Tarot with TruthinHand 12/23-29
Our soft underbellies are exposed when it comes to what we love. Which is why control strategies weave throughout relationships. This covers all manner of connections, like our love of country, passion for work or a role in the family. Often we search for proof, tangible, measurable proof that we are secure in our attachments. Those places and spaces run through our minds like worry beads we touch over and over again when we feel less than.
As we march towards the heavyweight slugfest of Saturn and Pluto mid January, we feel the tension build. There is excitement there, too, and fear. Because what we love we fear losing. The asteroid Chiron, that young helpless place in each of us, shows up this week along with an eclipse on Christmas. You will have to contend with feelings of powerlessness. Only when we face it, can we essentially mature out of the stuckness of that mindset.
How you face it matters. It’s about your perfect combination of compassion and strength. How much of each do you need in any given moment when triggers come up. Watch for control issues. Those can come dressed in big stories about the motives someone has for doing what hurts you, or what you believe their behavior means. It can come dressed in behaviors that mask how you really feel to keep harmony at any cost. You’ve heard it before and it’s a theme that continues to play loudly for another few weeks.
Moment by moment can you feel what’s going on with you, rewrite what you think it all means to include fresh options, then act on from a place of personal responsibility? Invite others to do the same with your example, especially Wednesday with the eclipse and holiday gathering. The eclipse is in a place that is the scorpion’s tail. It’s the sting that heals or hurts. Others can only hurt you to the extent that you join their efforts to make you feel less than loved or valued.
Use any pain that’s been doled out as a starting point to validate yourself, see your own worth. Part of being an adult is acknowledgement of what you did wrong or where you could do better. See the whole of you with the faults and weakness held in a bowl of self acceptance and love. Even your mistakes have value when you learn from them. Use this week to get to know you and how you use your power to give and get love. The Cards and Stars will help.
Thank you,
Lisa Greenfield
Card of the Week: The Pole Star
The Wildwood Tarot calls this card ‘the prophecy of renewal’, perfect for the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. Just as day turns to night and then into day again, our lives go from difficulty to joy to challenge again. What makes life enjoyable rather than just bearable is how you interpret and navigate change. When you don’t get what you want, it’s not hard to feel deprived of what you want.
However, if you imagine that what is on offer can contribute to you getting even more of what you want then you engage with the present from a whole different mindset. One that keeps you in the driver’s seat instead of protesting from the passenger seat. This card is a reminder that you and stars are made of the same stuff. Any darkness you encounter is simply an invitation to shine brighter. In case you weren’t aware, humor is one of the brightest lights. When things feel grim or joyless, find something to make you laugh.
Actively seek it out, even. A certain amount of spiritual discipline applied this way well yields tremendous results right now. Too much discipline and you sink under the weight of expectation. Too little and you drown in mental anguish when the life preserver is right behind you. Find light in laughter this week. Share it with another when and where you can. When we can laugh at ourselves we learn to let go and shine.
Monday: Ten of Bows, Responsibility
What a perfect way to start the week. This card signals responsibility and Wildwood Tarot counsels to do it with grace and humor. The ability to lighten the mood with laughter keeps showing up. It’s also a good reminder not to take ourselves too seriously. When we make our fear or pain a bogey man it is us, frightening ourselves out of proportion to the actual threat most of the time.
Better to line up our resources both tangible and intangible to help defeat the foes than it is to fuel the fear they bring. Focus your attention on what you can do to overcome the threat. Once you’ve done that, give yourself credit and find a way to release tension.
The Sun squares off with Chiron so you may find yourself going back and forth between encouraged and tense. Ride the waves and head back towards courage every chance you get. You get help by late afternoon from those you care about it. It may be words of wisdom from a favorite author, just take it in and breathe fear out.
Tens mean you’ve graduated and now play at the next level up. Fear is just the guard on all that expansion. The body guard matches to the size of the treasure. So if the fear is big, so is the expansion.
Tuesday: The Sun
The days gradually get longer, the light creeps in more each passing day here in the Northern Hemisphere. Today the aspects have Sun and Uranus lined up together to increase the brilliance. Which means the ‘aha’ moments are everywhere. You just have to slow down long enough to breathe them in and let them illuminate the dark corners. Time to be free of trying to make things happen and make people change.
Instead you taste the freedom to act upon whatever presents itself and see where it all lands when you stop manipulating or fearing manipulation. Reach for your innate reaction and peel back the layers of conditioning that stopped you from doing just that. That gift comes like a bolt from the blue today. Enjoy it, soak it in and radiate your light out for the world to see.
Wednesday: Seven of Vessels, Mourning Solar Eclipse
Your childhood helplessness officially ends today. You are free if you choose to throw off those chains. It’s a mixed bag of sweet and sorrowful as you let go. How good it feels to know you are more than equal to life and can embrace it in ways you’ve not even realized before. Yet as old sore points get triggered a little bittersweet empathy is good to apply to the tender spots.
The Capricorn eclipse blocks the light of parental power so that you can see how much influence you have. Indeed you may well see that you’ve always had more impact than you realized. Our brain stem is so clever at keeping us in smaller, familiar space. To do that it always overestimates another’s power and underestimates our own. But you can see where that happens today. When longstanding wounds show up, you simply navigate them from a place that feels better than ever before.
The dark and light together are the stuff that makes up our lives. Yet you may find yourself yearning for the childhood view of perfection. As the adult, now it’s your opportunity to turn any moment into that happy ending, or beginning.
You can see the authority figures in your life as the flawed, imperfect children that showed up to be responsible in whatever ways they could. Grace is the best gift you can give yourself or another. Today, be as generous with another’s faults as you’d like them to be with yours and see where that takes you. Love has endless power.
Thursday: The Journey
The aspects are light today following yesterday’s pile up eclipse. It’s a chance to go within and make peace with what is gone and grieve the ending of an age. Grief needs a bridge between what was and what will be. That is why funerals were created. It was the space to honor what was and say goodbye to it. This process allows feelings to move rather than back up and fester in the background.
This is a big turning point in the world and you chose to be alive now. So you have a part to play in the unfolding of it all. How can you honor what went before in a way that feels right for you. This is a time to create your own rituals, ones that feed you. Inherited traditions have outlived their full usefulness. Select what you love about them and incorporate them into what you do now.
The Moon is in harmony with both Ceres and Neptune. This means that what you hunger for is important to nourish you. Watch for sugar cravings as a substitute for the sweetness of life. A little sugar is good. Too much and you are on a merry go round of high and low that keeps you distracted from the emotions that need attention. The Star with this Card stands for a person who’s changed significantly. That’s you…
Quality attention for your feelings, all of them, keeps the water of emotion flowing freely. Those feelings are the heartbeat of anything you create. They are required. Free up any part of you that disowns them so they can blend together in a rich stream of life. The difficult is carried in the river of good that is big enough to dwarf the worst moments by contrast. Let it all flow on this Journey.
Friday: The Stag
While the Star card signals a move away from the negative influences, the Stag highlights cooperation and understanding as building blocks. Control is not needed when there is harmony in those working towards a shared outcome. The Moon meets up with both heavy weights today, first Saturn then Pluto. It’s the death crisis for domination. Fear and threat are no real enemy for those who join together against them.
Who do you align with in your life? What shared values do you have? Those who do not offer harmony may still have a role to play. Suss it out and discover where it all comes together. Some differences can add contrast that ultimately enlarges your views and then your world. Control is going to get more and more intense in this next phase, which only causes more pushback. The contrast between harmony and cooperation versus heavy handed dictatorial authority will be stark.
This goes for thoughts as much as actions. Anyplace you want to convince another of your point of view becomes a battle ground. Catch yourself when you feel opposed and try to change it up. Start with reassurance that there is something to benefit you in that opposing view.
Get curious, ask questions. Chew on the answers to find what feeds you rather than justifying your position or using their words to carve them up. See if you can get to a place of gratitude for whatever the moment has as a gift for you. Once you do that, you mapped the path to harmony versus conflict.
Saturday: Queen of Arrows
This sharp tongued, clever Queen is here to show you how many different ways there are to interpret almost anything. They’ve proved that facts don’t change people’s minds. Feelings do. This is the Queen of facts. She also proceeds over ground rules. They need to be set up wisely and well. This is today’s secret sauce. What are your ground rules for disagreement? It’s an important part of collaboration.
This bright lady knows how to find freedom in the midst of any restraint. There are a thousand ways to accomplish a goal. Look for where you solve the same old problems the same old way. Time to add in a few more options. The Moon and Venus meet up today in airy Aquarius to add extra inspiration so the new solutions feel good. Mercury joins them and he can go anywhere, he knows no limits.
So it’s time to call on your inner air traffic controller to weigh all the options, see the 360 degree vistas and trust you can deal with the bigger picture. No need to give anyone else authority that is yours. Neither do you need to be the answers for everyone else. They have their own 360 degree view and it’s not the same as yours. Keep that in mind and let your mind go fetch new solutions to old problems.
Sunday: Four of Stones, Protection
This week offers two steps forward for each one back. Today is the step back first. Picture a clenched hand of your inner child. Whether it’s fear or rage, the driving need is to protect oneself against pain. We are hard wired to avoid pain and seek what pleases. The only problem is the brain doesn’t differentiate between physical, emotional and mental pain. So a brutal thought can send the richter scale sky high.
But the thought is just that; it’s not necessarily a fact. Today is a day to practice doubting your doubts. Stare fear in the face and ask it how it knows that what it thinks is true? Call on your inner Queen of Arrows to work with you and show you other thoughts that are equally true. There are a lot of possibilities.
Don’t get hung up on an ugly truth that makes you miserable. This is one habit that belongs to what is passing away and doesn’t need you to make in comfortable in the present. Push back on what makes you miserable when you think it. Reach for a better feeling thought. There is one. I guarantee it. Then let yourself believe it. Apply some love to the spot. It gets easier each time you do. This is one practice that is so worth your time.
