Lessons from the Alleyman’s Tarot

So, my latest obsession is the Alleyman’s Tarot, which is a Tarot deck I backed on Kickstarter last year. It’s a bit different than the usual Tarot deck in that it’s not standard — it has the standard cards in it, but it has even more — non-standard cards and suits. It’s literally made up of cards from different Tarot decks. A patchwork or “magpie” deck, as it’s being called. It funded at over one million dollars and made history. And I am in love! It’s a bit tricky, I will admit, as I have to look up the non-standard cards in the guidebook when they come up. And sometimes I can’t tell what’s what even with the standard cards. They are all different. There’s no unifying theme or any rhyme or reason to it. It just…is. And that’s the beauty of it, I think. It forces you to expand your ideas of “normal” Tarot, of a “normal” reading, and what these cards are telling you. And there is a myth about the Alleyman, too, which I have not, regretfully, dug into yet. But apparently it’s really, really cool. He goes around collecting cards and gives them away to people. A singer was recently visited by a man who could have been the Alleyman…who gave her the exact Tarot card she needed to see on that night. The power of Tarot and universe, yo. So lately I’ve been tweeting #advicecards from the Alleyman’s deck and have been having fun. And…

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Lessons from The Tarot: Empress

So, if you’ve been hanging around here awhile, you know that I’ve been reading Tarot since I was sixteen (thirty years!) and Lenormand for the past two years. And while I originally, as a kid, used it “to tell my future” LOL, I now use it mostly for guidance. And writing, but that’s another post. Today I’d like to talk about the Empress card and the lessons it has taught me. First of all, the Empress is Key 3 (of 21) – Major Arcana (major life themes/karma/big things) and she represents creativity, abundance, nurturing, motherhood, a mother figure, home and hearth, and, in some contexts, pregnancy. (She’s actually HUGE for pregnancy if the question is about that). The interesting thing about the Empress is that she is my personal significator card. See, the Tarot selects a card for you when you start reading. And that card will show up in a lot of your readings. And the Empress is totally interesting as my card because, well, I’m not really maternal, and I’m not a mother (except to a cat), but I am creative and I am all about home and hearth and I can be very nurturing. So it’s kinda like an inside joke. Here’s me, the woman the least likely to pop out kids, and I’m the Empress. Ha, ha. But there’s another aspect to her. She’s also the Divine Feminine, counterpart to The Emperor, Key 4, the Divine Masculine. The Divine Feminine what, you say? Well…that’s all about…

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