Daily Dose #1: Tarot as Medicine: Strength
"Strength is "total" living - living with the undiluted multiplicity of your being. Combining your capacity to destroy with your power to regenerate and heal. Taming your powers and drives by finding the "inner" power that gives you your strength. Affirm all your individual qualities - be sensitive to what you are feeling every moment."
~Crystal Reflections~
This morning, I cried in the shower, laughed as I drove my kids to school, and stared in silent awe at a giant birdcloud alighting from a strand of trees near my new house. I went inside, made a cup of tea and threw today's card. Strength. The power of strength. The simplicity of strength. The gentle touch of the woman in traditional Rider Waite soothing-taming-overcoming the beast. I set the card on my tarot altar in my bedroom, beside a deer skull and an antique poison bottle full of dirt I filched from outside of Georgia O'Keeffe's studio in New Mexico. Strong medicine.
Today, Strength fell out of the deck as I shuffled it. What I need to know about today. Being in touch with all aspects of myself with solid acceptance. Not letting things get me down. Using gentleness to soothe the wild aches I carry within and the ones I stumble across outside of myself. This woman has known struggle, has learned her way around her own inner nature, has realized that a gentle but determined approach will be the best one at this time. All things I needed to know.
My relationship with tarot over the years has ebbed and flowed. Always present, but not always something I've been willing to discuss with others outside of my immediate circle. That has certainly been shifting over this past year as I am now doing events and private readings for individual clients and parties with my tarot work. My creativity and writing has also been completely guided by tarot--not something I am yet able to share publicly, but the depth of my experience has been profound to me. So, it seemed time that here, on my quiet little blog, I let myself start to share the tarot as medicine and and narrative and to offer doses of my own cards and what they mean to me. I love reading about the tarot and I love the act of being accountable with it. So, this is where my Tarot as Medicine: Daily Dose category begins. I have no rules around it for myself, but it felt important to give it its own space in these occasional rambling words I post here.
Since this year my card is the Star, guided by Strength, and Strength is what fell into my hands today, this seemed the right moment to let the category-marker start. Another touchstone. Another mirror. Another story to tell.