I try to pull a tarot card everyday, today would have been my mom’s birthday. Things collided and were written about.
I’ve written before about my tarot cards, the connection I feel from them and the guidance I get. I know it might not really be a spiritual connection, even though it’s what I like to think, what I’m trying to open myself up to believing. It could just as easily be me coming face to face with aspects of myself I’ve been avoiding that the cards force me to realize, but can’t that be a sign or spiritual in some way? Can’t that mean something? When I pulled The Fool and it told me I need to earn being foolish, be unafraid of the title when it’s one of the things I’m so afraid of, how can that be chance and not some celestial sign? Can’t they somehow be connected?
Today would have been my mom’s sixty-first birthday. She never even saw sixty, never got to see me graduate, never got to see a lot of things and still won’t because of cancer. It’s something I could focus on, something I do at times but it doesn’t do any good to focus on all I will miss her being at. My wedding, the publication of my first book, grandchildren.
So today as I shuffled my cards my mind was on my mom and I asked them (because I talk to them, as crazy as I know that is) for some sign, for something to know that she’s with me still (even though I know in my own way that she is), just something from her. I shuffled my cards and picked the one I felt connected to and to my own annoyance pulled the Five of Pentacles.
This is a card I pull quite a lot and it’s not a favourite of mine with its wilting flower and overall theme of sadness from the picture alone. It is about sadness, and deprivation, and worry. One thing the card makes clear in the Wild Unknown Tarot is that there will be “so much worry” and that during this time it’s important to “quiet the mind” and try to cope during this time.
Sometimes the cards aren’t clear, which is why understanding them can be hard and is really up to interpretation and can easily be interpreted wrong leading itself to whether or not tarot cards are accurate or just oneself looking for answers. I’ll argue it can be a healthy mixture of both, but I won’t get into that now. What I mean is that I recognize this card as popping up when I’m hyper focusing on an issue or aspect of my life and trying to solve it knowing I can’t. I tie myself in knots; I make myself ache and my mind a constant whirl of situations and possibilities that can’t be fixed. This card reminds me to calm down, to try to stop the worry, to recognize that I am worrying in an unhealthy way and find a way out.
A message from my mom? Maybe. The cards telling me not to worry about what my mom would think of me now, to wait for a sign, to obsess over everything she’s missing? Also possible. I’ll never know, but I can at least try to quiet my mine, take a breath, and focus on now instead of all the other worries I can easily turn into knots that can’t be undone.
(Inktober Prompt List found here. Image found is my own.)
Sarah O'Connor 