Tarot and the meme

[averygoodun42]

So, today, while Babe was napping, I brought out my tarot deck for the first time in six years.  When I asked if it would play with me, it finally, finally gave an unequivocal "yes."  So, I did three readings which were all way better and more accurate than the reading I got at the faire, though it mirrored that one in certain aspects. 

The first reading was just to try and clarify what my question really was, as I was having a hard time putting to words what my heart was trying to express.  So I used a simple four card diamond thingy (oh, see how technical I become!) and these were the four cards I drew: The Moon (XVIII) - what's actually going on; The Tower (XVI) - what I am receptive to and am attracting; Death (XIII) - what I'm expressing and showing to the world; while The Universe (XXI) is supposed to be the answer.

It seems my propensity for drawing all major arcana hasn't diminished much.

The other readings are a little too personal to share, but they were all good mirrors of what's going on, with the last one incredibly helpful and hopeful.  I was right, though, and the next while of my life is going to be strenuous.  I just have to remember that where there is Love, there is Hope.

It's funny.  When I first got this deck and read through the book on the meanings of all the cards, the card that I thought was the absolute worst was The Tower.  It scared the bejeezus out of me.  Now, not so much.  Now, of the major arcana, The Moon is the... not worst, or scariest, but the one that makes me the most uncomfortable, although both The Universe and The Chariot also kind of give me the heebie-jeebies. 

It felt good, though.  It felt like honest guidance from a helpful source.  Which is kind of ironic because both the reading at the faire, and two of today's readings emphasized that I should be very careful about whose guidance I accept.  As the faire reader put it, "You can't be naive and believe everything everyone says.  It's not like you're 21 anymore." 

:D


And now for the meme.  I've read pathetically few of these, although more than I thought than upon first looking at the list.  Too bad the compulsion to read has been getting less and less frequent of late; at this rate, it's looking like I've got a lifetime's worth of reading to do, just on this list.

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicise what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand. (Please note; all originally foreign language books which I claim to have read, I have only read in translation). Add an asterisk to those you've read more than once. Underline those on your to-read list.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina (I will try again very soon)
Crime and punishment
Catch-22
One hundred years of solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The name of the rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice*
Jane Eyre*
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Iliad
Emma*
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations*
American Gods
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius (I like the title)
Atlas shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The historian : a novel
A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the time of cholera
Brave new world
The Fountainhead
Foucault's pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A clockwork orange
Anansi boys
The once and future king
The grapes of wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984*
Angels & demons
The inferno
The satanic verses
Sense and sensibility*
The picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
To the lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's travels
Les misérables
The corrections
The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
Dune
The prince
The sound and the fury
Angela's ashes : a memoir
The god of small things
A people's history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces (Never heard of it before, but it sounds intriguing!)
A short history of nearly everything
Dubliners
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The scarlet letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down*
Gravity's Rainbow
The Hobbit*
In cold blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The three musketeers

Comments

[protect-vester.livejournal.com]

The tarot = very interesting. I'd been taught to read tarot cards by a psychic friend, and it's something that I would have never taken seriously had I not tried it. I get almost the exact opposite feeling from the Moon, but that's a very personal card to me.

What deck do you own, and how well has it worked for you? I've been looking to get another one. I've also found throwing cards is good for fic-writing. If you've never thrown for a fictional character, you should try it. The bunnies love it. XD

[averygoodun.livejournal.com]

I use the Crowley - Thoth deck, and it resonates with me fairly well, especially now that no one else has touched it for so long. Back when it was new to me, I let my mum use it, and it kind of glommed onto her. It started really pissing me off that it would want to play with her, but not me. :D Since then we have learned that you aren't supposed to loan your deck out.

I haven't tried throwing cards, but I can definitely see it being a good way to round up some plot bunnies (which, admittedly, is sometime like herding cats).