2009-01-08 Follow-Up Reading

I decided to do a tarot follow-up reading to my i-ching reading. I wanted to know how to interpret the hexagram I got in terms of my life right now.

Now, since I had already decided on an interpretation in the previous post, that brings a bias into this reading… so it may not be the best reading I’ve ever done. That’s always a danger: making the cards fit what you already think. But, it looks to me like the cards read consistently with my thinking… feel free to disagree!

Here’s what I got:

So, the top row of three cards is the answer, and the two cards below it are what’s “underneath” that answer, and the card at the bottom is the root of it all.

This spread is full of elemental conflicts, which has an overall weakening effect on most of the cards. No wonder I’m so tired… none of my cards are able to express themselves fully!

So, I have the Emperor, Princess of Swords, and 2 of Disks. I see this as a futile sense of control. The emperor wants to direct things, and is the strongest card in the set. The method I use to get everything I want done is a whirlwind of activity (princess of swords), and a little bit of rationalization for good measure. But, this path not only weakens my efforts, but also dampens my ability to cope with changes in my schedule (the air and earth cards weaken each other elementally).

Why am I doing this? The 9 and 10 of cups say I want to do the things that please me… especially the 10 (”Satiety”, a mars influence from the aries emperor) tells me I want to have it all, and am willing to push too much to get it.

And why push so hard to fit in the fun stuff? Because I have too much to do (10 of Wands, “Oppression”) that I don’t find fun. Elementally, the fire (10 wands) is at odds with the two watery cups cards above it. So, not only do my responsibilities weigh me down, but so do my motivations. yay…

My last observation is that my motivations and root causes are all 9’s and 10’s… low-energy cards (way down on the tree of life… stuck around Malkuth). This is also where the Thoth emperor and the princesses live: towards the bottom of the tree. Meanwhile, the changes I’m dealing with are way up at the top of the tree (2 of disks)… which in fact represents just about the highest-energy emanation that there is (the elements are said to not even be clearly differentiated at this point, which draws interesting parallels between the 2’s of Dominion, Love, Peace, and Change… think about it!). So, I need to maybe rest up a little until I have the proper energy to deal with everything.

What’s interesting is that, while my tarot reading was mostly descriptive, the i-ching reading actually had built-in advice about what to do. That’s kinda neat. I’ve been trying (in my so-called free time) to come up with a clean mapping of all 64 hexagrams to tarot cards… but it’s hard to find a systematic way to approach it. I dislike the Haindl method, which seems to be a “standard.” Maybe I’ll have time to post my thoughts on this later. If I can’t find a mapping that I like, maybe I’ll continue to just do dual readings, as I think they went well together.