Tarot Blog Hop Yule 2013: Turning Darkness into Light

You may have hopped forward from my friend  Joanne's blog, or perhaps have gone widdershins and arrived backwards from my friend Chloe's TABI blog: craftmaker-type people, bear with me - perhaps you might even glance through today's ramblings ....

In the Northern Hemisphere, Yule is known as the Winter Solstice while in the southern hemisphere Yule is known as the Summer Solstice.  No matter where you are located and whichever religion or traditions you follow, Yule is always a magical time filled with excitement and steeped in traditions.  Yule sees the triumph of light over darkness.  As Celtic Yule lore goes, Yule is celebrated as the rebirth of the Sun when the Oak King who ruled over the light part of the year, defeated the Holly King who ruled over the dark part of the year. So Yule brings with it the opportunity to be reborn with new light.

As the wrangler for this Yule 2013 Blog Hop, the season offered me a time to think about rebirth.  You see, it's been just over a year that I had been part of this Tarot Blog Hop community.  In more ways than one, the Tarot Blog Hop community had been responsible for lighting my path throughout my spiritual journey with the cards. 

So for this Yule Blog Hop, the theme  our wrangler Joanna Ash thought most appropriate is "TURNING DARKNESS INTO LIGHT”.

Yule night or Winter Solstice sees the longest night of the year.  When the sun rises the next morning, we celebrate light with the rebirth of the sun as the dark half of the year makes way for the lighter half.  In the spirit of welcoming back the light, do unleash your creativity with this topic.  For example:

• Use your Tarot cards to guide you on how you could bring light to the people around you.
• Share your experience on finding light at the end of a period of darkness
• Use your Tarot to guide you on re-charging yourselves with strength
• Use your Tarot to guide you on how you are going to imbibe vitality to your endeavors
• Share how you celebrate light with Yuletide traditions

In a nutshell, use this Yule Tarot Blog Hop to celebrate light together with me in your own way.


Well, once I started to think about the topic, it struck me that there are quite a few different types of darkness and light: literal, emotional, psychological, spiritual. There's probably more, but it's late and I haven't drunk quite enough red wine to get truly philosophical. Which means I won't be talking about any of those.

I heaved a great big sigh of relief right then, even if you don't fully realize the magnitude of your escape.

Instead I shall talk about a down-to-earth, everyday way of turning darkness into light: attitude.

Let's illustrate that, shall we, and seeing as how Tarot is a visual medium full of symbols and colorful imagery. At least I will find it interesting, even if no-one else does.

Phantomwise Tarot

 Not only is this my astrological card, its meaning of calm optimism and hope typifies my normal attitude to life. I am so sorry, but one can really nearly always make lemonade from lemons; sometimes, it may seem like it's a bit of a long-haul search for the sugar, though. 

In tarot terms, it means that the 'problem' cards also contain within them the solution to the problem.

Shadowscapes Tarot

Sometimes it isn't as simple as lighting a torch. Sometimes it is a question of crawling around on your hands and knees in the dark with all the creepy things ...

RWS Tarot

 ... until you remember that you are being overly fussy demanding that the light be bright: the moon will do quite nicely for the while, thank you. At least now I can see the creepy things rather than finding them by their oozing touch and hairy skitterings.

Gilded Tarot

In this way, I think the reflective light of the moon is more valuable than that of the destructive lightning flash, which only allows you a glimpse of your fast-approaching doom, not a clear enough look or time to take any saving action. Here is the dilemma of telling the future: do you really want to know ?

And so anyway. Three main approaches can be summed up using the same card from 3 different decks:

Barbara Walker Tarot

  


This is Marvin the Paranoid Android. Why am I even bothering with life, it's pointless.

RWS Tarot

 




Hmm. Things might not be so bad. Look, there's the sun coming up over there. Let's get out of all this squelchy mess anyway.

Hello Kitty Tarot

OH MY GOSH ! IT'S SO FLUFFY I'M GONNA DIE !

It is also invaluable to maintain one's sense of humor, which can remind us of what's really important:

At worst, just keep saying ''this too shall pass'':

Bohemian Cats Tarot

Don't forget, you can read Joanne's Yule blogpost here, Chloe's TABI blogpost here, and the masterlist of all participating blogs can be found here.

Tarot Blog Hop: Lammas 2013

HousewivesTarot

    
   Tarot Blog Hop: Lammas 2013



      
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You may have come from Joanna's blog, or fallen backwards from Chloe's - or even alighted here by random fate, how lucky for you. The theme chosen this time by Arwen, is:

''Lammas is a special time for me. It's the first harvest (generally fruits and grains) in many cultures. It's associated with baking bread among other things. I won't go into all that it is. Grin, you all have the ability to research for yourselves.

The first blog hop topic was "How can I be a better candle?" It was meant to spark the idea of how we can each light up ourselves and our community as a whole. Going off that theme, the question I have for us for the Lammas 2013 Tarot Blog Hop is:

"What can I share from my table to enrich my community?"

 Regular readers will already know that my table never looks like the one above, since I am not a cooker. I like to eat, of course, but I really dislike cooking - too many years doing it as part of my job, I think, has jaded me. In other words, if you want to get fat, it won't be in my house !

So, what I can I share to enrich my tarot community ?

This kind of reminds me of the Litha 2013 Tarot Blog Hop, when we had to tell people about how stupendously amazing we are. Of course, as a regular reader, you already knew how totes amazeballs I am, but it never hurts to remind of one's fabulousness, does it ? I feel I share with my tarot community as I am a teacher and mentor, as well as a founder member of TABI. But all that's kind of established and old hat and boring - which as you also know, is so not me.

Tarot of Durer

So I think I will add to my general overwhelming awesomeness by peaking with a plain and simple giveaway: all you have to do is leave a comment on this post. Next Wednesday I will use one of those random number generator thingies and a winner will be picked.

What's that ?

Winner of what, did you say ?

Oh yes, I forgot the really important bit - as it's a tarot blog hop, I think I shall give away a tarot deck. After a quick shuffle over to the bookshelves, I think the most appropriate deck on this occasion is the out of print I Tarocchi Del Buongustaio from Lo Scarabeo.

 Good to know I can still impress myself too.





Don't forget to check out all the other tarot Lammas offerings by clicking on the links below:
 
 

Tarot Blog Hop: Litha 2013

Old English Tarot

Litha/Summer Solstice Blog Hop 2013

 

So... let's celebrate the longest day of the year by sharing our abundance with each other in creative and playful ways! For example, you might choose a tarot card or a number of tarot cards to represent you and your talents. You might then follow that up with a recipe, a meditation, a poem, a tarot reading for Litha, book recommendations, or a piece of music, depending on what your talent is. Choose whatever you think best represents your talent and gift it to the circle of bloggers taking part in the hop, and to the readers following us.

 

You may have arrived here from Morgan‘s blog, or jumped backwards from Ania‘s blog. Knitting and crafting people – you are lost, lost, lost and without GPS to save you; but hey, the post isn’t long, don’t worry.

Prairie Tarot

I thought this might be an interesting topic to write about – after all, I am hardly a shrinking violet hiding my light under a bushel, am I ? I hope you note how cleverly I joined those two phrases together.

 

So anyway.

Housewives Tarot

 If I must toot my own trumpet, I shall just do it pianissimo at the moment as I merely remind you, Faithful Reader, that you already know me as a witty and erudite blogger, a skilled knitter, a semi-skilled crocheter, and an unskilled cooker.

Whimsical Tarot

I shall parp a little louder, just to make sure you hear of my talents as a tarot reader, and as a teacher. I do talk about tarot here now and then, but as it is such an integral part of my life, affecting how I think about things – a visual shorthand, almost – and because I have so many tarot friends, I tend to forget that not everybody has this structure underpinning their life.

In this spirit of revelation, I shall even be honest about why I read tarot: sure, I like to help out other people when I can, but actually it stems from pure nosiness. I do love to get all up in other people’s business, and am looking forward to buying net curtains in my old age, just so I can twitch them.

 I don’t have a very ‘New Age’ or psychological approach to readings – I firmly believe in giving practical, down-to-earth advice that people can go away and actually use, if they wish.

 Just a quick word about my hitherto unsung teaching abilities: I have been teaching tarot in TABI for some years now, and have been mentoring tarot readers for about the same length of time. I have actual real life qualifications in training, and I enjoy sharing knowledge; it also means that I get to know a large and varied number of people. If only I had a decent memory, just think what I could do with all the random information I have collected over the years. Perhaps I should write a book ….

Hanson-Roberts Tarot

Hello Kitty Tarot

However, I think my most surprising gift is an ability to turn enemies, ie. people who can’t stand me, into friends (you all know who you are). Unfortunately, it has worked the other way a couple of times too. You’d think these occasional imperfections would prevent the growth of arrogance, wouldn’t you ? But you’d be wrong.

Just to show that I can sometimes be nice, I shall shoo you off to read my Eviller Twin Ania‘s blog rather than keeping you all to myself ….

And just for thoroughness, here is a link to the Masterlist at Sharon's blog.

 

Gaian Tarot