Pathworking the Tarot
Page 9
Wandering
The World card is the reminder of the dirt under our shoes, the grass between our toes, the rain on our face, the wind in our hair, and the sun on our skin. It connects us to our five senses and grounds us in an experience that can only ever be experienced right here, right now, on this planet. It is easy in our busy daily lives to forget these things, and to disconnect ourselves from the elements that make this world our home, albeit a temporary one.
Just for today, connect with the world. Instead of worrying about your to-do list, stop and feel the wind, the sun, or the rain. Instead of rushing from one appointment to the next, sit, take a breath, and marvel at the ground beneath you and the sky above you. Give thanks to the gravity that stops you from being sucked out into space, and show some gratitude to the planet that puts up with you and your moods every day until your organic vessel gives out. Observe your immediate world, including the people, the animals, the experiences, the emotions, and anything else that you have deemed important to you. Have you created a world that brings you joy or is it one that makes you feel trapped? The World card is not just an ending, the completion of a journey started twenty-one cards ago; it is a reminder of the stage on which your journey has taken place, a stage that you will get to dance on until your dance shoes no longer fit. Therefore, wander through your world with a grateful heart and a thankful mind. Bless every leaf, every bug, and every crack in the pavement, because this world has supported you, and it will continue to do so as long as it turns.
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The Court Cards
The sixteen court cards, regardless of which school of tarot your cards belong to, tend to represent developmental stages or steps in a process. They show a very distinct learning curve, from apprentice or beginner—the Pages—to the initiated and in constant training—the Knights—to the networker, social developer, and change agent—the Queens—to the Master—the Kings. This approach also negates the gender often ascribed to each of these cards. Getting rid of the gender element in this process is probably one of the more liberating ways to work with these cards, as now we are focused on where we find ourselves in a cycle, stage, process, or goal instead of whether or not we need to be more masculine or feminine. This is why this section has been written with nonbinary pronouns. Each deck creator designs their cards around the energy that calls to them from the deck itself. It is not in any way meant to limit or control how you interact with the cards or the characters portrayed on them. Regardless of what gender is pictured on the court cards themselves, each one still represents a stage you will enter along your path. For me this is truly helpful, especially when I am working on long-term goals or short-term experiences, which, by the way, is a distinction you will need to understand before you begin your pathwork with the court cards. Are you focusing on something long term (perhaps with a timeline of three to five years) or something that is a short-term experience (taking perhaps three to twelve months)? The time frame is important, as it lets you know how quickly you will need to work through each of the court card stages. Perhaps you will find you’re further along than you first thought, and those five years just got reduced to two!
Let me give you a couple examples of what I mean and show you how you can set up your pathwork experience with the court cards to supercharge your goals, manifestations, or healing processes.
For the first example, let’s look at something that is long term. Because I work with a lot of female entrepreneurs, we’ll use the idea of starting a business. This needs to be something that you plan to grow over a three- to five-year period. If you can’t commit to a business for three years, then just don’t do it. Business is hard; it takes a lot of time and a lot of single-minded focus and concentration, which is why you have to commit the time, and lots of it. For the sake of this argument, let’s say you are planning to hit King status in three years. This means in three years time you will be considered an expert in your field and a true leader in your industry. People well seek you out because of your expertise. This is a fabulous goal, but how do you get there? Well, by starting at the beginning, of course. Hello, Pages!
You want to spend as much time in this stage as possible. You need to surrender to the energy of this stage, not rush through it. I see boredom kill so many businesses. Everyone is in a rush to be King. Don’t be. It’s hard at the top and even harder if you didn’t learn all the right lessons in the beginning. This stage with the Pages sets the foundation for everything else that comes next. You literally build upward from the foundation you lay in this stage. Love yourself and your business enough to build a strong, stable, and secure foundation, and only when that is done should you move on to the next stage, the Knights.
The Knights, in many respects, kick up the active energy of the process or phase you are in. Unlike the Pages, who are more observational and focused on single tasks, the Knights are where the action really revs up. The Knights need to hone multiple skills, juggle multiple responsibilities, and manage a wide variety of tasks in short periods of time. In many respects, the Knights represent first level management of your business. The Knight will actively engage you on all the elements of your business—setting up email lists, taking ideas from the Pages phase and turning them into real tangible things, creating a social media presence, blogging or vlogging, and hiring a virtual assistant, just to name a few. Under the watchful eye of the Knights, you will learn product creation skills and battle plans, also known as launch strategies. You will sharpen your mind, learn to limit your distractions, use boredom as a creative weapon, and become singularly focused on the long-term goal of becoming King of your domain. You will find that you go through many Knight phases on the path toward your goals. Like the Pages, you never really say goodbye to this stage; rather you just learn when to actively engage in this phase and when to move on to the next one, which would be the Queens.
The Queens bring with them all the glitz and glamour you would expect, but don’t let that fool you. If you have made it to this level, you are working harder than you ever have before. The only difference is that you are enjoying it. You are so engaged with what you are doing that it no longer feels like work but more like an extension of who you are. You may have seen some sparks of success while you were in the Knight’s phase, but you haven’t seen anything like what you will see here at the executive branch of the tarot court cards. In many respects, this is the make-or-break stage of your journey. Things will come at you fast, and you won’t have the time you wish you had to spend on dreaming and creating. The pace at this level can overwhelm people. It may have been what you said you wanted, but now that you are here, the pressure to constantly keep up, keep creating, keep moving, and keep relevant is starting to get you down. It is when working with the Queens that you will either give up and bow out or learn how to use this pressure to create something miraculous. There are many people, myself included, who would love to stay right here at this stage. There is something so satisfying about getting this phase right. It makes you forget why you ever wanted to be King. The problem is that you will end up at King level by default, just because you are such an awesome, badass Queen. Unfortunately, that is just the way it goes, so like it or not, you are about to level up.
Believe it or not, being King isn’t anywhere near as much fun as people dream it is. Those who have gotten this far know that wearing this particular crown is hard. Now more than ever, the responsibility lies solely at your feet. Things you could get away with before are now frowned upon and called out, often in public. Once you have stepped foot into this fourth stage or phase, all eyes are squarely on you. Everyone wants to know you, know what you are doing, who you are with, what you are wearing or eating, you name it. You are the King and people know who you are. Of course, this was the goal all along, to be King of your field, career, niche, and business in three years. But now that you are at the top, now that you have worked through all of the phases … now what?
Again, let’s stick to a business framework. Let’s say you just signed up as an essential oil advocate. You love essential oils and you truly want to share this passion with as many people as possible, so you have set yourself a goal of reaching the Elite sales title in your first year. Since you now have your goal, you would settle in with the Pages and start studying. Learn your oils and gather as much information as you can about how to use the oils, market the oils, and close a sale. Ask lots of questions of people who have already done what you want to achieve. After you have gathered all the data you need, you would move into the action phases and start being known as an essential oil advocate. This is when you would start posting on your blog and social media sites about the oils you love and use on a regular basis. You would start crunching your numbers and really pay attention to the questions others now ask you. Next you would move into the Queens stage by finding other people to collaborate with, and you might see if you can get on some podcasts, or start one of your own. You may write guest blog pieces and see about joining other groups that are a natural fit for your product, or looking into what partnerships and joint ventures you can create. The Queens love to network, so think about how you can start classes or create a meet-up group, or even get yourself to a conference or event that puts you face-to-face with others. If you have done all of this correctly and with a committed, focused mind, you should reach your goal of being the Elite King by the end of the year. Or who knows—maybe you will do even better than that and your results will blow you away. Before you know it, you will be the almighty leader of your own team of hopeful advocates who now dream of being where you are, and guess what? You can tell them all about how you used the tarot court cards to track and plot your goal of going from Page to King in under twelve months! Hurray!
I could write these examples for pretty much anything—weight loss, health and well-being, relationships, you name it. The same stages, phases, and steps apply. There is literally nothing you cannot achieve by following the stages of the tarot court cards. Now that you have seen what is possible with these cards, let’s take a deeper dive into the individuals that make these sixteen cards so special, because getting to know the energies of these phases, steps, and processes will only empower you and your goals more.
Pages
The Pages are, in many respects, a representation of someone who is just learning to meditate. They are beginning a journey with a very specific destination in mind. For a Page, the goal is to be a Knight, and for the newbie meditator, it is time to either reduce stress, increase one’s level of awareness, improve one’s mental focus and clarity, or, for some, reach enlightenment. The Pages and the beginner meditator both start off exactly the same way: by learning how to become expert observers. The newbie meditator, or for the sake of this book, the newbie pathworker, is learning how to observe their thoughts, feelings, actions, and material existence. The Pages break these components up over four cards, which makes working with the Pages a fabulous tool for new meditators and pathworkers alike. I will often get my healing clients to start working with the Page cards in the tarot as part of their healing journey, especially after an intense few months of healing work. This is to ground the new energy that is rising inside of them, and to assist them in making better decisions and taking more aligned actions for their health and well-being goals. The Pages are the very first steps in a much longer journey, but before they even begin that journey, they need to put in the time and do the slow tedious work of getting their bodies, minds, emotions, and spirits aligned with the experience itself.
The Page of Swords is the starting point for mental training. This Page must observe the thoughts, beliefs, biases, and words of those around them. Much like a baby learns how to speak, what to believe, and how to be prejudiced, the Page of Swords finds themselves in a world where they have to relearn all they thought they knew. It is here in the Page of Swords that we start to understand that truth, in and of itself, may be more fluid then we are willing to admit. Just as you learn how to meditate, the Page of Swords must also learn to observe the thoughts that float around in their head. They must examine, without judgment, their inner dialogue, and see how it matches or doesn’t match the dialogue of those around them. They must also learn to do this without attachment. The Page of Swords is only an observer at this stage. Even though they may wish to swing that sword all on their own, the consequences of doing so will cause more harm than good.
The Page of Wands is the first time we have been asked to monitor how we might act or react to the world around us. As babies, we learn how to act and react from our parents. Their triggers often become our triggers in one form or another. The way we deal with fight or flight becomes less instinctive and more habitual the older we get, showing that we learn how to act or react to triggers over the course of our human lives. Here in the Page of Wands, you are being asked to put all of that under the microscope. Becoming the observer of our actions and reactions is actually harder than monitoring our thoughts. If you have ever undertaken any new habit training, you will know exactly how hard this is. The Page of Wands is a crucial card in habit changing, for if you cannot first observe how you interact and engage in the world around you, you can’t change it either. Think about things you have wanted to change in your life, like bad habits you tried to break or new habits you have tried to create. How easy was it to do any of that? Research shows us that the older we get, the harder it is to change habitual behavior, yet it doesn’t say it can’t be done. You just have to make a decision to do it, and then walk that journey. Lucky for you, you have the Page of Wands to assist you. Of course, the Page of Wands has a bit of swagger and cockiness about them, but at some point, self-preservation will kick in, and if you can stick with the tedious task of being the ever-present observer in your reactionary world, you will see your focus, clarity, and resolve grow stronger and better with each passing day.
The Page of Cups introduces us to the consequences of our dreams, feelings, emotions, and imagination. Not unlike the Page of Wands, the Page of Cups needs to be on alert for things that trigger them. The watery energy of the cups is a challenging energy to work with at the best of times, but it is even harder when you cannot do anything but sit on the shore and watch. This act of looking or observing is actually seen in many Rider-Waite-Smith decks, as the Page of Cups is the only Page that has their own animal totem with them: the fish. I am not going to go into a discussion here about the fish and what it symbolizes, but you can check out my book Tarot Court Cards for Beginners if you want to go further with the fish. For now, let’s just say the fish and the Page offer us up the complex duology of emotional energy. It is both internal and external. It flows in us, through us, and out of us. What emotional conditions we create internally shape the physical conditions of the world around us. The Page of Cups is learning that in order to understand their emotions better, they will also need to learn how to observe the reflection of that energy in the world they engage in. This means tapping into that other lovely cup’s energy: intuitive sight. Seeing via the third eye while still keeping the physical eyes open is one of the hardest things for new meditators to do. In fact, it is hard even when you have been meditating for many years, but this is where it all begins, right here in the Page of Cups with the ever-watchful fish. The watcher and the watched are both taking notes and exploring how their feelings shape the world, one emotion at a time.
The Page of Pentacles deals with pretty much everything in the physical material world, including all the things you can feel, taste, and touch. This is the Page of material resources, that which makes up the physical world of matter. This Page learns early on in the game of life that money is not the only way to be wealthy, and that most fo
rms of abundance have nothing to do with money at all. The Page of Pentacles also learns just how closely our bodies, health, and food are linked to our beliefs about abundance. This Page doesn’t have time for delving deep into their emotions, nor do they have time to sit around and contemplate their navels, oh no, because while others are off wondering about the meaning of life, the Page of Pentacles is learning what makes the world turn and how they can move, flow, and grow right alongside it. Walking hand in hand with the Page of Pentacles, you will learn just how interconnected the physical world actually is. The Page spends each and every day collecting data, finding patterns, and seeing how things connect. The Page is, after all, training to be a Knight, but in order to get to that status there is much to master. The Page is learning about their body as well, and seeing how it changes, grows, and reacts. The Page of Pentacles is the perfect card to work with when you start a healing journey. Of all of the Pages, this one might be the one that stretches some of your current beliefs, which makes this card a perfect journeying partner.
Pathwork
Intentional