Welcome to the Ostara/Vernal Equinox Tarot Blog Hop, whether you’ve come forward on the list from Krysten Barnes’s Creole Moon blog or backward from Alison Cross’s This Game of Thrones blog. 

Blessed Ostara is showering jasmine scent upon my garden at home in Houston, Texas. The subtropics mean that spring comes before the Equinox—we are all enjoying the pollen effects as the trees bloom all over the neighborhood (ah-choo!). 😉 And my sources indicate that Ostara, an Old German goddess of spring, is the origin for the Christian word “Easter” in English. So, the old deities survive all attempts to eradicate them, still bravely celebrating the resurrection of Nature in this case (in the northern hemisphere), under the guise of the resurrection of Jesus. Ah, I do love archetypes. They persevere because they’re all about being human. 🙂

Sometimes we all feel a bit…sideways. What I liked best about our blog hop wrangler Morgan Drake Eckstein‘s write-up on this hop’s theme is the idea of setting Tarot cards sideways if the position of the spread calls for more than one possible attitude or meaning. For example, the ninth card in the traditional Celtic Cross spread can be set sideways to reflect that it can about both one’s hopes and fears about a situation, not just one or the other.

In this time of balanced light and darkness, we are reminded that the light doesn’t always “win,” but neither does the darkness. it’s always a flow between them through the course of the seasons of the year, and more metaphorically, in the quality of our human lives. And on that edge (you can see it in the half Earth from space), is the gray, where things can be blurred or go either way. And that’s where the Tarot becomes useful. The cards can give us pattern and context that may bring new possibilities to light, or show us where the darkness is, or even where things are not so clear, all of which can be useful in guiding us to clarity on our own motivations and the energies surrounding us.

If we go even deeper, the fundamental physics of particles (quantum mechanics) shows us that nothing is light or dark, solid or gas, here or there, until we measure it. In a very basic way, we create our reality, or at least our perception of it. Everything is potentially everywhere, light, dark, gray (even purple, my favorite color!). Only when we make our observation, lay out the cards, can we begin to see the probabilities coalesce. Even then, there is still room for movement, our free choice.The cards show the potentials more clearly, perhaps, but we take the action to make it so, or, no.

So, let’s see what we encounter in the “mists” of space between electrons and atomic nuclei, our conscious and unconscious minds, the play of the collective energies surrounding us.  My favorite spread for seeing in the darkness of probabilities and bringing one into the light is my Quantum Focus spread. Looks like this:

1) Initial probabilities: Here’s your first “sideways” card. Try putting it down sideways and think about not just one interpretation, but two, or several, that could come from that card. Allow yourself to entertain the possibilities, even if you’ve asked a specific question about focusing on something, and then pick a couple of favorites, or more, if you like.

2) Black box: Is Schrodinger’s cat, poor thing, alive or dead? We’re on the dark side now, and this is our second sideways card. Before, we at least might have had a favorite interpretation. We could “lean” in some direction. Try not to allow that with this one. Take each interpretive possibility as equal to every other. You might want to write these down.

3) Measurement: Now we leave the sideways, murky, world of quantum reality and start painting the world we see and feel. Make sure this card is upright, not reversed. This is the energy you can apply to bring those possibilities into focus, that darkness to light. Take into account all your interpretations for cards 1 and 2, and see what patterns might result. That’s your measurement, the way you are likely to approach the issue at hand.

4) Focused reality: Time to apply your measurement and find the result of your observations. This card (allow it to fall upright or reversed as it will) should clue you in as to which pattern, which influence, is the focus for the question, and the idea to take with you in making any decisions based on the spread. Enjoy!

I made a draw using this pattern (and Ciro Marchetti’s Gilded Tarot Royale), to give you an example:

I asked the cards what’s my underlying focus, my passion, for this spring?

1) Empress (sideways): Creative projects bearing fruit, inspiration from nature, sensual pleasures, being all feminine and flowy and sexy, fat and sassy. Gee, I like all of those! Well, we could also be distracted by physical pleasure, blocked creatively, getting superficial with it. Hmm. Not sure where to lean on this one, except toward the positive interpretations. Let’s see what develops…

2) Temperence (sideways): Hiding in the darkness is the secret to mixing the right elements for inspiring a new poem or story, a new website design (I’m working on revising a couple of them), but I can’t know for sure what that mix is (making sure I get up in the morning and get going, opening my soul, as a friend related recently, to just let new stuff fall out on the page?). Only the shadow of something about mixing elements. That’s all I’ve got. Could go well, could blow up.

3) Fool (upright only): Honest, I did shuffle. All majors, looks like. How does one use the Fool as the measuring tool? Not much discipline in this way of observing reality. But maybe that’s a good thing. Just take a leap into the black box (card 2), as it were, with all my creative energies (see card 1) in my little hobo bag and mix it in the dark. Think I’ll take the little dog with me, just in case we meet the cat and he’s not nice. 😉

4) Magician reversed: Now this is interesting. We graduate from the Fool to the Magician, but he’s reversed, so we’re focused on the trickster, the con man. Thinks he knows it all, but he’ll be found out, eventually.

So, not easy. If I apply my measurement of the Fool, I could get into trouble. The mixture from the black box of Temperance could blow up in my face, and all my creative energies will end up crumpled paper in the waste bin. What the Fool and the Magician say are that I’ll need more discipline and forethought, as well as integrity, to fulfill the most positive possibilities in the Empress and Temperance here. I’m actually heading off in the wrong direction and need to regroup.

Thanks for visiting my Tarot Blog Hop contribution, and let me know, if you are so inclined, what you think of the spread and what happens when you try it out.  And please do visit my hop neighbors, either going back on the list to Krysten’s Creole Moon blog or onward to Alison Cross’s This Game of Thrones blog. And if you get lost and want to check the “GPS” for this blog hop, go to Morgan’s master list here to get re-oriented.