My card for today is the 6 of Swords from the Thoth deck. Its astrological correspondence is Mercury in Aquarius. Mercury connects us with communication, education, and intelligence while Aquarius plugs us into liberation, innovation, and expressing undeniable truths. So, what liberating piece of information will I write about today?
What comes to mind is that a liberating way to do tarot consultations might be without an actual layout, but rather with the structure of the tarot itself. When the readee arrives, the Majors and Minors are all laid out in their respective orders. The client then states what’s on hir mind and we find a card in the array that most corresponds with that situation or experience. We find the larger concept that could be behind it, then see what’s next in any row or column that could offer a solution, or at least a next step.
For example, the Thoth deck is laid out on the table. A man comes in and states that he’s worried about the state of his finances. This draws my attention to the 5 of Disks, subtitled Worry. The card’s connection with Mercury in Taurus could tell us that something was communicated to him about productivity, that he was taught that it would behoove him to learn slowly and steadily about money, or that he feels he knows all he needs to know about making his way in the world.
The 5 of Disks’ numerical correspondence with the Hierophant (fifth Major) tells us that the larger learning/principle behind his worries is about beliefs, learning & teaching, tradition, morals, religion, and the like. His financial worries could be the arena for learning to question inherited beliefs and to tune into what his own beliefs are. What patterns does he engage in because his parents, teachers, and religious models did so? How much of that does he truly believe in the present? What’s his own philosophy about how life ticks?
Now we can look at the map before us to find a next step. In the way the deck is arranged face-up on the surface, the Five of Swords (called Defeat) is above the Five of Disks. The client says he doesn’t want to defeat anything, rather he chooses to come into feeling a sense of personal power around his financial stewardship. Aha! Right beside the Five of Disks is the Four of Disks (Power) and its astrological correspondence is Sun in Capricorn. Next steps for this client might be to make tangible structures the centre of his financial life, to be playful in marketing his business, and/or to allow a great teacher to shine hir practical wisdom on him. So I ask the man which of these sounds doable. He responds that the first two feel right, so we brainstorm the types of financial structures that could be central to his life and a couple of enjoyable public events that could attract his ideal paying clientele.
The deck itself has acted as a map or layout for what we needed to explore.
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