TdM: Rachelcat reads for Joan Marie

[Rachelcat]

You mentioned that we don’t need a question for this one, so I jumped right in with a reading. Please let me know if you want another with something more specific in mind.

I did a kind of strange deal. I discarded minors until I got a major, then the minors that came up went with the majors that were already there until I got one major and one minor for each.

(I still couldn't get the picture right. I never thought of myself as techie challenged . . . Sorry)

The deck is my beloved Budapest Tarot. The stage-setting background cards are LS Marseille Grand Trumps. I figure Temperance is the perfect setting for “harmony.”

Now to the reading:

How do you express your inner masculine?
The Star and 9 of Swords

The Star is usually considered a feminine card (although here it’s difficult to say if the person is male or female. He looks male to me). But you express your masculine qualities as the Star because you are active in blessing people and casting a spiritual glow around you. You take sun-like action in publishing what you believe and trust in. The 9 of Swords might be saying that you want to do that because you’ve experienced the discomfort of having such a positive and beautiful faith but few people to share and live it with.

How do you honor your inner feminine?
Empress and 4 of Cups

You honor your feminine side by being a strong woman! You honor “softer” feminine values, but also honor women by knowing and embodying that they are emotionally and physically strong and enduring. You also know women don’t have to be afraid to be socially powerful. 4 of Cups says that your ideal of womanhood is strongly felt but not often expressed. You don’t have to shout about knowing that women are strong. Instead it’s a quiet source of inner strength for you.

What will bring these two aspects of your self into greater harmony?
Judgment and 10 of Swords

Well, going by what I’ve said above, it seems like your aspects are in pretty good harmony as they are, but these cards make me think more of conflict than harmony! You know in your heart and soul that people are people, and everyone has masculine and feminine qualities. You’re just not sure most people know that, too, even though they should. So you’ll just keep on believing, and someday a new day will dawn when prejudice and misconceptions and confusion regarding gender and sexuality will be out of date, almost laughably so, if it weren’t for the trouble and suffering they’ve caused over the years.

I hope this make some sort of sense to you. I feel like I’m kind of all over the place, and I know what I want to say, but don’t quite know how to say it. What do you think?

[Joan Marie]

I hope this make some sort of sense to you. I feel like I’m kind of all over the place, and I know what I want to say, but don’t quite know how to say it. What do you think?

What a lovely reading! Thank you so much.

It is true that I have not always had so much luck being around people that shared my particular enthusiasms for life and have in the past been a bit cowed by this disinterest. But it is also true that I now feel a lot less hesitation and shyness about expressing myself. And I agree that kind of confidence is a masculine trait.

And I do believe that strength and loyalty and endurance are classic female traits. It's a pity that for so long we were all taught differently, even called "the weaker" sex. I'll give you a for instance of how that hasn't really changed. When Obama was president he had several women in very high positions in his cabinet and I read somewhere that "he surrounds himself with strong women." It makes it sound as if being a strong woman was such a rare thing. And also because you would never hear men spoken of that way. It is just assumed men are strong. It's patronising, (literally). Yeah, it's true, I'm ready for "post-feminism" where we don't even have to acknowledge it anymore, it's just a given, but unfortunately, we are a long long way from that.

I'm all for love and acceptance and appreciation of all ways gender is expressed. People are so magical and full of surprises, why would we ever want to discourage that?

Thank you again for such a nice reading.