There’s this weird thing I’ve been thinking about a lot the last few years: the twelve days of Christmas. My family celebrates the winter solstice now, but the concept of a long, dreamy holiday season around midwinter is pretty old and pretty awesome – for example, I was happy to learn that the Rauhnachte in Germany (twelve days starting after the solstice) are a traditional occasion for healing magic and divination.
This year I’ve finally decided to combine this idea with another thing I always think a lot about: the tarot. Every day from today (happy solstice!) to New Year’s Day, I’m going to draw and share a tarot card and a few thoughts about it. These are cards for this holiday season, but also to reflect on in the coming year.
I recently finished reading Robert Place’s The Tarot, Magic, Alchemy, Hermeticism and Neoplatonism, which was a great opportunity to start a new notebook and reorganize my current thoughts about every card. As I was working on this, I thought many times about how many of the cards I really enjoy. Even the big ones that people often hope to avoid, like Death and The Devil, have so many interesting lessons! I just hope I don’t pull the ten of wands for Twelve Days of Tarot, I thought.
So, naturally, that’s exactly what I did first.
I just got this R. Black tarot as a solstice present, so the good news is it’s a beautiful card. The bad news is that it’s about effort, stress, and, especially, obligation. The classic image in the Waite-Smith deck is a man looking close to collapse under the weight of ten giant, unwieldy poles he’s carrying.
This isn’t entirely inappropriate at the start of the holiday season, I guess. I know I’ve spent the last couple of days doing lots of last-minute shopping, laundry, packing, wrapping, food prep, and all the other holiday things I was saving to get done until my “vacation” started. Sometimes, that’s just the week it is.
The important message of the Ten of Swords, I think, is about what obligation really means. According to Etymonline, it’s from an engaging or pledging, literally a binding, and that covers a lot of ground. Nobody wants to be tied to a heavy burden, and this year I encourage you not to be. I promise nothing terrible is going to happen if you put all those wands down for a second.
For one thing, doing that gives you space to think about why you were carrying them in the first place. Coming right at the beginning of this time, maybe that’s a good way to think about it – what can you simplify or drop, in order to give yourself more rest and actual presence with the big things happening this week? Then, from that more magical state of mind, you can think about which ones you actually want to pick up, engage with, and maybe even pledge to in the coming year.
Like Rumi has been pointing out to me, the feeling of carrying something heavy because you actually want to is somehow significantly different.
Robert Place is the gold standard both for Tarot writing and Tarot design.
I just got this book - I like this. :)