In the Cards

I do a tarot reading every Samhain night, aka Halloween. While I’m not nearly as spiritual as I once was, this one little ritual I keep. A tarot reading about the coming year.
It can be a little odd to watch your life laid out in symbolism. To see the foundation of the year as being caught by failure unawares with a warning not to despair. To see the past as two roads diverging in the wood, which one did I take again? To see the present spelled out as, I kid you not, the end of a cycle and being ready to move forward. Boy am I ever. The past and the present are easy to decipher it’s when we look at the future that things start to get hazy. Why? Because the future is colored by our perceptions and our desires. We will look for what we want to see or what we fear to see. In the spread I use depending on how you choose to interpret there are at least two cards representing the future. The first for me told me about contentment…alone. Being happy with what I’ve wrought by myself. It’s not the card I wanted to see. I wanted to see one of the two cards that I have dubbed the happy home cards. I didn’t get them anywhere in my spread.  The next four cards can be interpreted to be a future for each of the upcoming three months of the year  or they can be interpreted as investigative cards with the final card being the outcome. Either way the outcome doesn’t change. I see myself being led by emotion. I see a light at the end of the tunnel of an arduous journey. I see me being unsure of myself, of being overly analytical. And then I see the Sun. Another card for contentment. Contentment for the things in my life that I can do and those that I cannot do. At peace with the universe.  I want contentment, I want peace, but I can’t help but shake the feeling that it’s not going to be found where I want it to be. I keep seeing the alone flash. Boo.

Next I did two  past, present, future readings. One for adoption. One for IVF.
I pulled the happy home card for the future in adoption. Tears immediately pooled up in my eyes. I don’t even remember right now what the past and present cards were. I zeroed in on that card. All were minor arcana.
Then I did one for IVF.  I pulled the empress, which is close as you can get to earth mother for the present, and the moon for the future. The moon is uncertain, hazy. And the Hermit for the past. All were major arcana. Stronger influences.

Unsatisfied I did another spread, the dilemma. The dilemma pulled up as rational thought fleeing from emotions. Ivf’s choice pulled up as rest after a long struggle, but only a temporary rest, you have to go back to battle. Adoption’s choice pulled up that the outcome was already determined the events already set in motion. But if you change one thing, it changes everything. Then another card for a choice I’m not considering. Again contentment, sharing abundance. That third choice that’s the one I should go with. Pity I don’t know what it is.

My last card I pulled was the eight of pentacles. ‘Be wary of being so excited about the harvest, that you forget about the balance sheet’. This was the answer to my question of what should I do to be happy.

Does anybody else read cards? I’d love a second or third opinion. I’m using the Gilded Tarot.

 

Edited to add some second thoughts:  There are some trains of thought that put the major arcana as people. Only two major arcana showed up in my original spread. The lovers and The sun. Since the Lovers showed up at the crossing which means impolitely the problem that one’s probably a guarantee. It probably really does represent exactly what it says. The Sun as a person… doing a little digging I’ve found that in other decks the Sun often represents a child, either a boy or twins. Huh. See what I mean about how our hopes and desires become imprinted upon the reading.