Shabbat Reading for a Dear Friend

how exciting!  I threw out an offer on facebook of donating my 'weekly' tarot reading to someone, and a dear friend grabbed the opportunity.  not only that, they had a Really Great Question that others may relate to as well:

"I’d like to ask about my weed consumption. I’m vaping medicinally/therapeutically and feel it’s allowing me slowness and more tolerance during a chronically hard season. I want to make sure I know how to use it for its intended purpose and how to discern between a cue to treat myself with a medicine versus a compulsion to escape into a high state."

I loved the unexpected nature of this inquiry, and wanted to shuffle my decks right away and dive in!  first off, I felt there were several parts to the question, and since my friend didn't note a deck preference, I figured I'd use different decks for the various responses.  I knew right away that I wanted to use The Faeries' Oracle - it just jumped right out at me - and the first card I pulled was mostly to connect me to the general energy of the question, and to center my friend in my mind.  their first card was "the Laume"...

 

the Laume from The Fairies' Oracle by Brian Froud

 

described as a creature of unconditional giving, who knows they will reap their return as nature loves balance.  the Oracle says it takes heaps of generosity to pay back what we receive in abundance every day, and giving too much may end us up 'spiritually toxic and bloated, or energetically depleted'.  the remedy suggested, if you are feeling stuck in one area, is to back off and use your energy to grow in another area.  either a small push now that may come to fruition later, or something big that needs tackling immediately.  it suggests that the Laume gives until it hurts, though it looks to me like she knows her own wisdom, and who to turn to when she feels she needs input (who's that she's sitting on?).  this is saying to me that the intention behind the weed consumption feels very deliberate and specific, in pursuit of a goal or outcome (medicinal/therapeutic).  that my friend is in alignment with their own stated purpose is clear...

 

Queen of Swords from The This Might Hurt Tarot Deck by Isabella Rotman

 

so, when I pondered how my friend said they feel like using marijuana medicinally/therapeutically is allowing them slowness and tolerance during the time of the year when the days get shorter and colder where they live (don't we all tend to freak out a bit when faced with our yearly journeys inward?), and they want to make sure to be discerning about their consumption, the Queen of Swords showed up!  this lady knows her business.  you can guarantee she's thought of everything and then some.  with her sword up and her hand open, she's ready to share all she's learned from a place of logic and reason.  she can be trusted.  she cares about you, too, that's just not entering the picture so much here.  it really is all about the thought process.  she checked the internet, cross-referenced her searches, read several articles from various sources with differing viewpoints, and checked in with her astrologer and tarot reader while reading signs from the local flora and fauna.  I'd say my friend knows well how to be discerning about their consumption!

I drew two more cards - one to represent a cue to work with a medicine, the other representing a compulsion to escape into a high:

 

Three of Swords and Ace of Pentacles from The This Might Hurt Tarot Deck by Isabella Rotman

 

wow.  and ouch.  that Three of Swords is old, deep pain...I'm so sorry.  it's so personal and heartbreaking it can pierce through all your defenses, and have you picking at old wounds in self-sabotage.  BUT.  if this represents a cue to Work With a Medicine, it can be interpreted as having survived the trials that can lead to growth and renewal.  in this case, perhaps, a healthy relationship with an herb that has had a less than stellar reputation, or others substances that are also being used in more widely accepted therapeutic ways, now.  and that Ace of Pentacles?  I'm glad to see it.  those are some pretty heavy Swords and a bit of earthy grounding with a pentacle is shiny and happy.  and an Ace no less!  All That Potential!  so many possibilities...I wonder...would it be such a terrible thing to escape into a high state just this one time?  listen, dealing with addiction issues is No Joke, and I'm not offhandedly suggesting 'everybody must get stoned' in any way shape or form.  what I'm saying is this ONE FRIEND, Whom I Know, who has OBVIOUSLY spent a Great Deal Of Time meditating with great purpose on this deeply personal question for reasons that are None Of Our Business may be able to handle a few hits in the middle of the darkest days of their year for probably more reasons than the season, and not get sucked into anything permanently harmful to their health.  this is a card that encourages us to sit in our personal 'garden of protection' and enjoy our material existence by recognizing the miracle of everyday life.  it can be a reminder that it's ok to unwind a bit, and sometimes it's ok to use a tool to help you unwind, especially if you're being extremely conscious of how and why you're using a tool in the first place.  hey, I take Vitamin D when the days start getting shorter, and usually stop taking it when the growing light tells me it's time to start gardening in the sunshine...it's basically the same thing.

 and because I like a nice rug that can tie a room together (ha, I crack myself up) I drew one last card:

 

8 of Wands/Swiftness from The Thoth Deck by Aleister Crowley and Lady Frieda Harris

 

light wands turned into electrical waves, restored Universe, interplay & correlation, high velocity.  much force applied suddenly, a quick rush soon over, short-lived chaos.  things are moving, like sparks flying through the air.  this is fire representing energy as pure light, and having created intelligible geometric form.  this is the moment - go with what's flowing and you're perfectly aligned to reach what you dare to achieve!  slowing down too much out of fear will have you missing some whirlwind opportunity, so staying focused is key to riding this lightening.  whatever it is, it's already happening.  if it's the weed helping you find clarity as a medicine, or the simple pleasure of getting out of your head so you can hear your own deepest thoughts, you are bringing something into being, soon. whatever needs to be decided, do it now.  you have all the information you need.

I hope this helps to bring clarity to the situation, and much love from me to you!

💙

 

for a reading of your own, contact me here!

 

Shabbat Shalom Tarot Reading for Myself!

I had to make the text bigger so I could see it better, ha!

it's been an interesting week, but not really...I just got some news yesterday that was both unexpected and highly disappointing on a number of levels, but we're not going to talk about that now.  today, instead of a community reading, I'm going to be reading for myself so you can see how I work, and then get in touch with me to book a reading for yourself!  sound good?  let's go!

first of all, why do I want a reading?  what's my question?  what burning issue do I want further insight to so I can move more resolutely along my path?  where am I seeking more clarity?  

well...for starters, I'm curious about the timeline for my voyage overseas.  I had originally planned to go in the Spring, but I'd just as soon go now.  why wait?  the sooner I can get this next chapter started, the happier I'll be, really.  part of me wants to honor the wisdom of the plan, and another part of me doesn't want to delay another minute.  and then wrapped up in that 'desperately wanting to get out of here' is the fear and worry about leaving my only offspring behind.  in my heart, I know he'll be fine - that he'll face challenges, that he'll miss me when he needs me, and his fears about my safety all make it painful for me to leave, but he needs the space and isn't yet sure about his future, whereas I'm more certain than ever about where I want to be, and how to get there.  and when I 'get there', what then?  will it be more of the same low-level hustling to make ends barely meet?  or will I finally afford myself the opportunity to explore and expand on the themes I've followed in my artistic practices for all these years?  will I find the freedom and courage to step out of my shell and do what brings me joy?  there's been plenty of signs pointing to my need to realign with my own spiritual practice, and when I remember to do so, it feels good, so...let's see what the cards have to say!

first I need to choose a deck:

 

I went with the fake Russian version of Buckland's Romani Tarot because it's newer to me and I haven't used it that much, and for whatever reason decided to add some whimsy by choosing to use The Kitchen Tarot for clarifying cards, because a dear friend whom I love sent them to me and I hadn't used them yet.  interesting to note that I thought clarifying cards were needed before even starting.

I did a 3 card pull because I'm also writing this blog post and I didn't want to spend the whole day with it, and a 10 card spread can take me hours.

so, while meditating on my upcoming trip, I pulled the first card. 

oh, Two of Swords...perfect.  that feels like I have a hard choice to make.  or maybe not so much hard, but...a choice.  this version of the card is interesting because there are two people in it, he's blindfolded while she appears to have her eyes closed, and they're both facing opposite directions with their arms crossed.  it's Winter but they're not dressed for it, and is she wearing a hood with a jeweled edge?  and who's holding the swords?  they're just kind of sticking out there...on the sides.  weird.  anyway...the longer I stare at the card the more it looks like the woman is massaging the guy's brain, like she's the High Priestess bringing him the intuitive insight he needs to act on one - or the other - of his choices.  it's a stalemate, almost as if the choice itself doesn't matter, just that it gets made.  is it possible that he doesn't have all the information he needs?  that he's missing a part of the puzzle?  or is it better to block his sight in order to focus more clearly on his deepest thoughts? it's a cold image, and makes me slightly uncomfortable, but what it says to me in the context of my question is that when the time comes for me to go, I will go, whether it happens in one month or three.  I'm honestly not sure which I prefer, but sooner does seem to feel a bit better as the snow comes down and it's getting dark already before 4pm.  and honestly, the ONLY thing keeping me here is the adult-ish kid (and the cat). which is the next card, so...

 

 

while thinking deeply about my dear offspring and his ability to fare alone in this shitty town/state/world, it appears I have nothing to fear.  The World card says not only was (am) I a kick-ass mom, I have not one reason to doubt that I have raised an amazing young person.  not that I did that much outside of staying out of my own way in letting the boy be who he is, and at least attempting to nurture as many of his dreams as I could without crushing his soul with my clumsy relationship skills and harsh criticisms.  his ancestors appear to have wrapped him in a cloud of protection against their lack of faith in my ability to keep him safe, for which I am grateful, and I trust that they (and the cat) will continue to watch over him whether or not I continue to beg and plead for them to, though I will continue to pester them forever for their assistance with him, as they're the only village we have. I know I've taught him how to live, and soon will come the proof of that.  I hope the lessons he will be tasked with learning don't hurt too much, and that all signs continue to point towards good for him.

so what of my desire to 'step out of my shell' and really stand in my power?  5 of Swords?  seriously?  this is saying 'yay, I won, but at what cost?'  why would it feel bad to find my place in the world?  will it truly come at the cost of those I hold dear?  this seemed less clear, as I had some trouble holding the question in my mind given the aforementioned disturbing news of the week, which kept sneaking in at the corners.  so...do I 'win' whatever that situation is, but end up doing it in a way that loses me friends?  I don't know, it kind of feels like I already lost what there was to lose, so I might as well go on as I have, which is as if I did.  who cares if the rewards are more than I can carry, I'll share them freely.  it's never just a win for me - if I succeed at something, I end up lifting up others as a result.  if they like me or not.  it's a lonely life, this Aquarian living in a future world we have yet to create.  Swords.  both minor cards were Swords, and me an Air sign.  and that Winter cold where Swords to me feel like Spring...curious deck.

anyway, the message was clear enough, but I wanted to use my friend's gift deck so I went ahead and asked for clarity:

ha ha!  Mom & Apple Pie!  what the hell is that?  aww, it's The Sun card!  it's so cute...there are mini-pies in a 'cosmic pie safe' and they are labeled 'love', 'good health', 'balanced Earth', 'enough moolah', 'family + friends', 'joy', and there's a big pie labeled 'peace'.  there's also a person in an apron holding a large covered pitcher, and a chubby dog sits nearby.  there are other little critters/people just generally chilling and seeming content to be near the open, welcoming vibe of the sweet and abundant Mama energy.  and that definitely brightened up the heavy mood of the Two of Swords, as if to say in a Jewish Mama voice "don't worry darling, it doesn't matter when you go, it just matters that you go!"  and either She will be there to greet me, or I will more fully embody Her when I get there.  or both!  it's a good omen; I like it.

 

 

now for my magical lad - the card I pulled for clarity for him was The Kitchen Timer/The Hanged Man.  meaning - he will face his trials.  as we all must.  and he will be fine.  as blown away as I have been at how energies align for this boy, it makes total sense to me.  it's too much to get into here, more than a blog post of its own, and really kind of personal and private, but maybe I'll share sometime that's not now.  that 'fool' must head towards his own cliff, and see what he's got in his bag of tricks at the end of a stick (see what I did there?  that was a reference to The Fool tarot card as a metaphor for my son's personal journey).  time to let the birdie fly, by leaving him the scant comfort of our nest while I go seek my ends and means elsewhere.  he.  will.  be.  fine.  will I be fine without him?  of course I will, but maybe that's the real question, here.  am I willing to truly believe in both of us enough to know that we'll figure this out, too?

Salt & Pepper as The Magician is interesting, and I guess the longer I think about it, the more it makes sense to me.  in terms of how it relates to the 5 of Swords, it feels like the work done to affect an outcome may have been greater than the loss it took to achieve it.  it feels like the deep regenerative work of creating one's life, to me.  like a whirlwind of possibility about to manifest - the gathering up of elements transmuting synergistically.  it's speaking to this being the right time to use everything I have to do exactly what I've been dreaming of all these years, whatever that may be, I'm not even sure myself.  but I do know, and I should name it rather than hide behind my shyness and pretending I'm nothing.  I have been there and done that, and I took notes.  winner takes all.

as usual, I just need to work up the courage to jump, and the net that I've been weaving since I first had an interesting idea will once again appear under me, and I will keep tying knots until I run out thread.  

I hope you choose to connect with me through my Mysteriam Tarot & Dreamwork fb page, or even here in the comments.  either way, I'm happy to offer you a reading, and learn what we can about your path together.

💙

Memory Jar 2022/2023. 2024?

 

*sometime in February, 2023?

this would have been our 9th year of Memory Jar posts, but I dropped the ball...or was I three weeks in my new apartment after having lived in the car for half the year, and had no idea where the Jar even was?  I remember watching Rocky on New Year's Eve '22/'23 because I'm making it my new tradition to do so, and I watched the whole Rocky franchise (up to Creed 2) this past New Year's.

2022:

my list ~

Z graduated BOCES

Z got into his 1st choice college

Z got $100 fitness scholarship

standing with the guitar teacher during the kid's last solo

Medicine Day

Vermont Corn Maze

Being invited to work at AW

Getting an apartment!  yay!

Hannukah at the local synagogue

making Z spit eggs by saying "Peanut Butter Falcon!"

breakfast sandwiches

"Tantar, make Mama some perogies"

grateful to have my son home with me

 

his list ~

skipping

catballs

have a Snickers

300 lb. leg press first try

burgers

climbing to the top of the rope

pre-workout

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

September 26, 2024

I just finished my ritual of burning the memory slips before starting the process of filling the jar up again.  it mostly took me that long because I don't really have a great place to burn things in this apartment other than the porch, which makes me nervous, so I burned them a few at a time in my bathroom over a fireproof tray, with the ventilation fan running.  then I took a look at my facebook activity log starting all the way back in January, and wrote down the good times I felt important enough to share with my social media network and friends, and put them in the jar.  I will ask my son to take some time out of his increasingly busy life to add a few, and I'm sure after some rudeness, eye rolling, unnecessary aggression and argument, he may oblige me a scrap or two with a word or so.  we'll see.

here's why it's important to me:

I'm making Aliyah.

(for those of you who don't know, that means I'm moving to Israel.)

 

it's going to be increasingly important to me to figure out ways to stay in touch with my son (who won't be coming with me), and our small traditions that we shared while he was growing up in my care, as he feels the inevitable need to pull away from me.  not that he has much choice if I'm leaving the country...but it is time to strike out on his own, even if I'm the one doing the 'striking'.

and we have almost a decade of memories showing the same tendency, as his lists have gone from running in tandem to mine, while we enjoyed many of the same happy moments, to his moving year by year towards his own joys and experiences, as they should.  I'm not 'in on' several of the moments he shared, as I'm sure readers can tell, and similarly don't understand.

we've had a rough couple of years.  from the ongoing need to move constantly whether it be from eminent domain, the landlord selling the building, or only having a one year lease so my son could graduate high school with his class (for which we were grateful), to my mother dying, and the general hormonal bullshit that I had to put up with between my male teen and my own peri/menopause.  then we had homelessness and non-college-preparedness before we were both finally able to settle down into decent work situations and figure out where our lives were, individually, and in relationship to each other.

at the moment, we're both in a pretty good place.  the Young Man is fine, and I'm going to do my best to stop talking about him as much as I do, because he's an adult now, and I owe him his privacy, but I'm sure news of him will sneak in here and there because he's my baby and I love him the most.  let it suffice to say that he has a good job that he enjoys doing, a few good friends (one of whom he is intimate with), and enjoys an active social life pursuing his interests and hobbies.  I was working at a job that I really liked, doing work that I felt was important, until the underlying toxicity of the administration that I had been overlooking in order to keep paying my rent finally caught up to me, and I walked out in frustration one afternoon.  it didn't take long before I had another job doing similar work, and in that case, it was the administration that got frustrated with me for pointing out the inconsistencies in their policies, and how it was actively harming their guests.  no worries...I got another job offer a few days ago, and will probably get another one before the week is out.  I can get jobs - I sometimes have a hard time keeping them.

if you're familiar with this blog, and have visited the 'freebooting' tab, you'll see that I've engaged in a wide variety of work activities, and have never settled on a 'career' because I am a multi-disciplinary artist who rarely has the necessary time or space to engage with my art as I'm so busy hustling to survive all the time.  for instance - there are 78 unfinished drafts for posts on this blog.  38 of them are from 2020, 26 are from 2021, 6 from 2022, 5 from 2023, and 3 so far this year.  if I manage to publish this post, there will only be two from this year.  we'll see...

I have a lot of work ahead of me for this upcoming move, and I've once again been doing my best to whittle down my belongings to what I can take overseas with me, and there are years of backlogged art projects that are getting dragged out of the closet for me to force myself to contend with.  I haven't been doing that badly, and several finished products have made their way to their final destinations, and it has definitely been clearing my energy to see those items come to fruition.  there are some bins that are harder to deal with than others, and I'm in the middle of one of those, now.  talk about memories!  

so we're back to the point I was making at the beginning of this post, which is that our family tradition of saving memories to reminisce over at the end of the year hit a snag due to my lack of financial solvency, as I haven't yet gleaned the secret to being a single working mother who can give my art the same time and energy I need to devote to my 'job' so I can manage to keep a roof over our heads, and all that.  the Memory Jar didn't get filled because I was working.  the posts didn't get finished because I was working.  the art didn't get done because I was working.  I made more money this year than I ever have in my entire life.  and that was amazing.  but what did I have to sacrifice for it?  it was when I got fired and decided to move to Israel that the projects got dragged out of the closet, so here we are.

2023 was all about the Benjamins.  make more doing less.  I gave everything to my employers and the people we serve, and had barely a thing left over for me, let alone anyone else.  I ate well, I upgraded my wardrobe & my phone, got some work done on the car, did volunteer work in the community, and served on a city council committee.  I donated money.  I also experienced more anti-semitism than I ever have in my entire life, mostly in my workplace, and after that, in community spaces meant to offer mutual aid.  I learned that people will take every single thing you give, and offer only their ingratitude in return.  I watched people die in the streets while our representatives in the government slept soundly in their appointed mansions.  I lost a lot of fair-weather friends claiming to be sisters-in-arms when I demanded that these staunch feminists acknowledge the atrocities of October 7th, which they continue to deny matter, let alone the plight of our dear hostages, still being held captive by genocidal terrorists.

but these are topics for a different post.  like I said, 2023 both was and wasn't great, and none of that made it to our jar.  but the slips from 2022 got burned and buried, and there's a '2024' tag on the jar now, with a pile of new slips in it.  I hope more get added, and I look forward to reading them with my son on New Year's Eve, however that may look.

I look forward to hearing from you again ~ 

memory jar posts past:

2014 - 2015 - 2016 - 2017 - 2018 - 2019 - 2020 - 2021 - 2022 - 2023...