Words and pictures
Normally when I do a weekly reading I break down the cards a little and piece them together into a narrative for the coming week.
Today I’m not going to do that. Instead, here’s what I take from this spread. If you’ve been craving connection or needing cooperation recently, that ship is on its way in. There is calm, understanding, hope on the horizon. That’s all the message we need.
Have a good week and stay safe x
Well. There’s an interesting set of cards.
This feels like a very broad reading, a toe dipped in to feel the currents that are at work for so many of us at the moment.
Let’s look at each card in turn today before we draw them together. The Eight of Swords is a card of mental stagnation or stuckness. Look at how the placement of the swords bring to mind the shapes in a barred window, and think about the ways we imprison ourselves – even if those bars are only in our minds.
The Princess of Disks (aka Page of Pentacles) is something of an antidote to the airy, head-based swords. She is doubly allied with the earth element. She is grounded, physical, rooted: in fact, her pregnant belly shows that she is the beginning of something new.
The Moon has us straight back in the clouds again, although with the added element of darkness, subtly altering the way we see everything. She speaks of shadows, secrets, the unknown, the lesser-navigated inner paths.
What story does this tell us about our week? It feels to me like laying a marker down for a process of transformation which will extend way beyond these next seven days and into the future.
Think how pertinent the prison window symbolism of the Eight is at a time when many people are still choosing, for safety, to stay at home as much as possible; sometimes the threat is real, even when the bars are not. However, something new in the physical, material realm is coming. The ways we go about our daily business are changing. We are already starting to venture out from behind our physical and mental barriers again. A new kind of life will be born. What we don’t know yet is what that will look like, exactly: all we have are glimpses in slivers of moonlight.
It may be too soon for us to know the full story of how all this will play out, but this reading asks us to pay attention this week to the shape of the future. How might we come to feel safe enough to venture beyond the bars? How long might it take before the new life borne by the Princess arrives? It doesn’t matter that we don’t know all the answers just yet. We don’t have to. What we do need, however, is to start asking ourselves the right questions.
Have a good week and stay safe x
OK. Let’s get the really obvious interpretation of this spread out of the way, shall we? – it’s going to be another hot week in the UK. Don’t get sunburnt and stay hydrated, folks!
Right, now to the more nuanced stuff…
This is a really warm reading in more ways than one. There’s a lovely energy whenever the Sun arrives in a spread: in the booklet accompanying this deck, Pamela Eakins suggests that it signifies “your own garden is as lovely as could be.” It’s a card of realisation, of union, of things falling into place as they need to.
Fire Father (aka King of Wands) suggests that this concerns things that we’ve been working towards with some energy and conviction – passion projects, or the things that motivate us.
Water Sister (aka Page of Cups) might seem at odds with these two fiery cards, but in actual fact she is a reminder that in order for our passions to continue to succeed, we need to remain tuned in to our dreams and intuitions, both to keep us on the right path and to cool down any excess fire should the Fire Father’s energy and drive become too singular and in danger of burnout.
In summary, then – it’s a good week to see progress towards the things we care about, that we are hungry for. There’s no need to charge towards them to maintain the momentum; just keep listening to that inner voice and remembering the dreams that started it all.
Have a good week and stay safe x
[content warning: reference to domestic abuse]
It begins with an itch.
Right between your shoulder blades, that part where it’s hardest for you to reach and scratch. You fidget for a while, trying to get to it, but he frowns in annoyance soon enough and pushes your hand away, roughly, tells you to leave it alone. So you stop, but the itch keeps coming back.
After a few days, you learn that you can get a little relief if you rub your back up and down against the door frames just so. When he’s out and can’t see, you stand there, grinding your spine over the wooden frame, sighing contentedly. It’s more difficult when he’s at home, and one evening you risk a scratch in the kitchen doorway while you should be making his tea; but he catches you in the act. You should have known better than to give his requirements anything but your undivided attention. You pick yourself up from where he threw you down with a roar, noting the places where the new bruises will join the existing ones. Black and blue.
Your arms have started itching too.
The first signs appear soon after. He drags you out of the shower cubicle one morning, shoves you in front of the mirror. “What do you call this?” You can just make them out, straining to see over your shoulder: two rows of spiky, keratinous lumps bordering either side of your spine. Apart from the itching, you had no idea they were there. More appear over the next week or so, rows of them, radiating out towards your arms. When he forces you to undress, instead of using you in the usual way he now takes off his leather belt and lashes your back until it feels raw. “What the hell do you think you are? Who else would want you looking like this, freak?” You know better than to say anything, and besides, you don’t understand where the lumps have come from. Curiously though, the harder he lashes the more you identify with the strange, spiky landscape forming on your body. Here is something that he can’t control.
The spikes start to get longer and your whole body itches.
You have always shrunk from him when he is violent, but now you are visibly, physically shrinking. Your clothes begin to sag on you, even as they catch on the ever-lengthening growths that have now spread further: down your arms to the backs of your hands, up your neck to your cheeks, along your torso, elongating and protruding from your coccyx. They have begun to darken wherever the skin was not already the shade of ripe bruising, slowly blackening you all over – except your chest, still as pale as your skin and gradually becoming softer, downy. You feel weaker, clumsier, and he grows more impatient with your faltering body. You find it harder and harder to speak, as if your lips themselves were stiffening, sealing in the protests you dare not utter.
One day, when you have failed to complete some barked instruction or other, he snaps and drags you into the spare room. “I can’t bear to look at you any more, you filthy little freak. You can stay in here till I decide what to do with you.” You realise through the blur that behind the disgust in his eyes is fear. He is afraid of you. After he hurls you to the floor, you hear the door lock behind you and the front door slam. You are tired, so tired, so you huddle into a corner and close your eyes.
You aren’t sure how long you are locked inside, but you find yourself awakened by dawn light through the blind slats one morning and you feel… different. Tentatively you stretch out your arms, but where there were hands are now wingtips. Your arms are a span of black feathers, glossy and new. You walk gingerly towards the mirror on the far wall, but it’s too high for you unless you hop up onto a nearby stack of boxes. From there, you survey yourself in the glass. Smooth white belly, eyes dark and glinting, blue-green flashes on your black body catching in the morning light. This new version of you feels lighter, slicker. With your long beak you reach to preen a feather or two into place. Black and blue.
Your skin is no longer itching.
As you preen, the front door slams and you hear his footsteps climbing the stairs. Little time to think, but it’s now or never, and you are ready. When he opens the door you fly straight for his face, beating into him with wings and beak. Cursing, he raises his arms and as he staggers backwards, loses footing: the crack of his head on the banister is audible.
You head straight for the tiny bathroom window he never bothers to close. You don’t look back. Outside, you fly for a minute or two, marvelling at how it feels, before alighting on an old oak in the centre of a field.
You are alone for only a few moments before another of your kind appears, alighting at your side. We’re so glad you made it, she says happily, and somehow you know that she knows, and you say thank you. The two of you sit for a while before others begin to arrive, to add their own welcome, to show their solidarity. And if anyone were to walk by they would see the seven magpies in the old oak, hear you chattering in chorus to each other, but they would never know the truths of which you spoke.
Sorry for the unplanned break last week! I was under the weather with a virus (thankfully, a test confirmed not the virus). Something like normal service is now resumed. Here goes, then…
It’s a reading where you turn over the cards and think ‘oh, it’s going to be one of those weeks, is it?’ Two hefty majors to get our attention. Things are shifting.
Tomorrow is the full moon, shortly before 5pm BST, and here she is over the shoulder of the High Priestess. To me, this speaks of a need to pay particular attention to our intuition, our inner voice, in the next couple of days. The High Priestess is a keeper of secrets. What is being whispered in your ear, if you stop to listen? What can the moonlight illuminate for you?
Judgement is a card I have always found particularly complex, but one of the messages that stands out most strongly for me when I see it is about timing. When the call comes, and only then, magic can occur . You might not be raising the dead this week, but whatever it is that the Priestess wants you to focus on from within may well be ready to find its external expression this week. Judgement says blocks can be removed, life can spring from decay: things are going to happen.
The seven of vessels (aka cups) is our reminder not to get sidetracked as we turn our inner knowledge into external manifestation. There will always be an array of options and choices in front of us, but we can only drink from one cup at a time. The knack is in choosing the vessel that best fits our needs. See the eye on the golden cup, and the eye in the angel’s cloud?
When you close your own eyes, listen carefully to your inner direction. Use that third eye to focus on whatever it is you need to see more clearly this week. When it becomes clear, you’re ready to make things happen.
Have a good week and stay safe x
Ah! It’s a new moon in Cancer today and fittingly this is a more down-to-earth, practical kind of reading than the previous week’s. Disks and cups: doing, nurturing and feeling.
Disks (sometimes coins or pentacles) represent the earth element, the practical and material aspects of life. Many take this to refer to finances, and often this is true, but their remit extends to the wider material sphere; our health, our energy, the physical world around us. There’s a great blog post about the tarot Threes here in which Ginny Clayton talks about them in terms of a stool: you’d have trouble balancing on a two-legged version, but add a third and suddenly you have a strong, stable base to put your weight upon.
This is the place where we begin to crystallise an idea or project, to understand the shape it needs to take and therefore what to do in order to bring it to fruition. Threes bring energy to a situation. This week, start to put shape to the practical things you want to achieve in the new lunar month. Make plans.
The three of cups is also a dynamic card that speaks of social interaction, friendship, care and support. Astrologically it’s associated with Cancer… Did I mention it’s a Cancer new moon today? It’s often thought of as a Good Times card, and who doesn’t want to see that as a feature of their week? So, about those plans – who features in yours?
I don’t always read cards left to right in a three-card reading, and I’m seeing today’s spread as rather like an old-fashioned balancing scale, with the threes perfectly offsetting each other on either side and the Eight of Disks as the central supporting pillar. I think it offers a gentle note of advice, if not exactly caution.
To use another borrowed analogy, because apparently it’s that kind of day: my yoga teacher often says that you don’t try to prise open a flower bud with a screwdriver and expect the result to be a beautiful bloom. Some things require patience and work over time. Don’t let the buzzy energy of the threes tempt you to try and rush results, this week. Trust things to happen when they’re ready.
Have a good week and stay safe x
This is one of those readings where you turn over the cards and go “oh… now that’s interesting.” Just look at all that feminine energy lining up. What’s all that about?
I’ll be honest – it’s another week where the cards are giving me a hard stare. There is a very obvious message here about the circumstances I currently find myself in; but again, I think elements of it are highly applicable to many of us at the moment.
These cards, I feel, are speaking to different aspects of one individual. The Empress is earthy, grounded, embodied, physical. The High Priestess is esoteric, highly intuitive, changeable; hers is the inner realm, that which often remains unspoken. In the centre, the fierce sharpness of the Queen of Swords’ insight and intellect is the mediator, the provider of clarity.
I can’t speak to the circumstances internationally, but where I am now, many businesses are beginning to reopen after the Covid-19 lockdown and there is a significant push for a return to something like normality. For many people, myself included, this is a challenge. The virus has not gone away by any means, and normal life will not be as we knew it. Some feel it is too soon for restrictions to have been eased, though some are eager to resume life as it was.
This is the challenge our reading speaks of: how to protect ourselves (and each other) physically, staying healthy while honouring the inner voices which in one ear say it’s OK, we can do this but in the other whisper no… not yet. We are surrounded by uncertainty and it is the Queen’s insight that will enable us to weigh up and make decisions as to what is best for both body and spirit. These are choices not to be rushed or taken lightly, for it does not befit a Queen to act in rashness. Take your time this week, think hard about what is best for you, and act accordingly.
Have a good week and stay safe x
There are times when I pull cards intended for a universal weather report type reading and as soon as I look at them, I know that they are reading my mind and smirking at me. This, friends, is one of those times. But I’m not here to witter about what’s happening in my head, so what can I tell you about the next seven days in a more general sense?
Well, it’s a week for connection, according to the 3 of vessels (aka cups) and the Sun. We may not yet be venturing fully back into ‘normal life’ – whatever that means now – but we still need people, and many of us are craving the company and familiarity of those we care about. In whatever way we feel comfortable, we should seek it out this week. Talk to, or spend time with, friends; nurture relationships. Bask in the metaphorical warmth of the sun just a little. It’s OK to relax, in fact it’s necessary.
Why? Because the Queen of Swords’ blade is double-edged and razor sharp. Spend too much time thinking or looking inward and we run the risk of turning insight into conjecture, clarity into confusion. The mind is a powerful storyteller, but thoughts are not facts. If we take insufficient care to remember that it’s all too easy to walk ourselves down a hundred dead ends, wasting valuable mental energy that we could have put to better use. Like stepping away to connect with friends, for instance.
Have a good week and take care x
There is optimism to be found in the coming week, if we are able to resist the urge to overthink. The nine of earth (aka coins/pentacles/discs) speaks of a balanced, grounded state in terms of resources: an appreciation of our wealth, in the fullest – not purely financial – sense. The father of wind (aka king of swords) is a master of intellect, of rationale, of thought: but the bull he rides here is an aggressive mount. He appears to be riding with his shadow. Two figures, two flags, two sides to every sword blade. The power and blunt force of this figure can cut either way, so it is up to us to balance the inrush of thoughts with the grounding influence of the nine’s Zenith. In doing so, we find the middle way of Temperance.
Have a good week and stay safe x
I thought I’d start doing a short weekly reading on here, as a general look ahead.
However, as this weekend was the Summer Solstice, first I pulled a couple of cards thinking about the period flanked by the longest and shortest days; what’s in store for us between now and the Winter Solstice?
Well, that’s an interesting contrast. The 6 of Cups is about beauty, pleasure, indulgence almost – although in many decks it also carries a connotation of nostalgia and dwelling on the past. The Hierophant, on the other hand, speaks of order, tradition and our place in communities. Here we have a tension between doing what feels good, the things we think of with fondness, and what we feel (or what we think others expect) we ought to do. How apt as many people’s lives – mine included – have been upended by the events of the year so far, and our expectations of the future may be far less clear than previously. ‘May you live in interesting times’, as the proverb goes.
Now to the coming week.
Wow, that’s a lot of energy rushing at us for the week. The wheel keeps turning – the Solstice begins the diminishing of the light towards the darker half of the year, and a new moon cycle begins today. Endings and beginnings surround us, the push and pull of competing elements, the need to find balance to reach our goals and not to get caught beneath the wheel as it turns. We may need to be forceful this week, strap on our armour and slay some metaphorical dragons where they are keeping us from reaching where we need to be. The good news is that the World suggests we’ll get there.
Have a good week and stay safe, all.
Louise Norgate 