Divination: Tarot

Even though I grew up in a very Catholic family, I have been exposed to Tarot reading and other forms of divination since childhood.  Both my mother and great-grandmother read Tarot (Spanish deck).  My mother still uses my great-grandmother's cards.  I don't understand her deck very much, as it is very different from the French spread that I've grown accustomed to.  I always found it strange that a woman who claims she's a devout Catholic would play around with things like Tarot cards.  I think there is a part of her that doesn't want to admit how much of the craft is within her family.

I bought my first Tarot deck back in high school.  I was exploring the path a little back then, but was still very nervous because of my parents.  At this point in my life, my mother would hang rosary beads or place crosses under my bed to "try to bring me back to church."  That didn't really help her cause since it just drove me farther away from the church and put a major strain on my relationship with her for a number of years.  So, I began my study of tarot with the Universal Waite deck.  I didn't take it very seriously then, but I would play with the cards and do occasional readings for myself and close friends.  However, I never made them a part of my every day life, which is what I've started to do now.

This week, I've been doing a daily draw from my deck.  I still use the Universal Waite because it's what I'm most comfortable with.  I think doing the daily draw will help bring me closer to my cards and give me a stronger understanding of their meanings.  I have my tarot journal, but I need to be better at keeping it.  My friend who started our coven actually created a great worksheet that I plan on using.  I think I'll continue the journal I have, because it's really pretty, but I'll use the set up from her worksheet.

So, this leads me to the purpose of today's blog post.  I wanted to bring in my tarot study to the blog as a part of my weekly reflections.  I think I'll close each week (Saturdays) with a reflection on my daily draws and see how they fall into my week once it's finished.  If any of you are experienced readers and would like to offer some advice/critique/help with the readings, I would greatly appreciate it.

A new beginning

After doing much research on my maternal family, I was stuck in a limbo.  I was in college, a Catholic college at that, and I just never felt attached to anything.  I was depressed.  I felt like there was still a void in my life that no amount of drinking, partying, or other "extra curricular activities" could fill.  Of course, being an ignorant 20 something, I did nothing about this other than the above mentioned.  I graduated.  I found my first teaching job.  I met my husband.  I went through the motions of everything I was "supposed" to.  I hit a figurative wall: I couldn't sleep, I would panic over everything, and I could barely leave the house to go to work.  The constant burial of my anger and spiritual loneliness finally caught up with me.  I went on anti-depressants and sought therapy.  It's been a slow process, but I'm getting better.

So, how did any of this lead me to the path?  This past summer, I ordered 3 books on a whim from Amazon dot com: Scott Cunningham's Guide for the Solitary Practitioner , The Complete Idiots Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft (an excellent book, believe it or not), and Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft.  I was bored online and was searching through the recommendations and all three had come up (probably because of my purchases on Native American religions, but who knows?).  So, I ordered them.  And then I read.  Like a maniac.  Something finally clicked.  Everything that I had been taught by family was in these books.  All the morals I believed in, even the little herbal "tricks" my grandmother would use when we were sick, were in these books.  I was stunned.

I finally felt comfortable enough to approach the subject with two close friends who were Wiccan.  I asked them questions and I was given honest answers.  Talking about the emptiness I'd been feeling for so long felt so wonderful.  These were things I never thought anyone could understand, not even my therapist.  I felt better.  The missing puzzle pieces were right in front of me for years, but I'd ignored them.  I'd come home.

Finding the path . . .

Yesterday, I started my story of my journey into the craft.  After my Confirmation, I stepped away from the church.  I was offended by their outright hatred of what I felt in my heart was moral and just.  It did not make sense to me that I would be damned for eternity to hell because I myself was bisexual.  It further didn't make sense that my own family members who were gay would burn.  These were people who worked to help others and were good, moral people.  Nothing about Catholicism clicked correctly in my brain anymore.  Sundays were now mine again.

I guess, for the majority of high school and college, I was what could be labeled as an agnostic.  I knew there was something out there greater than I was, but I couldn't put a finger on what.  I began to research my own family history.  My maternal grandmother was almost 100% Native American.  I didn't grow up knowing all of this; I actually found out around the time my grandfather died.  In my heart, there was something very beloved and treasured about this part of my genetics.

The more reading I did on my tribal history, the more of a sense of home and peace I was getting in my heart.  Of course, I didn't do much about it religiously.  I was still hurting and wrestling with that good ol' Catholic guilt.  The God and Goddess were waiting patiently for me to find them.  I know now that they led me to pick up the books on my family history and that eventually I'd come to seek them as well.

A tiptoe back to the beginnings

I suppose it's traditional to start in the past and then work my way up to the present.

Prior to my introduction to the craft, I was brought up in an Italian/Spanish Catholic household.  My family, especially my mother’s, raised me to be independent and freethinking.  As a woman, I was to never depend on a man and get as much education as a I could.  You can rely on no one but yourself.  However,  the Church raised me to feel guilty.  About everything.  Including bathing suits.  This was quite traumatizing to me considering I was a competitive swimmer, but our church’s Deacon was quite insistent that Jesus did not want women “to bear their flesh.” I couldn’t understand it.  Weren’t Adam and Eve naked in the Garden of Eden?  Didn’t God love our bodies and want us to love and appreciate them?  Of course, I asked these questions, but I was snubbed with answers like, “Adam and Eve were different!” “Showing too much skin is sinful!”  and of course “If you don’t make confession, you’re going to hell!”  Such wonderful things to tell a 10 year old.  My home instruction and church instruction never seemed to quite fit and I was always confused.

That same year I had my first experience with death: I lost my maternal grandfather.  This man was my entire world and now he was lost.  I fully understood that death was a part of life, but again the church and our priest offered little comfort to me.  What really did me in was when they began prayers for his soul to be released from purgatory.  I asked the priest why my grandfather wasn’t in heaven.  His answer: he didn’t make his peace with God before he died, so he’s stuck between heaven and hell.  This was not what my mother and grandmother told me or what I knew of my grandfather.  He was a good Catholic man.  He always did for others.  In my eyes, he was a saint.   The cracks grew deeper.

I continued through the motions of the sacraments and made my Confirmation at thirteen.  My Catholic molding finally broke at our 3 day “retreat”.  It was basically a three-day rehearsal/brainwashing.  Girls and boys were separated and although I do not know exactly what took place during the boys meetings, I know it couldn’t be far off from mine.  We discussed “mature” Catholic dogmas: abortion, sex, marriage, AIDS, birth control, homosexuality.  I couldn’t believe my ears.  Everything I had come to believe on my own about these topics, based on my personal experience and from the teachings of my mother and grandmother, was apparently a lie.  The church told me that I was a sinner.  The church told me that my gay friends were also sinners.  The church told me too many things that just didn’t click anymore.  Confirmation was only a day away and I would go through with it, but after begrudgingly receiving that sacrament, I hung up my rosary and tossed aside my Bible forever.