Divination: Tarot: Suit of Swords

 Dear Reader,

The suit of swords is the one that is most frequently misrepresented in popular culture and media. People assume that the swords mean death, disaster, and destruction because they are weapons of war. While this suit has a higher likelihood of having those connotations, they can also speak of courage, cunning, and overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The trick in reading the card 'right' is understanding it's placement in a pattern (i.e. the Celtic Cross) and it's relationship to the surrounding cards and the querent.

There is some disagreement as to what Elemental force this suit is aligned with. Many people say it is the Element of Air. Others say it is the Element of Fire. I personally was trained to associate it with the Element of Fire on the basis that swords are formed out of metal worked in fire. There are ancient kennings in various languages describing the wounds created by a sword as fiery. As such, it seems most logical to me that the suit of swords are associated with fire.

Divination: Tarot - The Minor Arcana & The Suits

 Dear Reader,

After some careful consideration, I looked at my pile of tarot decks and decided that we were going to take a stroll through the minor arcana and the suits. I know that there is a lot you can pull out of these cards. Simply using the minor arcana alone (or a regular pack of playing cards) you can do a full tarot reading.

Much of what I am going to present here is going to be my basic interpretation of these cards and how they relate to each other. There are some cards that have ties to the Major Arcana, we will be exploring those too. Where most of my reading is intuitive, I do have a standard set of meanings that I work with as a base for my intuitive style. And they're a bit different from the 'standard' meanings as defined in the Rider-Waite decks.

Next week, we will start with the suits. You can condense an entire deck of tarot cards down to a single suit to do a reading. It has it's challenges but it is possible to be done. That, however, is something we are going to discuss later in the series of posts (I'll be going over different tarot spreads and how to draw information effectively from them. It'll be in a series of posts after we wander along through the suits and the minor arcana. Good things to look forward to!)

My First Question that the Opera Omnia couldn't answer.

 Dear Reader,

I have spent months reading, researching, and attempting to make sense of a single line from the teaching in the Clear Recital : The Three Loves. I have discovered this teaching is missing from the Gospel of Our Mother God. I have found that it is present in all other versions of the Clear Recital, including the one I was head editor on. At the time I was working on the Children of Déa version of the Clear Recital, I was focused on improving language and format. I and my team did our very best to include as much of our research into the book. 

One can imagine my surprise as I was reading the CDV's version of the Three Loves and I came upon this line.

And rightfully it has been said that your soul shall be placed in the balance against a feather, and if the beam tip even by a fraction are you condemned. CDV: The Three Loves, Verse46; Page 104, lines 4-8

I immediately sought my other copies of the Clear Recital. Word for word, this line was present in each copy except for the Gospel of Our Mother God. I then turned to the Opera Omina for some form of exposition upon this line. I found nothing to help me interpret it in either volume. This was a large disappointment. I then began looking through the digital library of the Society for Filianic Studies via the Wayback Machine internet archive. I found a great deal of discourse about politics but little about theology and nothing to clarify this line.

Thus I was forced to sit in contemplation and try to puzzle out the answer to the questions that arose from this line. These questions are:

1. Who places our souls in this scale?
   
2. Which direction of the beam tipping are we facing damnation?
   
3. Who judges this scale?
   
4. How does this condemnation/damnation effect our eternal rescue from Khear by the Daughter?

I have thought long and hard on these questions. I chose the word damnation in this post because, to be honest it is a very functional synonym for what is expressed here. I have no answers for these questions. I have prayed over this line for many days and all I find is a sloppy connection to ancient Egyptian mythos and the weighing of the heart. The feather belongs to Maat, the goddess of justice. Anubis, the god of the dead presided over the weighing. And Thoth recorded the results. If the heart was filled with good the scales would be equal. If the heart was filled with evil, the scale would tip towards the heart. And the soul would be given to Ammut, who would eat them, for they were not the blessed (good) dead who would go to live with Osiris in paradise.

This requires deeper thought and raises more questions. Like why did the foremothers of the faith choose this connection when there had already been an established system for what happens when you die.

The Opera Omnia wasn't as helpful as I had hoped.

 Dear Reader,

I chewed my way through the Opera Omina (both books) and came up with more questions than answers. Isn't it maddening when you sit down with source material and not only can't you find explanation of material in the other primary work you're reading but a laundry list of other questions pop up. In comparing the Opera Omnia to the Clear Recital (ECE edition because it is the most popular), I couldn't find clarification of a number of things that bothered me about some passages in the Clear Recital. I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that Filianism/Déanism have an incomplete theology. Honestly, the deeper I read into it, the more I find unclear where it is said to be simple.

I know some find satisfaction in the fact that there are deeper mysteries that can not be fully comprehended. But when a statement is presented as fact and there is no follow up or exposition to explain that fact, I'm left wondering what is missing, where do I find it, and how do I present it to prevent the confusion of others. I can't help a measure of grief that much of the sacred knowledge is hidden or lost. We have a portion of the wisdom of the elders and this grieves me, for I see a time coming that we shall have need of it.

Incapacitating Migraines can be Odd.

 Dear Reader,

I now understand the theory that Hildegarde von Bingen had ocular migraines and this was the root of her visions. I have ocular migraines. The aura symptoms for me include pain, food cravings, and my vision going blurry/foggy in my right eye. I usually have to take my medicine and go lay down in a dark room for a few hours. This time the migraine lasted three days. With my eyes closed, I saw colors and wavy lines. It was odd.

When sleep finally came, my dreams were vivid in color and realistic in action. Alas, they were nightmares of past trauma. As I woke up, on day two of this fun-fest, I heard a quiet voice telling me that I am strong enough to thole this as I have other pains. Thole is an interesting word from Anglo-Saxon. It means the ability to endure suffering and continue to act. (I am slowly learning Anglo-Saxon. I don't think I'll ever have a comprehensive grasp on it. I started too late and teachers are few.)

I don't know if Hildegarde's visions came during her migraines. I know that mine do not. But sometimes, the symptoms leading up to the migraine include elements that I had seen before in dreams. It's usually right before a pretty bad migraine. Precognitive dreams are funky. You see something happen and you see yourself acting, but it is all as if it is a movie, you have no control over anything despite the hyper realism of the dream. The hyper realism thing usually happens in lucid dreams, which you can control stuff and do things like fly.

My visions hit me like my flashbacks to trauma do. I get a cold sensation in the pit of my gut and suddenly I'm not here anymore. Flashbacks, I can't act or say anything. I can only relive the trauma in full color and all the sensory awfulness that happened. Visions, I can act and I can speak. They last a minute at most, though they were longer when I was younger and not on psychoactive medication to control my flashbacks. But, given Einstein's law of General Relativity, time is relative to the frame of action. Thus that one minute can feel like an hour. And a lot can happen in an hour. 

Searching for answers.

Dear Reader,

I have decided to re-read the Opera Omnia in an effort to answer some questions that have come up in my regular reading of the Clear Recital. I've cross referenced all the editions I have on a number of quotes, there are some variations in how the things that bewilder me are phrased but nothing more to clarify the sections that keep me asking questions.

So, I am going to chew my way through the Opera Omnia again to specifically look for answers to my questions. I suspect that there will be nothing satisfactory. I, however, am in a gloomy mood and Déa will provide guidance.

As I meditate and pray, I will be working on my latest design for embroidery. It is a quote from the Clear Recital (can be found in all versions). I am not satisfied with how my lettering came out so uneven, but writing on fabric is hard. The color I'm using for the lettering is DMC's 798.
 

Divination: Random Thoughts.

 Dear Reader,

This fan is more than an embroidery project. It is a project begun by my late Grandmother and finished by myself. It has a strand of her hair woven into it, though you can not see where it is located. I still have the mount it and frame it, but I finished it Saturday. I could feel my Grandmother's approval and happiness with the way it turned out. The fan is a literal touch stone to her because of her work on it and the hair woven into it.

When you're starting out practicing necromancy, you need those touch stones to help you connect with the person you are attempting to contact. You also need a touch stone to bring you back to the present. They act as compass guides to bring you to where you want to be. The more intimate the touch stone is, the deeper the contact will be and the more you learn. It is the difference between a mass produced prayer card with their picture on it and a favorite pen they used to write letters. One resonates better than the other because it was an active part of their life here.

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Practicing divination when your depressed is a crap shoot. Your depression may block or distort the psychic input of the session. If you're getting accurate results, depression's attendant problem, imposter syndrome, may leave you to think that you are just wrong about everything. If you are depressed and trying to do psychic work, be extra gentle on yourself. And get a second or third opinion, just to make sure that you are focusing on psychic input and not the garbage input that depression creates.

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In a little retail therapy a few months back, I picked up this deck. It was made in China. These cards are the most adorable things I've seen in a while. My favorite cards are The Chariot (that cat looks like it's hyper and doesn't care about the rules of the road), the Hanged Man (I can't get over how they took a 'serious' card and made it fun with the character sticking out their tongue at you), and Death (it actually looks friendly and welcoming).

I  am still working on getting the deck properly mixed up. My hands are small and the deck is kinda large.

But that Chariot card, though, utterly hilarious when you think about cats.