Welcome to my personal blog.
Here you will find my musings, thoughts and observations, all inspired by my experiences as a full-time professional tarot reader.
Pomegranates, Persephone, the High Priestess and Poetry
For the Autumnal Equinox Tarot Blog Hop, a poem about the High Priestess as Persephone.
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It’s the Autumn Equinox/Mabon Tarot Blog Hop, wrangled by Maureen Aisling Duffy-Boose. She’s given us quite a challenge. We must each create a tarot card, using imagery, words, or both, that answers this question.
"What does Mabon/the Autumnal Equinox/the Second Harvest mean to YOU?"
Being a complete devotee to the sun, and coming from the cold Northeastern US, the Autumnal Equinox was always a somber holiday for me. Now that I live in Florida, the approaching fall no longer fills me with dread.
On the other hand, anyone who says Florida has no seasons has never been to Florida. The shortening of the daylight hours is even more striking to me here than it was up north.
To celebrate the Autumnal Equinox, my community will reenact the abduction of Persephone. We will prepare for our own underworld journey, as the dark overtakes the light.
We will end our reenactment with the chant, “She changes everything She touches, and everything She touches changes”. We will think about how we ourselves are transformed by another turn of the Wheel of the Year.
The reenactment itself is always funny. I think it’s good to laugh in the face of oncoming darkness.
When I think about these themes, the tarot card that comes to mind is The High Priestess. In the Waite-Smith Tarot, she sits between light and dark. On her backdrop are pomegranates, the food of the land of the dead, whose six sweet seeds caused Persephone to become Kore, Queen of the Underworld.
Typically, the High Priestess is associated with Pope Joan, or Virgin Mary. I am excited to make a connection between Persephone/Kore and the High Priestess. Persephone's annual journey to the underworld seems akin to the High Priestess' journey beyond the veil and into the unconscious.
If I could draw, I know a pomegranate would figure prominently in my High Priestess image. I am a lousy artist, but I am a passable tarot poet. In fact, I am happy to be a contributor to the newly released anthology of tarot poetry, Arcana.
My goal is to write one poem for each of the tarot cards. I call it my "78 Poems Project". I've written thirty of the seventy-eight, and I've been stalled for a bit, until today. Perhaps from this trip into the Underworld I will bring back some poetic inspiration!
Here, then, is my tarot card for our blog hop, and a new entry to the 78 Poems Project.
Persephone as the High Priestess
Balancing mercy and severity
Dark and light, night and day
Holding secrets in silence
And serenity.
Seasons change
As she changes all she touches
And yet remains herself
Essentially the same.
The price women pay for wisdom
Can be counted
In her six sweet seeds.
A Time for Renewal
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Welcome to the 2014 Ostara Tarot Blog Hop!
For this Ostara Tarot Blog Hop, our wrangler, Joanne Sprott, has asked us to honor the season by celebrating resurrection and rebirth. Gladly I will!
Although I hadn’t thought about it until Joanne asked us to, I have been in a cycle of rebirth and renewal recently. I always try to make that happen in the spring. This year it seemed to happen naturally.
Recently I found myself listening to Bob Dylan’s iconic “Forever Young.” I’ll tell you something – that song means something different now that I’m fifty than it did when I was twenty-five. As we get older, the need for renewal is greater, and also harder to find.
Whether we are celebrating the end of winter, the resurrection of Christ, the renewal of the Earth or all of the above, the energy of spring each year gives us the opportunity to feel young, if we let it. This is no less true for me in sunny Florida than it was in the snowy Northeast.
Recently I’ve found a way to nurture my renewal by honoring both the old and the new. I am trying new things, learning new skills and finding joy in them. At the same time I am re-exploring things from my past that had fallen by the wayside.
As an example, one of the old things I have revisited is playing guitar. My guitars have been collecting dust for far too long. I had forgotten how much I enjoy playing music.
One of the new things I have tried is Brussels sprouts. I have always disliked this particular food. I tried it again, for the first time in years, and discovered that now I enjoy these cute little veggies.
I think this balance of old and new is an important discovery. To be constantly renewed, to be forever young (as it were) I need to nurture the things that have always made me happy, and I need to be constantly willing to try new things. Never should I gracefully surrender all of the things of youth, and never should I be an old dog who can’t learn new tricks.
There are so many tarot cards that teach us of these processes. We honor the past with cards like the Six of Cups and the Ten of Pentacles. We honor the new with the Aces. We honor transformation and the passage of time with Death, Temperance and Judgment.
I have been exploring two-card spreads recently. For this Blog Hop I thought I would create a spread to help us find renewal by being open to new things, and by revisiting the things of youth.
Two-Card Renewal Spread
Card One: What do I need to do in order to revisit something from the past?
Card Two: What do I need to do in order to welcome something new?
I received the Nine of Pentacles reversed for position one, and the World reversed for position two.
Here’s how I see it. For me, the Nine of Pentacles reversed is about feeling insecure. In order for me to dedicate myself to playing guitar I have to get over my insecurities about my questionable musical ability.
I think the World reversed reminds me that I can’t know if I’ll like something if I don’t try. For me the World is a sense of closure and completion. In its reversed state, I see something unknown or unfinished. It also speaks to my continued need to learn and experience more of the world, for as long as I live.
That both cards are reversed suggests to me that there is still a great deal more I can do to welcome renewal.
May the new spring bring renewal to each of us.
Now it’s time to hop over to Louise Underhill’s Priestess Tarot blog.
If you are working backward you can visit Aisling’s TarotWitchery blog.
If you find a break in the chain you can visit the Master List.
Maypoles I Have Known and Loved
Beltane (May 1) conjures a lot of memories for me. Because it is a spring celebration and there are so many fun Beltane traditions it is typical to celebrate the holiday with other people, even if you tend to celebrate other turns of the Wheel more privately.
My first Beltane gathering was also the first time I acted as priestess for a large group. I didn’t priestess the Maypole, but I did perform a handfasting at the day-long event.
This gathering happened at Devil’s Hopyard in Connecticut in the 1980s. It was the first time I had ever seen a Maypole.
Well, I had seen pictures of schoolchildren dancing the maypole. Discovering the maypole as a fertility rite was quite a different matter!
A few years later I was honored to be priestess at a Beltane celebration at a private home. I’m afraid that the pole was a bit short and the hole was a bit shallow. I ended up sitting on the ground and stabilizing the pole during the dance. The energy of that was amazing – to be sitting in that vortex of fertility and creativity.
I ended up having to do that same thing a few years later at a Beltane Tarot Circle meeting. A member had made a beautiful maypole out of a coatrack.
One year I rented a conference room in a hotel and we used a maypole in a Christmas tree stand. Our ritual honored the four elements. We had ribbons colors for each element and each person had to dance with a ribbon that honored the element they most needed to bring into their lives.
My son was born in early May. After he came along our Beltane celebration would often include a birthday celebration for him.
When he was three we gathered at Kettletown State Park in Connecticut. We had a wonderful day with our kids, dogs and guitars. Our huge maypole was a multi-colored extravaganza as we laughed and danced. Ultimately we ran around the maypole until we were dizzy.
In another field in the same park we found a solemn group of Wiccans with their own Maypole wrapped precisely with black and white ribbons. We were all dressed in tied-dyes and colorful prints. They were in somber black robes.
It was nice to see other folks enjoying their traditions in the same park, and nice to see how each group expressed the magick of Beltane – so differently in some ways and so much the same in others.
I was lucky to be a presenter at a large Beltane festival in Connecticut. There we danced a thirty foot maypole to the tune of renaissance instruments.
The following year at the same festival I led the women in digging the hole. I wrote a chant for the occasion.
We prepare the Earth
With reverence and mirth
It’s the season of rebirth
It’s Beltane!
I’ve used that chant every year since.
I led a much smaller skylad Beltane two years in a row. The second year we created a chant for the men as they fetch the pole.
We prepare the pole
with reverence and soul
rebirth is our goal
It’s Beltane.
That year I learned that it can be a problem to use streamers as ribbons. The first year it wasn’t humid at all and the (inexpensive) crepe streamers worked well. The second year the crepe was soggy. Many of the ribbons ripped. That was probably the least successful maypole of my life.
Last year I did a small maypole with a group of women. It is interesting how the Beltane energy is expressed in sisterspace.
This year the Beltane season has brought us a lovely new home. I am already scoping out where to put the maypole for next year.
If there is one thing I have learned over the years it’s this. There is no one right way to do things. Some ways work out better than others. At the end of the day it’s not about the size of the pole or the perfection of the dance. The celebration of spring, renewal and fertility is all that matters. In that way, and in many others, the maypole is a wonderful analogy for life.
Celebrate the Sunrise
Welcome to the Tarot Blog Hop. For the full Blog Hop master list, visit here.
You can visit the blog prior to mine, Teresa Deak’s, here.
When you finish here, hop over to the next in line, Caroline Cushing, here.
Celebrate the Sunrise is the theme of the Summer Solstice Tarot Blog Hop. This morning at dawn people will gather across the world to celebrate the sunrise of the longest day of the year.
The Summer Solstice means different things to different people. It is the first day of summer, a joyous occasion for schoolchildren everywhere. It is midsummer, a time for faeries and frolic. It is the end of the Light Half of the year. After today, the dark hours of night will increase and the daylight will diminish.
I celebrate the Summer Solstice as the holiday of Litha. One Litha tradition is to build a fire and toss flower blooms into it, signifying the beginning of the Dark Half of the year, and the end of the Light Half. For me, Litha is the most somber holiday on the Pagan Wheel of the Year. Celebrating the sunrise is not my first inclination today.
I am from the Northeastern United States; land of snow and sleet. Four years ago, I honored my lifelong dream and escaped to Florida, aptly named “The Sunshine State.” As a New England Pagan, Litha was a reminder that, although the summer was just beginning, it wouldn’t last long. There was no way to prevent the coming winter. Litha was a wolf at the door, howling and laughing. Summer was a frantic time; three months of enjoyment before night descended again.
I’ve had to reframe my Wheel of the Year for South Florida. Here, every season is beautiful. Food and flowers grow all year long. Seasonal changes are marked by the food that falls from trees onto city streets; coconut, mango, avocado, loquat. Here, my Litha holiday is somber in theory only. My one concern about moving to Florida was that my observance of the Wheel of the Year would suffer, because I wouldn’t feel its turning so directly.
Here’s what’s really happened. Now that I don’t think about the changing weather, I find myself thinking about something deeper. Today is the longest day. Sometimes, the Wheel of Fortune turns in our favor. Sometimes, opportunity is at the door. Sometimes, we can seize the day and make it ours. If we don’t jump at the chance, the Wheel will turn again, and our opportunity will be lost.
Another lesson is about surrender. We relinquish the light to the dark, and the flowers to the flames. There is an opportunity here, too. It is the opportunity to release that which no longer serves us, and to accept that which we cannot change. It is the opportunity to find the gifts in all things.
I spent years living in fear of the unavoidable winter. Now I understand that the lesson of Litha is to jump without fear, like the Fool in tarot.
For this year’s Litha ceremony, I’ve written a new chant.
The wheel turns
The fire burns
The dark night will soon return.The shortest night
The longest day
Gather flowers while we may
While it’s ours we’ll seize the day.
So how will I celebrate the sunrise of the longest day of the year? Like the Fool, I will look to the future without fear. Like the Wheel of Fortune, I will honor the changing seasons without remorse. Like the Sun, I will seize the opportunities that are mine, without hesitation. Like the Hanged Man, I will accept that which I cannot change, and surrender my attachments.
Tonight, when the last bit of sun is gone from the sky, I will light the fire. I will drum and dance. I will chant my intention to seize every opportunity. I will joyfully relinquish the old in favor of the new. I will find value in the dark, as well as in the light.
Today, I will celebrate the sunrise without fear. Tonight, I will throw the flowers to the fire.
Thanks for stopping by on the Tarot Blog Hop. Continue by visiting Carolyn Cushing’s blog here.