At this point, it has become pretty clear to me that the theme of this year’s Twelve Days of Tarot project is work. For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many work-related cards in one reading – in fact, I’m not I had even realized there were so many work-related cards in a tarot deck!
Today’s card is the Knight of Pentacles (or, as it’s called in this R. Black image, the Son of Pentacles). This card is about starting to take action on practical matters. Joking aside, we are more than halfway through this holiday break, and as we approach the new year I know I’m starting to give some thought to the kind of habits I want to cultivate as we ease back into our usual routines. For me, right now, that means setting up the new planner I got for Christmas, getting a few extra chores done (slowly!) so I won’t be too swamped next week, and deciding which habits I want to focus on for the next month or so.
One of the excellent functions of festivals and rituals in general is that they give us a bit of a break from our usual routines, allowing us to get a clearer look at them from the outside and a bit of flexibility about how we want things to look when we start to pick them up again. On that note, I really enjoyed this blog post by Caitlin Matthews on the Twelve Days of Christmas as a historical time of rest and omen-seeking:
In Brittany and in Wales, the Twelve Days of Christmas, which mark the intercalary days of the year, are called ‘the Omen Days,’ and they have a special purpose. ‘Intercalary days’ are really the days left over from reckoning up the solar year and, in calendars throughout the world and at different times, they are special because they are considered to be ‘the days out of time.’ It is in this interval between the ordinary count of days that gods are born or conceived in many different mythologies.
There’s lots more in the post, which is well worth a read, about the specific omen-seeking methods traditionally associated with this time.