Cult of Tarot Forum

Today's Theme:

Day 10. Day of Nymphs - Dec 29th
This card encourages us to connect to our playful side, our inner child and how best to cultivate this aspect of ourselves.

Do your best with this one.
These days it can be a real challenge, but it really is so important.

Well, this is how you know I'm not cheating on this exercise.
Who would ever choose the Emperor to connect to their playful, childlike side?

What to make of this.
hm.

No one in the Major Arcana is more grown-up than the Emperor.
But what is that scepter in his hand if not a grown-up's toy? And his fancy costume, isn't it just a wonderful "dress-up?"

And don't all children think they are The Emperor of the house?

The message that comes to me is to look around in my house, my life, and see all the "toys" and costumes I've amassed. How without realising it, I have fulfilled childhood dreams of the kind of life I wanted to have, the atmosphere I wanted to live in.

Also, where I may have lost those dreams along the way, and how I can, with the power of a grown-up adult, bring them into my life now.

The funniest thing just popped into my mind.

When I was a little kid, my favourite show was "Bewitched."
It was on TV a lot, in re-runs every day.

I always wanted to be Samantha, except without the stupid husband.
I never could figure out,even as a kid, what was wrong with that guy. His wife was a gorgeous witch and all he wanted her to be was an ordinary housewife. I did love how she constantly went behind his back and did her witchy things.

I kind of liked I Dream of Jeanie too but her "Master" was a real jerk, always stuffing her into her bottle and constantly scolding her and yelling her name angrily.

But I REALLY wanted to be Samantha. I used to pretend I was her and tried really hard to wiggle my nose like she did thinking that was the trick. But I really loved all her magic spells and incantations and her crazy-cool family.

Funny how I grew up (?) to get into Tarot, the occult and all these other witchy pastimes.

(I just watched some old Bewitched clips on YouTube, that show was really funny and wierdly holds up. There were so many great characters. I could spend all day in a Bewitched rabbit hole. Now that I think about it, isn't having a "magic phone" that I can call up almost anything I want at will, even old Bewitched reruns kind of a witchy dream come true?)

Page of Swords
My playful side is keeping an open mind and being excited about learning new things. And maybe pretending to be a cat. (Dude is wearing a lion skin like Hercules.) Even when I’m playing around, I like to stay sharp. Over the holiday, I’ve had fun hanging out with my son and enjoying his wordplay and clever and silly dialog.

Joan Marie wrote: ↑29 Dec 2021, 10:23 When I was a little kid, my favourite show was "Bewitched."
It was on TV a lot, in re-runs every day.

I always wanted to be Samantha, except without the stupid husband.

Me, too! All the same! I watched the reruns and wanted to be just like her. She was so practical yet magical, just what I wanted to be!

Day 10. Day of Nymphs - Dec 29th
This card encourages us to connect to our playful side, our inner child and how best to cultivate this aspect of ourselves.

Card: 7 of COINS

As I lay awake in the crepuscular dawn, wondering if I should go back to sleep or get up and start my day, I found myself thinking about yesterday's reading. The Huck Finn aspects made me consider how grumpy, persnickety, and adult-like I have grown in my old age. Funny that today's reading concerns exactly this.

The 7/COINS upright song, Time Passes Slowly, is a description of pastoral calm and bucolic pleasure. I thought this morning how, like Huck on his raft, I would spend hours outside as a kid. The benefits of nature are visceral and irreplaceable, and this card unmistakably admonishes me to get out in it more often. The card's reverse song, No Time to Think, is one of Dylan's most complex rhyme schemes. As such, it is intellectually intriguing but the music suffers as a result and the song fails by being too clever by half. Without outlets for play and the fortifying properties of being outdoors, one becomes so incarcerated in the mind that there is "no time to think" because, ironically, thinking is all there is.

Afterthought: As a boy, Betwitched was one of my favourite TV shows, too. I don't know that I wanted to "be" Samantha, but I envied and empathized with her (for the record, I still sometimes say "Well..." just like she did). Darren and the creepy Larry Tate represented the adult world no self-respecting kid wants anything to do with. As JM points out, today we have much more magic at our fingertips than we did in the '60s. What we often miss is not that we need to choose between nature and technology in an either/or, but rather that we need to moderate both, use both wisely, and not get so wrapped up in either one that we lose sight of our inner child.


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By the bye, Bewitched was based in large part on a delightful little film by Rene Clair called I Married a Witch.




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