Cosmic Whispers Tarot

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Tom’s Angels: Samhain Tarot Blog Hop

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13_death_cw_watermarkNow that the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest, and we go from more light to more darkness, more heat to more cold (in this Northern Hemisphere), it’s time to feel into that mutable mirror and push over to take a look at the land on the other side of our soul’s looking-glass.

Great observatories of the universe with their multi-spectrum eyes give us wonderful and sometimes disturbingly familiar patterns to match to our lives and deaths here on Earth. The Death card from the Cosmic Whispers Deck doesn’t mince imagery.

But death is just a movement, a line to cross, dressed in pain and fear on one side and love on the other. This is my knowing. I have felt this love, if only briefly (and not when I was “in love”). It’s not like the love we feel in life. It’s not happy or sad, it just is, and it fills every single cell of your being and beyond.

So, we move beyond Death to Rebirth (the Judgement card in traditional decks), and more literally than the symbolic shapes and colors of beings seeming to rise to the “heavens” would indicate. We get to be20_rebirth_cw_watermark all of that, mainly because we already are. But that’s not much consolation here on the pain side. I know.

We begin with loss, we end with loss, and then we find. I’ve sunk into that loss, feeling only the pain of this side. This is also very real. Both sides are real, and it’s always hardest to be left behind.

My hubby and I watch and wait now as our parents move slowly into the last struggle before that push through the veil. We live in limbo not knowing where to be, what to do. Waiting. That’s one way.

I experienced another way a very long time ago when I was twenty-one. I received a phone call that my boyfriend’s small plane had gone down, and he was gone. His name was Tom. He wanted to fly airplanes for a living, but he came to ground too quickly in the forested mountains of New Hampshire in the summer of 1978. There’s no waiting in these cases. For those of us left behind: me, his parents, brother, it’s just the pain of loss, the meaning of the Death card (it’s about the living, of course, and not the dead).

After a period of grief, there’s a kind of rebirth, but always incomplete, for we do not go there permanently for a much longer time. We wait. We live instead.

But at times like these in the cycle of Earth’s seasons, the veil thins between dimensions, and I can feel the Other side, the love that is there, the presence of the ones I’ve lost, the ones everyone has lost.

They are only lost to us, not to the universe, of course. Einstein’s equation sees to that. We are all immortal star stuff. So, I can feel him sometimes. And it’s a good feeling, sliding up next to the veil and feeling the love and hearing the laughter over there.

Hard to tell if the tears now are sad ones or happy ones. Maybe both. For Tom, I decided this year to lay out three cards (my deck’s not finished, so I’m using the Golden Tarot from Kat Black) just to ask how he’s doing. Here are my questions so if you’d like to try this, you can:

  1. How are you feeling over there?
  2. Have you re-entered here to try again?
  3. What’s your message for me on this side?

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Two eights, I notice. Sense of movement all around, numerological and with the Knight of Swords (Tom was always a very curious scientist). Looks like the beauty of being on the other side is the ability to totally let go of emotional attachments. He’s definitely moved on in that respect. The Knight of Swords, though, indicates he may have reincarnated in order to finish playing out his chosen warrior role. When he died, he was taking private flying lessons and was about to enter the United States Air Force as a pilot. So, slaying dragons was definitely in his spiritual DNA. 🙂 His message for me: know my own gentle power to connect with the infinite and deal with the forces flowing around me.

Thanks, Tom. Here’s to your own infinite power.

Tommy

Tommy, what skies do you find out there?
Are you flying formation with angels?
Banking and rolling, touching wingtips.
You were just too alive to stay.

I still feel the squeeze of your arms
enfolding me with your love,
the shelter from my inner storms,
just the place to feel safe and warm.

Wondered when you would fall.
Your flights brushed so many cliffs.
I was always waiting for that call.
You were just too alive to stay.

I loved you so fiercely,
feared so to lose you.
Then the call I feared, I found.
The one that rocked my world, tore it down.

I wish I could have been there,
to hold you in that final night,
as the last light left your eyes.
You were just too alive to stay.

I wanted to hold you in my arms
and tell you that it would be fine.
That the angels you didn’t believe in
would fly you to the other side.

Tommy, what skies do you find out there?
Go tickle an angel for me.
I still love you, but I’m glad you’re free.
You were just too alive to stay.

dorado_NGC1483_galaxy_cups

Don’t forget to hop on to my neighbors, Siobhan in one direction, and Vivianne in the other. 🙂

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Find the Silver Lining—Stress Cards

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Time to find the light in the shadow. You know those cards, the ones that make you cringe whenever you see them. Over on FB, Alison Cross (visit her court card blog, This Game of Thrones), challenged our group recently to identify the cards in our decks that create stress for us and come up with three good things to say (remember what your mother told you about not speaking up unless you have something nice to say?) about them.

Now, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be honest about the negative implications of a card in a reading, of course (I personally have to resist the tendency to spin them all to the good when that’s not useful for the querent). But there is a good argument for bringing balance to the Force, as it were. So, herewith, my difficult cards from the Universal Tarot of Marseille, which is the deck I’m studying in Alison’s FB group. The Minors don’t give much info as cards since they aren’t fully illustrated (I think I’d pick the 10s and 5s as the most stressful of the Marseille Minors), so I went with the Majors and Courts plus the keywords to pick my stress cards.

Hierophant

Stressful because he reminds me of my Catholic guilt trip. I tend to want to rebel and consider him stuffy and arrogant, anti-feminine/woman, etc. But, like my historically inspired keywords say, there are lots of good thing about the Hierophant: he represents faith and beliefs, patience, marriage, giving charity and receiving, and conscience. He is also one of the Wise and has his own connection to the eternal wisdom, just in a different way than the High Priestess.

Devil

Stressful because in the Marseille in particular, he/she/it represents demonic forces, hell, and therefore suffering and temptation to evil. So, what to do? Well, the presence of the card in a reading gives you fair warning that you are letting yourself get sucked into stuff that will make you suffer, so consider this your call to enlightenment and integrity! Also, even in the Marseille card, the nooses that hold the two “slaves” of the demon are loose enough to remove, so your freedom or captivity is your own choice; we have control. And lastly, we can’t have light without shadow, so, the devil just represents the balance in the Force, as it were.

Queen of Pentacles

What? Yeah. In the Marseille, she’s stressful. Check out the severe look. She’s the cold one in the Marseille court, rather than the Queen of Swords. Practical to a fault, she can be totally unsympathetic and concentrates only on the material. The good parts? Sometimes we do need to take a practical and distanced approach to our problems in order to solve them. Sometimes the house does need cleaning, and we can take pride in our grounded accomplishments and the accumulation of wealth that sets us free to relate to others from a position of generosity when we choose.

Death

In the Marseille deck, the Death card provides what seems to be no comfort.

There’s little enough about “letting go” and more about not having any choice in facing a loss. Back in the day when these cards were first drawn, the Black Death was never far away; life was often brutish and short, and the grim reaper always lurked in the shadows. The positive lesson is again about the balance in the force; loss is inevitable, just remember to move on after you grieve. Also, Death is an equal opportunity employer—king or pauper, all will face loss and inevitably death. It is the great equalizer. It is also the foundation of life itself, for only through decay can new life find the sustenance to be born. Death is an important phase in the cycle of life.

© 2013 – 2020 Joanne Sprott