2011's Tarot Message -- two cards speak

As has been my habit the past two years, each new year I pull a Tarot card to guide me through the year. For those who are curious, take a peek at what I pulled for the past two years.


2009:
http://awalkintheworld.blogspot.com/2009/03/little-whispers-from-universe.html


2010:
http://awalkintheworld.blogspot.com/2010/01/2010s-whispered-message-queen-of-cups.html

I had to giggle when I went to pull cards for 2011 because TWO cards showed up -- the EIGHT of SWORDS and the HIGH PRIESTESS.

It's an interesting pull, methinks, because these cards comes from both arcanas. (Minor arcana cards, some of which are numbered, reflect a typical, archetypal experience - a reflection of what's happening in the outer world. Major arcana cards are larger archetypal snapshots and show how inner changes precipitate external events and vice versa.) Using the cards as divinatory tools, it appears that I will use my intuition (trusting it 100%) this year to make serious, path-changing decisions about the current trajectory of my life. Let's go a little bit deeper.

The EIGHT of SWORDS card, according to the Mythic Tarot card system, shows Orestes in a fearful posture. His hands are up to fend off the three Furies to his right and a stern looking Apollo to his left. He is encircled by eight swords. Dark clouds appear to loom in the barren background.

This strikes me as being a card of bondage and some decision-related paralysis. A decision must be made NOW. One cannot put it off any further. On a divinatory level, the card heralds a situation where there is a call to action, regardless of perceived consequences. One must own responsibility of how one got to this position but acknowledge, too, that with some creative juice, a new way forward is possible.

The HIGH PRIESTESS is portrayed above by Persephone. In her right hand she holds a pomegranate, split open to show its multitude of seeds. In her left hand a bunch of white narcissi trail to the ground. One either side of staircase on which she stands is a pillar; the left one is black, the right one white. Behind her, at the top of the staircase, a doorway opens out onto a rich green landscape.

The writers of the Mythic deck tells us that "on an inner level, Persephone, the High Priestess, is an image of the link with that mysterious inner world to which depth psychology has given the name 'the unconscious.' It is as though, beneath and beyond the ordinary daylight world which we believe to be reality, lies another hidden world, full of riches and potential, which we cannot penetrate without the consent of its invisible rulers. This world contains our undeveloped potentials as well as the darker, more primitive facets of the personality. It also holds the secret of the destiny of the individual which gestates in darkness until the time is ripe for manifestation...Persephone...can only be dimly sensed by waking consciousness, and appears through the fleeting fragments of dreams, or through those strange coincidences which make us begin to wonder whether there might be some hidden pattern at work in our lives.

"On a divinatory level, the appearance of the High Priestess augurs the heightening of the powers of intuition, and implies that there will be an encounter of some kind with the hidden inner world which Persephone rules. The individual may be drawn inexplicably to this world through an interest in the occult or esoteric, or through the uncanny sense that "something" is at work in one's life."

I have a hunch what some of these decisions are about, and I refuse to stay stuck behind a bunch of swords! Here is to a year of action shepherded by self-trust and intuition!