Where Soul Meets Body: March 2018 Tarot Cast
I love March-time! Tree leaves twinkle in the morning, from the sunrise & icy dew. Flowers. Bees humming. Hummingbirds flying. Trés jolie.
Also, March is my birthday month! ♈️
These past few months, I’ve focused on staying in my integrity. With Jupiter in Scorpio & Saturn in Capricorn, I've been organically purging my unconscious of old fixtures while tightening up brass tacks. Squeezing out the moldering psychic gristle, so that core power can flow like a fountain.
So, I decided a Feng Shui Spread to be the perfect Tarot Cast for my 31st birthday, at a time where I feel quite ready for a mind-body-soul reboot. I’m lining up new posts about sorcerous forms of personal transformation & my best practices for maintaining a steady current of holy creative energy in your space / body, so stay tuned for that!
Keep reading to learn more about creating a Feng Shui-inspired Tarot spread & what the heart of the spread, The Hierophant card, means for me.
MARCH 2018 TAROT CAST: THE FENG SHUI SPREAD
Feng Shui is the art of maximizing (& optimizing) the flow of energy in a space or body. In interior decorating, Feng Shui is used for arranging spaces in relation to the 4 cardinal directions. (North, South, East, West.) You also have to consider where the room’s entryway lines up on a Bagua Map, which is like a template for the 9 realms of life that add to (or pull from) your life force.
In the Feng Shui Tarot Spread, you can assign a card to a specific aspect of your life, in order to encourage changes, or you can pull cards at random to help you read more deeply into what’s going on. This spread is ideal if you’re pleased with certain areas of your life more than others, & want to gain an overview of how your goals relate to what you already have..
The Feng Shui spread is definitely the kind of Tarot you do on a rainy night when you’re home alone, drinking kombucha & waiting for a mud mask to harden. Like the Celtic Cross spread (11 cards!), it’s a bit of a process to work through, at least for ponderous babes like me who must deeply handle each & every card.
TAROT FOR FLOW: HOW TO DO A FENGSHUI TAROT SPREAD
A Feng Shui Tarot Spread pulls 9 cards to represent 9 aspects of life on the Bagua Map. You can draw 9 cards face-down, face-up, or a mix of both.
For example, if you want to Divine a message about your life’s direction, your True North, you would pull a facedown card at random from the deck. You would put in the North quadrant of spread. (Which doesn’t actually have to be facing north, unless you’re very thorough.) You meditate on how this card relates or doesn’t relate to this area of life.
But if you know without a doubt that the High Priestess symbolizes how you see yourself & interpret your life path, you simply separate out the High Priestess & stick her in the North. That’s kosher.
(It’s all kosher.)
For every card pulled, enter at least 3 keywords into a diary or grimoire, based on what you see in the card & what you remember about its formal meaning. If you’re still memorizing card definitions, you could also look up each card on Tarot Wikipedia (on top of checking a guidebook), to compare / contrast definitions & deepen your intuition of each card.
Because 9 cards are too many to analyze in this post, I’ll break down the 9th card of my March-time Feng Shui spread. This is the card that goes in the middle of your Tarot Bagua Map, which is the 5th position in my interpretation. This card is labeled “Health” & is the heart of the spread.
I go by this Google Image as a template for the Bagua Map. You might find a better one, or count out your spread’s positions differently. You might prefer to Divine the center of your Feng Shui, whereas I intentionally placed The Hierophant at the center of the spread.
I selected The Hierophant for the center because, right now, I’m focused on self-healing. I’m working with Jupiter’s transit through Scorpio & Saturn’s transit through Capricorn, which has turned into a very structured journey of purging shadow drama & relaying practical foundations.
I’m consciously aware that I’m in a process of waking up. I’m at a juncture of my journey where there’s no turning back & everything is about to change. I’m aware of this as a breakthrough phase where challenges (& challengers) are actually gateways into my sacred strength, where I'm making direct contact with my core strength. It's tough, but it's the only way to access the strongest part of me. And you.
That’s what I’m all about right now.
THE HEART OF MY FENG SHUI SPREAD: THE HIEROPHANT
The Hierophant is the card of gurus, mentors, & royal viziers. Often, our best teachers present us with our biggest challenges. They counter-weigh our true beliefs. The Hierophant symbolizes the conventional attitude with teachings & principles that task us to understand why the world is the way it is.
At number 5 in the Major Arcana, The Hierophant numerologically corresponds to a pivotal point of our spiritual journey: a personal reformation instigated by challenging circumstances... like a confrontation with the status quo or a "losing my religion" moment.
My life-path number is also 5: the life-path of the teacher, challenger, & Awakened survivor. I talk more about Five-ness (& also how it pointed me towards my Patron Goddess) in this post. This just means the general project of my life exactly corresponds with the process of challenge & Awakening symbolized by The Hierophant.
In this Tarot Key, shadow work & reality checking goes hand in hand. Before you can change anything in your life, you need to understand why it is the way it is. You have to be willing to know the truth of the situation, even if it could potentially dismantle reality as you know it.
Because The Hierophant lies at the heart of my Feng Shui spread, I’m committed to this directive: what I find, I must heal.
The Hierophant is not like the Hanged Man, who would advise you surrender to your predicament & wait on Divine insight to guide your next steps. With The Hierophant, you consciously seek opposition to what you think (& feel) about the world. To really be able to use this Tarot key, you have to be willing to learn as you go. To get pragmatic.
So, at the heart of my life right now is a learning quest for rebuilding my integrity. I want to advance beyond the ability to talk pedantically about my childhood. Where the memory symbolizes an old version of my journey, but no longer tangibly lives the present. It’s a reference point, like a node on a map I’m drawing as I go.
Which means waking up. Getting constructive. Humbling myself. Finding masters. And making myself useful.
So, shadow work.
Also, reality checking.
(Check out this post & this post for more about that.)
Some inspiration for your own fast approaching spring-time Awakening:
💫What to do after you have a breakthrough. This Danielle LaPorte post is a good little soul-snack to get you through it.
💫And this Katy Perry interview totally speaks to where I’m at right now.
“Now I want to touch the stars, which has to do with the heart.”
💫Btw, it’s an ideal time for some soul-healing! For the Virgo Full Moon (March 1st), adopt a new self-care ritual, like meditation (I’m obsessed with this kit) or therapy or juice fasting. I’m wading into the detox plan outlined in Dr. Kelly Brogan’s book A Mind Of Your Own. (Catch Marie’s interview with Dr. Brogan--it changed my life.)
💫My March-time essential combinations: Lavender, Vanilla, Orange, Rose. (Mostly NOW). I love diffusing oils & opening up a couple windows, so the fragrance really circulates. When I have oils diffusing, it's like Heaven on Earth.
💫Remember: Venus is still in Pisces for the next 6 days, so keep playing with your senses & accessorizing your imagination. This is how you set a beautiful tone to springtime! (Read more about what I'm doing while Venus -> ♓️ over here.)
Feature images via Pinterest. (Help me credit the creators here.) All Tarot images via The Starchild Tarot by Danielle Noel.