I’m having a bit of car trouble. Earlier this year my old Holden began leaking coolant so I took it to my regular mechanic to have it fixed which cost me serious dollars.
Seven months later the same issue. This time I took it to someone else. The verdict: I need to spend some more serious dollars to keep the darn thing on the road.
This leaves me with a dilemma. Continue reading
I think the following W. H. Auden poem beautifully encapsulates the yin and yang of the Wheel of Fortune card. I reproduce it here for your contemplation… Continue reading
I had a comment on my blog the other day (yay a comment!) asking me to predict somebody’s fate, her doom even. I declined of course, being the non-psychic Tarot card reader that I am (As if I’d want to predict someone’s doom anyway. What the?) As I’ve said before that’s not what this blog is on about. I mean, yeah, sure, you can use Tarot cards to predict the future if you want (I keep warning you but that you can get into trouble if you do. Feel chained to a particular outcome. Mind you, that doesn’t stop me doing it now and then, ha!) But as I cannot emphasise enough there is more to Tarot than that. Clearly the message needs to be hammered home with triple exclamation points: Tarot is so much more than a fortune teller’s tool!!!
What kind of more you ask? Well, for starters… Continue reading
I had that darn Katy Perry song ‘Last Friday Night’ stuck in my head for months this year. You know, the one that has a chorus singing T.G.I.F. T.G.I.F. T.G.I.F. louder and louder. Well, after a week back at work, I couldn’t agree with that lyric more. So just for fun I thought I’d explore the Tarot of Thank God It’s Friday.
This is how I normally feel by Friday… Continue reading
So, as I’ve mentioned before Tarot cards can be read in both a positive and negative light. As with all readings you work out which meaning to choose depending on the position of the card. One of the more obvious ways you know when to choose the negative meaning is when Continue reading
A man turns his back on eight cups and heads off in another direction. Mountains lie in his path. The cups belong to him. They represent relationships or things from which he draws emotional satisfaction. But he turns his back on them because Continue reading
I’ve noticed there are lots of people on the Internet offering a ‘card of the day’ type service. The way it works is that they pull a card from the deck to represent the day ahead and share the meaning of that card with peeps.
Now, there’s no way that card could symbolize the experience every single one of their followers is going to have that day. Tarot doesn’t work like that. It’s personal. Tarot decks prefer to speak to the people dealing the cards. A reading done for a broader audience is going to be much less reliable, if it works at all.
However, I think card-of-the-day services can fulfill a higher purpose. Continue reading
I have to attend a long meeting after work tomorrow and already my spirits are sinking at the thought. So just to amuse myself (and hopefully you too) I thought I’d contemplate the Tarot of meetings. Continue reading
We had a look at The Empress recently so it seems only fair to check out her counterpart, The Emperor. He’s one of the Life Lessons (Major Arcana) cards so he carries a bit of weight in a reading but as he’s found early on in Life Lesson Tarot he’s not too complicated. What does he represent?
He’s your dad.
He’s you as a dad.
He’s a hard worker, or, the need to work hard.
He’s the one meeting out discipline or the need to be disciplined.
He’s successful. Gets things done. (Cause he works hard and is disciplined. The knee bones connected to the thigh bone.)
He’s where you experience limitations.
He’s good at saying no. (Whereas The Empress is the yay-sayer.) Note: He’s not a hard arse. That’s more the King of Swords. The Emperor has expectations but he’s not cut-throat or mean about it. Just firm.
He’s rules and regulations.
He’s every authority figure. Authority in general. Policemen in particular.
He’s the rock you can lean on. But also the immoveable object in your path.
He’s your inner critic. (Whereas The Empress is more like your inner encourager.) That voice in your head that reminds you what a loser you are.
He’s the screws turned tight. The control freak. Obsessive compulsive behaviour. When I was a teenager I had to have 16 teaspoons in my Milo (an Australian chocolate drink). Had to. 16 exactly. That sort of thing.
He’s in charge. The patriarch. Your boss. The dominator in S & M situations.
He rules. Sometimes with a fair hand. Sometimes with an iron fist.
He makes you feel safe and secure. Will defend his loved ones to the death.
He loves routine.
He’s self-controlled. You can’t rattle him no matter how much you try.
And he makes no apologies for all of the above.
You need to exert a little Emperor energy if you want to achieve your goals. Forcing myself to write on this blog every day no matter how #$&% I feel is tres` Emperor. (Actually #$&% represents tiredness more than anything else. Not a very exciting emotion huh? But day-to-day life exhaustion is my mortal enemy when it comes to writing. You can’t write if you can’t think and you can’t think if you’re tired. I’ve been off work for the last two months caring for an ill family member and go back to my day job tomorrow. So it’ll be interesting to see if the quality of my posts are affected. I’ll be drawing on all The Emperor reserves I have to write them I can tell you. Teaching children is like pouring your energy down a black hole every single day. Lucky I enjoy it.)
How you feel about The Emperor card will tell you a lot about how good you are at setting boundaries in your life and/or about your relationship with your father. So how do you feel about The Emperor? Please share.
As I said in a previous post there’s a numerological formula you can use to work out which Tarot card represents the type of experiences you can expect to have during each year. I’ve been using it for so long I can’t remember anymore where I learnt this trick but as I said I find it quite reliable.
The formula will give you a number that correlates with one of the Life Lesson (Major Arcana) cards. Because of the way it works each following year you will shift into the subsequent Life Lesson card e.g. If your Tarot Year Card in 2012 is The Empress, in 2013 it will be The Emperor. But the turn of each decade signals a re-set button. Thus in 2009 my Tarot Year Card was Judgement but in 2010 it flipped back to The Hanged Man.
I find it quite interesting that through this formula Tarot insists that each decade has its own particular flavour. Because the western media also classifies time in this way i.e. Each decade is seen as a distinct social period. The 90s was the grunge epoch whereas the 00’s was all about de bling where people got into debt to fund their dream lifestyles. I don’t think anyone’s worked out what the ’10s are yet but I’m wondering if it’ll have something to do with the rise of the internet, with the spread of information through blogs like this. With the end of the gatekeepers such as media owners and merchandise importers. I quite like that idea.
The formula is this: You add up your birth day + your birth month + the current calendar year. Then you work out which Life Lesson card matches the number you got. If the number is greater than 21, you add the digits together.
The Life Lessons cards are numbered as follows:
1 The Magician
2 The High Priestess
3 The Empress
4 The Emperor
5 The Hierophant
6 The Lovers
7 The Chariot
8 Strength
9 The Hermit
10 The Wheel of Fortune
11 Justice
12 The Hanged Man
13 Death
14 Temperance
15 The Devil
16 The Tower
17 The Star
18 The Moon
19 The Sun
20 Judgement
21 The World
My birthday is the 22nd May. The formula for me this year is: 2+2+5+2+0+1+2 = 14 which is the number of Temperance, the card of finding a new balance. Thus as a writer I expected to be doing a lot of editing and so I have been. But there has also been a shift in my relationship with my teenage children which I wasn’t expecting. A re-balancing. As is appropriate when your children become adults. (Not that it isn’t still shocking and scary as a mum.)
It’s important to point out once again that you should use this formula with a grain of salt (I throw a lot of salt over my shoulder while using Tarot, lol). You should never let the cards chain you to a particular outcome. That would be using Tarot Devil style. I use my Tarot Year Card mostly to teach myself about the cards. I note the experiences I have and see how that could fit into the meaning of the Tarot Year Card.
Have a go and let me know what you think. And if your Tarot Year Card is one I haven’t focused on yet and you’d like to know more about it let me know in the comments section below. Cheers!
The Tarot Teaclub 