@skewedcard-blog / skewedcard-blog.tumblr.com
Sharing solely for “black and white fart squirrel”
So sometimes I have what I call “word gaps” and this is literally what happens in our apartment whenever I’m low on brain battery.
“The tarot represents the spectrum of the human condition, the good, the evil, the light, and the dark. Do not fear the darker aspects of the human condition. Understand them.” –Benebell Wen
“I am comfortable being myself.”
Requested by anonymous
“I am protected from nightmares.”
Requested by @bubble-sprite
Good morning!! I decided I wanted a more positive spread to work with today, so I made this! It’s a simple three card spread asking:
1- Theme of the Day
2- Good news about the Day
3 - Your highest energy for the Day
xoxoxoxox Alie
Nourish my demons. Fill the empty spaces left by all the others. Feast upon my words Neither time nor space An obstacle. Quench me with your fire And shower me in your darkness.
Post Notes: Please do not remove the captions. Title: Hymn To The Dark Lord Copyright: © Ivan Ambrose 2017 Deck: Hexen2.0 Tarot Challenge: NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo. Day: Eleven Navigation: Table Of Contents | FAQ | Contact me
“I achieve my desired body.”
Requested by anonymous.
bit of a jungian twist in this one.
“My insomnia disappears.”
Requested by anonymous.
After writing my Aesthetic & Mechanics post, I noticed several people expressing interest in tackling the task of creating their own aesthetic and mechanics. I also spoke with quite a few people who weren’t sure with where to start.
So, if I may make a humble suggestion: a great place to begin is with your own values.
Values can be defined in many complicated and nuanced ways, but for the purposes of this post I’d like to be as simple as possible, which for me means being literal. Your values are the things that matter to you.
I find it helps to consider it as a question: What do you think matters? What is important to you? What do you value?
This, and the upcoming questions, can be answered in multiple ways, and multiple times. You can even draw tarot cards (deliberately or at random) to gain some insight and inspiration.
Also, I personally feel that the divide between who I am as a witch, a pagan, and a person is mostly an invisible line that never actually existed. But it can help, when asking these questions, to add “…as a witch.” or “…as a pagan.” or whatever other labels you may identify with, to the end of them, because you might come up with things you may not have considered.
Everyone values different things, and even shared values can be held in differing opinions of importance. And not only that, but different people may manifest these values in their lives in different ways.
So the next question might be, what does that mean? How do those values work?
For example, let’s say I decided I placed a high value on success. Different people define success in their own ways though. So let’s say for me, success means triumphing over everything that stands against me or tries to get me down. That I measure success by how far I’ve come from where I started and continuing to move forward when circumstances tried to stop me. And what would being successful say about me? That nothing could stop me? That I always come out on top? That I’m happy?
The next question might be of particular interest to those who enjoyed the aesthetic and mechanics post.
The third question is: What does that look like?
So, looking back at what is important and how it works, some images and feelings might come to mind.
To continue the success example, one of the first things I think of is the Six of Wands from tarot. And drawing from that imagery, I might add laurel crowns to the list. The idea of perseverance and ending up on top makes me think of mountaintops, so I might add that to the list as well. The colour gold. A shining sun. The image of someone battered and bruised, but still standing.
As I go on, the feeling might come that success is how far away I get from the things that make me unhappy, and so success as a purging fire might come to mind.
All of those things start to come together: gold. crowns of it. golden wands alight with bright flame. golden veins under the skin, bleeding ichor. Success is me, a golden star in the sky, burning and bright, and no one can stop me.
On a practical level, that might lead to the incorporation of gold and fire into my practice, both on as part of my aesthetic and my mechanics. A golden laurel crown might become part of my ritual wear, and I might use fire magically to eliminate the things that stand in my way.
And I could have started from any point in those three questions, to be honest. I could have asked myself what a golden crown can do or what it means and from there figured out why that was important to me.
Or I could have thought about me, overcoming all odds and obstacles, asked myself what that’s called and why it matters and what it looks like.
However it would end up manifesting, whatever order I approached the process from, it would be something that was important to me, because it was made from something important from me.
Knowing your own values is a useful thing even if you’re not interested in developing an aesthetic and/or any mechanics based around them. And indeed, your aesthetic and mechanics can come from wherever you choose. But I think that tying them to your values is a great way to get started on a deep and meaningful practice.
Thanks to severe OCD and PTSD, I’m often stuck in my own head with a bunch of intrusive and obsessive nonsense. I came up with a perpetual banishing and transmutation spell to help process and deal with unwanted thoughts.
The Banishing Bin functions somewhat like a computer’s recycle bin:
This is a great spell if you’re a spoonie or not open about your craft. It’s fairly easy to perform and store without raising eyebrows (it literally just sits on my bookcase unsuspiciously). I found the mini trashcan at a local discount store for a couple dollars. The cheapest one I can find is on Amazon here, but you can use any container you like as a bin. If you don’t have a banishing sigil you’re already are working with, feel free to use mine (pictured in the bin on the left).
Use this spread to answer any question. Pull The Empress from your deck and place her in the center, casting your cards around her.
1. What do I love?
2. How do I nurture others?
3. What emotion is flowing?
4. Who am I?
5. What power do I exert?
6. What stability do I maintain?
7. What is being born?
8. What fertile grounds await?
From Sasha Graham’s 365 Tarot Spreads
