A Little Tarot Magic for Compassionate Commitment

Let's do a little magic. Today I want to explore how tarot can be brought in to deepen an existing daily practice that you have - little rituals, affirmations, meditation time, yoga time, whatever you got going on. Some folks talk about this as a daily draw, but I'm curious today about bringing tarot into a conversation or practice that already exists. Sometimes daily draws all by themselves get a little unfocused, repetitive and, well, boring for me. I like to incorporate tarot into whatever else I'm up to because it helps me have some structure in understanding the card's message, and keeps me learning from the cards in fresh ways.

So what I'm up to today is #womenshistorywomensmagic - a little ritual I found at the blog of the incomparable tarot reader, priestess, and magic-maker Yeshe Rabbit. Go check it out for a good read and the details of the practice - in essence, though, here's how it goes (from the source):

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Print out a picture of the Earth as seen from space. This is a nice one, and so is this.

Also place a photo of yourself on the altar.

Every day in March, stand in front of your altar for a few minutes each morning or evening.

Looking at the photo of yourself, say out loud, "I have compassion for you, and I commit to you, Self."

Then think about all of the women you know who are struggling to do their best, to make change, to take good care of those they love, to create art and beauty, to invent, innovate, revise and iterate, and generate a deep sense of compassion and respect for them all.  Say out loud, "I have compassion for you, and I commit to you, Women."

Finally, look at the photo of the Earth, and envision all that needs to be done to heal her...the waters, the air, the land, the animals. Say out loud, "I have compassion for you, and I commit to you, Mother Earth."

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I'm feeling this today, on each level. A lot of my personal work lately is spiraling around my compassionate commitment to myself and what that really looks like in practice - it raises a lot of questions! I also wrestle with what compassionate commitment to women looks like in practice, as I in the past week I've witnessed gnarly strains of misogyny and transmisogyny creeping into spaces in which I really want to feel safe, and in which I'm not sure how to find voice to fight back, or how much of a shared space to claim as my own in that fight. It's so difficult when these things catch us off guard in our own homes, families, and communities - and yet, shouldn't these be the places where we are best and most lovingly able to have conversations about it?

And on the Earth Mama level, especially difficult questions are arising about compassionate commitment. It's like everywhere I look, folks are looking the other way from glaringly painful realities around how we pollute and poison our world. It's like a constant grief, just below the surface. Yesterday at the beach, just walking in the sun after the gorgeous storm system rolled through, a dying seal washed up on shore. A small group of bystanders gathered around to prod and take pictures of him. We alerted the closest authorities, and they said they'd take care of it, but it's clear not much was to be done. Maybe this was just a normal thing, but in the context of hundreds and hundreds of mysterious sea lion rescues and deaths  in the last month off our coast, that seems unlikely.

Yeah, it's been one of those weeks - so this little ritual caught me at a good time, and helps me reorient toward exploring the possibility that I do have some power, I can make choices that reflect my caring and commitment. It may seem ridiculously small in the face of such big questions and concerns - but to me, it's super helpful to get out from under the overwhelm of such bigness and get back into reflection about my own thoughts and feelings about these things.

I'm a big believer in the power of small, local change and action in relationship with others doing the same work.

What does it mean for me to be in right relationship to these forces in my own small way?

That is a great question for tarot.

So here's how that looks for me, this morning. Let's go in reverse order, starting where we are with the big Earth Mama stuff and working back out to Self. The Motherpeace Tarot deck feels like a good choice.

Guidance for my compassionate commitment to Mother Earth: 5 of Wands.

Join the struggle. Here is where the fight is. Don't be afraid to be angry - but don't be afraid to use that force creatively, to let off pressure often rather than all at once. There is a way to engage this struggle that sustains and supports us through the conflict. It will take many points of view, many tools and perspectives and voices and actions. This is a shared endeavor, and requires sharing power. Commitment to caring for Earth Mama requires change, discomfort, challenge - it is not easy.

 Guidance for my compassionate commitment to women: 3 of Disks.

Remember that this is a work in progress, and that we are working together. The model here is not a fight but re/building. See how walls and boundaries house us and keep us safe. Windows help us breathe, see, modulate and communicate. None of us can do it alone. Come not from the fire of anger but the earth of steady purpose and patient labor.

Guidance for my compassionate commitment to Self: 7 of Cups

Continue to be with your dreams, and value in the inner spaces of imagination and vision. But be mindful of your choices, and how your visions, desires and idealism sometimes cloud your sense of reality. Use the weave of the net to strain what is useful and discern what is not. Remember your ground in the tidal work between worlds.

Each card helps deepen the affirmation, orients me, and creates a touchstone image for me to carry with me throughout my day and outward interactions. Super helpful for me. And as I do these affirmations over the course of the month, I'll weave a rich relationship with each image that will inform my work with them in the future. I love tarot magic!

And obviously this is just an example. You could do a draw to support any daily affirmation, morning or evening ritual, meditation focus, yoga or other practice intention...you get the idea. Enjoy your tarot explorations!

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Kaeti is a therapist, teacher, and dreamer based in Long Beach, California. All of her work (and play!) is interested in dismantling intersections of oppression and breathing magic and radical healing into all the daily corners of her life, into all the spaces of community she helps weave.

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There are photographs in this post that were borrowed lovingly from the internet and do not belong to us. All are linked and credited to the best of our abilities in hopes of attracting more traffic to the photographers and websites who have blessed us with this imagery. The inclusion of a photograph here should not be interpreted as an assertion of the subject’s or artist’s identity or beliefs. If there is a photo included here that belongs to you and you want it removed, please email compassionaterevolt@gmail.com and it will be removed promptly, no questions asked.

The Flow of Creativity: 3 of Stones

I've been drawing today's card a lot lately (twice this week!) - and it has me kind of loving the Wildwood Tarot's take on the three of pentacles:

3 of Stones

A traditional take on this card would have us thinking about work - specifically collective work, work that joins you to your community or is a harmonizing effort of all the parts of yourself. But I think that emphasis tends to get redirected in our cultural focus on work as linear, directed, goal-oriented, productive, and commodified - our thinking that work is about what you produce, and its value, and how that defines your value. This particularly trips us up, I think, when we feel the lack of creativity in our lives. I often hear people say "I'm just not creative," "I miss being creative," I need to be more creative," and they tend to be talking about making things. Making artistic things, maybe, but making things nonetheless. Producing.

The 3 of Stones offers a different view: work as process. Work as connection to being. Work as being grounded. Work as being in the flow - the flow of the earth, the flow of intuition, the flow of inspiration. The flow that roots in its own place - and gives energy back to its own place, becomes part of the ecosystem. The flow that communes with what cannot be seen. The 3 of Stones reminds us that all of these process are themselves creative, and part of what it means to be creative.

I love that this card challenges us to just get into our flow, whatever that looks like today - whether giving or receiving, connecting to nature, dancing with intuition and ideas, taking care of our physical needs, meditating, connecting to source, drawing strength or inspiration up from our roots - and say: "I'm being creative."

Because a dimension of "work" is recognizing or attending to the ways energy flows through us, connecting us in partnership with the living and more-than-human world around us. Our deep connectivity is a font of creativity. How does your work change when you send roots down into this place? What dimensions of creativity open up to you when you see this image?

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Kaeti is a therapist, teacher, and dreamer based in Long Beach, California. All of her work (and play!) is interested in dismantling intersections of oppression and breathing magic and radical healing into all the daily corners of her life, into all the spaces of community she helps weave.

4 Directions Spread: Cosmic Snapshot Part 1

Happy Tuesday y’all - did you know we welcome submissions to Tarot Tuesday?

A reader wrote in, “I don’t really know how to interpret a directional spread,” but she’s playing with it - and she included a photo of a beautiful full moon spread she did while camping in the Cascadian forests.

4 Direction spreads have been my bread and butter for years - I love their flexibility and use them way more than the other common small spread, PPF or “past, present, future.”

(PS, “Spread” is what us tarot folk call the particular design guiding the cards’ layout after you draw them. It’s like laying out a feast. What a spread!)

Here’s what I love about the 4 Direction spread: It creates a little cosmos, giving you lots of room to explore aspects of relationships. That little cosmos is both circular and linear. Take a look:

You see the circle clearly - the wheel created as your attention moves around the perimeter of the spread. It moves in both directions.

The linear is in the axes it sets up - I find myself using the word “axis” a lot when I read cards. These are the axles, the load-bearing places of support between cards: they give strength, seal connection, channel energy, and create oppositional movement.

Taken together, the two form an ancient and deeply archetypal symbol that has as many interpretations as we could throw at it, and then some.

Sometimes I’ll put a card in the center: a hub. This spread doesn’t have one. That’s okay. That’s part of the flexibility of this spread, and I often don’t include a central card when I’m just asking for a general picture of things (cosmic snapshot). Or, I’ll do the spread and then pull a card for the center about how to deal with all the lessons the outer cards have presented. To ground me as I move back into the mundane world. Anyway, this spread clearly has some beautiful ritual & magic going on in the center and that will have its own power in this reading for Our Dear Reader.

Some positions have more than one card: that’s cool too. Sometimes you need a little extra for certain positions - you have a question, it sparks another question, or you just don’t know what to do with the first card (the wtf factor). I am a big fan of just drawing another clarification card, even if you’re not sure why yet.

Another thing I love about this spread is that it is deeply orienting. Imagine me, or you, the querent, or the issue in the center - and then the spread encourages us to ground into that center, and then to take a minute to look in each direction, and then to really be with what’s there. Before I start playing with axes, I go around the circle and be with the card/s in each position. It has the effect of making a place, giving some ground from which to consider whatever the issue is, and understanding that issue not as a thing but as an ecosystem.

Part of sitting with each direction will include bringing your associations and meanings for each direction to bear on that image. This kind of practice (associations with directions) shows up in a lot of cultures, and we tend to take it for granted (especially in pagan communities) as something that belongs to us, just something we do. One of the places it comes from is Medicine Wheel, which belongs very specifically to various indigenous American tribal traditions. This is not something we can just take wholesale and plop into: East means this, West means this, according to the Great Indian Shaman, case closed. Especially for those of us practicing on this land, I feel very strongly that awareness of this history and our capacity to participate in its legacy of violence via cultural appropriation is a part of right relationship. Many Western pagan traditions do have their own sets of directional correspondence: great - use what works for you. But if you’re copying lists of meanings from (books about) indigenous cultures to whom you do not belong and with whom you have no relationship outside of your consumption of them, this paragraph is especially for you.

And so this is not to say we can’t practice directional spreads, or some form of Medicine Wheel meditation. It is to remember the importance of doing our own work, and to remember that personal spiritual practices are part of the web of collective life and history. To remember that the 4 directions are not lists of meanings but experiences of aspects of the ecosystem we live in.

That said, you probably have a blend of associations and meanings that belong to the different directions for you - a mix of personal experiences, things you’ve read, practices you’ve studied, and sheer intuition. I can’t encourage you enough to start practicing bringing your awareness to the different directions, and thus building your own library of associations to those directions for you. Maybe you regularly encounter a certain animal, or color, or goddess, or feeling when attuning to a direction: these are associations full of potential exploration.

Bringing them to bear on a spread might look like: “The East is where the sun rises, a place of light and hope and restoration and newness. I associate it with qualities of Air, and stillness, thoughtful practice, and a refreshed heart. How might the Page of Wands embody those qualities, or what would she have to say about them?” Look how, in the actual spread, she even faces the East, and perhaps the coming dawn. I might close my eyes and connect with the East, visualize a landscape or setting there, and then allow the Page of Wands to wander on stage. What happens next?

Or: “The West is where the sun sets - where the darkness grows, the home of night, the gateway to dreams. I associate it with qualities of Water, especially ocean, because I live on the west coast; also I link it with change, and moving between worlds.” Look at how, in the spread itself, the two queens in the West regard each other; what kind of tone does their interaction have for you? How might this go down in the wild West I described? What kinds of power are at play?

Then, I might think about the axis. This horizontal axis I often associate with time. The West may reflect what is passing away from the present, where the sun is setting, what has come before - while the East reflects what is on the horizon.

It may also reflect different choices or influences: on the one hand, on the other, a kind of weighing. It may speak to fears (the growing darkness of West) and hopes (the rising sun of East). It may talk about where your emotions are at (the Watery West) vs. what your head is doing (the Airy East). Western Moon speaks with Eastern Sun?

You can see how deep a spread like this can go. And we haven’t even really gotten into more magical directional correspondances, or specific meanings of cards outside our immediate reactions to them. We haven’t even touched the cards of the vertical axis, or gone around the wheel. I’m telling you, 4 positions + your central attention is all you need to explore your mini cosmos, to get a snapshot of your psychic ecosystem.

Clearly we could go on (and on) with this one, but that’s about all the time and space we have for today. Next week we will look at the vertical axis, and dig a little deeper into this particular spread. I hope this little intro has sparked some ideas and excitement about using this spread for you though! I know Our Dear Reader who submitted this lovely query would enjoy any of your thoughts, for anyone who wants to jump into the comments and practice interpreting, or share their 4 directions stories. I encourage you to send in other questions, spreads, or ideas for us to play with too!

Be well!

Kaeti

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Kaeti is a therapist, teacher, and dreamer based in Long Beach, California. All of her work (and play!) is interested in dismantling intersections of oppression and breathing magic and radical healing into all the daily corners of her life, into all the spaces of community she helps weave.