Shadow work and healing

[Nemia]

I'm slowly continuing my shadow work. There is much to do but I do it slowly but surely. I continue to use walking meditations and tarot cards, usually with a focus card that I choose and put up on my shadow altar before I start walking.

The Emperor is an important focus card for me because I have a complex, mostly negative relationship with my biological father (dead for some years now) which was never really resolved. It feels silly for a woman of my age to still struggle with fears and negative messages from my father (which still sound true to me) and I've gone through a number of cycles with this but from time to time it returns, especially if triggered. I have also had some dreams about my father where I we actually discovered warmth and kindness towards each other - something we never had when he was alive.

So when it's my shadow that is connected to this relationship with my father, I focus on the Emperor before I go out to walk and let the thoughts come up. And when I come back, I flank the Emperor with one or two cards that comment on my insights concerning this work, a positive counterbalance, something healing. I leave this ensemble on my altar for some days.

Right now, I'm using the Stretch Tarot for this healing work. The collage use of old materials has a dream-like quality and some of the images remind me of the old boxes of family photographs that my grandmothers had.

All my "shadow topics" are connected to the deep past and right now the Stretch feels the right deck for it.

And some things are really a bit weird. The Emperor in the Stretch Tarot has a stag's head with huge antlers. And when my father lost his patience with us, one of the names he called us was "du Hirsch!" I've never heard anyone else use Hirsch (stag) as insult, stags are such great animals, but it seems that in the South of Germany, idiots are called Hirsch... anyway when I look at that stag headed Napoleon, I smile and that's great.

There are little insights from this work up to now, no real breakthroughs, but the tarot has really helped me. I'm building a kind of ritual which feels good. And I never leave a card that symbolizes a shadow unanswered. I always add a healing card.

[Joan Marie]

When my mother was angry with us she called us "Dumb Bunnies." Try unpacking that one. Dumb sure isn't nice, but Bunnies are cute, right?. What did it mean?

Anyway, you mention the Emperor and I just had to share something from a post I made earlier just today in an interview with dodalisque about hypnotism and working with the unconscious. He mentioned the Emperor specifically:

We are being constantly bombarded by millions of sensations and the conscious mind is a kind of filter that reduces those sensations to a manageable level and organises them into familiar patterns. The conscious mind, which I always associate with the Emperor (IV) card, is our protector. We would drown in a torrent of phenomena without it. But the Emperor, especially as we get older, tends to do his job too well. The patterns of our life gradually become more manageable, more familiar, more fixed. We get "set in our ways." In hypnotherapy this is known as someone's "conscious set." At this point we need to find a way to trick our way past the Emperor if we are ever to make positive changes to our life.

I'm not sure exactly how it fits with your relationship to the Emperor that you talk about here. But I thought since it seemed to be in a similar vein and also how he came up twice today in pretty interesting ways, I thought I'd throw it in for consideration.

[katrinka]

The Emperor is an important focus card for me because I have a complex, mostly negative relationship with my biological father (dead for some years now) which was never really resolved. It feels silly for a woman of my age to still struggle with fears and negative messages from my father (which still sound true to me) and I've gone through a number of cycles with this but from time to time it returns, especially if triggered. I have also had some dreams about my father where I we actually discovered warmth and kindness towards each other - something we never had when he was alive.

Just jumping in to say that it's perfectly normal to feel more than one way about a person you know well, and I don't think anybody ever gets the parental stuff completely fixed. My adoptive dad was a nice guy who provided for us well and took us to do fun things. He was always coming up with fun stuff for us kids. He killed Nazis in WWII and had a box of swastika armbands to prove it. I PROFOUNDLY appreciate that. But there was also more than one occasion that I came home and found a dog missing, only to be told that it "got loose" and "tried to bite somebody" (these were gentle dogs that probably wouldn't have bitten even if you put them in a corner and poked them with stick), so he "gave it to some people in the country", and no, he wouldn't tell me who. Even as a child I knew he was lying. He worked at his father's business, and after he passed when I was 17, Grandpa used to pressure me to "get rid of those mongrels and just keep the little Dachshund". I also learned at that stage of the game that our local pound, at that time, "euthanized" dogs by putting them in a cage and lowering it into the river with a crane. What was it, Dad, did you take them to the pound, or dump them someplace where they suffered and died?

I love my dad. I also hate his guts for that. Intensely, all these years later. I have no expectations of resolving that.

There was a girl I went to school with whose family owned a bar. Sometimes we'd stop there - my dad would get a beer, just one or two, he wasn't a drunk - and I'd get a soda. For some reason I was not allowed to accept money to play the jukebox from this girl's father. I found out later that he was a pedo and raping the two older daughters. CPS was not around in those days - everybody knew, but it was "their business." Their mother finally loaded all four girls into the car and left ("before he could get the two younger ones") but it took some "liquid courage" to do that. They ended up in a horrible wreck, the mother was killed and one of the older girls got her face permanently disfigured. After all of that, in the father's last years, his daughters would push him around town in a wheelchair.

I'd have pushed him into the river. But it's easy to say that from the outside looking in. It's more complex than that when you're in the middle of it.

So when it's my shadow that is connected to this relationship with my father, I focus on the Emperor before I go out to walk and let the thoughts come up. And when I come back, I flank the Emperor with one or two cards that comment on my insights concerning this work, a positive counterbalance, something healing. I leave this ensemble on my altar for some days.

That's a good way of doing it. As for me, I don't use Tarot or my altar for this. My job is extremely tedious and repetitive, and I use the time to let thoughts arise, acknowledge them, and hopefully eventually burn themselves out. (That hasn't happened yet, though.) As long as we're doing *something* and not just smashing things down, we don't become neurotic. But I might try your way. I already have a little area with the ashes and photo of a truly great dog of mine who succumbed to cancer a few years ago. And I'm tired of thinking about this stuff when I'm dealing with an endless stream of short range radar units.

A dog shrine would suit me. In Chinese astrology, I'm a double dog.

And some things are really a bit weird. The Emperor in the Stretch Tarot has a stag's head with huge antlers. And when my father lost his patience with us, one of the names he called us was "du Hirsch!" I've never heard anyone else use Hirsch (stag) as insult, stags are such great animals, but it seems that in the South of Germany, idiots are called Hirsch... anyway when I look at that stag headed Napoleon, I smile and that's great.

Al Hirschfeld's name would translate to a whole field of Hirsch. It makes one wonder about name origins!

[Joan Marie]

Right now, I'm using the Stretch Tarot for this healing work. The collage use of old materials has a dream-like quality and some of the images remind me of the old boxes of family photographs that my grandmothers had.

I find the the Stretch Tarot is the one I turn to when dealing with nostalgia and with themes from the family life of my childhood.

My family kept their old photos loose in boxes too. There was also an old suitcase full of the really old photos. On occasions when we'd go through them as a group, we would each just take a handful.

So, yeah, maybe that's what draws me to the Stretch Tarot for those times too. It's beautiful how he captured that feeling for us.

There are little insights from this work up to now, no real breakthroughs, but the tarot has really helped me. I'm building a kind of ritual which feels good. And I never leave a card that symbolizes a shadow unanswered. I always add a healing card.

I know I've said it before, but I so love the pictures you post from your alter. I always put my cards back immediately after I use them. It never occurs to me to keep them out like that, to use them the way you do. Your using a card as a healing card is such a beautiful idea and I can really see how that is healing.

[Nemia]

I'm working my way through a book right now which is (up to where I read it at least) is quite interesting. Rebecca Hintze, Healing your family history. The author communicates some assumptions that disturb me: she assumes that the ideal family is heterosexual and lives an American lifestyle - she assumes that everybody is Christian ("even if you haven't been in church for years..." - there are people who NEVER go to church but to a temple or mosque) - and she's writing in a very upbeat style - but I can overlook these traits because she's just different from me and that's okay. Can I trust her to ask me difficult questions about my family background? I guess I can. I'm working through her book, really taking the time to understand what she's asking me.

I did already "deviate" from the standards my birth family set in many ways, encouraged by my husband who comes from a much more relaxed, accepting, non-judgmental family who never got into each other's veins the way my family does. My mother and aunt have often told me that my children "simply HAVE to do x or y", and I let them make their own choices nevertheless. In many ways, not in all, I set my children free (they still have to navigate their own relationships with my mother and aunt, the loving-but-demanding women who raised me and always gave them lots of love, too).

My children have also helped me break free from the assumptions of my own youth. I don't expect miracles from the book but I'll be reading it seriously, and I love the workbook aspect of it. It's a bit like Tarot for Your Self and I loved that, too. I might even develop some spreads from the questions in this book.

When I'm through with it, I'll be able to tell you whether I recommend it or not.

I have the feeling that working in parallel on getting to know the Spirit Keeper Tarot and this book will be very good for me. There are things to keep and acknowledge, and others to improve or even discard.

I always feel a bit ridiculous that at my advanced age, there are still things I struggle with, especially since the educational work on my children is done already - isn't like eating healthy to prepare for a pregnancy that will never come?

But I feel that there are still things unanswered, and they're pushed down somewhere in the shadow parts of my soul, but they could help me free energy if dusted off and taken out into the light. And all of these things developed before I was an adult.

I'll keep my two "childhood related" tarot decks, the Silhouette and the Stretch, on my desk as I work through the book. Just wanted to share.

[Diana]

I always feel a bit ridiculous that at my advanced age, there are still things I struggle with, especially since the educational work on my children is done already - isn't like eating healthy to prepare for a pregnancy that will never come?

Oh Nemia. Whatever age we have, we still have in us all the other stages we went through. We have our "tantrums" like toddlers, we moan when we have too much "homework", we rebel like adolescents (you should see me doing the pogo at punk concerts - and I'm also getting to an advanced age). When I'm very sad and life just seems too hard to cope with, I often just long for my mother to rock me in her gentle arms like a baby. And I'll be 60 years old this year.

Our shadows will continue to pester us until we resolve them, or rather dissolve them. That is part of their function. We must be grateful for them because they are teachers. A few years ago, I went through great turmoil due to stuff going on around me that affected me deeply and brought up all sorts of things that were hidden and which had never been dealt with properly, old inner stuff that hadn't been resolved. Things looked so dark. But my god, did I learn some deep lessons. I'm still working on them but now when remnants of this experience show their face, I smile at them and say "oh, so I've still got a bit further to go to heal. If you weren't there to tell me, I would not have the opportunity to evolve." I shed a few tears and then try and observe what's going on and what still needs to be worked on.

[Nemia]

I hope you feel that the little "thank you" was especially heartfelt!

[Diana]

I hope you feel that the little "thank you" was especially heartfelt!

Well, I feel it now! (insert heart emoticon here.)