields.

I’m not talking about being a cry-baby.  I can hear some of you saying you don’t want to wear your heart on your sleeve.  But that’s not what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about opening your heart and feeling everything… but you don’t have to show that.  You can walk through a crowd of people hurt as hell, and no one has to know.  You are just open, feeling it.  You aren't pretending things are good, you are admitting they aren't, and feeling it.

And like I said yesterday, you don’t need to label it, and endlessly think about.  You just need to feel it.  That’s what this card is really saying, and it’s saying it twice.   

May 4th, 2013 - Saturday - Disappointment

May 4th, 2013 - Saturday - Disappointment

Is it possible to be disappointed when you pull the disappointment card?  Aleister Crowley and Lady Freida Harris put the Disappointment Tarot card as the 5 of Cups.  Suzanne Wagner explains what it means when it’s upright or reversed.

But it really doesn't take a psychic or magician to tell you what disappointment means, does it?  Something isn't going right and we are feeling bad about it.  That’s the part that gets us in trouble.  The emotion.  Emotions are labels we put onto input. 

Or better said: Emotions are labels we put onto feelings.  Things happen and we then put a label on it, and then we make it worse by starting to think about.

Let me show you an example:  Say you are in love with someone, and they did not mail a letter for you that you asked them to.  This triggers a feeling in your body.  At that point, it’s just a feeling.  In this case it would be an unpleasant feeling.  It might feel a little like pain, a little like irritation (depending on how important that letter is, but let’s keep it simple and say the letter isn't that important).   So you have this feeling in your body.  Probably in your stomach.

But then we got to go and label it!  We got to muddy the waters.  It is what we humans do, but let me show you how:  You now start to label this ‘feeling’, you call it disappointment.  You are disappointed the person let you down.  So you have a ‘stimulus’ and you are labeling that as an emotion ‘disappointment’ (5 of cups) and now you are going to really screw yourself: You’re going to think about it.   You are going to ruminate, and start telling stories.  Why did the person not mail the letter? Did they forget? Are they mad at you?   Are they planning to kill you?

Here’s what happens when you label an emotion and then think about it:  You anchor it.  That means you lock it into your nervous system.

Who would EVER want to lock disappointment into their nervous system?

No one wants that, but they don’t understand how it happens, unless they train to ‘remain’ open to all feelings all the time, and let them pass through them.   Training your mind not to label feelings and not tell stories with your mind is not easy. 

I used to do it all the time. I was the king of storytelling.  In my need to predict the future and the meaning of all things (ironic, isn't it, now that I’m writing a blog on psychic cards!!!!) I would tell stories about every single thing that happened.

And I still do it… it’s become habit, and I train every day NOT to do it.  To breathe, to open my heart, so soften my solar plexus, to feel things… and let them pass through.  I still look for patterns… I still see things that I suddenly attach meaning too in a story telling way… but I’m getting better.

Think of yourself sitting on the beach.  Watch the waves come in, one after another.  At one point… you are going to be able to ‘predict’ what the next wave is going to look like and do.  More importantly, you can predict what it ‘won’t’ do.  You don’t have to ‘think’ to do this.  You can just observe it.  And eventually you’ll see the pattern and be able to predict the next wave.

That is the psychic power of observation and anyone can do it.  That’s what we do with the cards here on this Aleister Crowley Tarot Card Blog.  We’re looking for waves…

But what about Disappointment, the 5 of Cups? We've identified it as a freaking emotion… but what does pulling it today mean in the patterns?  It probably is pretty simple. Look, small or large, we get disappointed every day.  That just happens.  But today… we might be pretending we are NOT disappointed… we could be ‘feeling’ hurt and denying that ‘feeling’. 

This might sound complicated… but the key is to ‘feel’ the hurt… accept it… and let it pass through you without labeling it unduly and without thinking about it.  When someone you loves lets you down, you are going to feel hurt.  That hurt in your stomach and heart is real, it’s a real ‘feeling’.  What you do with that feeling is where this card comes in.  This card is warning us today that we who read this (and even those who write it) are going to want to be diligent about avoiding adding labels and thinking about our feelings more than necessary.

Today we are going to train to feel open and wide, through deep breath to start with, and avoid thinking too much about the pain we are feeling.    This will lead to love…

May 3rd, 2013 – Friday – Completion

May 3^rd, 2013 – Friday – Completion

Friday is here and we get the completion card.  Anyone can tell you that Friday is a good completion card day.  You don’t need an opinionated psychic armchair philosopher to tell you that today… you are COMPLETE.  Or getting there. 

One of my teachers talks a bit about never being complete.  We might fulfill certain duties, we might complete a project, or perform our purpose… but we are never actually complete.

So the question, as always, bounced back to you:  What is incomplete in your life?  Knowing you will never be fully complete… what do you do anyways?  This obviously isn't about Friday….  My guess is that it’s something to do with a relationship.  There is some conflict in the arena, and it’s winding down… and it’s coming to completion… but not quite.

That’s my sense.   Inside all of us is a drive to do things. Much of that is biological of course.  I have to pee.  I am thirsty.  I have to pee again.  Another sense is emotional: Our need to belong and be loved by our tribe.  Neither of these ever become complete. I’ll always get hungry again.  I was loved yesterday, but that means nothing if I’m not loved today.  Life is a grind in this way… our basic needs, our childhood dents, just keep needing to be filled.

A teacher of mine told me I had to tell my woman I loved her every day.  Expressing this love to a woman’s soul was like mowing the lawn.  You are never done.  It grows back. You need to mow it again.  Hence you give love again.

See how this has flipped?  We started talking about what we needed for completion, but I've deftly turned it around to feeling into others for what they need for their ‘daily’ completion.  Is the house clean?  That makes my wife happy. In the moment.  Complete… for a bit. Until it gets dirty again. 

And yet is not everything complete in the moment?  Love is here right now, at this moment, and it may appear as various shades of inscrutability… but it’s still here.  We are still one.   I know when I settle into the effervescent moment and let everything be, then things are complete.  Sure… there is still the lawn to be mowed, there is still love to be given, there is still work to be done… but the moment can be complete when you dissolve through it and open your heart in the doing.  This takes practice of course, but it can be done, even little by little.

Is there such a place called Done?  Death comes to mind, but before that… can you figure it all out, and get to Done?  Some say such a place exists, but that to get there takes such a huge amount of energy, like a Rocket taking off and escaping the Earth’s gravitational pull, that it doesn't happen often.  Well if you are reading this, you aren't done.  You are still firing all thrusters and trying to break out.  You will break out, or down, and die… but for now as the rocket rumbles and the earth peels away below you… take a moment to open your heart and feel out into the completeness of this moment.  Love now.  Don’t wait.  Enjoy the ride!

May 1st, 2013 – Wednesday – The Devil

May 1^st, 2013 – Wednesday – The Devil

Welcome to the Aleister Crowley Tarot card – The Devil.  This card means you are going to be tempted today… but what does that mean?  Come on… you are probably tempted every day.  I know I am.  Even if it’s just something as small as a cookie.  But if these cards are to be useful in seeing patterns and helping us do what we are supposed to do in the world as functioning human beings… how can this help us?  Is it a warning? 

You know I sell Disaster Survival Emergency Supplies, so I’m all into warnings.  We have these nifty Mainstay Food Calorie Energy Bars which you can eat to keep you alive in an emergency.   Is this what we are being warned of with the temptation card? Global problems? Probably not…

It’s more of an internal warning. 

Physically… it usually means sexuality.  A temptation into sexual shadow.  Only you know what this could mean… as each person’s temptation could be something different.  And it might not be sexuality at all, it could emotional temptation.  Do you desire to be seen?  Sometimes when we want to be noticed we act in a way that… well… let’s say attracts attention in the WRONG way.  Attention is attention, but we might be tempted to do something a bit foolish today in order to get that attention. You want to be wanted, right?   Or it could be entering into a contest of power… who here has used sex or sexuality to manipulate someone?  

Oh….  No one want to volunteer?

But what does all that mean? I’m the psychic right? I’m the one who is supposed to tell YOU what is going on and how to handle it.  I’m the one who sees the future crystal clear and can predict the winner of next year’s Super Bowl! 

Ah… but it doesn’t work that way.  All the Aleister Crowley Tarot cards really do is show patterns, and they show patterns you’ve already witnessed.  Dollars to donuts (who says that anymore?) this pattern of ‘sexual power temptation’ is something you’ve already seen in your life and know exactly what it means to you today.  It’s just a marker on the road to where you’re going.   Headed toward the City of Sexual Temptation: The Devil… 194 miles to go… yep… you are on the right track…

So any advice on what to do with this card?  Sure.  The card indicates distractions are here or are coming.  Probably sexual.  That’s what the card is saying.  You probably already know what these distractions are… you’ve seen them coming.  And so what is the advice?  It’s obvious:  Stick to your original artistic plan and don’t get distracted.

Easier said than done!  When dealing with the flows and tides and ebbs of human weather, you are dealing with a complex mix mash of fear and emotion.  That’s what’s going to be at the bottom of this temptation away from purpose. 

Acknowledge the distractions, say high, say bye, and get back to purpose.

Of course… there is a deeper interest in all this shadow talk.  Why?  Well the distraction isn’t just coming up to be fun and get you off course.  That would be too simple, right?  Here’s what I can offer you:  The temptation is coming up because you are hiding a shadow aspect of yourself.  And that shadow aspect is a BIG ONE.  It’s sexual in nature.  Those tend to be the most screwed up, particularly in our weird culture where sex is so consistently seen as bad. 

So we hide shadow sex in deep recesses of our unconscious mind.  Bad shit happens when we do that.  And that is bubbling today… bubbling.  And if want to dive in, and why not dive in, then look into that shadow of sexuality.  Take a deep look.  Yes you will distract yourself from your purpose, but the test will be to see the shadow, deal with it, accept it, AND… stay on purpose.  Wow… think about the freedom that could result if you do it that way?

Or you could just ignore the shadow and stay on purpose.  That works too.  You probably will have to face that shadow again… no doubt about it.  It will return.  That’s what unseen shadows do.  They come back until you shine light on them, and then, as any shadow must, when put in the light… they disappear as the apparitions they always were.  Illusions.  Fake. 

But from our perspective today… this day of the Devil… this day of temptation and shadow…they are very real…. And will stay real… until we shine some light on them.