Tag: Direction

Chapter Sixty-Five – Three of Pentacles

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Finding Balance, Memoir, Personal Growth, Someone Else’s Life, Tarot

When I arrived at her home, Darnelle had all sort of things laid out on her dining room table. She poured me a mug of tea and laid out milk and sugar on the table. The cups looked funny among all the magical paraphernalia. I was immediately put at ease when I took my first sip. I saw Darnelle smile at me.

“Never underestimate the healing powers of tea. It reminds us to spare a few moments for ourselves, at least while the tea is hot. Tea helps us to stop, breathe and practice patience.”

“How does tea give us patience?” I asked her.

“Because young and old, we wait for that tea to cool slightly so that we can drink it. It’s kind of like magic. We’re afraid until we delve into the pool beyond our ankles, but then when the water is supporting our weight, we let go and wait for joy.”  She lit a cigarette. “Here, let’s do your Medicine cards and find out who your guides are.”

Pulling the deck towards her, she put down her cigarette in the ashtray and handed me the deck of cards. “You need to shuffle these until you feel like you are done, just like the Tarot cards you love.”

It felt odd to be holding a deck of cards without having a question to guide me. While I was shuffling, I thought to myself ‘Who is willing to guide me?’. It felt better to give the shuffling some direction. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind of nothing else but the question so that it would take up room in the dark. I could feel a card fly free from the deck. I opened my eyes and put the deck on the table.

Darnelle held up the card that flew out of the deck. “Looks like the Wolf if your guide.” She let out a bark of laughter as she set the card down in front of me. “Well, you already chose them.” I knew that she was referring to the fact that I had changed my name when I was eighteen so that I would no longer carry my fathers name as my middle name and family name. I had chosen the name Wolf as my middle name. I always had a fascination with them and the wisdom that they carried. I liked that they were part of a pack to survive but would go out alone if they needed to. I had a pack of people that I loved and could be the lone Wolf if I needed to be.

She lit another cigarette and took a sip of her tea. “Spread the deck around in front of you and slide your hand overtop of the pile. Stop when you feel a card pull you.”

I did so, familiar with this being a way to look for a Tarot card, too. I used my left hand. I was right-handed and I had learned that the dominant hand rids you of the energy that you don’t want and the non-dominant hand brings in the energy you do want. I ran my hands over the blue backs of the cards, the yellow lighting bolt design looking as if it would point me in the right direction.

Stopping when I felt a tingle in the palm of my hand, I plucked the single card from the pile and held it up. It was the Crow card. Darnelle smiled at me.

“That’s so profound. Did you know that the Crow is one of the only animal spirits that can go to the land of the dead and cross back over the border of the world of the living? They are harbingers of magic and they tell stories. When they speak, you need to listen. Much like you’re a writer and you have seen so many shadows in your life. The Crow will show you the right way for you.”

I took a sip of tea and looked at the Wolf and Crow cards. “Don’t thing come in threes?”

Nodding, Darnelle smiled. “Yes, but in this case, they are your guides and you have to work together to get to where you need to go. You have to work together, the three of you, to achieve your goals. They are with you to show you the way as best as they can, but you have to find the way yourself. Does that make sense? The three of you have to work in tandem to create what is possible.”

I nodded, because that made sense to me. It was nice to know that even though I was asking magic for help, I was still in control of my life. The Wolf and the Crow would help guide me, but I knew that I had a lot of work ahead of me. “Thank you,” I told her.

“Okay, now that we have your guides, we have to work on your resume.” She got up to pour some more hot water for our cups of tea and lit a cigarette. “You need to tell me about all your skills and the jobs you’ve done before your time on the streets, before you ended up at Lisa’s. Do you remember everything?” She handed me a pad of paper and a pen. “I’ll help you make a new resume. It’s something I’ve helped a lot of people within my line of work. We got this, okay?”

I looked at the blank page in front of me, and I knew that my guides, I knew that I would find my way to where I was supposed to go. The page in front of me was asking me to create the direction I wanted to go in. I was being asked to really focus on myself for once. I took a deep breath.

“Okay,” I said.

Chapter Twenty-Four – 3 of Wands

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Finding Balance

I talked to Sunshine about it over the next few weeks. My dreams had been full of gods and monsters, goddesses and wonders, magical events that had taken place before my time or had never happened at all.

“I don’t know why you’re over thinking this.” Sunshine said, taking a drag from his Djarum cigarette.

He handed me one and I took in the scent of cloves. The smoke was harsh in my throat, but tasted of far-off lands that I imagined my muses would have come from. “What do you mean?”

“You always talk about Egypt. It’s pyramids this and pharaoh that. Why ware you looking anywhere else. You always overthink things so much.” He pointed his cigarette at me. “It’s what keeps you so grounded.”

I let out a snort. We were sitting in his apartment. “How has it been?” We didn’t see each other as much as we had before. We hung out when I found him in the square, but there was a bridge between us. “Are you still dating Shale?”

Sunshine shook his head. “Nah, he didn’t want to settle down. He wasn’t into anything long term.” He tried to keep a brave face on, but I could see the pain in his eyes. “We wanted different things.”

I butted out my clove cigarette and pulled Sunshine into a hug. “I’m sorry.”

“Fuck him, honey.” He waved his own cigarette like a baton. “I’m a free man. It will be nice to choose myself from now on. Like you are.”

I nodded. I understood what he was talking about. I could feel a shift within me. It was taking its time trying to show itself to me, but I could feel the new path beginning to grow in front of me. It felt like I was divided between what was and what I wanted. “I’m not sure if I want it.”

Sunshine let out a puff of clove scented smoke. “What do you mean, honey? What could be better than this?” He waved his hands around the room. “There are so many cockroaches here, they’re throwing a party every night. You have your own room, you’re learning about yourself.”

“There’s so much to learn.”

“Life can be like that. You can’t be afraid to go wherever the journey will take you, Jamie. You have to look at what is coming and not live in the past. Look at what you left behind you.”

The bridge between us had grown longer. I wanted to take Sunshine into an embrace and not let go of him. I wanted to take him with me, to keep him like a touchstone. I felt so far from my family that I had known for so long. “I don’t want to let go of you.”

“I’m not letting go of you. You can’t get rid of me that easily, honey. No, all I’m saying is that you’re changing. Isn’t it wonderful? You’re able to let go of Shades and his bullshit and Matt was a fucking drama queen. You’re starting out on your own. How amazing is that?”

“I just live in a room, Sunshine.”

“But it’s your room. It’s your space. You’re at the start of a new beginning; you just haven’t realized it yet.”

“I don’t know where I’m going.” I said, almost whispering the words because I was afraid to admit this.

“You didn’t no where you were going when you got here. Don’t fight where the world wants to take you.”

“I won’t.” I told him, knowing that there was fear there. I had known fear all my life, but this was different. It felt like a fear that was filled with possibility instead of full-on fear that promised hurt. Rather than make me want to turn away and stay with what was comfortable, I was looking down the road that led me away from the bridge and knew that I wanted to discover what was possible.

“Good, I’ll kick your ass if you muck this up.” He butted out his cigarette. “Want to go look at the guy across the alley jerking off?” Sunshine grinned. “For old time’s sake?”

“Just try and stop me.”

Chapter Twenty-Three – 2 of Wands

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Finding Balance, Memoir

It was fair to say that Lisa captivated me.

Instead of going downtown every day, I started going to Lisa’s place. She lived in the bottom floor of a red brownstone house with two other roommates. It was a three bedroom apartment with a sprawling kitchen, living room, three bedrooms, a big backyard and it was a complete and total disaster.

The first thing I noticed when I started visiting her was that I had to clear off clothing and objects of any of the chairs if I wanted to sit down. There were ashtrays filled with cigarette butts and there were always dishes in the sink left in water, presumably to soak, for days at a time. She had a cat named Lucy and its litter inevitably stank. Having grown up in homes that required so much order and structure, the wildness of Lisa’s home made me feel like I was in some kind of forbidden forest and Lisa was the wild woman of the woods.

She always had something to say about magic and the art of creating spells of our own to take back our power. “The thing is, you have to find a god and goddess that call to you.” Lisa gave praise to The Morrígan, a goddess that symbolized prophecy, war, and death on the battlefield and Cicolluis, the Irish god of war. “It’s all about who you have in your corner, Jamieson,” she said and handed me a book of gods and goddesses to look through. “It’s about who calls to you.”

“Well, you picked two Irish gods. Are you Irish?”

“Nope, but I love Irish whiskey.” She gave me a smile which I returned. “Magic and the gods don’t care about your nationality, where you came from, your social status, how much money you make or your gender and sexuality. They are more than that, you know?”

“I don’t actually,” I said.

“It’s okay, you will.” She started pulling books out from beneath piles of closes and shelves crammed full of books, bits of food, ashtrays and crystals. “You should learn about crystals, too. They come from the earth, and they are meant to help us find our way along wherever our path has taken us.”

“Why did you choose a god and goddess of war?” I asked after looking up her deities in the book.

“I told you that I’m a warrior witch. You are too.”

I wondered what horrors she had seen and what she had lived through. I looked at the book in my lap and its large compendium of gods and goddesses and wasn’t sure where to begin. “I don’t know anything about these people.” I said, shrugging. I was a little overwhelmed. “I have no idea where to begin.”

Lisa shrugged and lit a cigarette. She handed me the lighter and I lit my own. “Well, you have to just start delving in. Don’t get overwhelmed, this is the time for discovery. What kind of mysticism are you drawn to?”

I didn’t have to think about it. “I love Egyptology. I love the magic of that world.”

“Yeah, you do read with the Ancient Egyptian Tarot, I should have thought of that. There is a whole section in that book about the gods and goddesses of Egypt. See, if you look in the index, it’s broken down by alphabet and then by place in the world.”

“Do I have to choose right away?”

“No, and you can change who you pray to, it doesn’t have to always be the same. During my early hippie phase before I chose my warrior path, there were others that I prayed to. Devotion in Paganism isn’t a set thing. It’s fluid, like we are.”

I took the book home with me that evening and flipped through it before bed. I let the pages fall through my fingers and I wondered if I could hear the whispers of the gods that were contained in the book, ready to share their wisdom and help me find the way I was supposed to go. My small room didn’t seem so small when I was reading about lands from the past, peopled with the spirits of the old.

I had no idea where I was going, but I knew that light had started to burn brighter within me. The light continued to grow the more I continued to read and I wondered what direction my path would take now.

I was ready for what would come.