The Cosmic Tarot

Because I’m embarrassed to be talking about myself so much in this blog, I thought that this time I’d share with you a tarot reading I did two weeks ago. Then you might at least find some interest in that esoteric art, even if not my internal ramblings.

I first learnt about tarot reading 27 years ago from a compelling woman who might or might not have been psychic. But you certainly believed everything she said, and she took me under her wing. She made the cards come alive for me in a way that all the learned books (by men) that I’d read hadn’t.

I do believe that magic sometimes happens in tarot-reading – when a certain card brings me out in goosepimples or strange coincidences appear in the fall of the cards – but on the whole I look at it as simply a case of noting the effect that the archetypal images have on me and weaving a story from them. We all know more about each other and ourselves than we realise. We just have to tap into that knowledge.

Sometimes I read for other people but I feel grossly under-qualified to do so and find it a huge responsibility. It is however a good way of opening up subjects for discussion. When reading for myself the results are variable. Sometimes the cards are meaningless, sometimes they’re only wish-fulfilment, and just occasionally they’re extraordinary.

This was one of those times.

The reading

My intention and the random card

I held the cards in my hand and pondered my intention for the reading. I wanted hope, I decided and clarity about something that had been plaguing me for several months. Then as I shuffled the pack this card fell out, and Cheryl, my teacher, always said that you should pay attention to these random cards.

 

It’s a lovely one, isn’t it. At XIX (19) it’s near the end of the cycle of the Major Arcana, the 22 cards that deal with our soul’s journey. I took it to be a good omen because it means happiness, being reborn, seeing the world with the freshness and joy of a child. It doesn’t mean that you’ve finally got the answers to life, the universe and everything. It just means that you’re on the right track at the moment.

Thank god for that, I thought.

The spread

Then I laid the cards out in my favourite ‘spread’ (arrangement) – five cards, with the first two representing the past, the third and centre card the here and now and the final two the future near or far (timing is not a forte of tarot reading, any more than it is of weather forecasting). You can use any spread you like so long as you’re clear in your mind as to what the positions mean.

 

Cards 1 and 2

These were the first two cards.

Oh dear, oh dear. I didn’t have any secrets, did I, from the powers that be (the powers that control the fall of the cards).

‘Anonymous’ commented on my previous post that it must be difficult for me to imagine a new life when I was happy with the old one. Well, sort of. Frog and I knew we wanted to be together but we both had ‘issues’ and they clashed, and for years we had terrible fights. By the time he died we’d reached stalemate and I knew his death was my chance to finally sort myself out – in my own time, in my own way, however messy the process.

So that’s what I’ve been doing for the last three and a half years – without much reward I was beginning to think. Why didn’t I look for a close male companion, or CMC as I put it in my journal? (Not husband. One was enough. You can only be married once.) Having a CMC might alleviate my grief for Frog and enable me to deal further with my issues. How nice it would be to fall in love again, I thought. I deserved it. Surely it was time.

But it wasn’t happening and I was getting more and more stressed about the whole thing.

And wasn’t this just what the cards were saying? Neither of the couples is actually together. Neither is kissing. There’s a gap between them. There’s indecision, lack of confidence. Well, that’s how they appeared to me anyway.

I was going down a blind alley, the cards said, and I knew they were right.

Card 3

I laid out card number three, the one concerned with the here and now.

How interesting that the card showed a female person. She had to be me, looking rather severe.

The 56 Minor Arcana, like ordinary playing cards, come in four suits with four court cards in each suit – princess, queen, prince, king. The suit of Swords, as here, represents the mind – the intellectual side of life, thoughts.

I was brought up to rely on the mind but it wasn’t working for me any more, if it ever had. It was my soul that had got me through the years since Frog’s death but my mind kept scoffing. It was horrible. It was my mind that had come up with this crazy idea about a CMC and worn me out with it.

My mind needed to know its place, said the card. We also had body, emotions and spirit (as in the other three tarot suits – and according to Jung). I needed to remember that I was only a princess and not yet a queen. I didn’t know everything. How comforting that was. 

Card 4

This was card number four, from the suit of Pentacles, representing the body and the physical world – money, houses and security – and this card showed lots of activity in that area.

How apt, I thought. That was also me over the last few years: clearing Frog’s mountains of stuff, having work done to the house in case I wanted to downsize, taking on the myriad practical jobs that Frog did, getting used to the scariness of managing alone, trying to stay healthy while staggering between sleepless nights.

That activity wasn’t finished yet, said the card. There was still more to do. That’s what I needed to focus on – not romantic dreams.

OK, I could cope with that. It was quite a relief, actually.

Card 5

This was the final card.

Put simply, this beautiful card means hope, which was extraordinary given that hope was exactly what I’d asked for before doing the reading. It means following your star. It means that you are a star. At number 17 in the Major Arcana it’s near the end of the spiritual cycle, like The Sun, and another celestial body.

The card told me to write, as that is where I feel most me, where I touch my star.

It gave me permission to believe in a higher (celestial) world.

It answered everything, as did the whole spread.

So there was a pattern. We are connected. All is well.

Note
Tarot probably dates back to medieval times but the best-known traditional pack is the Rider-Waite one of 1909. Modern tarot packs, and there are many of them, are easier to read because they rely less on symbols and more on pictures. I use the Cosmic Tarot (of 1988) because that was the one Cheryl used. Thanks to the artist Norbert Lősche and the publisher (of my edition) F X Schmid. There are other later publishers.

Reading, writing and being a zero-dimensional, non-existent point, floating in space

Since Frog died I’ve only been able to read light novels with happy endings, and I discovered in the library an author called Sarah Morgan who fitted exactly those criteria.

I’ve now read almost every single one of her books at least once, if not twice, if not three times, including the romances she wrote at the beginning of her career (what me, a one-time serious book editor, reading romances? Whatever next?) so, when I saw her latest book A Secret Escape on offer in Sainsbury’s recently, I snapped it up.

At the same time I saw Here One Moment by Australian writer, Liane Moriarty. I haven’t been able to read Liane for the last few years because she’s too worldly and cynical. You can never have too many books piled on the bedside table however, and it could be that I was stronger now, so I bought that one too.

 

I spent the first three years after Frog died clearing his Stuff from driveway, garage, shed and music room not to mention the rest of the house. He was a bit of a hoarder. Then I turned my attention to the structure of the place, doing essential repairs and improvements just in case I was going to move.

This month at last I’m free. I’m without clutter, builders, visits and visitors. It was deliberate. I wanted the rest. I wanted to get back to myself. But yesterday morning I wrote in my journal (my post-Frog record of thoughts and feelings, my best friend, my ladder of recovery), ‘It’s all a bit meaningless without Frog. He was my purpose and my sounding-board. He saw me, so I was me.’

 And I thought of a passage in Here One Moment, which I’m just about managing to read. It's not uplifting me, like Sarah’s books do, but I’m intrigued by the subject matter – psychic prediction – and I’ve no idea how it’s going to end.

In the passage, a mathematician is describing a letter she wrote to her fiancé when he was fighting in Vietnam (no, I didn’t know either that Australians were drafted for that war). She is remembering a lesson from school.

    “… a point is ‘zero-dimensional’, meaning it doesn’t actually exist. But once you have two points – two non-existent points – you can fill the space in between with lots and lots of points, and you get a line, which has length, so it’s now one dimension, which you could argue means it does now exist.

    … I told Jack that when I was with him, I felt like I was close to understanding what I had nearly understood that day.

   I told him I was a zero-dimensional, non-existent point, floating in space, until I met him."

When I first read that, I cried. As I copy it for you, I'm crying again.

 Thank you for reading this blog and being that other point at this moment.

 Maybe writing is an answer.

A benevolent tonal Buddha*

From 1977 to 2019 Frog (my late husband) was connected with Exeter University’s student radio station. He looked after the equipment and gave continuity and advice to the ever-changing student members. He also presented his own programme, The Frog Prog, on which he played his unique choice of music, both popular and classical, from all eras, and passed on his encyclopaedic knowledge of all things musical.

Last June, past members of the radio station put together a tribute programme for Frog

https://www.mixcloud.com/XpressionShowcase/john-frog-whitworth-memorial-show/

and I’ve been crying my way through it. Sometimes they really catch his character and talents and it’s given me a whole new appreciation of him.

I’ve been doing a lot of crying lately. Since November in fact when I acquired a bad back. The pain then went to my legs where it has stuck ever since. It’s terrified me because, now I’m on my own, I have to manage. I can’t be ill or incapacitated. I have a dog to mind.

Ellie at one year old. She's now twelve and a half.

But what I realised this morning is that the pain has made me get in touch with my feelings. It’s lowered my defences and let the grief come to the surface. It’s given me time. I haven’t been able to rush around clearing Frog’s stuff, forging a ‘new life’ and being brave. I’ve spent a lot of time alone, in my dressing-gown, writing in my Notebooks (a sort of diary), using up tissues.

In a funny sort of way, I think that realisation may help me to throw off the pain. It may be a sort of turning point. I hope so, anyway.

And at the risk of sounding crass, I thought I might link all that to the slow emergence of spring, another turning point, as evidenced by the following pictures.

Rooks' nests by the canal

The weeping willow over the lane below the house, always the first tree to burst into leaf

Ivy berries, like bunches of grapes, important food for birds at this time of year

Beech flowers

I've never noticed beech flowers before (in all my 70 years), which shocks me. How much else is there that I just don't see? Putting that in a more positive way (and I do try to be positive in everything), it shows that nature is always there to surprise and delight us - if we keep open to the possibility.

*This is how one ex-student described Frog in the tribute programme (at least, I think that's what he said)

How wonderful life is

 Since the beginning of April, at the suggestion of the counsellor I’m seeing, I’ve been keeping a Notebook in which I try and write down all my thoughts and feelings. I’m now on Volume 4.
 
It’s become my best friend and helps me acknowledge the upheaval that’s going on inside  (since Frog died, in early January), instead of dashing around being busy and pushing everything to the dark dusty corners of my mind, for attention When I Have Time – which is of course (in my case) never.
 
This morning, after two good nights’ sleep (a rarity), I wrote the following.
 
Perhaps I can be glad that I met and lived with Frog and that he is still alive somewhere.
‘How wonderful life is, now he’s in the world.’
And, god willing, we will be together again.
 
Those are probably the first truly hopeful words I’ve written in the Notebook, which is why I’m sharing them with you.
 
(As you may – or may not – have noticed, I’ve been silent here for a couple of months. That’s been for several reasons:
-       There was too much going on my head to begin to be able to write something coherent
-       I had the Notebook and that was enough
-       I was too miserable.)
 
Here too, now I’m on a roll, are some pictures from the last few months.

The Scots pine that answers to mine. (See earlier post.) 

Looking through the mudra of my Scots pine to the hill where the other one lives. (It’s hidden behind that stand of trees, which is new Scots pines.) Thanks to my friend C for the idea for the picture.

A good crop of fat acorns

A puffball nearly as big as Ellie

The view from the distant Scots pine (and my friend C and her dog)

Lifelines

At times, the seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks and months since Frog’s death have felt like one long nightmare, a black tunnel without an exit. Three things have kept me from going under.

The first, and perhaps the most important, is my connection – however shaky ‒ to a spiritual world. In particular, my affirmations. I won’t tell you what these are as that might reduce their power, but I can say that I first learnt about them from Louise Hay’s wonderful book You Can Heal Your Life.

My edition of the book

The edition on Amazon at the moment

I bought the book, which came out in 1984, many years ago, but only started using it seriously about 4 years ago in an effort to cure my migraines. Well, the migraines have virtually gone, and I wonder now whether I was also working through the book in unconscious preparation for the times I’m going through now. It’s a mad thought, but the world is stranger than we can ever imagine. I know that now because I never expected Frog to drop down dead in front of me at the age of 69. Perversely, that unexpectedness is another comfort: who knows what my future holds?

My gateway to the spiritual world is nature, to which I'm led every day by my beloved Ellie, and in particular my secret wood, which I’ve mentioned many times before in this blog.

My secret wood, in a steep valley carved by two small streams

My secret wood, with Ellie and bluebells

Thankfully, it’s spring at the moment and, even though spring doesn’t seem quite as glorious as usual and half the time I’m stuck in my own desperate inner world, it has its moments.

The wild cherry tree in my garden a few weeks ago

My third lifeline is people: family, neighbours, friends, counsellor. I never realised before how much I needed people. Because of what happened 44 years ago when Frog and I wanted to marry, we retreated. We kept ourselves to ourselves and I dreamt of the two of us living somewhere really remote like an uninhabited island in the Pacific, instead of the Devon countryside, however beautiful. Now, people seem to have forgiven me my unsociability and flocked to my aid.

I’ve mentioned my lovely sisters and brother and how much they've been helping me, but I've not mentioned my counsellor before. I see her once a week in the village and she’s amazing. I can say anything to her and cry all I like. I leave each session feeling like a new person. At the moment we’re working on emotions, using a wheel.

The version of the Wheel of Emotions that I'm using at the moment.
There are many others, some with better words. 

It’s as if my emotions have been frozen for decades (which of course didn’t help Frog and me. I’ll do better next time – if I get a chance. Please, God) and now my heart has burst open. I have no experience of dealing with such a tumult and my counsellor is helping me to learn.

Two days ago a former sister-in-law (she used to be married to an in-law of mine) dropped in with her now-husband on their way to Cornwall. They left me these flowers . . .

. . . and sent me this stunning picture from their holiday.

Cornwall, yesterday

Every kindness, like that, does something to fill the hole left by Frog’s death.

Writing this blog helps too.

Wildflower watch

It’s about this time that I start spotting wildflowers as they begin to appear and – in an anoraky way – making notes in my diary so that I can compare first-sightings over the years.

Primroses

All wildflowers now appear much earlier than they used to as a result no doubt of global warming. Primroses for instance, which I used to think of as a February flower, now appear before Christmas.

Here are some that I photographed today along the edge of our garden. (I do regret the fence, as it’s not good for wildlife, but it is essential at the moment to stop Ellie squeezing out through the hedge and chasing vehicles, the varmint.)

The flower won’t however come into its massed glory for a couple of months, such as these that I photographed in April 2017 along a nearby path.

 

I remember as a child going on primrose-picking picnics (try saying that a few times) with a friend and her mother, but I would never pick wildflowers now, not even if there appeared to be lots of them. They need all the help they can get, with habitat loss to my mind a far greater threat than rising temperatures.
 
As I said to Frog as we walked along the canal two days ago and I looked longingly at a scruffy and forgotten field-corner, ‘I just hope I live long enough to see large parts of the country rewilded.’
 
Scruffy and forgotten corners are all we have left of real nature - the rest is a green desert – and I can’t begin to count the number of scruffy and forgotten corners where I used to sit and dream that have since disappeared.
 
Europe is in part to blame because it rewards farmers for the amount of land they cultivate and, although I voted to stay in Europe, I may be changing my mind because the British government has plans to reward farmers for the good they do for the environment instead. God willing, those plans will come to fruition. (They could scrap the HS2 railway as well while they were about it.)

Wild Daffodils

Wild daffodils are a case in point. Back in the 1980s I used to see fields of them but those fields have gone, no doubt ploughed up and ‘improved’. The only ones I see now are these that I planted myself at the entrance to our house, which have been flowering for nearly a week and bringing joy to my heart every time I pass them.

They’re not the same as the cultivated daffodils which have ‘escaped’ to live wild, being smaller and paler. They come out earlier too. My wildflower books say March but I made a note in 2005 that they’d come out on 1 February, so even sixteen years ago their season had shifted by a whole month. They are the daffodils that Wordsworth saw and wrote about.

 

Snowdrops

Snowdrops on the other hand have been late this year, perhaps because it’s been a cold winter. I usually see them at Christmas in a small bed outside our back door but my first sighting this year was in the wilds of Mid Devon on 22 January on a freezing and wet day. It was so dark that my camera flashed as I took the picture.

Snowdrops are probably not native, as they weren’t recorded growing wild in this country until the 1770s, but they certainly look at home now, growing in swathes through woods, and here at the bottom of our garden (photographed a few days ago).

I seem to remember at one time that when you were buying snowdrop bulbs you had to be sure they came from a reputable source and hadn’t been lifted from the wild, but I can’t find anything about that now so perhaps it was a different plant. (Incidentally, it’s illegal to dig up any wild plant except on your own land or with the landowner’s permission.)
  

(Lesser) Celandine

This for me is the real harbinger of spring. Its flowers are like miniature suns, gleaming out of bedraggled hedgerows. One day they’re not there, and the next they’re everywhere. This year that day was Tuesday (2 February), again a month earlier than The Books say.
 
 

 
I love their perfect trowel-shaped leaves.

I may continue with this wildflower watch as spring unfolds. I keep looking for my blog’s raison d’être, or USP (unique selling point) as Frog would say, and wildflowers are as good as anything. After all, as I’ve said before (and will say again), no one else in the media seems to care about them. Do please feel free to contribute your own sightings and experiences. I'd like to know about them.

New moon, new broom

At 4.44pm on Wednesday the 13^th, the moon was new. I know this because of our moon calendar.

I get one every year by post from Mystery Arts in Brighton. It’s lovely to look at and, as well as keeping us up to date with what the moon is doing and telling us about eclipses and astrological signs, it helps me with my veg garden. I sew and plant out when the moon is new and waxing. This does make a difference. They’ve proved it on ‘Gardeners’ World’! (For more on this fascinating subject, you could do worse than investigate ‘biodynamic agriculture’.)

 
And if the moon affects plants, it might also affect us, which might account for my recent flurry of cleaning and gardening. Other factors of course are the new year, the lockdown, a few fine days and the fact that I don’t have a big writing project on at the moment (for various reasons which I might go into another time) and so am twiddling my thumbs looking for things to do.
 
First up (as they say) was my workroom. I can’t remember when I last cleaned it and the floor was beginning to scrunch underfoot with a mixture of shredded paper, sewing debris and dead flies.

Dust covered the surfaces.

Ropes of cobwebs decorated the ceiling.

The filing tray overflowed and the storage system under my desk had descended into chaos.

The only neat area was my collection of reference books.

Two bin bags of paper for recycling, several buckets of dirty water, a rattling vacuum cleaner, one visit to the tip and three days later and my room shone with order and cleanliness.

 

Next on the list was the garden. I tore Frog away from the Mini kit car he’s rebuilding (also another story) . . .

Frog's 'Hustler' in 1985 decorated with records for Exeter University Rag Week

 
. . . and we tackled what we call ‘the big bed’, a shrubbery which had become infested with brambles  and grown so tall it obscured our view. (There were no blackberries left so it was a good time to make some changes: we wouldn't be depriving the birds.) Frog wielded chain-saw and bill-hook and I pulled with my new bramble-proof gloves. Two days' work later and we had three large piles on the lawn.

What we do with them now we haven’t yet decided. The birds are loving them, using them as a waiting area for the bird table and investigating them as sources of nest material.

We can now see what we actually have left in the bed and through to slices of our lovely view. . . 

 
We left this leggy mahonia . . .

. . . because the flowers were turning into berries and apparently (I checked) the birds love them. (Humans can eat mahonia berries too, but I’m not sure I’ll try.)

 
Likewise this ivy on a dead apple tree (left).

The spindly trees you can see in the centre of the picture above and in this one below . . .

. . . are elms, which have grown as suckers from a tree which used to live here until it got too tall, contracted Dutch elm disease and died (the beetle which spreads the disease only flying above a certain height). We've since cut their tops off, both so that they survive and in the hope that they will bush out and help fill our now rather sparse shrubbery. I'm all for native species.*

 
I wanted to do this post last weekend for Kate’s blog link-up party on the theme of ‘new’ but it wasn’t ready. Instead I’m doing it in advance for this weekend's (22nd to 24th) on the theme ‘moon’, and sneaking in the ‘newness’ that should have been there last week. Do take a look the party and maybe even upload something of your own - it's very easy.

*I had a feeling elm wasn't native so I checked and here's what I discovered (from various sources). There are two sorts of elm - Wych elm and English elm. Wych elm is the only true native, but grows naturally only in the northern half of the UK. The English elm is thought to have been introduced by Bronze Age people from southern Europe, and this is the version in our garden. I find these elms easy to distinguish from other trees by their ultra-knobbly bark and the strange thickness at the bottom of small branches. (Wych elms on the other hand have smooth bark.)

The ultra-knobbly bark of English elm

The strange branches of English elm