Tamara's Reading
My sister reads cards for me
I'm changing my life in a big way in the new year -- leaving the safe job, embarking on a multi-month hike, either in Europe or the USA. Everything is is in the air. It's been interesting to see my reactions to things. I set all this in motion, but there is a tendency to get annoyed with one aspect or another. I've caught myself fantasizing about arguments and show-downs. For example, I've read that flight attendants throw people off planes if their mask is down a second too long while putting a chip into their mouth. I'm jogging one day, and find I've spent the last five minutes with a scenario where this happens to me, I end up stranded in Iceland with a 40 thousand dollar bill for an unscheduled airplane stop. No one cares, injustice is maximized. Tears of recrimination, hurt, Twitter flame wars...
What is happening? And then I see.
My ego fears the unknown and doesn't know how to control what approaches. It is trying out scenarios in which it prevails against enormous odds. When it faces emptiness, it can only fill it with war.
And so it is that I would step into a New World, and find it essentially the same as the Old. The walls have already been painted by that which lurks within...which lives by my assent. That which I cannot entirely disavow, ever. My protector...and my destroyer.
Here, I must be the adult. For each withdrawal from the bank of the future it makes with the energy of my consciousness, I must put double the amount back in -- in visions of hearty adventures, of struggle overcome...of friendship, of summits. Of love. Of nights of cold stars, and fierce warmth within.
This I will do.
The first stop on my path is to reach out to Tamara (who also makes jewelry and has an Etsy shop here) and see what her friends and high countenances on the astral plane have to say. My specific question was: "should I pursue the more ambitious hike in the USA?"
Tamara draws 6 cards, laying them out as the first of 4 rows...
Let me digress a moment with some words about divination. The church is not happy with this stuff. Nor are the non-believers. I agree with both sets of people that it could go wrong. That a person with a raging ego or unstable personality may claim to speak for Gods and behave like a wolf to the sheep that come, ever trusting. I also agree with the churched that for most, it is not necessary to "peek behind the curtain" and gain more detail about the framework in which these lives of ours are lived. I also agree with them that when we can put our trust in authority, we've received a great boon: we can carry out our life plan without interference.
However a complete world requires the skill of divination, because if 90% of lives can be fruitfully lived on the pasture, 10% of them must occur in crags and desert. We see nature express herself there, it wouldn't be logical if we eschew all edges, all liminal states in the carrying out of a human life. This means at some point, a life will occur in which connection with the unseen makes all the difference. Not necessarily for us, surrounded by Taco Bells, by insurance policies and 24-hour cable TV. However maybe for us as well, for we pine away and deaden when our bellies are full but our spirits are UN-exercised.
Given that the "do it yourself" search into the unseen will occur, human nature does the rest, creating experts among the proficient as well as mimics and parasites, as occurs everywhere else. Thusly, the "fortune teller" is a dubious figure, but one which never goes away, because for all her error, she gets it right too.
Returning to the Church perspective...to a shepherd, it is best if the sheep do not stray to the cliffs. We are 90 percent sheep. That is...most of our lives should proceed normally, naturally. Most parts of us need no hankering after special knowledge. For the remaining 10 percent, the hankering after such knowledge should probably be met skeptically. Because how many times did the will to power destroy man?
The question is...how do we change from sheep? To what degree are we acted on, and to what degree must we take up the surgeons knife and act on ourselves? I am sure that there is some degree of initiative required. My whole life tells me that. Many good things come just by being patient, and living day by day. But sometimes I had to make a real move. "But did you really?" I can hear.
Yes! I answer. "Even if I was wrong."
Because we need error in order to develop the capacity to profit from error, and to discern the road to error. We must seek.
So the sheep must become an individual. He must stray near the cliffs. If you see the sheep there, it is likely he has already fallen and died more than once. But leave him. If he reappears, then he is still trying to walk the middle road...to accept the food God has laid out. He has already returned as a sheep, which requires humility.
And yet, he is carving the wood of himself.
To the shepherd or the sheepdog I would say, not all beasts that move in the forest beyond the pasture are your enemy. Some of them are bound to be like Aragorn in Tolkien's works, derisively named "Strider" by townspeople for his long shanks, loping gait, and rough appearance. It was, however, by his efforts that towns could remain towns, and the people who wished to concentrate on local tasks and remain "simple" to wider concepts could do so.
So...I know that I did not dispose of objections. However, I hope I have enlarged the space in which these questions are held. I'm satisfied that these skills are needed in this world and I very much appreciate that people who develop their skill here are with us.
I'd also urge you to begin practicing yourself, especially if you ever become dependent on anyone doing divination for you. That's the signal that you're going to create a new obstacle in your path at some point. I spent about about 6 months reading about the Qabalah, which provides a basis for deeper understanding of the symbolism in tarot cards. Then for more than a year I did daily divination. It deepened my attention considerably. It got me to habitually see problems from new angles. I didn't continue it, just as I didn't continue astrology after an initial feverish interest. I did integrate the approach to my thinking, and that remains.
I'll attempt a definition:
Divination is intuition, which we all have, joined to the idea that there is the unseen, and though it leaves little trace, there are faint signs visible when one looks into the apparent emptiness.
And here is a fuller one, dredged from the (hopefully not too hazy) cellar of my imagination:
Gathered around the fire, humans and spirit beings meet. Not anyone can come. It makes sense that diviners know much about the need to protect the space, just as we need screen doors against bugs. The use of cards, numbers...things like that. That is a door through which chance occurrence can be tilted slightly through partnership. Because the beings cannot say "anything." They can only "say" what those on the human side can hear. For the humans also work on the plane of spirit, and their acquiescence to the possibility of idea A or B is required to express A or B on the physical plane. The diviner creates the space and perceives more deeply, however they are human too, and their own inclinations and experience tilt what comes yet again. Thusly, they must become the embodiment of openness and acceptance in order to carry out their role.
Tamara has done this work for generations. And so we are here.
The First Row
Tamara draws 6 cards, laying them out as the first of 4 rows. Subsequent rows normally enlarge on the idea presented in the first row. The first row came from her Archangel Michael cards. The first card was:
Go Forward Fearlessly
Here is the whole set of cards. I'll describe from left to right, top
to bottom. The columns enlarge on the initiatory first row.
What a message! The angel sits on a throne, holding a sun-like orb. He occupies the beautiful center of Tiphareth, the highest center we can ascend to as men. This is the place of beauty, imagination and justice. The prayer beneath is one of gratitude to the Great Benefactor. It is the psychological location that brings tears of joy to my eyes easily, and fills my legs with the desire to walk across a golden land.
My name is Michael, and a Higher Michael tells me to walk. What a great start! 😄
Shield Yourself is the next card. Tamara talked about holes in the penumbra of white light around me. I think that this is what I'm doing to myself -- out of fear that a glorious future may disappoint, I'm tearing it down already. Doubts are, I think, "holes" on a higher plane. Remember the "ozone layer hole?" It makes perfect sense to me that it came in the 1970s, when we became newly conscious of our role as stewards of creation...and began to doubt that we were doing so very well. The answer here must be to continue and increase positive signal radiating from the core. A strong offense is the best defense.
Spend more time outdoors is next. Well...yes. I almost feel like this was a small joke. I mean...how could I not? :) The mountains are my great teacher and I'll walk in them until the end of this life, then I will walk further into them on subtler levels.
Self respect. This theme was continually enlarged in subsequent rows. I spent most of my life as a "people pleaser," and it's been hard to unlearn. I still find myself agreeing to things that are not the best for me. At least now I return to the people, hat in hand, and beg off. Easily saying no to things that dilute concentration of my energy is still my task.
Detach from the situation is necessary advice. I often feel in a small, cramped room with two hairy problems: the permits for the hike and my ability to walk long flat distances. It's easy to get desperate. The truth is, whatever happens, it will be 100% okay, and I'll learn throughout. I have a big goal, and a big goal is one that you don't know for sure that you can complete. There is uncertainty. To take that ride...the ride of a big goal, you must be "tall enough" to detach from fear. To detach from dependence on outcome. All outcomes are flowers in the Lords garden. The important thing is to be in the Lords garden! Not to crush one flower out of that all-too-human admixture of fear and love of self.
Focus upon divine and perfect health. And so ends the top row -- the conditioner of all that comes below. Here is good advice. Here I'll channel Neville Goddard and deny the trickster evidence of my senses. I will form the future with my own "hands." With my imagination, which is the spark of Christ given into my care. This I can do, because this I have done.
Second Row
Play is the first card. That I can do. Sunryu Suzuki said that when people feel the right to be a little bit mischievous, they feel (finally) free. To set an audacious goal and leap into it like a child setting out to walk around the world before dinner time, peanut-butter sandwiches packed...
Here a focus on the middle and lower left side.
Time to Go is the second, with an angel flying rapidly across the frame. "He who hesitates is lost," comes to mind. I've carved out space in life for this hike...perhaps the angel is right. There may not be a better time. Also, this card coming under Shield Yourself enlarges the idea that the true shield comes from positive movement in a chosen direction. The enemy of doubt is heartened by stagnation.
Reward yourself. It's so wonderful that this comes under Spend time outdoors. The cards are really coherent with each other.
Trustworthy guidance. Guides are there for me. Often they come through friends, through Barbara and my sisters. Often in meditation. They lead me to the right books. I really do feel their presence. I rarely "speak" with them. Somehow that seems impolite to me. Rather, it feels like I'm driving the bus of this life and must keep my eyes on the road. They are behind me. Or maybe I'm stubborn and want to do it myself. Only with One have I conversed... the most humor and light in those conversations coming in the mountains.
Let your past go. How amazing that this comes under Detach from the situation. I often feel as if I committed a great sin, sometime in lives before this one. In my communion with spirit, there is a silence about the deep past. I believe this is meant to be protective, for a spruce tree cannot grow in the desert. However, a grown tree can withstand much, so my time of knowing will come. Strange, yes, that prompted by "let your past go," I muse about learning the deep past? My defense is that error must finally be understood. But to understand it requires detachment. And then it can be let go of. My sin may have been as "small" as the momentary thought that I can set up my own separate kingdom apart from God. This is hardly small! But just as Jesus said:
But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
The merest thought is the beginning of a road. And I feel I have walked that road of separate kingdoms...that long weary way, marked by cynical smirks and nights of long knives. I will perish utterly before taking that road again.
Focus on service. Here Tamara mentioned boys in that age between 8 and 12 or so. Is there anything I can do for them? I think that the natural world can absorb and repay their energy. It sets a standard for them so high, so far and yet so near that they can never be disappointed. If they grow into men who build things here, those things will last longer because the mind conditioned by love of the high and remote works of God does not need human greed or tawdry accommodation with the world. In this way, the boy survives into manhood, and the older man meets himself again on his walks. Also...interesting that this card is under Divine health. Health comes from circulation. That which we have been given we must "breathe on."
Third row
Practice, practice, practice. Yes! Because play is the first activity of freedom, but then having dreamt the wildest dream in play, you set to work. You must imagine your ideal, and that over and over. On the card, a girl plays a flute, and the unicorn looks on approvingly. She is, in fact, teaching the unicorn, who is grateful. Thusly, the unicorn prepares for humanity, and the human prepares for angelic life. Through practice, within a vehicle that purifies itself by taking in good things and no bad things...transcendence will come.
I just want to add here that I am so, so glad that I spent my teenage years incessantly practicing the guitar. I was a fiend! Once there was a snow day and school was closed. My stopwatch recorded 6 hours of playing. I had been fired by a vision of the possible. I had "played" in the field of my imagination, and came back with a stark will to practice. My whole life unfolded from this.
Ask for what you want. Yes, but how to know what you want? It makes sense to me that this is under the heading of doubt (my interpretation of the Shield yourself card). I haven't been exactly sure of what I want. I think this is what comes from "busyness." Busyness is the appearance of productivity, but a dearth of introspection leads to incomprehension. What do I want? Understanding That Which Is. Only that! 🤣
Flower Power. The card says to spend time with flowers. Earlier I would have chuckled at this as something silly. But no, I respect flowers. They are teachers. They are the holy beings of plant life, and how many cycles of dawning consciousness of grass took it to achieve the subtlety of flowerdom? They are the essence of the exploration of possibility. Of the use of space, time and available resources. They are surface paradox, and underlying unity.
(Wow, I didn't expect THAT!)
Assertiveness. Writing this right now and putting it on the internet is part of my response to this card. Whatever this is that types, it is reasonably good, and deserves a place here. And this, what my sister does with cards, is good. This is her service. I assert my relation with her. I assert the wonder of her gift.
Your New Home. Here the story reading down a column becomes profound. Detach...let go, that you may reach a new home. This is the New Man spoken of by Christ. This is new wine in new bottles, "else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out." We cannot imagine where we are going, but if we proceed on the road our conjoined heart and minds discern for us, we will get there.
Spiritual Teacher. Well, coming under focus on service...and adding to that my ridiculous ability to talk for years about spirit this and spirit that, I suppose I'm cut out to be a spiritual teacher of sorts! I'll come to you, sweaty and lisping, and press crumpled tracks into your hand, then call at odd hours, ruin dinners with bizarre dietary restrictions...clearly I am not that comfortable with this designation. I guess I'd better just do what I do and see how it goes. I mean...the idea of calling yourself a spiritual teacher just doesn't sit right. But I know there is some kind of truth to this and I must be silent rather than calling attention to myself.
Fourth Row
Tamara used special cards here, masters of spirit, gods and goddesses.
Djwal Khul, Dharma Unfolding. This dude is the archetype of a wise and enlightened spiritual leader who transcended the earth plane long ago. I first heard about him when reading "The Complete Ascension Manual," a book focused on his teachings. Technically, he's a channeled entity, by Alice Bailey in the 1920s. I pulled that book off the shelf today and found a passage that I highlighted:
"It must be understood again that the soul does not pay much attention to the personality until the personality pays attention to the soul."
That rings true to me. Until age 42, I turned away from any contact with the numinous. What hurts my ego a little bit, is that the soul didn't particularly mind, because it wasn't paying that much attention to me, either! I got a glimpse of this in 2015 when I employed a hypnotist to rummage in the closets of my Mind for clues to past lives. My guide, my great teacher, was there. And didn't particularly like being disturbed in this way. I was being an elephant in a china shop, forcing doors open rather than knocking.
Now I can see my rudeness for what it was. Ambition, entirely unconscious of the way it needlessly upset apple-carts lovingly set out.
Anyway, in that book, Djwhal Khul is vaguely credited with that sentiment, and the following quotes directly from Alice Bailey's books back it up.
I became disappointed with Alice Bailey, Charles Leadbeater and the like for various reasons. As a kid, I admired Jiddu Krishnamurti. When I learned his backstory only a few years ago, I was appalled. I was so disappointed that Alice Bailey would fall for this "millenarian" or "Manichean" idea that some individual will appear to "save us all." I was heartened that Krishnamurti turned away from all that.
Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on them. They were, after all, operating in a time when the gulf between East and West was far wider (it's also true that the West then was more conscious of it's gifts, and granted them more esteem...not a bad thing). They worked to close that gap, and that is a great thing.
Lady Venus, Downloads and Understanding. As the card says, "truth is being revealed." Tamara emphasized the significance of this card coming at the point of my weakness and doubt. It seems to be a reassurance that should I follow the precepts laid out in the column, I will reach a point of deep understanding.
Diana, Focused Intention. Wow, I love this card. Just the card itself -- she is so beautiful in her determination, with her "arrows of discernment," and the crescent moon that appears to have centered on her by the power of her concentration. I can say this -- it is two days later, and I have already walked 20 kilometers before or after work, in which I continually visualized success. I am attempting to mould reality with the spirit of concentrated power visible in her eyes.
So yeah, this card makes an impression on me!
Here a focus on the lower middle and right sides.
Archangel Michael, Trusting Heaven. This card, like Diana, has a promissory atmosphere to it: if you do the right things, you'll be greeted by an avatar of mastery over the plane in which the problems that required the doing of specific things appeared. It is reassurance, and a goal to strive for.
Mary Magdalene, Teacher Awakens. The card says:
"You have something important to share. Follow the inner call. Don't let anything stop you."
She has that beautiful abstracted gaze, precisely the one that led Jesus to say "but one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." She is gazing at God. And who is a better teacher than the one which does that and only that? What more need be awakened, than this gaze upon the Father?
Uff. Blows me the hell away...
The Divine Director, Intervention and Purpose. The card says "Know that you are being guided." To this I can only bow and say thanks. Because what did I do on my own?
I separated when union was called for. I slept when I should have stayed aware.
I need a guide. I know who he is. He is the Soul to which I aspire, and truly, if only that which I name "me" may shrink to the sliver of a moon in the sun of his day, I would be happiest.
The deck begins with Michael, and ends with the Soul. I couldn't ask for more. I have to say...the presentation has the tenor of works beyond our artifice. It is the symmetry desired and never achieved. This Tamara has brought forth, and I say thanks yet again...
Last cards
Tamara pulled the card Freya, Phases and Cycles and she found that especially powerful. I'd like to get her to enlarge on it. In the night after the reading, I felt that Freya was Saturn, or Binah in the Qabalistic symbology. And this is a "place" I find very, very helpful. Most of my growth has come in that place of tension, where I desire to weep for myself, my precious "me-ness," and yet I see the smallness of this desire next to the starkness and beauty of timeless truth illuminated beyond my tears.
This is the planet Saturn. This is the coming of Truth. It first destroys, and then from those ashes, you may rise into new creation.
Sometimes truth is like this...
I see Freya has a crow, with the moon behind. Of all the cards, this is the most foreboding imagery. In fact, as I'm writing this...I'm listening to the 2nd movement of Steve Reich's "Different Trains," about Europe in the war...and the train he evokes is one that leads to the Camps. The urgent voice over the violins and the sirens:
"And he said: 'don't breathe.'"
What knowledge does Freya bring?
To make myself ready I can only seek to continue as Mary Magdalene does.
To be worthy of the gaze of the Divine Director.
To discern, to concentrate as Diana models.
To find New Home, by imagining New Home so fully that my current address is forgotten.
The Lady of the Mirror
After a guided meditation in which I met Freya, Tamara had me pull a card when I felt her hand moved over the right one. She is pretty good with holding the phone in a cinematic way! 🤣
And that is what I got. To reflect back over all this. Not to judge, but to let it all bloom in my imagination.
And so I have written this.
Thank you sis, I love you.
Update on Freya...
I shared this with Tamara and she said something interesting:
You know, the very reason why you are a little weird about Freya, but ... she's got your back. She is impatient sometimes, but when I feel that from her it is her poking me to do or act or.. when I need to be a warrior, I of course summon Michael, but Freya and Odin a lot too, they seem to stay close to me for which I'm so grateful.
It sounds like just the way I would hide from contact with things I don't want to know. I would abstract the point of contact...strip the consciousness from it...and "elevate it" up to a high shelf where it's "so important" that it's strangely unimportant.
The knowledge of God in the breath hides from us in that thing (breath) which is so important that we never really focus on it.
Freya makes me uncomfortable because she, like all good teachers brings me the things I really need to do or understand, and I never want such teachers.
I want teachers I can control.
So I take the sting out of her messages with rhetoric of Saturn...this allows me to hide in a cloud of ink like an octopus from the truth that her messages are to me in particular, from her, in particular, and about necessary actions right here and now in this very life.
How many other things have I hidden from myself in this way?
A LOT, I bet.
So if you read this far, then take my final message: None of this matters if you don't honor intuition with action.
--With gratitude for All That Is...