I am sick. Not the best time to be sick, either… I work in the financial markets, and they are rocking and rolling at the moment. Anyway, I thought it was strep throat based on the initial symptoms, but it turns out to be mononucleosis (“mono”). Which means, according to my doctor, I will feel sub-par for about the next month or so. yay…

My reading today was about my sickness. I used the Osho Zen Deck for it:

That’s the Kinght of Swords, 4 of Swords, and 9 of Swords, and I put the cards in a simple three-card sentence.

Strange to get all swords (or “clouds” in osho zen deck parlance). Well, the Knight of Swords is me, the Gemini card. I see this spread as telling me not to struggle against the illness. After all, there is no cure for mono… you just have to wait it out. Rather than be sad about the stuff you must postpone, you might as well embrace the sorrow.

The osho book says that 9-Swords “sorrow” is about the fact that the things that hurt and hinder you serve to make you more aware. And, in fact, since I have been monitoring my condition, I can confirm that I am more aware of my body than I have been in the months previous. I was planning to take a Reiki class soon, and so maybe all this focus on what I’m feeling internally will better prepare me for that.

So, in true zen fashion, I should simply use my circumstances to become more aware and conscious. It’s a good message for me, so I appreciate this reading. But, I always have to stop to notice that all my osho deck readings seem to come back to simple buddhist concepts. I still say this deck is a little too zen…

If you’ve been noting my lack of updates lately, then you’ll understand why my reading tonight was for the question: “How do I fit everything I want to do into my hectic schedule?”

I did the counting and pairing technique with my Thoth Deck. Lately, I have been cutting the deck in half, and then using the half deck as a source of the cards. That way, instead of 12 to 20 cards in a spread, I get 5 to 10. Much faster!

Anyway, I consider this to be a fire-realm issue… that of motivations and drives. Conflicting desires, and the like. So, after cutting the half-deck four ways, I read the fire pile. It had the following 5 cards in it:

If you aren’t familiar with the deck, that’s: 3 Cups + 9 Cups + 7 Cups + 2 Wands + 6 Wands.

Overview

Well, we got five cards, which indirectly relates this reading to the Emperor (Atu IV). That seems appropriate, since I’m trying to get my life under better control. The top card is the 6 of Wands, “Victory.” What strikes me about this card is the stable structure, and the orderly, slow-burning flames. The central card is the 7 of Cups, “Debauch,” and I see it as my main problem right now. I keep essentially fooling myself into thinking I’ve made the right changes and I’m set up to get everything done. In fact, I end up focusing on fun and ephemeral pleasures. So, that’s the basic answer, but how to get there?

The only other thing that jumps out at me, at the overview level, is that it’s all Water and Fire here. No swords or disks are present. This tells me that we’re talking about a kind of spiritual/emotional shift, rather than a problem I need to solve, or an action I need to take in my physical environment. Fair enough!

Counting and Pairing

Pairing around the current situation, we get:

• 3 Cups + 6 Wands: Joy comes from stable effort, and expansions in creative output.
• 9 Cups + 2 Wands: I get a deep satisfaction from putting effort into my businesses. Once I force myself to sit down and work, I usually don’t mind it at all. The problem, of course, is…
• 7 Cups: Illusions of Success, fooling myself, getting caught up in fun distractions

Now for the counting. No court cards here, which is appropriate since the question was internal to me, anyway. So, I decided to count from the top card and the central card, in both directions.

Counting from the 6 of Wands in either direction takes you right to the 6 of Wands. This reinforces the stability and self-sustaining nature of the card.

Counting from the 7 of Cups clockwise, we get: 7 Cups + 9 Cups + 2 Wands + 7 Cups. So, my procrastination does in fact bring me some happiness, and causes me to have to rush and spend extreme effort to get my actual work done. Then, back to more procrastination. Not a great cycle to be in… but in fact, it’s the cycle I’m in now.

Counting from the 7 of Cups counter-clockwise, we get: 7 Cups + 2 Wands + 6 wands. Here is the other option… expend a lot of effort and will to overcome procrastination, and get into the zone of stable and expansive effort.

So I know of the two paths, and I know I want to be on the one I’m not on… but how do I get there?

Unaspected Card

My counting hit four of the five cards. The untouched card is the 3 of Cups, “Abundance.” When a card is not hit, it is called unaspected (ever wondered where the title of my blog came from?). Unaspected cards can represent energies that the participants in the reading are unaware of. They are forces that could be brought to bear on the situation. In some ways, you can think of them as “advice” cards.

When I see the 3 of Cups in that position, I think of Mercury in Cancer, and I think that I could be smarter about the way I do things at home. I think I have been making smart improvements, actually, but this card tells me I’m not done. Also, when I get so busy I start to feel constricted, like there won’t be time enough for everything I have planned. The 3 of Cups reminds to enjoy the tasks I do accomplish, and even celebrate them. It also alludes to the fact that life is not a race, even when it feels like one, and that there actually is time for everything important in due course. Maybe this is the mindset I need, in order to see clearly how to make my way over to the stable 6 of Wands.

Sorry the updates are still few and far between. I went to the Wyrd Astrology, Tarot and Divination meeting yesterday, which was great. An unfortunate side-effect of these meetups is that I always come away from them with a list of decks I want to purchase. This time, I bought Kaiser Playing Cards and Golden Deluxe Russian Playing Cards. I am still enthusiastic about becaming a master playing-card reader. It will happen… just takes time that I don’t have at the moment!

On a whim, I purchased Titania’s Oraqle yesterday. It’s a book that tells your fortune in this fashion:

1. You find the question on the front flap that most closely matches what you want to know. There are 100 listed, and they cover the gamut from “Am I right to be cautious of …?” to “What does my future husband look like?” Make note of the number of your question.
2. You place your hand over a wheel with 13 iconic symbols in it. Things like an eyeball, a shovel, a paper hat, etc. You close your eyes, and wait for your finger to be drawn to a specific area of the page. Remember which picture you selected.
3. On the back flap, is a table that tells you what page to read, based on your question number and selected symbol. That page has your answer.

Make sense? So, for instance… I want to know how our weekly tarot get-together will go. I look over the list of questions, and see a few relevant ones. Let’s select question 17, “Will I have a successful meeting?” Ok. I put my hand over the symbol wheel, and think of my question. I wait for my hand to be drawn to an area of the page with my eyes closed, and I select: the candle. I go to the back, and see that question 17 for the candle is on page 53. My answer is:

Not perfectly. Another party will be heavily preoccupied.

Pretty cool, huh? It is not the most deep or serious divination method, obviously, but everyone I show it to has fun with it.

I don’t normally go for things like this, honestly. But, I did two questions in the bookstore, and both times I was sent to page 88. I took that as a sign.

Sorry for the lack of updates… I work in the financial markets, and as you can imagine, I have my hands full!

This weekend I’m going to a dowsing conference, and I’m very excited! It will be good to have some fun. I may post some pics from my phone as I take them. [Edit: I took some pics, but most of them came out unfortunately blurry... oh well...]

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a cartouche reading, so I thought I’d send one your way. So many decks, so little time…

Anyway, here’s a 3-card draw for today:

That’s Air + Sirius + Anubis (Reversed). I am always impressed with how insightful this simple deck is. It’s currently the only deck I read with reversals, simply because there are only 25 cards in the first place… so I find it helps me flesh out the meanings.

So, today, it’s warning me that all of my hobbies and businesses (Air) are taking a lot of strength (Sirius), and that this is leaving me feeling vulnerable (Anubis Rev.). You can also read Sirius as foresight and grand plans, which fits nicely into my business activities as well. Air implies that there are a lot of things to juggle, and some inconstancy (“inconstancy” being the name of a card from the Tarot d’Eltynne that I pulled yesterday…) in terms of focus.

The last card, Anubis, is all about protection and diplomacy… so this stands as a warning that if I start to get stetched too thin, I may dispense with whatever tact I have. In other words, I could get touchy and snappy. Greeeeat…. thanks a lot, cartouche cards…

Ok, but honestly, I believe that. So, I’ve got some work that has to get done by 6:45 PM tonight, but after that I’m going to try to take it easy a bit. Chill with the cats. Stuff like that.

This was more practice with the Kapherus card meanings… I just pulled 3 cards with an eye toward learning something about my… (you guessed it!) work.

Here’s what I got:

Immediately my eyes fixated on the 8 of Spades over there on the right. That didn’t bode well! But, it would have to wait, as I’m trying to be methodical about these readings while I learn.

So, first off, the suits. We have an increase in power or money (clubs + diamonds) leading to some sort of blockage or problem (diamonds + spades). I see…

Now, I remembered from my last Kapherus reading that the Queen of Clubs often represents a business associate. So the increase in money sounds to me like the increase in subscribers that the woman I work with claims is coming in September. The activity in the financial markets is relatively dormant over the summer, but picks up steam again after the US Labor Day holiday.

All that’s great, so far, except now we get to the 8 of Spades… the card of disappointment! So, I think I will not be very impressed with the additional money coming my way. New subscribers to my service won’t magically come out of the woodwork, like my Queen of Clubs has been implying they would.

Ok, fair enough… I’ll just have to work harder!

Just a quick update. I did a quick geomancy reading on how the rest of the night’s work would go. I used the simple draw-dashes-on-paper-with-your-eyes-closed method I’ve been showing you in previous posts. Today I got:

… acquisitio, which you may recall is a favorable geomantic figure. It stands for gain, and things within my grasp. Very nice!

I hope you all are enjoying the geomancy stuff… this week’s posts will give more elaborate and interesting reading methods. But, you have to crawl before you can walk, and these single-figure readings are also fun, to me anyway!

One really interesting way to understand tarot card meanings is to investigate their relative positions on the tree of life. I’ll give you an example. Check out the three horizontal paths on the tree:

From the topmost (highest/purest energy) horizontal path, you have the Empress/Daleth. The middle path, just below the abyss, is Lust/Teth. Then the lowest path is The Tower/Pe. Given that the Empress is attributed to Venus and love, and an alternate name for The Tower is “War,” then you can see the way the purity of the concept degrades as you go down the tree:

Another example: The 2 and 3 of Cups are above the tree’s abyss, and Crowley calls them “Love” and “Abundance.” The 4 of Cups is the highest energy water card below the abyss, and it is called “Luxury.” Think about the statement being made, about the relative purity of love and abundance, versus luxury. Kinda neat. There are a lot of interesting relationships like that, encoded on the tree of life.

Ok, well, as I mentioned in my last post, the spirits instructed me to wait a while before trying to contact them again. So, I did, but I waited a bit too late. I was really tired, and had this weird conversation:

I decided I would try again in the morning when I wasn’t so tired… and hopefully the responses would be a bit less nonsensical.

Well, that was interesting! So, when I go to google maps on my phone, and search for ‘slano, michigan,’ I get a hit on an insurance company near Michigan (but not in it). When I search for ‘Slan Michigan,’ I get an insurance company on Slan St. in Toronto (near Michigan by some definitions of ‘near’). However, further web searching made me think it actually was ‘Solano, Michigan.’ Because, when I search for that, I see a Solano Dr. near a lake (the pond?) in actual Michigan.

Linda suggested that maybe the “insurance” isn’t a policy, but actually a dead body… like insurance in the form of blackmail or something. So my enthusiasm for dredging the lake has died down somewhat…

Anyway, I’m going to try to keep doing the pendulum seance exercise regularly, to improve my accuracy and effectiveness. If you go look at the last one I did, you’ll see that the spirit seemed to be asking for help, and today’s seemed to want something as well. Maybe at some point I’ll get accurate enough that I can actually lend a living hand…