After a long day at work yesterday followed by a lovely dinner with a friend, I went home to unwrap my new deck. I’ll admit to a little trepidation as I pulled out the cards. While I’ve done a few exercises with tarot cards in the past, I’ve never really felt like I had any particular insight into the per se. The specter of, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” crops up for me fairly often, even when it has no particular reason to make an appearance. That voice was quietly present last night.
I mixed up the cards by the simple expedient of dumping them on my bed and shuffling them about for several minutes. I’ve talked to folks who say that they are often (or at least occasionally) drawn to a particular card when shuffling, but that didn’t happen for me this time. I was about to pull a card when I remembered that it might be useful to, you know, have a question to focus on for the draw.
Hey, I’m new at this. 🙂
After a bit of reflection, I decided that the most honest question on my mind at that moment was something like, “What do I need to know about this writing project I’m starting?” Not the most life-altering question, but it felt right in the moment. Some more shuffling, and then…
First impressions: Thank goodness the first draw wasn’t one of the Majors. What little I “know” about the Tarot is really focused on those cards, and I suspect I will find it more difficult to set aside those preconceptions and focus exclusively on the card for those than I will for non-majors. Non-court cards will be the easiest, I imagine, so I was grateful to have pulled one of those to start with.
About the card: So what I’m seeing here is three people in what appears to be a church, cathedral or monestary of some sort. One of them is standing on a bench and wearing what looks to me like a workman’s apron, and I imagine if he were facing the other way I would see a few tools arranged there. Standing nearby are two other folks. one of them is clearly either a monk or someone blessed with a love of brown robes and the kind of hair style that I will have in a few short years. The other is rocking a fabulous orange robe. The gender of this third character is unknown, but I noticed that my mind filled in “female” immediately for some reason. Given the setting, I want to say that it’s a nun from an order with a great sense of humor, fashion-wise.
The Orange Nun is holding what scans to me like a set of plans for the cathedral/church/whatever. I really like the level of detail in the image, here – there’s just enough to make it pretty clear that that’s what it is, with just a few lines on the parchment she’s holding.
The story without words:Â My gut read here is that the guy on the bench is talking over his work with the other two. I imagine that he’s pretty busy, given that he’s still working while they talk about it. What’s interesting to me is that my initial feeling is one of empathy for the worker, as if there’s something going on here…not an argument, necessarily, but a discussion about whether or not he’s manifesting the plans as expected.
But what does it mean?:Â Looking at it through the lens of my question, I’m struck by my assumption that there must be some conflict going on here between the “vision” and the “implementation”, between the planners and the artisan. There’s nothing in the image to directly suggest that (nothing I’m seeing consciously, anyway) but I went there awfully quickly. If all of the characters in the card are me (my double Leo self LOVES that idea, by the way), then there’s a pretty clear parallel with my discomfort around actually putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) when I’m not sure if I’ll be able to bring what I have in mind into the world as I had originally hoped. I’m really wondering what I’d see if I had drawn this card with a different question in mind. Would I have seen three people collaborating over a shared vision instead of the tension between vision and action? Interesting stuff.
So, there we have it. First card drawn, first rambling post complete. Success!