When I looked up the meanings of this card in Gail Fairfield’s Choice Centered Tarot and Janina Renee’s Tarot Your Everyday Guide, I was once again amazed and awed by how on-target Tarot can be.

Two of the meanings that rang most true to me are
· You realize that you need to make some choices about the ways you view yourself. You can decide to re-invest in the self-image that you’ve been affirming or you can take some risks with how you see yourself now and reach for a deeper sense of self-worth.
· Successful perseverance and the motivational nature of the Wands card favor inner-directed objectives. It may help to put yourself in a different mode of thought, where you’re not constantly trying to calculate what you’ll get out of a job and how soon it will be over. Rather, focus on the basic dignity and self-worth inherent in working hard to maintain or accomplish something.

This ties in beautifully with my emerging comfort with my emotional side, my inner Queen of Cups if you will. In the past I have run from Cups nature as fast as I could. I preferred being seen as something of a bitch to being a doormat. I think one of the ways I managed to survive my childhood was to identify with the abuser in my family. I took on a lot of his traits and attitudes because at least if I acted like him it was unlikely that people would try to mistreat me. I armed and shielded myself as best as I was able and I kept most people at arms length. The reality ones that I was terrified of letting people get close enough to hurt me.

But now I need to shed that hard-ass persona. Well okay, I won’t shed her completely but she will be sharing more time with my softer side. I realize that in order to be open enough to work with Tarot I have to embrace my Queen of Cups. She doesn’t have to take over (although I don’t think that’s possible) but she does need to get equal time. Any imbalance is inherently unhealthy. And for a number of years I’ve been very comfortable expressing my more aggressive, assertive nature and very uncomfortable and threatened by showing my more receptive, intuitive side.

Ever since Mary Greer’s workshop at the 2007 Readers Studio it’s as though something cracked and that side of myself has been released. And now that the genie has been let out of the bottle, it can’t be forced back and I don’t want to cram it back in there. I am enjoying this experience. Releasing my intuitive, softer, more emotional has strengthened me in ways I could never have imagined. I’ll never totally be a soft and cuddly type, but I’m comfortable with knowing that she’s in there along with my armed warrior goddess side. Heck, even Freya and the Morrigan can be softies (not often but it does happen). And if my matron goddesses can show that side to themselves then so can I.