March 5, 2010 - The Four of Wands

Sometimes I am an optimistic pessimist. Sometimes I'm a pessimistic optimist. I keep one ear cocked always for the other shoe to drop. When I was little, my Greek grandmother would always caution too much joy lest the fates grow angry. She'd find not the worst case, but just enough wrong that the powers that be would leave her loved ones alone. At fifty-one, I find myself more like my grandmother than I know. I never celebrate completely. I may not consciously worry about tempting fate but surely there must be some of that in my tepid responses. Perhaps four years of flying high, too close to the sun, along with the requisite fall from grace at such daring, has cured me of peaks and vales. I may look a the sky, my dream of the sun, but I keep my flight at more moderate levels. No use risking melted wax and the deathly plunge into the ocean. I've fallen from great heights and survived, barely. I'm not sure I can be brave enough to do that again.

I wonder if the Four of Wands knows this and is trying to get me to celebrate a bit the good things of life, the gifts I've been given. It definitely heralds a celebration, usually the formal kind. It asks you to recognize success, reflect on your accomplishments, and enjoy some well-deserved rewards. Life always has its ups and downs but it has been, for the most part, pretty wonderful this last year since my bypass. If it's indicative in any way of the next half of my life, then things on the whole are going to be good. So maybe it wouldn't be so wrong to celebrate a bit. Surely the Fates are as angry at those who ignore or forget to honor their gifts as they are those who forget to honor the Fates.

Of course another aspect of the card is freedom. It urges you to get our of oppressive situations, break free of bonds, open to new possibilities, let go of limitations. Since my bypass, but even before I've had a hard time thinking beyond the edges of the life I've been living. I feel its narrowness and find little comfort in that anymore. I want to overflow my edges, move beyond my traditional boundaries. I don't want to be that tiny local creek with its safe trickle of water. I want to be a river and I want a river's rights to flood, to dry, to flow, to make my own way to the sea.

Before the levees here tamed the Delta for agriculture, the span between Sacramento and San Francisco was a great meandering inland sea. I want that freedom to spread when I need to, narrow when that too is right. We think of rivers as dependable, set. We need them to be that. But water has a mind of its own, as do I, and it will find its way to the sea. It strikes me that maybe in my second half, this two is my goal to find my own wild way to the sea.

Not sure what the Four of Wands has in mind but I'll keep you posted.

March 3, 2010 - The Four of Wands

On a gray, rainy day in the midst of extensive lay offs, this card arrives like a ray of sunshine. Apparently the Four of Wands is pointing me toward my path to happiness.

The four of Wands is a card of celebration, rejoicing over a happy event, recognizing success and reflecting on accomplishments. It's a card of seeking freedom, getting out of oppressive situations, breaking free of bonds, and letting go of limitations. And it's also a card of feeling excited, relishing the moment, feeling jubilant and surprised. Remember the excitement of the best of birthday parties, the cake coming in alight with candles, your loved ones and friends all around you? Remember that first slow dance with the love of your life, the deep, thrumming thrill of it? That's this card. In a reading, the Four of Wands often refers to a celebratory event or event, the kind that generates excitement. It can also be a card of freedom, of breaking loose, claiming the broad vistas that are yours.

In the Jane Austen Tarot, the Four of Candlesticks depicts the marriages of Jane Bennett and Charles Bingley and Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy. It speaks of a celebration, but a lasting one. If you're asking about a relationship (I wasn't), then it might indicate a new, more stable phase of it, increased seriousness. Those four wands speak of stability, a completion and new beginning. It's a lovely card although I'm not really sure what it means for me. Is it time to reach for freedom? Is a celebration coming? Are relationships deepening to something more stable? What is my more perfect union? I guess we'll see.

January 30, 2010 - Four of Wands

Looks like a celebration ahead! Hurray. Maybe it's my upcoming trip to the Santa Barbara Film Festival. Maybe it's the friends I'm planning to meet there. Maybe it's a surprise, something wonderful I can't even conceive of now. The best events in my life came just like this, out of the blue, completely unthought of, inconceivable until they happened then inexorable once they occurred. They felt like the hand of fate, the touch of God, miracles, plain and simple.

When the Four of Wands comes up in a reading, it speaks of celebration, of freedom, of excitement. And, as opposed to trying to figure it out, plan it, worry it, I think I'm just going to see what comes and relish all of it, in every form.

In the Jane Austen Tarot, the Four of Wands (Candlesticks) depicts the weddings of Pride and Prejudice - Jane and Charles, Darcy and Elizabeth. Not that this card promises weddings. Rather, it is the end of one cycle, a foundation complete, and moving on to something new. A relationship can move to the next level, is moving to the next level, but nothing is certain, nothing is guaranteed. I get that now in a way I never did. You can want, I did, but all that wanting, as powerful as it is, doesn't make it so. Relationships are living things with their own fates. We think we drive them but when two come together, lover, friends, parent-child, etc., something is born and the third, the child, has its own destiny. I never realized this so completely until I loved and lost and kept on loving. And it didn't die, but lived as something different and keeps evolving, surprising me.

What Would Jane do?

"Rash decisions do not often result in prudent results, and success and achievement are rarely achieved without effort. Yet people continue to insist that prosperity and happiness are worth the expenditure -- especially in retrospect. With humans being the malleable creatures that they are, present happiness always trumps past pain." p. 62 May it be so.