Daily Draw: Five of Cups

Today’s draw came out the five of cups.

Yesterday I learned that my mom was going to have to have a second surgery on her knee which she had replaced in September.  She’s been struggling with the PT and I know it’s been incredibly difficult for her.  I flew out there to spend a week with her just a short while ago and to hear that she’s got to go through the entire thing again has left me feeling sad, anxious, and helpless.

This daily draw feels bang on the money.  It’s hard for me to focus on those two cups I’m holding when I know that my mother’s are all upended and I’m powerless to help.  She lives too far away for me to see her as often as I wish I could and I can’t afford air plane tickets.  I’m struggling right now with what I can do to help her without being there.  This card is telling me I need to focus in on what is here, what is positive.

I need to figure out how I can help my mom (and my dad) through this incredibly difficult time.  And I need to figure out how to stop worrying about this being the start of a downward spiral for my mom.

If anyone has some extra healing energies to spare, I’d be grateful if you’d send them in my family’s direction.

❤

Card of the Day: Five of Cups

Today’s card is the Five of Cups from the Happy Tarot

I really like that this card shows a little kid crying about spilled ice cream.  I think it neatly captures the meanings of this card.  The Five of Cups reminds us not to waste our time crying over what we’ve lost so long that we forget what we still have that we might miss while bemoaning those spilled cups.

The reason that I like that this card shows a little kid is that when you’re little enough to be crying that much when you’ve dropped your ice cream it’s because your feelings really do run that deeply.  The losses the little kid is facing are very real to him.  So it’s okay for you to feel grief for the losses the cups represent.  This card isn’t telling you to suck it up a deal.  This card is just a reminder that although there have been some losses, there’s more behind you that you’ll miss if you don’t open your eyes.  In this depiction it takes one further step too, the cups in the foreground were mostly empty already.  The cups behind him are full still.

The five of cups is a note to try not to focus on what you’ve lost and to remember to look around for what you do have.  While it’s okay to feel sad about what you’ve lost, when you come up for air and dry your eyes, you’ll see the bounty that still surrounds you. ❤

Card of the Day: Five of Wands

Today’s card is the Five of Wands from the Universal Goddess Tarot.

This is one of my favorite cards in this deck.  It depicts the Polynesian Goddess Pele.  I’ve been fond of Pele ever since I lived in Hawaii when I was in high school (8th through 10th grade).  My class took a trip to the Big Island (the actual island of Hawaii, as opposed to O’ahu which was where I lived) and we visited Volcanoes National Park.  While we were there we heard lots of stories about the goddess and it was kind of hard to not get caught up in the amazing energy of a place where we were able to get within feet of active lava flow.  Close enough to throw loose rocks into the lava to see what happens.  They melt.  In case you were wondering.  They hit the lava and MELT.  It’s pretty crazy amazing.

Crazy amazing is a pretty good descriptor for this five of wands.  We see Pele, dressed in the red and yellow that was reserved only for the Hawaiian royalty, decked with a hakulei around her forehead and more beads and flowers at her wrists.

She is a goddess of furious creation and destruction, just like the volcano that she is said to live in.  When a volcano erupts it is a powerful destructive force, raining down fire and brimstone and rushing waves of lava that destroy everything they touch.  But at the same time, volcanoes can be powerful creative forces as well.  Volcanic eruptions created the Hawaiian islands.

This balance of creation and destruction is what the Five of Wands represents.  Perhaps now is the time to let the fiery energy of the Wands suit burn away the things that no longer serve you.  The five burning wands here can represent ideas or projects you’re got in the works; the volcano behind them is throwing up lava which could rush down and devour those wands.  Maybe it’s time for that.

But a volcano is unpredictable, so it could be that the active flow misses them entirely, instead offering more fuel to help them keep burning.  The way I’d interpret this card in a spread would vary depending on where it showed up.  Whether you try to avoid the explosion or seize hold of a passing boulder and ride it out, cheering at the top of your lungs the entire way, is up to you.

One thing is for sure, when this card shows up, things are about to get explosive.  My advice: don’t argue with a volcano goddess.  Just go with the flow.