Monthly (allegedly) Celtic Cross: April edition

Welcome to my first Celtic Cross reading on Patreon! I meant to do this monthly a while ago, but, well, I meant to do a lot of things on a more regular basis until we were hit with a literal plague and that frankly disrupted, well, pretty much everything. You know.

Which is a shame, because this is the kind of time when I could do with some more Tarot. It always helps me feel more collected. But it also does take some effort and energy, and the latter is something I often don’t have much of these days. 

I’m doing this reading (and these readings) for me specifically (I’ve found that doing general readings for the world at large don’t go as well). I’m writing them up because I think it might be of interest to others. There was a while when I was doing readings for other people for a fee; I’ve largely stopped that but I may pick it up again. For now, though, I’m using myself as a focus in part because that seems to work best. 

SO LET’S GET STARTED.

First card, the center of the cross, which the present situation/my current state of mind: the Ten of Cups. 

That’s uncomfortably relevant. It’s relevant because the Ten of Cups is about, among other things, happiness and contentment in the home/in a family. Which... I don’t know that I’ve been feeling happiness or contentment, exactly, given *GESTURES BROADLY AT THINGS IN GENERAL*, but it’s been hitting me pretty hard that in terms of living situation, I’m a lot more content and secure than a lot of people I know. My husband and I have a solid relationship and are still healthy, and so (as far as we know) are all our family. We’re not even vaguely wealthy and never have been, but for the moment finances are not a concern for us. I really like where I live; it’s not an enormous hardship to be stuck here every day, and in fact we rent a house on a large property in a suburban neighborhood where it’s very easy to get out and walk around safely if I want to. Things are good for me, on paper. They’re good for us. We’re stressed and worried but so many things are good. 

Which leads me to card two crossing the first, which is to say the challenge I’m facing: the Three of Cups. 

What’s interesting about this is that the Three of Cups is prima facie a happy card; it signifies celebration and joy in community with others, and mutual affection and friendship. 

Why is this a challenge? Because I’m feeling super guilty right now about things being really on-paper good for us, and in particular I’m feeling weird about the notion of a “blessing”. I was raised Christian, I still nominally am, but I struggle with the idea of being blessed while so many other amazing people go through serious hardships. How can I be thankful for my own situation when those people are doing so much worse? How is any of this fair or right? What should I be doing with my own good fortune? I want to find some kind of collective joy with people I care about, but the unease and guilt I’m feeling is getting in the way of that and making everything so much more emotionally bewildering

Also it’s very difficult to mutually celebrate with people right now anyway. I don’t know when I’ll see anyone again. Everything sucks. How can we find this sense of joy with each other? The emotional uplift of community is more important than ever right now and yet it’s so hard to achieve. 

So in this context, I interpret a usually positive card as in fact representative of what’s *lacking*, and what’s inducing a sense of inner turmoil. 

Card three, which is the bottom of the cross—the unconscious or subconscious influences of the situation: the Four of Cups. 

This is about inwardness to a negative degree—turning inward so completely that you run the risk of missing what’s right in front of you. It signifies missed opportunities, or an inability to notice positive things available to you. 

So... yeah, I feel like that’s really representative of an important aspect of this whole mess. I tend to overthink in even the best of circumstances, and turning inward too much is a real problem I have. In this case, it’s way too easy to get lost in navel-gazing about how I should or shouldn’t be feeling and in the process miss good things I should be taking advantage of or accepting. 

Fourth card—to the far left—which represents past or receding influences: the Artist. 

This is interesting, because the Artist, while a card in the Major Arcana, is unique to this deck (and is part of the reason I bought it). The Artist is creative work, effort, and skill, the ability to take raw material and make something coherent and even beautiful out of it. How I read this is in relation to one of my coping mechanisms in bad situations, which is another thing I’ve been feeling super conflicted about: I tend to fictionalize everything. The painful or frightening events unfolding around me become part of a story in which I’m the main character, and I engage in that narrative in terms of finding it fascinating or compelling. 

Which is, like... shitty? When real people are getting hurt and losing their jobs and dying? But in the moment it helps me keep myself together. I’m profoundly ambivalent about my tendency to do that and I’ve been especially so over the course of the last couple of months. 

Card five, the clear and conscious influences in this situation: the Four of Swords. 

This is really notable when contrasted with the Four of Cups beneath it, because both cards mean similar things. But whereas the Four of Cups has negative connotations, the Four of Swords is much more positive. It’s about turning inward in meditation, in contemplation, and ideally in recuperation. It’s about a time of outer calm or stillness in order to do some work with the inner self. In other words, while the Four of Cups might represent a warning about what might happen if I’m not careful, the Four of Swords could represent what should be going on right now, and what I’m reaching toward: meditation that leads to peace and mindfulness, not obliviousness or deeper conflict. 

Card six, future influences: the Page of Pentacles. 

Page cards are cards of opportunity—in this case for the manifestation of abundance and productivity, the use of one’s skill. This is a really neat conclusion to the overall story of the cross part of the spread, because I feel like it’s pointing me toward a focus on what I can do with the advantages I have right now, how I can use those advantages to increase an abundance that I can share with others. A way in which I can take the challenge of the Three of Cups and turn it into a thing I can actually achieve instead of a conflicting factor. The Four of Swords is a pause on the way to that, a moment where I can consider ways to make the most of everything and channel it into the opportunities the Page represents. 

Now the Staff. Card seven, which is both an advice card and a card signifying something about my state of mind and heart, perhaps something to be cultivated or made use of: Strength. 

This is about as comforting as one might imagine, because Strength is what it says on the tin, in terms of the image on the card: a sort of calm, steady, soft control. Over the self, over a situation, over anything where control is needed. Strength is firm but gentle and compassionate; she persuades rather than demands. 

Right now what I feel like I need, among many other things, is that sense of calm inner strength over the parts of myself that resist control. I need to find ways to get my emotional shit together that don’t involve being cruel or abusive to myself. Genuine compassion for the self can often be harder than even genuine compassion for others, and it’s never come easy to me. But I need it now, and this card reminds me that it’s available to me. 

Card eight, external influences: the World. 

I frankly love to see this. The World, in the traditional Major Arcana, is the culmination of the universal journey of existence, the point where the Fool finds their place in a harmonious whole and joins it in a full actualization of the self. It’s the simple, innocent Fool become experienced and wise, and finally achieving enlightenment. 

To me, this is a reminder that even when the world is a mess and I feel like a mess within it, there’s a whole that I can be—and indeed already am—a part of. I have a place within that whole, and in that place I can find a purpose. The World is one of the things I should be emerging from the meditation of the Four of Swords to find. Harmony might be elusive, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. 

Card nine, hopes and fears: the Sun.

“Hopes and fears” is often a tricky part of the spread to make sense of, because it can mean one of two totally opposing things or both of those things simultaneously. But I think it’s pretty clear what’s going on here. The Sun represents joy, success, positive energy, vitality, and health. Which is to say it’s exactly what I’m hoping for in general, for myself and for others. It’s what I want to be waiting for us on the other side of this. In that sense, I connect it back to the Three of Cups and the Page of Pentacles: the goal of celebration and abundance in community. 

To me, this card in this position simply reminds me of that goal—and that possibility. It’s a thing to be hoped for, and hope matters. One of the things that we need in order to get past this is the ability to imagine something more, a world better than the one we’ve been living in up until now. The inability to imagine that world is literally dangerous. Keeping it fixed in my own mind is absolutely vital. 

Last card, the outcome: the Knight of Wands. 

The Knight of Wands represents an intense form of the energy of the suit, in this case the active passionate fiery energy of the Wands. These elements of the Knight are what I feel I am in my better moments—vivacious, enthusiastic, adventurous, excited and exciting. Of course, the Knight also has downsides, because this kind of intensity always does: unwise impulsivity, unreliability, enthusiasm that can’t sustain itself for long. The Knight of Wands is me in my more hypomanic periods, and while usually the result is fun and positive, it’s something I have to moderate.

It’s probably worth noting that I feel most like this when I’m hanging out with people I like a lot. 

Lately I haven’t been able to be that person. In part because the world is exhausting and depressing, but also because, like I’ve been saying this whole time, I’ve been starved for community and connection and haunted by an inner conflict that I feel is getting in the way of that. What this tells me that there will come a time when I can be that person again. It might not be possible right now, but it eventually will be, especially if I can focus on the kinds of things I interpret this reading as pushing me towards. 

Because one thing that really strikes me is that overall, this is an extremely happy reading. If every reading like this tells a story, this one is about accepting and valuing what one has, working through whatever conflict I might be feeling over it, looking for inner centeredness and calm and then being ready to turn outward and try to make a better world, as well as embrace my own place in it. This story is reassuring and hopeful. 

In other words it’s pretty much exactly what I needed to see in mid-April 2020, and I feel good about it.

Here endeth the reading. Hope you got something out of it, or at least found it marginally interesting. This first one is open to everyone; the next will be locked to supporters at $1 and up. And I truly intend that next one to happen reasonably soon. We’ll see how it goes.