Ink in the Veins

Different Lenses

07 Jul 2016 1 Comment

by Kath in Daily Living Tags: being human, kn, life

“The Star” by Cot­ton Valent

Old pho­tos tell sto­ries.  ::stage whis­per::  They steal your soul, you know.   I joke, but I do love the old­er images that show us a time oth­er than our own.  Not nec­es­sar­i­ly bet­ter, but dif­fer­ent.  Old let­ters tell sto­ries, too, through the paper they’re writ­ten on, the hand­writ­ing, the ink, and of course the con­tents.  Tak­en alto­geth­er and they open a win­dow onto anoth­er time and place, a time of ideas we’ve lost, and mind­sets lim­it­ed by what we didn’t yet know, or were unwill­ing to grasp. We are giv­en the chance to expe­ri­ence life, for the span of the pages, through another’s eyes.

For me, tarot cards open win­dows as well.  I had a ton of them at one point — 35 or so decks–which, look­ing back, seems exces­sive. I guess I felt it was exces­sive then, too, as I gave most away. They should be loved and used.  No point in hord­ing, or keep­ing things in a box.  I feel this way about any­thing “col­lectible” whether rare or not.  You won’t do any­thing with it once you’re dead.  May as well enjoy it.

A few years ago I put away my tarot decks.  Stacked them neat­ly in a tray in their wraps, then let them col­lect dust.  There “wasn’t time” for them, and I wasn’t read­ing for any­one any­more, even myself.  I had no more ques­tions to ask.  Life was life, and you take it as it comes, and you make things work.

I some­times drift away from a pas­sion to nev­er real­ly pick it up again.  I’m famous for dab­bling.  Or–as some­one once told me–I take in all I can from some­thing, and when it no longer nour­ish­es, I slough it off, like a snake does its skin, then move on.  I thought that was a very gra­cious way of putting it.  In this case, how­ev­er, it didn’t feel true.

Last week, I met with two friends who also do the tarot thing.  Before we met, I pulled out a few decks to see if I want­ed to take any of them with me on the vis­it.

In going through the dif­fer­ent cards, I felt I was throw­ing back the cur­tains on a win­dow, exchang­ing my black-and-white view to one of col­or and bird­song.  I had a sense of com­ing home again.

I most­ly used tarot for inspi­ra­tion and sto­ry­telling, for clar­i­fi­ca­tion, insight, and even focus.  And when I call them win­dows, I real­ly mean lenses–often 78 dif­fer­ent lens­es in each deck.  They remind me of the gels I used to use when doing light­ing design back in long ago.  The light fix­tures we used were always the same, but by plac­ing a dif­fer­ent col­ored or tex­tured gel front of the beam, it changed the way we saw what was on stage.  Mood, focus, dri­ve, sub­text all changed with the use of a gel.  And that’s how tarot works for me.  I have a sub­ject I’d like to see revealed or enhanced, or what­ev­er my focus is … and the card gives me a new way of view­ing it, of con­sid­er­ing it.  Pret­ty much as sim­ple as that.  There are oth­er ways of using them, of course.  This just hap­pens to be mine.

For twen­ty years I’d used them.  Some of these decks are old friends.  They fit my puny hands.  There’s a whis­per­ing *whuf­fle* as they’re shuf­fled togeth­er, a worn soft­ness to their edges from repeat­ed use.  The col­ors please my eyes, the illus­tra­tions intrigue, inform, reas­sure, and reveal.  I love how their depict­ed arche­types and inci­dents cov­er the whole range of human exis­tence.

I’d missed them, and not even known it.

Tarot has its lovers and its haters. For me, they’re a tool, and like all tools it depends on what you do with them.  Evil and good come from the hand which wields the tool.  It is one aspect of my life I don’t talk about much, though.  I find it’s less social­ly accept­able to read tarot cards than it is to be a role-play gamer, which is weird to me, but hey, I don’t write the social norms … I just try to change them.

I real­ized that I’d put aside my cards–my form of med­i­ta­tion and inspiration–because I’d also stopped being in a com­mu­ni­ty which val­ued such tools.  The greater world didn’t seem to have room for them, or me as a user of them.  There’s a lot of side-eye to side­step when you pull out a deck.

And that’s fear talk­ing.  I may write about social­ly unac­cept­able peo­ple, but I’ve always tried to pass as social­ly accept­able myself.  Some­how, after step­ping away from that com­mu­ni­ty, my use of the cards made me an out­lier in my own eyes, and set me up for judg­ment.

Guess whose voice was the loud­est Judgey McJudger­son?  My own.

So … all this is to say, “Just do what brings you joy.”  As long as it harms none, go for it.

As for me, I’m back to my old morn­ing rou­tine of a card with my sec­ond cof­fee, and a page of poet­ry.  It sets my brain right, starts the day with imagery and lyri­cism.   And we all need a dif­fer­ent view on the world now and then.

What’s your jam?  What have you giv­en up from imag­ined peer pres­sure, or the real thing?  What would you do again, if you could? What tool do you like to view the world through?

The Druid Craft Tarot. Illus­tra­tions Will Wor­thing­ton