A little study in Romantic Masculinity. The Emperor and the Strength card in Love.

From The Steampunk Tarot

It can be frustrating, when learning tarot, to have cards show up in a spread that can seem like they relate in no way to the subject at hand.

Here’s you, all fired up, reading about that fantastic guy you met the other night, and all you get are Pentacles and Wands. Where are the Cups? The Sun? The Lovers?…or…sigh..the Three of Swords?

Where is the Rrrrrrromance?

But there is romance, or issues related, in every single card in the tarot deck. Yes, it’s true. Every card is a romance card.

Why? Because tarot is entirely…entirely….about context. Sure, there are traditional interpretations for every card, but that is your jumping off point. Your diving board, as it were….the pool, though, is the context of your question, the placement of the card, the weird and wooly layers of your mental landscape and the energies that surround the question.

Every card in the tarot is a love card because every card in the tarot has a love context….and given that about 80% of the readings I do are relationship oriented, I became rather fascinated with the relationship manifestations the cards that seem none too emotional by sheer necessity! Surely these cards are saying something…but what?

And how do you know when to believe yourself?

For example: The Two of Swords has a traditional definition of “stalemate, cool emotions, and a retreat to fight another day”. But in a romance spread it becomes the card of the emotionally unavailable, the avoidant, and the rejection of love offered. You know the super fun feeling of someone blowing very hot and cold? Came on so strong and now you are chasing after him and feeling awful and unsure? Sigh. Yeah. That’s the Two of Swords in a love spread.

(Oh, and don’t ever wait around for men like him, ever, by the way, but that’s another topic for another time, and no one listens to me on that one anyway.)

Context. It’s something you develop with time and experience and reading after reading after reading. You will, with time, learn the way the cards speak to you, specifically. You will learn that the Eight of Pentacles traditionally means plugging away at a task with small gains, but in a relationship spread means someone who will stick it out: the guy who actually will go to therapy with you. The woman who is loyal and committed to things growing better day-by-day. They are the stand up person who doesn’t run at the slightest challenge. You know, the increasingly rare species known as “an adult”.

With practice, it’s easy to see how a “small” card is actually full of information.

Let’s look at two sides of a coin… the “Masculinity Expressed” coin, to be specific, in two cards: The Emperor and the Strength card. Here’s some manly goodness, but one is definitely better than the other (she wrote, as if her opinion were objective fact) as we will soon see.

Here’s THE EMPEROR, as defined in my book, “Love Tarot for Beginners”:

“4: THE EMPEROR

 TRADITIONAL MEANING

 Traditional Masculinity. Leadership. Oppression. Rigidity. Power. Overwhelming force. Conservative.

 LOVE READING

 Most of the time, The Emperor is a person in your life of great importance or influence to you at the time of the reading. This can be a good thing. This can be a neutral thing, if you get my meaning. This card can just represent The Man in Question, and nothing more, except signaling that he is important to you!On the other hand, if you are reading about character traits, and wondering what kind of person you are dealing with, then I should give you both the good and the… less than good!

 The Good

If you like traditionally masculine, protective men, well, it’s your lucky day! The Emperor is an excellent provider, often a leader in the community or his career, and oh, boy, would your mom approve. MANLY.

 The Less Than Good

Did I mention manly? Well, it’s not cute, funny, and charming Nick Offerman manly. It’s usually the “I wash my hair with dish soap because shampoo is for girls” manly. It’s “I call women ‘gals’ or ‘females’, and wow, they are sweet, but irrational. Am I right?” manly, and that sort of masculinity can be a bit fragile. Brittle. Rigid. At its core, it’s an insecure and precarious image to maintain, if not expressed in a mature way.

 Sure, he’s an excellent protector and provider, if you are someone who needs a lot of protection and provision, but your tears make him either angry or confused, and this kind of “protection” sometimes comes with a price, whether it’s something “small,” like resentment, or something large, like oppressive abuse.

 In his more benign aspects, when you have a problem of any kind, he is sure he can solve it with graph paper and a pencil. His natural leadership abilities can get twisted up in the wrong hands and become his natural “Let’s oppress everyone to make sure I get my way” abilities. There are a lot of little Emperors in the world. Some of them even run for President.

Be particularly careful if this card shows up in a spread with The Five of Pentacles. This suggests a strong attraction to “bad boy” types who talk a very good game, but are really unavailable emotionally. They might look great on paper, but words are not deeds, and rare is it that the words and deeds of this combination match.

 So, if you dig this guy, let’s hope he is that magic blend of traditional Knightly Protector and Sensitive Lover. He exists, but he’s a bit of a Manicorn, so good luck to you! If it is clear that this is not a person, and merely a situation, then you can read it like this: You will be dealing with a steamroller of a situation. Get ready to resist, evade, or submit.

 POSSIBLE OUTCOME

“Back to the beginning. A man who is currently insignificant in your life will greatly increase in importance to you.”

Whee!

And here is STRENGTH, from the same (totally awesome) book:

“8: STRENGTH

 TRADITIONAL MEANING

 Gentle force applied with skill. Strong character. The ability to master your impulsiveness and be effective in the world.

 LOVE READING

 The lover that possesses the characteristics of the Strength card is a wonderful partner indeed. As a person or a situation, the traits of calm, self- restraint, wisdom, kindness, strong moral character, gentleness, perseverance, patience, maturity, and attractiveness prevail.

The man who is represented by the Strength card is a dreamboat; the woman, a gentle, wise, sexy, confident and intelligent paramour.

This is the card of the grown-up. Possessed of high levels of emotional intelligence, this card represents someone you can introduce to friends and family with pride. This is someone who doesn’t run at the first sign of trouble; is gentle, but firm in their feeling; has learned from hard-won experience; and is no pushover. Gentle confidence is the order of the day.

Don’t mistake this for dull, and, if you do, carefully examine your own issues with intimacy. For some of us, when it comes to our love lives, the only thing that feels right is conflict, and the only thing that feels normal is feeling bad or confused or unsure. Sometimes fear of intimacy doesn’t show up as running away from someone, but running toward the wrong someone. That way, you can have the passionate experience of intense desire, longing, and “love” without ever having to worry about the terror of having this love actually returned.

As an experience, it means everyone involved is sane, kind, warm, and wanting the best outcome for all concerned.

This card boosts the good qualities of the positive cards it is near, and softens the dark aspects of the negative.

It’s a great card to have show up in a love spread.

 POSSIBLE OUTCOME

Everyone is going to play nice, or you will have the self-control, the maturity, to do the right thing, in the right way, and handle it like a boss.”

 

See? Both are about take charge, manly men, but one of them is sex on a stick, and one of them is, well, Dad.

Maybe you want a Daddy…far be it from me to tell you that this is a bad thing. In fact, if you are kink oriented, The Emperor might be the man of your dreams, as he is dominant and protective and old school and controlling. Sometimes, that’s a perfect fit.

On the other hand, Mr. or Ms. Strength are the type with a sexiness that comes with quiet confidence, earnest expression of feeling, and the courage to take emotional risks and win.

BOTH of these types would be really handy in a zombie apocalypse, for sure, but only one of them might share the spoils captured along the way.

SO! Your personal “knowing”…something which will always be a jumbled up expression of traditional definition, personal experience, and gut feeling, is something to be trusted, once you have the traditional card definitions nice and firmly tucked into the wrinkles of your brain. Get to know your tarot deck backwards and forwards, and then the deeper layers of meaning will show themselves to you in ways that will surprise.

You will eventually realize you aren’t making it up…you aren’t winging it. You actually know, and then the real fun begins.

 

 

 

 

The Six of Cups and Temperance: Nostalgic Longing in the Age of Anxiety.

Can we go trick-or-treating yet?

Welcome to another edition of Tarot Odd Couples, wherein I randomly draw two cards from the Tarot deck, hope that they are SUPER INTERESTING together, discuss how they relate to each other, how to read them together, and then yammer for a bit about the bigger ideas contained within. Like I am some sort of wise person. Snort.

This one will meander a bit. You can see the TL;dr at the bottom, if you need quick answers to your pressing Tarot confusion!

I drew the cards in the morning,  the Six of Cups and Temperance, and then had to run errands, which was good, as I had decided that I needed to let my brain percolate on the subject, and how to introduce the Six of Cups…the card of tender nostalgia. While driving, the sky put on a show.

The sky has been particularly dazzling this week, here in Austin town, deep blue with giant mashed potato clouds plopped flat on the bottom and left puffy on top, looking from here like an angelic bounce house.

I have been so delighted by the giant Texas sky. As a Los Angeleno transplanted to Austin by young widowhood ( I have close family here), I am used to a flat, washed out blue and mostly cloudless LA sky, too dry to form these fluffy masterpieces in front of me, delighting me in a way that is hard to describe. Making me feel a special kind of  “safe”, which is a feeling on short supply since losing my husband, and, you know, the world now being Bizarro World.

Then it hits me. These clouds are abundant in November in LA. And November, to a kid growing up in the last generation of Angelenos who will know a Los Angeles that was affordable, that had streets filled with kids on Halloween in every neighborhood…a pre-internet, delightfully punk rock childhood free of tethers and low on hovering supervision, is one of the best times of the year.

Privileged? Hell yes. My mom’s single motherhood barely registered for me in a struggling way, the self absorbed, weirdo brat that I was. We just knew Dad lived somewhere else and we saw him on weekends. She was that good. She made it happen.  She is AMAZING at holidays, my mom. The best.

And November is the Good Time, when you are lucky little kid growing up in LA in a sane, comfortably middle class family. That is Halloween, and then Thanksgiving and Christmas all smack up against each other. And, because you are a kid, you don’t really grasp all the WORK THAT WENT INTO THAT..all the cooking and shopping and planning..so it was all sparked with a gently spooky promise like a Ray Bradbury short story. Good smells of cooking,  people dressed up for parties, atmosphere changing decorations, the special food (you don’t get to eat yet, stop it) and the personal holiday rituals, and that delicious, difficult to quantify feeling that is a mixture of “everything is ok and very, very safe”…and “everything is magical and anything could happen”.

OK YEAH BUT ABOUT THAT TAROT STUFF, JHONE.

Right..right. Ok. Everything you read above? That is the Six of Cups in a nutshell. THAT feeling. And missing it now. Wanting that so much. Wanting to Go Home Again.

Hard to come by these days, innit? That safe but exciting feeling? Oh we have exciting. I mean, we have little tinpot despots here and abroad making really dazzlingly dangerous choices, so that’s a VERY exciting thing, yesirree.

But safe…cozy? Noooooope.

In relationships, the Six of Cups is about that too. The desire to be with someone who gets you on a deep, soul level. Forget acrobatic sex and passionate drama, er, for the moment. This is about comfort. Being known. Being seen and accepted. It can also mean an old friendship that blossoms into a romance.

It’s what we crave once we grow past the desire to have constant newness, constant variety, constant excitement. When you want sanctuary. Someone who has your back.

The sanctuary Temperance provides.

I took a lot of stupid risks when I was younger. I would list more of them, but, um, my mom reads this blog and I ain’t sharing,  and don’t care if I am in my forties. I did a lot of stupid stuff. I had fun while doing it, don’t get me wrong, but if I have a guardian angel, well, they were busy then. BUSY. I used to think the Temperance card was SO boring. So very plebeian. So settling.

Now I cling to this card, when it shows up in a reading, like a life raft that is sailing to paradise. And paradise is food in the fridge, improved health, and being loved by at least one person. There is almond milk for my chai. It is not being on fire. It is no one dying of melanoma. Right now.

The Temperance card is one of contentment. Of Everything is Going to be Okay. My gods, BRING IT. I will get spanked in a tent on a beach later. (Hm, that was pretty random.) Just so pleased there are eggs and toast.

When Temperance shows up as an outcome card in a reading for another, I breathe a sigh of delighted relief. It means whatever nasty is happening now will end. If you are estranged from your beloved, there is a good chance of reconciliation. In fact, this is a classic combination for just that. The conditions will improve, and you will be content. YOU WILL BE CONTENT.

Content in an age such as this is tantamount to bliss.

 

 

TL;dr: In love based readings, the six of Cups is a card of sweet, affectionate emotions, nostalgia and tender romance. Paired with Temperance, it speaks of a delightfully comfortable life and love. Treasure it as much as you might treasure fiery passion, because the world is wild and wooly. This card combination is also a classic one of reconciliation and being reunited with an estranged love one…..just be sure that is really what you want!

 

Want to learn more about how to read Tarot for Romance? I wrote a book about it!

Want a Tarot reading from me? You can have it! Get one here.

Like REALLY PRETTY STUFF? I make that. Get some here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Eight of Swords and the Four of Wands: Maybe Everything isn’t Horrible, or, Staying Optimistic in Chaotic Times.

Deck by the Super Brilliant and Awesome Dame Darcy. Buy everything she creates.

Welcome to the second edition of Tarot Odd Couples, where I shuffle and pick two random cards from a tarot deck and discuss how to interpret them together. Also I rant about stuff. And relationships. Yes, all that. ALL THAT IN ONE MAGICAL POST HOW DO I DO IT?

Slowly.

Possibly ineptly?

Earnestly, that’s for sure. Let’s go!

I suppose we should touch on the title a bit, but only lightly for now, and I will be getting back to that later. YES, hey, I would not at all blame you if you felt everything was terrible. I mean…according to so very many, we have a crass, unfit, pathological narcissist for a president, half the world wants to kill the other half, and this humidity is doing really terrible things to my hair. There’s more. So much more I could say here. About me, about the world, about you. The many things about my life that Need Improvement. How I know you are probably struggling mightily in one area of your life or another. Maybe a lot of areas of your life. I’m sorry.

But the truth is that I find my own stress really exhausting, mentally, and that is more than just the stuff the stress is about.  In fact…it’s exhausting, and queasily so, mostly because it takes me away from the Present Moment, which is always the only thing any one of us ever has at any time. Ever. The lovely innocent present moment, where I am not at all on fire. Not even a little bit.

In the present moment, all of the things I worry about aren’t happening. In the present moment, my home smells like fresh laundry tumbling, my partner in crime is working on his hobby, I just made a really good chicken salad with tarragon and grapes, and I am sitting here, writing to you out there, who really JUST WANTS TO KNOW WHAT THOSE TWO CARDS MEAN TOGETHER OK LADY?

Okay, okay.

We are gonna get back to that present moment stuff, though, ok? So buckle up, Star Pirate.

But now, the cards.

The Eight of Swords is an interesting card. Looks daunting. Even a bit kinky. Bound woman, blindfolded, surrounded in a little prison of swords. Goodness. How in the world did she get there?

The real question, though, is why is she staying?

All traditional Tarot decks show her bound very loosely. Those ties could nearly be shrugged off. That blindfold is slipping. And I don’t care how sharp those swords are…she could easy squeeze though the spaces in between.

So, the Eight of Swords is about the prisons we create for ourselves. “The Job We Hate, But Know, So We Hate it Comfortably”. “The Stupid Relationship That is Totally Unsatisfying But What’s Out There is So Much Worse, Surely, So Okay, Let’s Watch More Family Guy and Not Have Sex While You Sneak-Flirt Online”. Good times.

The Four of Wands is pretty much the opposite of that. It looks very sweet and straightforward, but it holds secrets. Sweet ones. Tasty ones.

The Four of Wands traditionally means “engagement”…there are woman dancing under a chuppa, and there appears to be a wedding about to happen. It really smacks of happily ever after, and that is true, but here is its tender, surprise chewy center: The card, at its heart, means this: The thing you hope and expect to happen DOES happen, but not only that, it is better than you expect! Whee! IT’S BETTER, BABY.

So what does this mean for you, when these two are together? Especially in relationship? Well….you might be tempted to think that whatever is superpoop about your relationship right now is just going to get magically better and you are getting hitched and it’s off to Vegas. But no. That’s not it. Oh, there is happiness for you, yessiree, but it’s going to take some change on your part.

This card suggests, whether it is work or love or money, that staying where you are right now means no growth, change, or happiness for you. Staying here in your little sword corral does not mean you will get to ride ponies. It means you will be safe, and there and stuck and unhappy and things are pretty grey, and sure, I LOVE Family Guy…the characters are so …um….sure, it’s fine, another episode is great…it’s that.

…and if you let go…you shrug off your bindings and walk away, pretty much immediately something awesome is gonna happen, and it turns out to be much better than you expect. WAY better.

This happened to me this year. In a previous post I wrote that I am not allowed any more “Michaels”. My “ex”, if you can call him that, was the first person I got involved with since my husband died five years ago, and he was a poor choice. I hung on, for a year, liiiiiiiike an idiot, because he was brilliant and funny and interesting and stuff, but in truth, he treated me poorly. Not because he was a bad person, but because he was stressed, emotionally unavailable to me, worried about his career, of an emotionally avoidant attachment style, and other fun stuff. I understand he has a new girlfriend now, and I hope like hell he treats her well. I hope they are happy. I truly do. But for me, it was a year from hell. It was not his most shining moment, and I certainly did not value myself very much at the time. Grief makes for stupid choices, sometimes.

THE SECOND WEEK after breaking up with him (right after my birthday, which was far, far too much for him to deal with, I guess…all those well wishes and dinner plans. I’m very high maintenance.)….the long legs and winning smile of My Sweetheart leaped into my world, holding a fist full of peonies and singing songs by Elbow , and changed it for the better.

Better is an understatement.

Within eight months, we were living together, are extremely, alarmingly happy together, and it’s way, way better than I could have even hoped for. We are just hilariously well suited, and oh my goodness, is he pretty. Prettier than me, that’s for sure. Score.

When I drew these two cards, I knew they were a perfect metaphor for my own love life (hey, I was thinking about my Eric when I drew them!), and knew this combination has genuine meaning for me, personally.

I hugely encourage you to let go of the Monster You Know, if it is genuinely unhappy and only merely safe and known, and take a change on things turning out even better than expected.

Even in a world where an angry cheeto can be president, Good Things can still happen.

Meanwhile, though, how do you cope when everything is crap? How do you deal with your stressful life, when all it does is make you regret the past and fear about the future?

Stop. Stop living in the future, right away. Oh yes, use the brilliant tool that is your brain/mind to make plans, for just as long as it takes to make them, and then set down the Useful Tool that is your brain/mind (You know that your mind is not YOU, I hope. YOU are not all that interior chatter and wierd yelling and singing old jingles and thinking about stuff you did in the third grade. You are just watching that, and sometimes forget you are watching)….and come back to The Present Moment, because it is always, and only, now.

So you come back to the present moment…where you are not on fire. Where there is a likelihood of tea nearby. Where nothing with tentacles is currently coming after you, requiring you to run. If you can stay in this present moment, as much as humanly possible, using Brain to Get Stuff Done and FUTURE PLAN as needed, but only in the way you pick up a hammer and pound a nail, to be set down when finished, rather than running around the house pounding on everything and calling it helpful thinking.

Sure, if you return to the present moment, then yes, you can find peace in your Sword Prison too. You can. Because again, you are not literally on fire. But if you let go of the control of that….you might find the universe has other plans. Better plans, if you trust it.

I am learning how to trust it too. It’s not easy…but I’m working on it. It’s really stressful out there. Right now, though, it’s fresh towels and chicken salad.