Day 1: 15.3. Cybele and Attis Festival
Today is the first day of week-long celebration of Cybele, the great Mother Goddess, and her youthful consort Attis. Today's card talks about love and eros in your life, and how you can celebrate them.
The first day of the most wonderful celebration of the incoming new astrological year, the first time I drew a card from my wonderful new Ostara Tarot - and it's the Wheel of Fortune! The Three Fates whom I loved already as a child.
Change, wheels, ups and downs ... I have certainly have had more than enough of them. But when I look at the topic of the day, Cybele and Attis, great love and eros, then I have to be grateful for the love in my life that has been unchanged and life-giving.
What an overwhelmingly meaningful card! I'll have to think about it a bit, take pictures and then go on. I'm also a bit overwhelmed being here again in this wonderful place.
Day 2: 16.3. Gahambar Hamaspathmaidyem
Today begins the Zoroastrian Holiday Gahambar Hamaspathmaidyem, celebrating the life cycle of human beings, from creation to death, and the presence of angels. Today's card connects you to your own path in life and the angel/power/energy that protects you.
The Five of Cups tells me that I'm too worried, too pessmistic still to connect deeply with my angel. I have been trying on and off to find this connection but keep thinking of the past, of losses, failures and wrong decisions, thus creating blockages for myself.
Day 3: 17.3. Liberalia
On this day, the Romans celebrated the Liberalia festival of freedom. Today's card tells you how you use your freedom and encourages you to be really free of bonds that limit your personality, talents and longings. What are the bonds you have to break to be free?
Seven of Coins. Now that's funny. The Ostara has a unique interpretation of this card, not based on RWS, how refreshing and wonderful is that? the keywords are: simple pleasures - happiness - no drastic change - comfort. And that's my situation right now, and I have to find my freedom in this setting. I'm not actually in quarantine but as freelance lecturer, I have no work - everything was canceled because of the Corona. So I'm at home, in the home I love, and first of all, I re-organized my tarot collection, tarot books and studio. I also started to paint and draw again. Nobody knows how long the isolation will last (in my country, there is more or less a lock-down on everything, and I'm totally okay with that), and I'll have time to bring our home back to the standards I used to have before depression hit me hard.
This card even illustrates how everybody feels right now. We retreat into our houses, with our families - but I personally, instead of feeling disconnected, I feel connected. I keep closer contact to others than usual. We're all in this together.
So how is that connected to the Liberalia and the celebration of freedom? My freedom is right now freedom from my usually too-tight schedule. I have thought for years to re-orient professionally and have done so, but only by cutting out what was too hard for me. I should now use this break to re-define my goals in life. I have three half-written books. I draw a lot and people seem to like it. I signed up to design a card for the TTM tarot (We are One Tarot) after I dropped out of the wonderful Button Soup. (I bought material, made sketches but couldn't do it - but since then, didn't stop drawing and now feel better able again).
Tarot and art, home and family, all this is central to me and my freedom will come when I leave the depressive valley behind me. No drastic changes are necessary - just to feel secure again.
These cards are wonderful. Up to now, each card was spot on. As though the deck knew me.
Day 4: 18.3. Ugadi
The Hindu holiday Ugadi is celebrated in some parts of India as New Year. Its traditional food represents the different tastes: sour, salty, sweet and bitter. Today's card shows you how to balance the flavours in your life, to be able to enjoy it to the fullest in the months ahead. How can make you make your life more flavourful and enjoyable?
The Ace of Swords. A unique image - the mouse is the survivor where heroes fell. And how did it survive? By its intelligence, its brains, not its strength or ability to frighten others.
I think about this mouse, about intelligence, about the role my own intelligence plays in my life. When I was younger, the head was more important to me than heart or hands, but after I had children, heart and hands took over. I became a (mildly) successful academic lecturer but never fulfilled my early promises. So many ideas that went nowhere, a whole drawer full of articles and two books, and I don't publish. I have long lost the drive or ambition to do so, I value myself for what I know and do, and have left behind the need to get more grades or otherwise outside attention.
Maybe I have to try and re-balance my life again a bit, I do feel the need for it. Heart and hands are important and make me happy, they give lots of flavour to my life, movement, interest and happiness. But my poor head always gets the short side of the stick.
It's weird, my mind always returns to the Corona situation. Let's hope everybody survives. To hear about so much death is heart breaking and daunting. May humanity find a way to win victory. Again, intelligence will bring victory over death.
Day 5: 19.3. Eostre/Ostara
The Germanic goddess of spring is celebrated with eggs, rabbits and the ringing of bells. Today's card reminds you of a bell ringing in your life, a bell that calls you forward and that you didn't heed or overhear until now. Understand what this bell wants to tell you, and in the coming month, try to make its voice heard.
Eight of Wands
A beautiful peregrine hawk - sees everything, fears nothing. Speed of movement. The 7 coins told me to stay put and enjoy what I have. And the 8 Wands tells me not to fear change. To choose according to the facts on the ground what I do.
Day 6: 20.3. Spring/Vernal Equinox
This is the day of balance between day and night, when new things grow and push through the earth, when Kore/Persephone returns from the underworld and brings flowers with her. Today's card calls you to contemplate on creativity and renewal in your own life. Where do you resist change, and where should you embrace it?
Today is the halfway point of the reading. It's also the day of the equinox, a very special day for people like me who watch the skies and feel connected with the celestial bodies daily. For me, it's important to know the moon phase, the moon's position and the positions of the main constellations any given moment. I still love to stand in the compass position that empowers me so much - face to the North, arms stretched out East and West. By now, I also try to re-construct in my head the stars even though I don't see them. Facing North, I know that I'm facing the pole star - so where is the Big Dipper? where is it pointing to? where are Arcturus and Spica? Once I know that, I can reconstruct the whole ecliptic. And that makes me really happy. It's a wonderful exercise for me.
My card for today: the Two of Coins.
Again, the theme of change and balance. All my cards until now circle around this motif, and the Two of Coins is a nice illustration of what I'm trying to do. An alchemist trying to keep his vessels in balance, in a moving ship - and if that image isn't crazy enough, there are little sparrows (!!! what are they doing at sea???) trying to get his attention.
First of all full points for the mask the alchemist is wearing - in Corona times, that's as it should be. I love being at sea, love to look at the sea and carry a ship name (given to me by two sea-crazy parents who had their honeymoon on that ship). Yes, I try to keep the different vessels of my life in balance and will continue to do so. But I'll also continue to give attention to the sparrows, too.
Persephone climbing up towards the light again - her pomegranate seed within her and flowers blossoming around her - the growth of light - all this is wonderful symbolism, too. As spring child, I appreciate spring very much (although I also have a deep love for autumn, who hasn't???). Within me, fear and hope are struggling. In these insecure times, we're all connected and feel it.
With the Two of Coins, I could actually conclude my reading because I have a clear message. But nevertheless, I'm curious to see what tomorrow will bring. I'll continue to draw, write, re-arrange the house and enjoy the progress I made. In my own little world, aware of the big world around me.
Health to the world, may this nightmare soon be over.
Day 7: 21.3. Harmony Day
In Australia, Harmony Day celebrates inclusiveness and acceptance. Today's card asks you to probe your own hidden prejudices, and what you can do to become more open and tolerant. Challenge yourself to inform yourself and get to know cultures, topics or people that until held irrational negative associations for you. How can you become an ambassador for inclusiveness and harmony in your society and immediate surrounding?
Queen of Wands
I try my best to be such an ambassador, it's really one of my heart's desires to see Racism, Anti-Semitism, discrimination against Autists, people with handicaps of all kinds eradicated from this world. I'm a fighter against prejudice in my online and RL activities. I think this is about the only realm of my life where i resemble the Queen of Wands. In all other things, I'm relaxed and quite laid-back, but this is the one thing that gets my back up. Unfairness of all kind. I always react when somebody makes a "funny" remark about gays, poc, Jews, women or any other group of Others. In my teaching, I try to make visible how traditional Western culture has 1. marginalized groups and 2. appropriated their cultural heritage. Other dominant cultures have done the same when they had the chance (the Romans are just one example) but as member of Western culture, as German, I feel passionately that it's my duty to fight against this thinking wherever I can in my own culture. I have cut off friendships because of such issues. It's the one thing I can't forgive.
Day 8: 22.3. Minerva Day
Minerva/Athene is the Roman/Greek goddess of intelligence, rational thinking and objectivity. Today's card asks you how you use your intelligence and talents, whether you give them the proper place or whether you feel you have undeveloped potential. What can you do to make the best use of your mental powers and intelligence?
It is the eighth day of this reading ritual that I love. And my second court card: the King of Coins. In the booklet, he doesn't get much love - his materialistic aspect is emphasized, so he turns into a figure of greed, a control freak and hoarder.
I'm a Taurus and see the Coins characters in a kinder light. (I ask myself why a nature-centered deck chose Coins, a man-made artifact that embodies exchange value and is associated with greed and possessiveness - why not Stones or Disks or Seeds?) This King is without a doubt an aspect of myself, and I laughed when I saw him. That's me, decorating my antlers with my precioussssss. I have spent all my days of Corona-stay-at-home with sorting through possessions, and I am and I was very happy doing so.
Minerva is the goddess of cool intelligence, and I need her. She is also the goddess of weaving and textile work, and I feel closer to her than for a long time. I have re-arranged my art materials, my yarns and wools and hooks and needles. I also have the time to brood over my half-finished or three-quarter finished book projects.
I have never made use of my potential properly. Sometimes it feels like a waste, but then again, I'm very content and happy with the place Minerva/Athena has in my life. She is important, intelligence and rational thinking are important, feminine traditions of textile work are important, home and house are important.
Today, we learn what is most important. In the end, human relationships are important. Love is the highest value of them all. If I had to make Paris' choice, I'd pick Aphrodite, too. Love would get the crown.
And looking at the card, I re-interpret it in my way. The crown that I decorate with treasures is my heart, hung with the love I feel for the people who are the real crown of my life.
Oh dear, and crown is Corona. This virus is preying on my mind!
Day 9: 23.3. Hilaria
The Roman holiday of Hilaria celebrates laughter and fun. Today's card throws a light on the place light-hearted fun and humour have in your life. Do you laugh often enough? The card challenges you to find things that make you laugh and forget your worries, and do them regularly from now on.
Six of Coins
What a lovely image, and how nice to see a mermaid not only in the Cups suit! A concept of the elements that's a bit more flexible - and the Six of Coins has the Moon in Taurus - very harmonious - I really love this deck! This year, unfortunately, there isn't much room for hilarity. I have lost my work and have no income while my children and husband work in essential industries and endanger their health every day. I'm far from my mother and aunts and uncles and siblings and cousins, all of them I love wholeheartedly, and I'm a worry wart in normal times already.
But yes, there is quiet joy. I keep in closer touch with everybody, and being for the first time in my life a real housewife with nothing else to do but buzz around in the house and cleaning and re-arranging everything... is actually quite satisfying and peaceful. I do everything at home to make life easier for them, and I feel like giving, giving, giving. I can't give to anyone but my own family now but that's what I do.
I always interpret this card as flow of giving and receiving - if the exchange is skewed in either way, we don't feel comfortable with the situation. I give time, attention, food, cleanliness and a feeling of pampering, my husband gives his earning power and total dedication to his work. We both give each other unconditional love. My relationship with my children has become closer again after for years, they were independent and took us parents for granted (which is at it should be - we raise children to live without us, after our time). But now we all give each other care, time, attention.
The outside pressure of fear and insecurity acts to alleviate inside pressures. I still suffer from panic attacks (and now have a new reason for them) and can't shake off my ages-old depression but I also feel more at home in my life.
The whole coins suit is for me not about material stuff but about the symbolic value of this stuff.
My source of happiness right now is this harmonious flow. I also have to believe that we'll find a way for me to earn money. The coins in the card seem to be falling into the water from above. Let's hope that's a good sign.
Day 10: 24.3. Earth Hour
On this international day, people stop to think about the environment and the use we make of it. Are you doing all you can to keep and preserve this earth? Today's card asks you to find your own connection to the Earth you live on, whether through environment awareness or the voice of your spiritual tradition. How are you connected to this Earth and how can you honour it?
Five of Wands
I would have expected a more harmonious card for my connection to the Earth! I'm a proud Earth sign after all and have always felt best the closer I am to earth. But it's true, like everybody else I'm a snake with two heads - I love the earth and feel connected to ecological questions, I'm a vegetarian-very-nearly vegan, and I don't drive - but on the other hand, I use nature's resources like everybody else. We all stand on the shoulders of a devastation of nature. Very sad if you think about it.
I can and must do more. And let's start with giving our garden some tlc today!
Day 11: 25.3. Palm Sunday
The Christian holiday of Palm Sunday celebrates peace, hope and new beginnings. Today's card shows you where you have to make peace - with memories, people in your life or other painful matters. Let them go and don't beat yourself up any more.
Nine of Swords
Yes, painful matters, at times like these inevitable. Going through the accumulated family stuff while bringing our house into shape, in those long lonely hours when I'm alone at home (everybody else is working in essential industries or functions), looking at the chaos that has been going on under the surface, I can't halp thinking about hidden negative memories, feelings of guilt and lots of fear. I thought I don't have clutter but I was wrong. Well, holding on to clutter is no sin and I shouldn't beat myself up about it.
I also ask myself how I have fulfilled my most important function in life, as wife and mother, while dealing with the possessions of my adult children who have left home. I always tend to see my negative traits more drastically than the positive ones.
This card reflects my feelings perfectly. I sleep badly at night. I feel attacked from many directions - the virus danger, the price of social isolation especially for my mother and my children (my husband and I get along fine just the two of us), fears because I'm unemployed now and don't get any money from the state (freelancer), difficult memories, feelings of guilt, and long-lurking feeling of being overstretched. Did I put my job first? was it worth it? what am I without my job? Theoretically, the institutions where I teach will return to activity after the virus wave but it's hard to imagine. I teach mostly older students, will they come? how will they get through this tsunami that has just arrived?
I have tough questions and this card doesn't give me a positive spin on it. Yes, the reading tells me to find the positive angle, but my negative feelings are too strong right now. And I have to acknowledge the negative before finding the positive. I hope tomorrow won't close this reading with another gloomy card. Today, i'm sad and fearful although until now, the outside pressure helped me deal with my inside pressures of sadness, panic and alienation. I dealt quite well with everything. But I don't want to suppress this dark side of the emotional bag.
Maybe this card tells me that it's time for a shadow reading......
Day 12: 26.3. Preparation of the Temple of Luna
On the final day of our 12 days, we prepare for the annual Roman festival in the Temple of Luna, the Moon goddess. Today's card tells you how you can become more attuned to the intuitive, quiet side within you, how you can make your spiritual work more meaningful, and how to integrate your shadow into your life. It's the message of the Moon for the spring days ahead while the influence of the Sun is rising.
The Hermit
Although this it the third time I've been doing this reading, I forgot that there is a gentle nub in the direction of shadow work. Yes, there are some unprocessed cobwebs covering huge black old holes. I know it.
I don't really want to close this reading, the routine and the group feeling have really helped me. I'm still clearing up the house, tackling old boxes of toys and photographs, even found letters that I had forgotten, that showed some experiences in my life in a different light from what I remembered them.
So there is the Hermit, yes, I'm alone again, no more vernal equinox readings, I'm being pushed out of this beloved routine again, I get it. I'm alone all day, and at night, my essential-worker-husband and essential-worker-daughter go to sleep early and sleep deeply and exhaustedly. I do speak with people but the feeling is no longer the light hearted spirit of the early days. Now there's a serious lock-down in place where I live, we each of us feel like on a lonely island. I know that for me, it's not so difficult (in spite of my unemployment and lack of unemployment aid) because I don't have small children. I'm also an introvert and can get along without others but I think about the many, many, for whom this situation is so much harder than for me.
I can't believe how precise this deck is, there was not one dud in the 12 days. This card tells me to use this time out from normal life. Not only get our house into shape again but also think seriously what I want to do work-wise. Getting to grips with some painful chapters in my past by accpeting them and letting them go - if necessary using a shadow reading to put them to rest in a reconciling and honest fashion. But the main thing, and the Hermit knows this better than anyone, is climbing up slowly but surely.
