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Minimalist Tarot

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hello!

I’m Christel and I’m an artist & designer—and an adventurer in the natural and hidden worlds. I can help shepherd your project from the realm of ideas into physical existence. MORE →

hello!

I’m Christel and I’m an interdisciplinary designer—and an adventurer in the natural and hidden worlds. I can help shepherd your project from the realm of ideas into physical existence. MORE →

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Feb 8, 2023 / Today’s card: Amethyst Awakening:

Feb 8, 2023 / Today’s card: Amethyst Awakening: Healing Addictions (27/9)

Do I think rocks magically heal complex conditions? No. Medical slang aside, there are all sorts of ways we block, avoid, silence, dim or drown the persistent pain that comes from deep, seemingly unreachable places. Some people use actual drugs. Some people use work or constant busyness. Some people use entertainment or spending money. Some people use art, creativity, or religion. Some people use interpersonal drama. Some people use family or even have babies to distract themselves from looming feelings of inner worthlessness or despair. Coping methods are as unique as one’s flavour of pain. Without these barriers, crises can occur.

“Healing” in the metaphysical sense is the process of intentionally allowing inner pain to surface without dampening or diverting it. Prepare yourself mentally and then let it come up, let it cause all sorts of horrible feelings. Endure them, explore them, accept them, cherish them, release them. It’s impossible sometimes. Other times, you may gain an internal friend, or reach a perspective you never had before, or feel a new burst of compassion for yourself and others who have experienced that type of pain.

The number 9 is the totality of the universe, all the being, doing, creation and destruction of energy in the many realms as an expression of something we won’t understand until much, much later in our spiritual evolution as a mind/body/spirit complex. On 3D Earth, there’s no end to this process of uncovering and processing pain. This is our task while we’re here, so we might as well get on with it.

“Remember: endure everything.” - Advice to monk-in-training Baluo Kaidi as he meditates in a swamp, covered in leeches, in The Boxer’s Omen (1983)

(Deck: Master Teacher Crystal Oracle by Rachelle Charman)

Feb 6, 2023 / Today’s card: Deep Knowing (43/7)

Feb 6, 2023 / Today’s card: Deep Knowing (43/7)

The moon (which we honour on Mondays/“moondays”) is associated with intuition, a source of knowledge that has little to do with assembling facts or calculating data. It’s often mistaken for imagination, and in school we get it hammered into us that deductions from fact-based information is knowledge and everything else is fantasy. But the unseen world—made of realms without measurables of time, space or proportion—can only be described by relationships, or what magicians once called “correspondence”. Gold is associated with the sun not just because of colour, but because they share intrinsic properties and, therefore, are linked spiritually. The owl is associated with wisdom because it’s a nocturnal animal with excellent night vision, able to detect things usually invisible in the dark—making the owl a close friend of the moon and a symbol of esoteric or occult knowledge.

The study of correspondences is the foundation of intuitive interpretation. Traditions that seem very different—for example tarot, hermetic qabbalah and astrology—are actually various modes of exploring the same subject: the transformation of human consciousness from a state that contends only with the material world, to one of awareness expanded to include the whole complement of What Is. “Deep Knowing” requires trust that knowledge actually can come from outside our ken, through seemingly tenuous links of words or concepts that hold far more meaning that we could possibly imagine. The value of intuitive practice comes from repeated experiences, no matter how small, of coming to know things without knowing how or why, and trusting that knowing before having it validated externally.

(Deck: Wisdom of the Oracle by Colette Baron-Reid)

Feb 3, 2023 / Today’s extended reading: Full moo

Feb 3, 2023 / Today’s extended reading: Full moon in Leo on Feb 5: Accelerated change and the need for proficient adaptation

If you feel like time is already moving fast, hold onto your butt because things are shifting into an even higher gear. This speed is both actual, as the earth spins faster and our solar system moves into a zone of time compression, and relative, as the earthly systems and frameworks we rely on are less and less able to keep up with the shifting desires and thought patterns of Humanity.

The first two cards out are from the Egyptian tarot, and both arrive upside down. First is the Twilight (18/9), known as the Moon in other decks, and feels very eclipse-like. Leo is such a masculine, solar sign that in reverse, the tiny symbols of Aquarius (Leo’s opposite) and Venus bring an extra layer of meaning: this is feminine power (intuitive, life-giving wisdom) wielded in a masculine way (leaping into the material world to provoke change). Second card is the Thunder-Struck Tower (16/7)—interesting since the sun will be at 16° of Aquarius during the full moon. Again, reversal brings a new meaning: the lightning comes from below/within rather than from above/without. Together, these indicate a shaking of inner foundations—perhaps in the Earth herself?—that create waves of change that may hit us in unexpected ways.

[For the full reading, go to “Clarity Readings” in my Linktree]

Feb 2, 2023 / Today’s cards: Aspen Spirit: Coura

Feb 2, 2023 / Today’s cards: Aspen Spirit: Courage (3) and Owl Spirit: Wisdom (27/9)

The blue morpho is a large, iridescent butterfly found mostly in South America, far away from the aspen groves of temperate northern forests. It requires courage to go on a journey outside the realm you know, to be a stranger in a strange land, to exist in a time or place with unfamiliar surroundings and people where you obviously don’t belong. Strange people with strange gifts have been, at best, under-appreciated in this world, at worst ostracized from communities or locked up in institutions or murdered after falling afoul of unjust authorities.

Depending on your circumstances, it may be prudent to hide or etherealize your wings until the danger passes, like the wise woman in red. The wise owl advises to practice your arts in secret, in isolation, at night, in order to keep from being bothered or hindered. Going out into the world with your shiny wings sparkling in the sun may entice ignorant people to tear them off, keep them for souvenirs. But we can’t all hide forever, and at some point it’s necessary to risk emerging into an environment that doesn’t appreciate or acknowledge you, and face what feels like demonization or death in order to embody the fullness of what you are—the three trining itself into the nine.

(Deck: Sacred Forest Oracle by Denise Linn)

Jan 31, 2023 / Today’s extended reading: The gre

Jan 31, 2023 / Today’s extended reading: The green comet and the refreshment of humankind

I decided to look into the nature of the green comet that is visiting us again after 50,000 years. What came out of the cards is a story of joy, pleasure and creativity being siphoned out of Earth humanity, and a call to refocus on these “lost arts” as a key to growing a new paradigm of society.

The last time this comet came by, neanderthal humans were ruled by the Annunaki god-kings, who were still tinkering with our DNA to better and worse effects. Earth was under the domain of very different beings, and the age of Man had not yet begun. And when it did, adolescent humanity was so heavily influenced by negative grey/reptiloid values that we very nearly destroyed ourselves several times over. What we have now is a planet full of people who are enslaved to an unnecessarily draconian economic system, where passion, creativity and joy are, at best, secondary pursuits after financial demands have been satisfied. This situation is, and I cannot state this strongly enough, absolutely fucked up and wrongheaded in every single way.

So, to the reading:

Out of the Astro deck came: Trine/Sextile: Symbiosis (52), Retrograde: Review (15) and Fifth House: Passion (43). This says to me that we’re coming into a time of largely unrecognized harmony and helpfulness, where Friends are close and we’re able to take advantage of an atmosphere of singing resonance in the spheres. Provided we can look back and evaluate our troubling past and present states without falling into despair and paralyzing depression, a doorway is opening that is aflame with passionate energy. This is not just heart chakra passion but solar plexus passion, imbued with desire for creative action that cannot be stopped by threats or limits.

From the Mystical Shaman deck came: The Staff (51), Standstill (52), The Time Master (57) and The Spiral (50). The recurrence of 52/7 makes me think of our annual solar cycle, which completes in 52 units of 7. [To read the full text, go to “Clarity Readings” in my Linktree.]

Jan 30, 2023 / Today’s card: Neptune: Vision (26

Jan 30, 2023 / Today’s card: Neptune: Vision (26)

Weird energy all last night and into this morning, prickly and insistent. Felt like being awake through my dreams, which were full of themes of death and resurrection. Looking at the stars, I find a few exact trines and sextiles from sun/moon to inner and outer planets. But Neptune, who emerged from the Astro deck as soon as I picked it up, is totally unaspected in its home sign of Pisces, despite being in the middle of the mix. An unaspected planet can be loud and confusing, because its energy isn’t being channeled into a dynamic with another body. Neptune out of aspect can bring heightened sensitivity, dreams, fantasies, or disturbances in the body and mind.

The ice shard barrier pictured on the card functions like a radio antenna. Crystallized water vibrates and transmits very well, but if there’s no translator or transmuter to help process the signals, they may come through sharp and strange. Neptune is the sign of collective vision: though the world might agree that things need to change, there’s very little consensus about how that should be done and plenty of propaganda seeding frightful images of nuclear strikes and world war three. In my opinion, these are bullshit scare tactics. We humans aren’t even allowed to use nuclear weapons anymore; our elder Friends are swift to shut that down.

But the confusion remains. By middle of February, Venus will be conjuncting Neptune in Pisces, which should help us sort through these future visions by routing them through a conduit of emotional expression rather than frigid, eerie dreams.

(Deck: Starcodes Astro Oracle by Heather Roan Robbins)

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