When not observing the Solstice seasons or Equinox arrivals, I pull Tarot cards weekly to inspire practice that cultivates soul wisdom for readers of this blog as a group using the Gaian Tarot. You are invited to use the cards below to inspire your practice, and, if you like, share your reflections in the comments. You are also free to draw your own cards using these positions.
PATH: Use Pile 1 / Majors and Aces to pull a card for the question: What path would it best serve us to walk this week? BINDWEED (THE DEVIL) invites us to walk this week on pathways of …
- Meeting the shadow (, i.e. the parts of ourselves that we reject and don’t want to acknowledge) as a first step toward integrating it more fully into your understanding of yourself.
- Acknowledging where you are stuck and then holding that place with compassion.
- Being honest and identifying places where our lives are out of balance
- Looking hard at and recognizing where and how we ourselves constrict ourselves and make ourselves small.
PRACTICE: Use Pile 2 / numbered cards for this question: What practice(s) will best serve us to move along this path this week? EIGHT OF EARTH invites us to practices such as …
- Drumming to listen, to heal, to shift consciousness.
- Engaging with a mentor/teacher.
- Being a mentor/teacher.
- Patiently practicing to learn something new.
- Showing love by slowing down and focusing your attention on another.
POSTURE: Use Pile 3 / People cards for a question such as: What attitudes and behaviors will be most helpful to undertake this practice and walk with path? ELDER OF AIR invites you to follow your path and practices with attitudes of ….
- Deep attention but little effort.
- Dedicating your actions to planetary peace and healing.
- Knowing your individual song blends into the Whole in a beautiful and important way.
- Knowing you are connected to and supported by the ancestors.
- Seemingly effortless movement and speech that supports anywhere to be sacred space.
OVERALL MUSINGS: It is the waking up to our shadow that makes traveling the path of Bindweed positive. We may not like to see this wisdom figure appear, but he offers us a powerful invitation to growth. I once heard a Jungian teacher say that working with the shadow is the only way to grow.
This week you may encounter personal and/or collective shadows. We certainly live in a time of collective shadows showing themselves. Racism in our institutions is clearly on display in the killing of unarmed African Americans (whose shooters go unpunished) and the separation of children from asylum-seeking Latinx parents (without procedures in place to reunited them), just to name the most recent and dramatic. Less dramatic is how this shadow of racism lives within all of us. As a white person, I, for example, have come to recognize how privilege pervades every area of my life from driving around town to being supported in grief (yes, there is a privilege of grief)
Whatever shadow work you are doing this week, you don’t have to do it alone. The Eight of Earth and the Elder of Air guide us to reach out to and be supported by others: a teacher, a circle (perhaps literally of drummers, but any gathering of people can support), the ancestors. Maybe we’ll need them all. None of us can right the collective wrongs on our own, but when we join our hands and voices together we are gathering our power and working toward the liberation of all.
Two places for connection to mention …
To work around race, you may want to take Ruth King as a teacher. She has a new book Mindful of Race, does trainings, and has a website filled with resources.
Joanna Powell Colbert, creator of the Gaian Tarot, is creating a new online course, The Sacred Wheel. It starts in August.