A 3-Card Reading for the Now "Turnabout
is fair play".... "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander."
... "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade." These are phrases
that we hear all the time, but how do we apply them
when life bends around suddenly and pulls a 180-degree turn on us, when
the shoe is suddenly jammed onto the other foot?...
By Christine Payne-Towler
For an introduction to the World Servers' Spread, see Arkletter 5
September Equinox, 2006
This month, within just a few hours after NewMoon, the Sun crosses the Fall Equinox. As the seasonal signs show the end of the lazy summer and the onset of the shorter, colder, harsher days leading to winter, we get to contemplate the forces of change. Sometimes it's a simple, gradual change brought about by natural forces, like the changing of the weather. Other times there's a quick flip and everything is inside out in an instant. Either way, the past is gone and, ready or not, the future looms.
What can we do, within ourselves and in our lives, to make ourselves available for miracles on short notice? Using the Conver Marseilles pack, I pulled these cards to advise us:
World position: Queen of Cups, reversed
When this card first came up, the temptation was to entertain some very predictable thoughts. Traditional associations with the Queen of Cups are hypersensitivity, vulnerability, and a sometimes-uncontrollable descent into the deep psyche. This gal is not known for being highly functional under stress! What followed was concern about the wind leaving her sails in the very hour of need, emotionally speaking. Laboratory science has recently demonstrated that when a person hears bad news, their nervous system registers pain just as if they had experienced the trauma physically. Is this a suggestion that at the Higher Power level, when developments surprise us in a negative way, we should just go limp and let ourselves be rolled over?
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Luckily, that thought led to the old adage about grass bending to survive despite winds that snap trees and blow down houses. Clearly, the advice is: Offer no resistance to this trend, no matter how it might feel to you at the moment! Yes, unexpected change can feel devastating, and yes, it can spoil the best-laid plans in an instant. But what's new about this? This is our daily fare, no matter how hard modern culture works to paper over the fact and give us the illusion of prediction and control.
If you watch any of those animals-in-the-wild shows on TV, you can see how in an eye blink, life can change from splendid to fatal. An African bush-cat can leap into the air and pull a bird in flight right down out of the sky in one instant. A reflex reaction to something dropping on the floor can wipe out a column of commuters in the foggy morning rush hour. Sometimes we are simply in the path of a force larger than ourselves, and our best response is to accept the situation ASAP!
Fool position: Death reversed
This position holds the significance of a cat dropping through the air after missing its footing while climbing a tree. Very quickly, the cat has to reorient its whole body so that it can land feet-down on the earth. There's a mad scramble in the air to get whipped around, which is (hopefully) resolved just before the trajectory abruptly ends with the smack of gravity. If the cat is lucky, there's a moment of stunned inertia to recover from, but then it picks itself up, dusts itself off, and slinks off into the underbrush, not too much the worse for wear. Just so, the Fool impulse is that of constantly falling and constantly catching oneself mid-fall. Straddling the zip-zone between the heavenly and the earthly worlds, there's never any predictability, nor are there guarantees. If there's anything the Fool is sure of, it's only that he is about to be confronted with the profound depths of his ignorance yet again.
So what does the Death card reversed bring to this message? For one thing, Death reminds us to cut all ties with the past. The Zen guys admonish that if you meet your master along the path, you must kill him. What they forget to mention is then you have to cook him, eat him, digest him, and pass him out the other end as well! Before you have done all that (figuratively speaking, of course), you are still the student, and somebody else has mastery over you. This is a very old shamanic consideration that still holds true today. We can't afford to be intimidated by circumstances, whatever they might be at the moment.
Further, the agricultural reference made by the scythe in the hand of the reaping skeleton reminds us that a vital component of growth is pruning. At the end of the fertile season, the grain must be reaped and the vines cut back to the main stem again. Without attending to those details, the labor of the previous two seasons is mooted and the promise of next spring is compromised. In its season, pruning is the only healthy and compassionate thing to do. There is never a reason to fear the Death card's hook, as he is helping us to know the difference between what is our business and what is not. Anything Death can shave away lightens our load and frees us up to concentrate on the things that really matter and can still make a difference. Therefore, let it go, think nothing of it, just release what you are being liberated from without regret. Soon enough a fresh growth surge will rush forward to restore everything you feared was gone for good.
What the Death card is doing is cleaning up the stage between scenes, just the same way that the world's insect population cleans up the messy leftovers of life that fall to the forest floor. This is a chance to welcome Nature's barber as he buzzes through, separating the annuals from the perennials. Nothing that is truly yours can be taken from you, no matter what it seems in the moment.
Magus position; 10 cups
Rejoice! Celebrate! This is the card of the rainbow sign after Noah's flood, telling the people that the time of disasters is over. And in the Magus position, it represents the sowing of new seeds of hope in an imagination that has been unburdened of its expectations and therefore its errors. Somehow, despite all the above, we are being instructed to greet the new turn of events as a rescue and an upgrade, whatever it is that was left behind or swept away.
This card brings to mind a constant of Egyptian agriculture since antiquity, the flooding of the Nile. The yearly inundation nourishes everything and everyone in equal measure, but in its wake it wipes out all the territory-markers and boundary lines that define the land into its traditional family holdings. With the great hand of God, the rising water would smooth away all the individualizing features that marked out one person's plot from another's. When the waters receded, the land would be renewed for the year, but there would be need of a brand new survey to put it all back in order for the next growing season. This clearing of the slate is one of the benefits the retreating flood of the 10 of Cups delivers.
Another signification of this card is Homeland, as in a place where body, mind and heart can rest and take refuge. After the long forced march and the metaphorical forty years in the wilderness, there is a sense of closure and of being finally safe again. Here in the Magus position, we are not talking about a "place" in the usual physical sense of the word, but instead a 'realm of mind' where the climate is hospitable enough to entertain optimistic thought-forms. Leaving behind the dark night of the soul, the skies brighten with the promise of a new season, a new cycle. The upright cups remind us that anything is possible now, so we can afford to hope again.
Overall, the message in this spread is that nothing is as it seems right now; therefore we should not consult our bygone experiences to understand the significance of present developments. Whatever meaning there is exists in the future, as we are able to create from the fresh start we are being given. What just happened remains open to interpretation, depending upon what use we make of our new opportunities. The more positive, creative, and thankful we are going in, the better our results will be in the long term. The future is abundant.
blessings,
Christine
_______________________________
*Christine Payne-Towler*
Research: Esoteric Tarot, Literature and Practice; Tarot.com
Publisher, The Tarot Arkletters
Bishop, Gnostic Church of St. Mary Magdalene
Founder: Tarot University;
Author: The Underground Stream;
_______________________________
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The Tarot ArkLetters are a publication of Christine Payne-Towler, founder of Tarot University Online. Christine offers classes, readings, and private sessions.
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Hi Christine:
Your spread reads like a text book version of what has evolved out of nowhere- in my life of late. The eclipse had me wondering prior.., just how it might play out. Needless to say even with my cautious notions and clear cut concepts it still hit me unaware. Dead-on in a manner and place that is most personal to me. We are after all only as strong as our weakest link. Its my style and nature to practice exactly the method you suggested. So today, after five days into this journey I thought to seek new insight about this seemingly forced transition. No surprise that you hit a bull's-eye with this spread! Thank you for your spirited wisdom. Divine grace is sometimes disguised as the reaper. Mahalo ~ China Rose
Posted by: China Rose | Wednesday, 04 October 2006 at 05:48 PM