If you have followed me online for any amount of time I’m sure you’ll be familiar with my ever present need for journaling. My notebooks are always with me and are usually in the background of any photo I take - often with a cup of coffee balanced precariously on top.
What you might not know about me is that I often use tarot as an aid to journaling. I have a practice of drawing a daily card, which helps me to focus my thoughts for my days free writing - nothing fancy. It can be a few lines or a few pages depending on what’s on my mind. I’ve also started drawing a tarot card as a guide for my Monday Thoughts email - which goes out weekly to paid subscribers. A little journal prompt or a thought for the week ahead.
In my Monday Thought’s email I didn’t think to mention that I base my writing on a tarot card - possibly because I thought people might not be interested. But also - and possibly more truthfully I was nervous about how people will respond to it.
I’m sharing this post here with similar trepidation and for that reason, the bulk of it will be behind the paywall for members with a paid subscription to my Everyday Knitter community. Part of my goal for this year is to show up more online, authentically as myself - all of me. Not just a knitter but also as a writer, a journaler, a tarot reader, a slow liver (is that even a word - it looks wrong written down).
But in the interests of baby steps I’m not quite ready to show all of me to everyone on the internet. Keeping it small here seems like a good first step.
I recently came across the concept of the Witch Wound and goodness me, there’s some food for thought (or journaling) in there. If you haven’t heard of it before it’s the concept that as women we are socialised to fit in, to adapt to our surroundings and to seek safety in being like others.
Deliberately choosing to stand out, traditionally brought risks. Being seen as different was the first step to being publicly denounced as a witch after all. And even though we’ve thankfully stopped burning women at the stake, venturing any kind of opinion publicly, risks ridicule, anger or even violence. Staying quiet, staying small has, for a very long time been the best way to stay safe. But once of the joys of finding a Substack community like this is finding out that there are multiple facets to us all. And that it’s OK to talk about them.
So anyway, back to journaling and how tarot helps me.
I’m a huge fan of Claire, who is here as Tarot from the Moon Shed and I love how she applies the knowledge of tarot to the practicalities and puzzles of everyday life. She has a particular interest in midlife, with many of her customers seeking her out around that phase in their own lives and she shared a simple 3 card spread the other day that I had to try out for myself. It was entitled “a 3 card spread for when you don’t recognise the person you see in the mirror” and that’s definitely relatable to me at the minute. The spread was as follows:
A card for how the physical changes are affecting me
How can I adjust positively to this new version of me?
A card for loving the skin I’m in.
If you’d like to read more about this and to see how I used it in my journaling practice please do consider becoming a paid subscriber - you’d be really welcome.
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