Wednesday 20 March 2013

Ostara 2013 Tarot Blog Hop: Alchemy

Cat's Eye Tarot


You may have arrived here from the Master List of participating blogs, you may have jumped forward to me from Joy's blog, or perhaps you are going widdershins and visit me from Koneta's blog .

You may be one of my crafting readers and will perhaps be thoroughly non-plussed, and your eyes and brain will glaze over in boredom at my meanderings today: but I would value your comments just as much (if not more), as they bring me a fresh view of things that has not been circumscribed by the ruts of experience and knowledge.

The topic of the Ostara Tarot Blog Hop 2013 was conceived by the host, Morgan Drake Eckstein of Gleamings in the Dawn, and the title was 'Dancing Between Light and Darkness'; Morgan explains it so:

 For example, a person can both hope for and fear success at the same time. The same holds true for relationships and health. Often one wonders if anyone would consult a reader if they were not in a place of mixed feelings about an issue.
 So in light of this tendency, I thought it would be a good time to look at situations, spreads, and cards that are naturally ambivalent--either one thing or another--until we decide whether to read them as light or darkness.
Basically, those things that naturally dance between light and darkness. Is something good or bad--well, for many things, it is a matter of how one chooses to look at it.
I have trouble getting all philosophical about things - after all, it is not 3 a.m and I have not imbibed 2 or 3 bottles of wine, I am fuelled by mere tea from tea leaves, not mushrooms. But it seems to me that to view things as black and white, or just light and shadow, is too simplistic. Opposites exist and together they make a balanced whole:



But for me, it is where the two opposites meet that is of most interest - and there is at the same time no gray area, as you can see in the above symbol. 

Of course, tarot encompasses this in Trump XIV Temperance, which is all about blending, balance and moderation; and it could be argued that this is the most important concept contained with a tarot deck - that all things must combine in order to produce a balanced whole

Housewives' Tarot

For example, where someone might describe themselves as a Wands person, in fact they are a combination of all four suits (akin to the four temperaments) and the Wands traits predominate most of the time; it is only the self-actualized person who will have all four in perfect balance. It behoves me to point out that even in Star Trek, there is no self-actualized person, despite what Kirk thinks of himself, and what we think of Mr.Spock. But together they attain the blend and balance of which we speak - Kirk is Wands through and through, Spock is - logically, Captain - Swords; Bones in the caring profession is Cups, and do not overlook Scotty's practical Pentacles contribution to the team.

So XIV Temperance depicts that perfect alchemic state of personal harmony to which we as semi-enlightened beings aspire:

Ansata Tarot

 But unfortunately, too much navel-gazing thinking and personal contemplation is not only egotistically narcissistic, it is anti-social, and many of the drugs which open those windows are illegal


Hudes Tarot
 and that means that we forget to pay sufficient attention to our surroundings and people near and dear to us, which often leads to imbalance with awful consequences:

Whimsical Tarot
 I expect this bit near the bottom is where one might look to see some kind of hypothesis, summary or conclusion .... or maybe even the Meaning of Life as revealed by Me; I must apologize, as there isn't one - I have dragged you with me through this ramble for no purpose at all.


 



You may find that elsewhere, people are making sense:




6 comments:

  1. Any ramble that includes finding the suits in Star Trek and providing other laughs along the way is a great ramble to go on ;D

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  2. And ending with David Byrne? A master stroke!

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  3. LOL A worthy and enjoyable ramble :)

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  4. Great ramble - and David Byrne! what's not to like :-D

    Ali x

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  5. I adore the Star Trek connection. :D

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  6. I've been thinking about this off and on since you posted, and what I keep coming back to is the science rather than the symbolism. Black is the absence of all color, white is the inclusion of all colors. So it isn't just the grey areas that fall between them, but all the flowers, shiny strawberry blond curls, Noro Kuryon yarn, happy puppies with soulful brown eyes and the paintings of them where the eyes are the size of saucers. Getting back to the symbolism, you can miss an awful lot if you are too rigid in your thinking.

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Thanks ! I love comments :-)