Tarot Dreams

First off, I will be posting more often.  Secondly, I thought I’d take this opportunity to talk about my tarot dreams – both literally and metaphorically.

I had a dream of tarot about a week ago.  I don’t have them often.  In the dream, I was in a room filled with people I knew from an earlier stage in my life–classmates from high school.  I was passing out to each person – from a standard deck (though not a specific deck) – a tarot card which was associated with his or her personality.  I did not actually take notice of which card I was passing out to which person, but it was assumed that the tarot knew the answers and the appropriate card would be assigned to the right person.  Afterward, we were all trying to decide which card we might consider indicative of the term “drama queen.”

In reality, I might suggest the Queen of Cups for her abundance of watery emotion, but in the dream we agreed upon the Devil.  An interesting, and rather telling, choice.  So who might have the Devil card, according to his or her personality?  Well, I could only think of one person, and she wasn’t there, and no one else had the card.  I, being the only one not holding a card at the time, wondered if rather it should have been me – the Devil still resting somewhere in the pile.

Interestingly enough, I have a nontraditional tarot deck (The Tarot of Transformation) with a card that is termed/keyworded “The Drama Queen” (pictured above).  Strange, considering the card is neither the Devil nor Queen of Cups, but the 7 of Cups, a card most often associated with an overwhelming number of choices, or abundance/excess, or perhaps confusion.  Hmm…it’s beginning to make some sense.

These are all issues I’m dealing with right now.  But pray tell, how am I being a drama queen?  True, I’m becoming outwardly frustrated at times, but I’m not throwing temper tantrums like a two-year-old (I hope).  The young woman pictured in this card is dressed in her finest, quite like a princess, or queen (complete with crown) and gazing at herself in a floor-length mirror (okay, this is ringing more than a few bells).  So she may be vain – I won’t lie, I am! – but the drama?  Notice she is on a stage of sorts, in front of a crowd, her self-scrutiny and vanity not only mirrored to herself but on display for an audience of people.  They could be anyone – peers, co-workers, family, friends, strangers.  The point is they are witnesses, and she is center-stage and most conspicuous in her opulence, her overstatedness.  Anything not outwardly obvious or superficial can also be seen – all her actions, emotions and thoughts (to any extent that they show) will be witnessed by everyone around her.  As if she weren’t more than capable of passing judgment on herself.

I’ll admit, this sounds familiar.  And it might to many of you, as well.  Perhaps we don’t mean to be drama queens, and can’t help it.  We are not all attention-grabbers (though I’ll admit I tend to wear eye-catching clothing, but that is not why I do it).  For some of us, very few parts of our personalities scream “attention-whore, ho!” or beg to be gawked at.  But some of us are drama queens by nature, rather than by choice.  Some of us dress to impress not because we want the attention, but because we want the look; some of us emote when we’re trying not to, or overreact when we’re trying to remain stable.  We cry at the drop of a hat when no one’s looking, and are over-sensitive to even the tiniest hint that someone we respect is upset with us.  We earn social stigma for being shy as opposed to being loud, because others think we are being exclusive.  And when we make mistakes, people notice and judge – or at least, we trick ourselves into thinking they do, when it is us who can’t handle the pressure, the workload, the confusion, the abundance, the emotion.

So what to do?  Well, if you’re like me lately, you snap – deciding you no longer want to live like this – and start reorganizing your life from top to bottom: schedules, calendars, devotion to your favourite hobbies, time set aside for anything and everything you need or want to do, in the hopes you’ll be more productive and happier.

You find a more tangible dream.  One that answers the questions you find your subconscious grasping at.  My dream is not simple – in fact, it is a series of dreams, all bound into the perfect life, one that perhaps I will never ever truly grasp or attain.  But I am trying.  A drama queen can’t fully escape her drama, but she gets tired of waiting for the dust to settle.

There are many small dreams I am beginning to follow, but my tarot dreams are as follows: I plan to spend at least one hour per day engaging in tarot-related activities, two hours each week drafting a blog post in my tarot blog (that means one post here per week), and an undetermined number of hours per week promoting my tarot skills by any means necessary, so that I can finally start reading the cards professionally with a frequency that leaves me satisfied (and hopefully, financially better).

I drew two more cards from the Tarot of Transformation regarding this whole drama queen/tarot dreams situation and came up with the Teacher of Disks (Passionate Play) and the Six of Wands (Inner Seeing).

These are the kinds of cards that help us in our dreams, tangible or otherwise.  A leopard is agile and filled to the brim with force, a master of its element, but it knows when to stop, when to use that energy for play.  Disks are the suit of earth, of tangible things, of money and health and the physical body we live in and use for all our important tasks – handling and crafting and building.  This card  teaches us to know when to rest our bodies, to know when to work them for other people and when to work them for ourselves.  Similarly, the 6 of Wands deals with personal success, and teaches us the difference between pushing ourselves for the sake of others and doing so for ourselves.  This particular rendition stresses the importance of self-love, of inner passion and wisdom, of the knowledge and respect we give and earn of ourselves by looking inward instead of outward.   These are the tools we need to define, process and execute our dreams.

I am using my energy to realize and actualize those dreams.  What will you do with yours?

The One.

For my first post (#1) I would like to discuss the prospect of the #1 tarot deck (very seldom the first). There are many reasons people collect tarot cards. Some are readers, and some are not. Some collect them for the art, and some collect them simply to collect them. And there is no one definitive person who collects, or reads, or muses on the system: some are religious, some are not. Some are Pagan, some are Buddhist, some are devout Catholic or Mormon or Islamic or Hindu or Atheist. Some are in between, and some are somewhere else – in fact, everywhere: Australia, Canada, Britain, India, America, China, the Czech Republic, and elsewhere. I have encountered these people time and time again since I began my tarot hobby 8 years ago. Some readers have thousands of decks, while some have only one.

When I started tarot, I had one deck, which lasted me a good couple of years. During that time, I used it often – shuffling, drawing, spreading, reading, musing, learning and loving it. It turned a dusty grey around the outer edges within months just from the handling, the kind of grey that makes a tarot reader smile and adore their craft. Smudges from oily fingerprints, no matter how often one washes their hands before use; faded streaks so multiple that their pattern becomes uniform and all that’s left is one. You know the faces of everyone in it, their personalities, their habits. You know their world and their thoughts. They are you, and you are them; you know they can be trusted.

I now have what is considered to be a somewhat modest collection by some: over 50 tarot and oracle decks. Not one of those decks, since the very first, shuffles like my Hudes Tarot. Not one of them has greying edges, a reader’s bend, or a heart to match. I love them all, for different reasons, each with its own aesthetic appeal. But I didn’t start collecting to collect. I, like many other tarot enthusiasts, began as a reader, and did just that – read. I only needed one deck. But as most will tell you – namely those cursed with the glory of the world of tarot and the Aeclectic Tarot Forum – at some point, it stops being about that one deck…and starts being about the one deck. The one. Like significant others, among millions and billions (or thousands, in terms of tarot decks), the one you hope will melt your heart and satisfy you unduly. We’ve all been victims, and for the most part, loved it. I admit, I still do.

Oh look, this one has gold gilt edges – just like a fine, old-fashioned book. This one is full of Da Vinci paintings – my word! And Klimt, and Botticelli! And this one has cats – I love them – and here, this one’s so lifelike…the people are almost real! Look at the colours in these…these masterpieces; they remind me of my childhood, my religion, my muse…myself. They all remind me of me. Here we have silver foil – the decadence! Fabulous CG, or my favourite animé. This one’s designed from fabric scraps – how clever – and this one’s based on blacksmithing! How do I choose? Why bother? They’re gorgeous. I think I’ll take them all. Wait, I’m sure to love this one. It feels so right. How could I not want to read with it?

And what happens? We wait, and wring our little hands, and when the package comes, we admire it, forget it, put it on a bookshelf or tuck it away in its little box – then find another that’s lustworthy. Sometimes we don’t touch them for months, or years; sometimes we trade them away. It’s filler. It’s pointless. There is no ONE.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t collect. I’m not saying we shouldn’t lust. But we should always know why we’re doing it. I’m tired of looking for the perfect deck – as with anything worthy of love, a perfect example doesn’t exist. It sounds obvious, but we do it anyway. Maybe the rest are all perfect to look at – and for collectors, that’s perfectly fine. But for those of us who want to read, contently and monogamously, the perfect deck is the one that’s acknowledged, tested, loved and used again. And again. And again. And again. Behold, the answers – the glorious answers! – the trustworthy faces, the little grey traces. The love, the connection; the usefulness. Don’t we ever get tired of being promiscuous? Whoever made progress not trying?