Tarot Thrones | The Court Card Blog

Tag: Beltane

  • Beltane Spread 2014

    The Beltane cards from The Wildwood TarotClick on link to visit their Beltane post on facebook
    but don’t go yet! Stay and read m’spread!

    Beltane is one of the ancient festivals that has managed to hang on in modern consciousness via a variety of little traditions – In Scotland, for example,  girls will have been nipping outside to wash their faces in the morning dew.  I did that this morning, but it was mainly rain, I think!

    This is a big Fire Festival and also associated with The Great Rite – fire and creation – fabulous combination!!

    So I dreamed up a little spread that you might find useful:

    The Beltane Spread

    First of all, split your deck into the three Arcana:  Majors, Minors, Courts.

    Card 1: (drawn from the Major Arcana) – Where am I burning to create?

    Card 2:  (drawn from the Court Arcana) – Whose energies will help me make this creation possible?

    Card 3: (drawn from the Minor Arcana) – How I make it happen?

    Here are my cards, to help you along!

    The Moon – Princess of Wands – 4 Pentacles
    Card 1:  Where am I burning to create? 
    The Moon here tells me that I burn to create something very imaginative, something that makes people think of familiar things in a new light.  But which ideas have got legs and which are destined to remain in my imagination?!
    Card 2:  Who helps me?
    The Princess of Wands offers me her mindset:  Worry less and just bloody well get started on something – make a beginning, make an ACTIVE and PASSIONATE beginning and offer up a light in the darkness.
    Card 3:  How do I make it happen?
    The 4 of Pentacles – golly, what a tricky card to receive in this position!  I associate the 4 of Pentacles with focussing (wrongly) on money, but in the image on the Norse, we see someone who is making all necessary preparations for a journey – directing the hoisting the sail.   But the cargo is still on the pier!  I think that this card is warning me against placing my focus on ‘getting organised to go’.  Procrastination is my deadly enemy!  I will be drawn to making sure that I have EVERYTHING I need to get going…. and not actually GO 😀
    How does this spread work for you today?  I’d love to hear your own cards and input into my own reading too!

  • Tarot Blog Hop | Beltane

    You say Tomato, I say Tomato
    You spell it Judgment, I spell it Judgement
    Does it matter?! 🙂

    Welcome, welcome, welcome!

    If you’re here because you have hopped upon the Tarot Blog Hop and alighted here from either Stella or Cher’s place – I’m really pleased to see you!  If you are a regular reader and are wondering about this Tarot Blog Hop thing,  here’s the facebook details so that YOU can take part in the next one! And, of course, I’m really pleased to see YOU here again too!

    The question set to us by the Beltane Tarot blog wrangler, Arwen Lynch, is:  What traditions are important to you in how you read Tarot?

    Initially, I just stared at the question blankly:  I didn’t have any traditions, did I?  But, of course, I DO have traditions

    Here are some of mine:

    1  Rider Waite Smith tradition – yes, I like to use decks based on the iconography of the RWS.  I much prefer my Strength to be Major VIII and my Justice to be up there as Major XI.

    2  Golden Dawn attributes – everything from astrological associations, right through to the Opening Of The Key Spread, this is a whole smorgasbord of traditions that I adore dipping into with the same delight as I might  raid your jewellery box.  Or your biscuit barrel.

    3  Tarot bags and reading cloths – I like to keep my decks in bags and I like to use a reading cloth.  There’s maybe a bit of the gypsy fortune-teller in me after all – or maybe even a novice Golden Dawner – they liked a bit of shwbiz with their Tarot.  Well, what do you expect from a group comprising of theatre designers, poets and playwrights?!

    4  Getting in the Zone – I do this lots of different ways.  Maybe with a scented candle or incense.  Maybe with some unobtrusive music playing gently in the background…..ritual washing, ritual clothing. I even have ritual SOAP!  I don’t do this ALL the time, you understand, but whenever I need to bring my head away from Facebook and Syria and Bombings and Budget Cuts, I like to go through some of these little routines to get into the Zone for reading.

    And they don’t do any harm, do they?

    Or do they?

    Maybe they encourage me to become set in my ways?

    I have now pulled out some decks where Strength is in her original setting of Major XI and Justice sits at VIII and I promise *gives girl guide salute* to use these until I am comfortable with either card in either position.

    Do I really need to stick to the Golden Dawn’s impositions on the Tarot? Will the world fall down if I start to use an older deck, one that doesn’t easily fit the constraints of the GD’s systems?

    What happens if I start thinking of Wands as Air, not Fire?

    Or Knights as Fire and not Air?!

    *looks around – the world still spins on its axis!*

    Let’s challenge ourselves and our beliefs – welcome the new and embrace it if it is a truth to YOU.    There is no one ‘right’ way to work with the Tarot – so you use it for fortune-telling, someone else uses it as a writer’s prompt, yet another uses it as a tool for self-development, someone else uses it to build fabulous card towers!

    Tarot is a mongrel puppy – hailing from Europe and North Africa. At every turn it has been modified and changed – let’s not ruin that fluidity of growth by letting our traditions solidify into dogma.

    Of course, the whole shebang needs to end with a spot of theatre……. altogether now! ‘Traaaaaadition!!!!!!’

    Now, shoulder-shimmmy your way to the next blog and, if you’ve a mind to do a bit of work with the Court Cards, come back and see us here!

    Previous blog – Stella  at US Games Ltd 
    Next blog – Cher at Tarot by Cher

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