The Tarot Lovers

In which I sound like some kind of pro­fes­sional intu­itive instead of the Sassy Sibyl you all know and love… This was writ­ten last year for Flock. I’m shar­ing here now, since I’m no longer there. I’ve updated the post with some pho­tos of dif­fer­ent Lovers cards from my col­lec­tion. I pur­posely chose some lesser known and strange ones. What is the odd­est Lovers card you’ve ever seen?

Feb­ru­ary is the month of Lovers. Well, it’s the month of Valentine’s Day, and for a tarot reader, that means being inun­dated with ques­tions about cou­plings. Does he love me? Will she marry me? Will we end up together? What kind of love will I find? What kind of love do I need? How do I attract a lover? I don’t mind answer­ing these kinds of ques­tions; the desire to find and main­tain ful­fill­ing love-relationships is one of the human expe­ri­ences that we all share in com­mon. It’s so big in our lives, that the Major Arcana of the tarot has a card devoted specif­i­cally to it.

The Lovers card from the Vic­to­ria Regina Tarot

The Lovers card in a tarot deck is the sixth card in the Major Arcana. In the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot, which is arguably the most com­mon tarot in the West­ern world, the card is illus­trated with the archangel Raphael bestow­ing a bless­ing of pros­per­ity over a nude cou­ple (pre­sum­ably Adam and Eve). Behind the woman is the Tree of knowl­edge of Good and Evil and the snake – which per­suades the female to choose her own des­tiny. Behind the male is the Tree of Life, set aflame with twelve leaves, which rep­re­sent the signs of the Zodiac – which he uses to make informed deci­sions. The woman looks to the angel for divine inspi­ra­tion, while the man looks to the woman. They are part­ners, two halves of a whole, but they play very dif­fer­ent roles in their rela­tion­ship. The card is com­monly illus­trated with two or more fig­ures, embrac­ing or reach­ing out to each other. Some decks include the third fig­ure (or snake) to intro­duce the aspect of choice in union – that is to say, the inno­va­tors of the tarot under­stood that the rela­tion­ships that we enter into are by choice, and that our choices have the power to hurt others.

The Lovers from The Prairie Tarot and the Bohemian Gothic Tarot

When the Lovers card comes up in a read­ing, it can be inter­preted as an exter­nal rela­tion­ship – one that is either roman­tic or pla­tonic, depend­ing on the con­text of the card in the read­ing – or it can refer to dual­i­ties within the sit­ter (the per­son whose cards are being read). Often the card refers to two oppos­ing forces at work oper­at­ing within our lives and the card directly speaks to our inter­ac­tions with other people.

The Lovers from the Deviant Moon Tarot and the Paulina Tarot

I have been long fas­ci­nated with the masculine/feminine duality/opposites aspects of The Lovers card. In the tarot, “mas­cu­line” cards tends to exert out­ward influ­ence on their envi­ron­ments. They deal in the con­scious, prac­ti­cal, the mun­dane, and the the­o­ret­i­cal. While “fem­i­nine” cards in a tarot focus on the uncon­scious, inter­nal, intu­itive, emo­tional, whim­si­cal or dream realm and the pos­si­ble. Both of these forces are present on this one card.

The take away les­son of The Lovers card though, is that bal­ance is needed in order to achieve har­mony. For exam­ple, we fall in love based on feel­ings, but we enter into rela­tion­ships con­sciously. Rela­tion­ships can be messy, hurt­ful, or divinely bliss­ful – but if they’re going to be suc­cess­ful, they come with the under­stand­ing that there’s com­pro­mises and choices to be made and main­tain. We can embrace the dif­fer­ences between us and be lovers, or we can ignore or fight about it. And every­one knows that in order to love fully and in a way that will sat­isfy the emo­tional needs of any other per­son, we must first learn to love ourselves.

The Lovers card from the Fan­tas­tic Menagerie Tarot

Let’s spend some time exam­in­ing the dual­i­ties we find within our­selves and in our inter­ac­tions with oth­ers. Try these exercises:

1. Ask your­self: if I were a pack of tarot cards, which aspects of me would be “mas­cu­line” cards? Which aspects of me would be “fem­i­nine” cards? For exam­ple, I tend to dom­i­nate in per­sonal rela­tion­ships, but I have a very deep, strong, intu­itive well that I draw from when I need to make impor­tant decisions.

2. What is your intu­itive sense about what kind of energy you will need to invite into your life in order to bring bal­ance to your life right now? Look through a tarot deck and find a card that you feel is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of that energy and use it as a jump­ing off point for jour­nal­ing or meditation.

3. Imag­ine your­self if your per­fect rela­tion­ship. What do you bring to the table? What does your ideal part­ner bring to the table? How do you two bal­ance each other out? What com­pro­mises does the bal­ance require? What choices do you need to con­sciously make in order for the rela­tion­ship to work? Try this five-card spread when work­ing with the tarot to dis­cern the nature of per­sonal relationships:

1. the sig­ni­fier (choose this card inten­tion­ally to describe the nature of the rela­tion­ship)
2. Per­son A – what is con­scious | 3. Per­son B – what is con­scious
4. Per­son A – what is uncon­scious | 5. Per­son B – what is unconscious

Love should be cul­ti­vated in all cor­ners of our lives – roman­ti­cally, pla­ton­i­cally and within our­selves. While love may be based in what we can­not under­stand (the uncon­scious), true, last­ing and sat­is­fy­ing rela­tion­ships are formed when we care­fully cul­ti­vate an under­stand­ing and accep­tance of the true nature of our­selves and oth­ers. Using the tarot is one way to arrive at that kind of understanding.

If you have ques­tions or get stuck with your inter­pre­ta­tions, feel free to leave a com­ment here, on face­book or send me an email!

Reflections : Into 2012

2012. Pretty crazy, huh!

And with it, as with every New Year we move into, buzz about res­o­lu­tions and reflec­tions. What will you change? What will you make bet­ter? What went well? What went hor­ri­bly wrong?

It makes sense to do this, by the way. We’re wired to rec­og­nize pat­terns and cycles and the turn­ing over of that cal­en­dar page is a nat­ural kind of demar­ca­tion for us. You could be cyn­i­cal about it — refuse to take part. Decry res­o­lu­tions as set­ting one­self up for fail­ure. Or you might be an opti­mist, I sup­pose, and cheer­fully make your­self a list. I fall some­where in the middle.

Though I find that the year end time for me is best spent in reflec­tion. And oh boy, was 2011 a doozey for me! Good, bad, every­thing in-between. You know, the nor­mal life kind of year. How did yours go? Nor­mal as well, I’m guess­ing (no mat­ter how wrapped up in it you prob­a­bly feel).

I’ve got some­thing for you, if you’re the intro­spec­tive type like I am. I was sit­ting with my cards the other evening like I do when I entered into some fran­tic tantric tarot-inspired jour­nalling. I wasn’t read­ing cards in the sense that I was ask­ing ques­tions and divin­ing answers. Rather, I was pulling the cards and let­ting them ask me. It was a dif­fer­ent kind of expe­ri­ence for me. Kinda good. Kinda scary. A lot help­ful. Because the cards gave me mem­o­ries back that I might not have attached impor­tance to before. They reminded me of things that I had for­got­ten (but should remem­ber). They val­i­dated a lot of my feel­ings about painful events and helped me to see those .

And then I got to think­ing about it — how this might be help­ful to you, gen­tle read­ers. So I put together a book­let, star­ing the Payen Tarot de Mar­seille, with 22 reflec­tive writ­ing prompts.

As an experiement, I made this as a slideshow on google doc­u­ments. You can pre­view the pre­sen­ta­tion here:

Each card of the Major Arcana is paired with some ques­tions for reflec­tion and a prompt to make a list. If you’re not a com­pul­sive jour­naller like I am, you may enjoy mak­ing the lists instead. I rec­om­mend you write them on index cards, use a hole punch and binder ring to keep them together. Save them for next year and see how your expe­ri­ences change (or how much they stay the same!).

If you like what you see, I’ve got two options for down­load­ing. The first has four “slides” on each page with the back­ground. Down­load this option if you have no plans of print­ing out the slides.

Down­load 22reflect : 2011 (the pretty ver­sion) here.

If you think you’ll want to print the slides and make cards, I’ve got a ver­sion with­out the back­ground. Print them out on card­stock and bind them to use as you move through­out the next few weeks, or make your lists on the back of the cards.

Down­load 22reflect : 2011 (the print­able ver­sion) here.

And if you like it a whole bunch, you might con­sider buy­ing me a cup of cof­fee (or other cel­e­bra­tory drink).

The Tombstone — a divine blueprint for tarot reading

RABBIT RABBIT!

And it’s Octo­ber, so this is the spe­cific rab­bit I’m talk­ing about (or maybe this one).

Mov­ing right along with our series on con­tem­pla­tive tarot read­ing, the blue­print I offer you today is called the Tomb­stone. This read­ing will exam­ine the nature of our lives here on this plane and what we will leave behind when we move to the next. HEAVY, am I right? Con­tem­pla­tive tarot is not for the weak of heart! If think­ing about death depresses or fright­ens you, or you feel you’re not sta­ble enough to take on a read­ing of this nature, DON’T DO IT. If you can approach it with a curi­ous and coura­geous spirit, know­ing your safe and grounded, you’ll be fine. Also, be bold! Ask The Uni­verse BIG ques­tions! You’ll get big answers back.

Before we begin, grab your cards. I’ll wait. It might be wise to get grounded now (click play! Isn’t that easy?!):

[haiku url=“http://sassysibyl.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/groundingmeditation.mp3” title=“Grounding Med­i­ta­tion” graphical=“true”]

The metaphor we use in this spread is a tomb­stone (clearly), with the epi­taph writ­ten on it. An epi­taph is a short verse that hon­ors the dead. Typ­i­cally inscribed on the head­stone, the verse can be witty, seri­ous, per­sonal or a “mes­sage from beyond”. Some of my favorite epi­taphs are:

Jesse James (Amer­i­can out­law & folk hero — if you aren’t famil­iar with the tale, he was shot in the back while hang­ing a pic­ture on the wall):

MURDERED BY A TRAITOR AND A COWARD
WHOSE NAME IS NOT WORTHY TO APPEAR HERE

Swiss Psy­chol­o­gist Carl Jung’s tomb­stone is inscribed with:

VOCATUS ATQUE NON VOCATUS DEUS ADERIT

Which trans­lates to “Invoked or not, the God is present.”

William But­ler Yeats, Irish poet (you should really know who he is any­way!), has on his tomb­stone, some lines from one of his last, stoic poems:

Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death.
Horse­man, pass by!

So let’s review: An epi­taph is a state­ment that hon­ors the dead. It can be a tru­ism, advice, a bit of lovely verse, what­ever the deceased (while still liv­ing) had requested, etc. The blue­print we’re work­ing with today uses a rather famous Scot­tish epi­taph, “Con­sider friend, as you pass by: as you are now, so once was I. As I am now, you too shall be. Pre­pare, there­fore, to fol­low me.”

This blue­print does fol­low a spe­cific order. Deep breath, lay out four cards start­ing with the top left. Next will be top right, then bot­tom left and bot­tom right.

Let’s break down the metaphor with some sug­ges­tions for interpretation:

Con­sider friend, as you pass by: — How do you live your life? Where are you cur­rently? What is your cur­rent mode of being?

As you are now, so once was I. — What is the nature of life? What is the nature of my life? What is your per­sonal legacy to live out? What is your ances­tral legacy live out? Where are you called from? Who has called you to pur­pose? What do you need to consider?

As I am now, you too shall be. — What is the nature of death? What will be left behind? What will be remem­bered? What is your per­sonal legacy to leave? What is your ances­tral legacy to leave? What con­sid­er­a­tions should be made?

Pre­pare, there­fore, to fol­low me. — What is your poten­tial for liv­ing? What can be done for improve­ment? What can be changed? What might I change about my cur­rent mode of being?

Now the chal­lenge! See if you can dis­till the top two cards into one sen­tence. See if you can dis­till the bot­tom two cards into a sen­tence. In other words, see if you can write a two-line epi­taph that hon­ors your life, from these four cards.

Con­sider, with these four cards as the frame­work for your con­sid­er­a­tion, how you want your life to be hon­ored. Are you liv­ing up to your expectations?

It’s okay if you’re not. It’s okay if you can’t come up with any­thing. Again, these read­ings are to be done pri­mar­ily for per­sonal reflec­tion and as a jump­ing off point for journaling.

Go offline for a bit and try the read­ing. You can down­load a beau­ti­ful PDF con­tain­ing the spread by right click­ing and sav­ing right here!

The next post will be a video sam­pling this blue­print. In the mean­while, try out the spread and let me know what you think! If you post about it on your blog, please leave a com­ment below so I can scope it out! Until then, gen­tle reader, I leave you with the epi­taph engraved on the head­stone of Frank Sinatra:

THE BEST IS YET TO COME

PS: If you want a weekly email with blog-post re-caps, you can sign up for that here (it’s a DIFFERENT list than the one on my side­bar. This ONLY sends you blog posts (on Thursdays)):

Leaves Fall — a sample video tarot reading