Asking About Life


I thought to use the Gaian Tarot by Joanna Powell Colbert for you this month. It made sense to me as the deck feels to me like it so beautifully depicts life in all its forms and this section is where I ask the questions about life. :-)

This month,  I thought just for the fun and curiosity of it that I would ask the following two questions.

1. What aspect of life is most commonly misunderstood?
2. "What is the truth of the matter?"

 Here is what the cards had to say:



Question 1: What aspect of life is most commonly misunderstood?

Card 1: The Wheel (reversed)

Here is an interesting place to start this answer. :-) The Wheel is a card from the Major Arcana and it came up reversed here, and that means there is a very important life lesson associated with the part of the answer given by this card.

The meaning of The Wheel for me is related to the unexpected. The Wheel card is related to those times when something totally unexpected happens. It's about those times when we have our goals set and our plans made and life just unexpectedly sends us something that forces us to change plans and paths. Either the path we choose closes down before us (we were about to take a course that got full before we got there, or the job we were about to apply for got filled before we had the chance...), or circumstances just change, or someone in our lives sways us in a new direction.

So this card is saying that one aspect of life that is commonly misunderstood is related to the nature of unexpected change in our life, the nature of those events that unexpectedly show up in our lives and force us to abandon our plans and change paths.

The image shows the circle of life, a tree passing though the changes it goes through as the seasons change each year. Fall will always follow summer, and spring will always follow winter. Nothing unexpected there. Things follow a set pattern that is in fact predictable when you can see the big picture.

The zodiac signs surrounding the trees passing through time, say that certain things in our lives are destined to happen. And that they are destined to happen at specific times in our lives. They occur when their appointed time arrives.

The butterflies are a sign of inner growth. So really what this card is saying is that most people may tend to believe that when unexpected change happens in their lives that forces them to change path, that it is random and there was no sense of reason behind it.

Yet the answer from this card says that there is a set pattern to these types of things and they happen exactly when they are meant to. Whether we call them to us through the law of attraction or if they were set to happen from birth, this card does not specify, but it does say that there is a rhyme and reason behind it. And it's not random. It helps us grow as we are meant to.


Card 2: The Moon (reversed):

 
This is a second reversed Major Card so it also has a very important message. It's not too surprising that the majority of the cards for this question are Majors, as Majors are about important life lessons and the question was about the things people misunderstand about life most of often..


This is another interesting card here. The Moon, for me in the way I read, is related to romance, romantic feelings and romantic relationships. Which is a popular topic in Tarot too, as readers get so many questions about it. And this card coming up here is saying that there is something that is often misunderstood in this area.

What is interesting in this card is that is shows multiple moons. A series of them coming towards the person. The woman is a representation of anyone, male or female. There she is  in the image, hoping for romantic love,holding out her hands so that life may send it to her,  Waiting for life to send her her true soul mate. But it's like she almost does not see the succession of moons passing by her.

All these moons are saying that there are many people we could love. We may love different people differently, but  this card says we can in fact have more than one soul mate in our lives. The misconception seems to be in waiting for "the one" while there are many who pass by us with whom we could have that type of relationship with

The decoration worn over her third eye, is saying that the spiritual idea that we all have only one soul mate and our souls were joined before birth can prevent people from recognizing someone with whom they could be blissfully happy and cause them to pass that person by. Maybe things did not go well at the first meeting. Some relationships may not be that from the start, but they may have the potential to grow into that. If you are on a quest  for the "perfect" relationship, you may let many of them pass you by that have that potential but were never given the chance to grow into that. And as the woman shown here lets all this potential pass her by, there she is--empty-handed.

Not all relationships can grow into that for course. But this card is saying that many of us let many relationships that could grow into that pass us by in a quest for perfection. And then we never know what we missed


Card 3: 4 of Air

This card is from the suit of Air, about our thoughts and the way we think about and view things. The 4's, for me, are about the completion and seeing the totality of something.

The image here is about something new about to come to life, with the growing leaves and the eggs about to hatch. So really the message here is about how we think about and see new situations in our lives. As well the eggs are blue, which is the colour of the throat chakra and of communication and they are very well protected by the soft nest.

The message I see here is that when new situations arise in people's lives, they often tend to compare them to other things they know or have experienced. They might remember another situation with some similar element in it and think that this is the same think again. Or when someone speaks to them in a certain way, they may remember another time they were spoken to in a similar way, and make the connection and decide that the thoughts and motives of this new person are the same as those of others in their past.

Since the question here was about things people commonly misunderstand, this is one of them. The blue of the eggs say that people often jump to these kinds of conclusions instead of talking to the other people involved and that leads to misunderstandings.  Maybe it can feel safer not to open up that discussion, but it does lead misunderstandings which don't help the situation in the end. This card says it might be more helpful to treat each new situation as a new and unique situation with no real connection to previous ones and to talk things out.

Question 2: What is the truth of the matter?

Card 1: 9 of Water

This is the 9 of Water, The suit of Water is about your feelings. And the 9's for me are about taking some alone time to work things out inside of yourself.

This card says that to see the truth clearly you need some time alone to sense and feel what truth is. No one can tell you what your truth is. No one can teach you. It comes from inside you and you need alone time to feel and sense it. It will come from that place of love and light inside you. If you go to that place and reach out for it, you can't help but find it.

 It takes time, and some downtime, some alone time, but you can find it and when you do you'll see the light. And the beauty of all that is will open up before you

Card 2: 5 of Air

And the last card here of this reading is the 5 of Air. It's again about your thoughts and the way you see and  think about things and life. The 5's are about the way you were taught to see and think about things. Not the ways that you learnt by observing the world around you, but what you were taught. This can include ways of thinking that were passed down though generations of your family, things you learnt in school, of from friends, peer pressure, what society considers acceptable....all that you were told and taught all your life about what truth is.

A lot of this we take for granted and have never stopped to think about. Maybe everyone around us believes it is true, about that in and of itself does not make something true. Once it was commonly believed that the world was flat. There was no one who did not believe it as truth, and yet it turned out not to be truth.
 

This card is saying that to know what the truth is, requires an examination of what you know. Sometimes we take things for granted and never question them and yet in reality they are not true or truth. While again this is work you can only do for yourself, the eagles here say that if you want to know what it true, what truth is, then you can only do so by freeing yourself from preconceived notions and seeing the world with new eyes, as if every experience is completely new and fresh, and you know nothing for sure about it yet. then your mind and heart can soar in new directions.