How could you NOT fall in love with the glow of the moon and stars, the warmth of the sun, the ancient life within the trees, and the sweet melodies of the winds?
A tarot spread for helping decide if a new direction you’re considering is right for you.
What Am I Missing? Things typically don’t beckon us when we are 100% content. What hole are you looking to fill? What element are you seeking out? What are you hoping to gain from this?
What Does This Path Offer? This is both the response to the question posed in the previous card and a guiding signifier for the whole spread. What does this specific path bring you? Does it heal, look pretty, or empower you in some way? Does it compliment what you’re searching for?
Short-Term Look What will the beginning of this path be like during the first month or three? Will it require a lot of prep-work? Will it be enlightening or frustrating?
Long-Term Look Where does this path lead after more time? Is it tough in the beginning but become really fulfilling if you stick with it? Does it start out strong but fizzle out later? Is this path an investment in your future or a temporary supplement? (Either is fine, but it’s good to know so you don’t cling to it after it’s spent.)
For those of us going through heartbreak and wanting a bit of divine guidance.
hi-res version downloadable at my ko-fi for members and one-time supporters!
Instructions:
Shuffle your deck until you find the 3 of swords. This is card 1.
Next, pull the card on top/in front of the 3 of swords, this is card
number 2.
Then pull out the card on the bottom/behind the 3 of swords, this is card number 3.
Shuffle your deck again and pull the last card, card 4, from the deck (top, bottom, middle, whatever calls to you).
Card 1 - The Current situation
Heartbroken, sad, feeling betrayed or lost.
Card 2 - The Bright Side
Q: What's the bright side?
It's easy to look at the downsides when we're heartbroken. We tend to blame ourselves or others rather than look at the situation as a whole. Turning your attention towards growth, in what ways does this situation (as hard as it may be) actually benefit you?
Card 3 - Lurking Shadows
Q: What can I learn from this situation?
It's possible that the signs were already there, lurking in the shadows; perhaps they were hidden from view or maybe you were denying their existence. What can you learn from this situation to help with future relationships/situations to prevent this from happening again?
Card 4 - Next steps
Q: How can I move on?
Either an action (or actions) to take to or a mindset to adopt to help you move forward. Ask the cards, how can I move on?
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hey not sure if this is okay to ask but i was wondering who i could even ask about something like this and you were the first person i thought of!
i been using some oracle cards for years now and they are pretty intuitive and over the years we got to understand eachother pretty well to the point i understand what they mean with no problem. i decided to get a tarot deck is a very nice one (star spinner tarot) and it comes with a booklet with some information of each card but i feel like is not enough for me to grasp what they are trying to say?
(also i never used reversed meanings with my other cards so thats a bit confusing)
i was wondering if you have any advice for someone getting into tarot? i do have experience with like other cards, pendulums, even runes, etc. but i feel like the information that came with this one is very short and i cant understand them as well as my regular cards
sorry if this is not an okay thing to ask!!
Hi, Anon.
Star Spinner tarot looks lovely!
You don't have to use reversals. I don't use them sometimes. It depends on my mood and how much I want to deal with.
For anyone getting into tarot, I would recommend starting your own notes and adding information from many different resources.
For most decks, lots online information is available for each card. BiddyTarot.com is a popular resource for more general card meanings. If you'd really like to study tarot, I highly recommend The Mystical Origins of the Tarot by Paul Huson.
As you study extended resources, contemplate meanings for a certain card as you look at the card. Consider not only popular contemporary meanings (BiddyTarot) and what your deck creator has to say (booklet with the cards), but also historical resources (Huson).
As you find meanings that resonate with you and stick out to you, add them to your notes.
Don't worry about trying to paint a complete picture of every card. Focus on the meanings that make sense to you. Most readers seem to find that their understandings of the cards are in flux and will always grow and evolve. So you're creating a starting point for where you're at right now, not the all-time ultimate meaning reference book.
Don't worry at all about trying to memorize the cards. Even professional readers you pay will still use their guidebooks and notes if they want to.
Common advice given to beginners is to start with only one-card draws and maybe do a 3-card spread if you're feeling bold, but this advice didn't work for me, and may not work for you either.
When I began reading I got so little information from each card that I had to do relatively large spreads just to get any information out of them.
It might help you to experiment with the number of cards drawn, and in what spreads you place them.
There are many exercises a person can do to try and connect with their cards more. Try forgetting the book meanings altogether and trying to craft story narratives based on what's happening in the pictures.
Another exercise that can be fun and helpful is to play with your deck while you watch a show. During the show, pull random cards and ask yourself how that card relates to what you're seeing on screen. You might want to pause and look at the book, but also look for other ways to connect:
The mood or atmosphere of the picture
The different characters on the card, what they're doing, and how they're acting
The location or setting of the card
The objects that can be found in the card
The goal of this TV show exercise is not to perform accurate readings on a TV show, but to stretch your mind and become comfortable relating the card to real world situations. As long as you can say, "this card matches because [...]," you have won the game.
Lastly, tarot is a relatively complex divinatory system with lots of moving parts and layers of meaning. It's normal for it to take a while to sink in - it's definitely not the easiest system to get into.
hello!! if you don’t mind me asking, how do you undo a spell?
If you were the caster and you have spell remnants (the thread that was knotted, the wax of the candle that was burned, etc.):
Bring the spell remnant back into Magical Space (whatever space, mindset, or rituals you require in order for your mundane actions to become magical).
Perform Undoing actions on the spell remnants. Cut or untie a knot, melt or pulverize wax, mix ashes with magically nullifying substances such as salt and iron, etc.
While performing Undoing actions, also give clear linguistic Instructions on what you expect to happen. These instructions may be spoken, thought, signed, written, read, or be imposed upon your Magical Space in any way you prefer.
Tie your instructions to your physical actions, such as:
This spell is undone as this cord is cut, the magic binds no longer
This spell is melted and reduced as I melt and reduce this wax; the magic dwindles into nothing
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; my spell is consumed by this iron rust - the magic no longer functions
I highly recommend using clear and direct sentences to the effect of "I am undoing this spell and I don't want the magic to work any more" (for those who only use present-tense intents: "this spell is undone, the magic has stopped working."
Dispose of the remnants in a permanent way.
If you were the caster and you do not have spell remnants:
Consecrate a new object (new thread to be knotted, new candle, new piece of paper) to represent the old spell. Ideally, this object will be chosen or modified to resemble the vibes of the old spell as closely as possible.
Any consecration ritual will do. The goal is to give a new physical body to your old spell; you are making an "poppet" of the spell.
Once the new physical object has become synonymous with the old spell, perform the Undoing and Instruction method that was described above.
(New candles should probably be snapped in half or burned upside down; burning them normally is more likely to empower the old spell).
If you were not the caster:
The "poppet" method above will tend to work if you know what you're doing with things. However, one of these might be more reliable:
Method One: Bless a thread with binding, limiting energies (Saturn is ideal) and trap the unwanted spell by tying it in a knot. Then burn the thread, ideally while Instructing what is supposed to happen.
Method Two: Carve the end of a taper candle so that the wick is visible on the bottom. Treat this bottom as your new "active" end, and draw correspondences from the new active end, downwards.
Coat the candle with a pepper-infused oil, score the surface lengthwise with iron nails, or otherwise mark the candle with destructive and banishing correspondences.
While doing this, Instruct the candle that its job is to banish, burn away, and destroy the unwanted spell. Light the candle. (A temporary holder may be obtained for the awkward shape by filling a deep dish with sand, soil, or salt).
Notes and Bits (Beyond 101):
It is generally wise to construct all spells with "kill codes" in case you need to undo them. This is essentially a special sort of intent that you build into the spell which undoes the spell on your command.
To avoid intrusive thought anxiety, it is almost always best to have this "code" require a specific set of physical actions, such as writing "Spell Cast on [date], be undone and begone" seven times over on a piece of paper.
Undoing a spell does not teleport you back in time to before it was ever cast. Imagine a valley with a river. A spell is cast that dams up the river. The entire ecosystem of the valley changes because the river was stopped.
Later on we can dismantle the dam and let the water flow again. But the valley will not "magically" go back to what it used to be. The spell may be undone but there will also still be significant changes already affected on this valley.
Record keeping is one of your best allies in knowing how to undo your own spells. The more you know about your spell (or anyone else's), the easier it is for you to undo or counter.
Once a spell is undone, you may still have more work to do. Suppose someone hexes me. Even if I undo the hex, my house may still be filled with nasty energy and I can still have anxiety. I will have to do a good self-cleansing and home-clearing before the effects are fully erased. Undoing a spell is not the same thing as cleaning up after it.
In sticky situations, you may also want to cast additional spells to protect against the effects of the unwanted spell.
Part 5 of 7 in a guide for buying crystals. Read the rest here!
We are finally at the wholly fake crystals! These crystals are either dupes of real ones, real crystals passed off as other crystals, or man-made crystals without a natural analogue. I'm excited to get into this because once you know what to look for, its hard to be scammed.
And to be clear, if you value any of these, either as collector's items or as spiritual tools, that's perfectly fine. My issue is when people try to pass off crystals (or not-crystals!) as something they're not.
Real Crystals Sold As Fakes
Howlite - A very common dupe for turquoise. Real turquoise is very expensive, so cheap turquoise is likely to be dyed howlite. This may also be called turquenite. Acetone removes dyes.¹ ⁶
Malachite - Genuine malachite is green to dark green (never stark black), the colours fade together softly, without uniform patterns, and often with circular patterning. Conversely, fake malachite, often made of resin, may have black, hard lines, and uniform patterning normally without circular patterns.²
Clear quartz - Clear quartz is often faked using glass. Real clear quarts will have some kind of inclusion, even if they’re not visible to the eye, and will NEVER have bubbles in it.³
Obsidian - There are many types of natural glass, such as obsidian and moldavite. Real obsidian is opaque, dense, and its colours range from black to brown. Many fake obsidians promise vibrant colours impossible for real obsidian to form as.⁴
Moldavite - Moldavite is incredibly rare due to not only being found in one location, but being exclusively formed by meteorite activity. Real moldavite will be mossy-coloured, while fakes may tend towards light green. White moldavite is not real; it is typically calcite.⁵⁻⁶
Moissanite - Natural moissanite is incredibly rare. Most on the market will be synthetics.⁶
Citrine - Citrine is heated amethyst, but most citrine on the market will be artificially heated and sold as natural. Natural citrine has a colour ranging from olive to lemonade, and will never be found on a geode. A telltale sign of artificial citrine is any sign of a parent geode, especially a bright white colour on the bottom of the crystal, as well as the crystal’s colour generally looking “crispy” or bright orange.⁹
Prasiolite - Green quartz is incredibly rare in nature, and thus, most found on the market will be heat treated amethyst of certain localities. Typically, natural prasiolite is light, translucent green, while darker varieties are treated.¹¹
Geodes - Geodes are typically made of quartz, but less commonly calcite, dolomite, aragonite, akerite, hematite, magnetitie, pyrite, chalcopyrite, and sphalerite.¹² Anything else is either incredibly rare or nonexistent. Many geodes may be dyed, modified, or sold as crystals they are not.¹³
Man-Made Crystals Without Natural Analogues
Glass (artificial) - There are many types of glass that are sold as natural crystals, such as goldstone (erroneously marketed as sunstone) and opalite (opal imitation, erroneously marketed as moonstone).¹⁰
Smelt quartz - Also known as cherry, blueberry, etc. quartz, are made of dyed glass.⁶
Slag - Slag is the byproduct of smelting. Names of commonly sold slags are: Fordite/Detroit agate, Sieber agate, andara crystal, rosarita, leklai, Frankfort green, and Leland blue.⁶⁻⁸
Cermikite - Also called alum crystal, these are commonly made in “grow your own crystal” kits. They are made of potassium aluminium sulphate.⁶
Chalcanthite - Synthetic crystal made of copper sulphate. Natural chalcanthite is incredibly rare and grows as fibrous crystals. This is a toxic crystal.⁶
Lopezite - Synthetic made of potassium dichomate. This is a toxic crystal.⁶
Cubic zirconia - Diamond imitation made of zirconium dioxide.⁶
Further Reading
I cannot list all possible fakes and dupes. However, I can point to a few sites.
Crystals Rock
The Vug
Mineral Expert
If you need more specific advice, I'd say to simply search "how to tell if [crystal] is real/fake."
In the next part, we are discussing the root of why we need to be so careful when it comes to buying crystals: capitalism.
Sources
"How to Spot Fake Crystals", Crystals Rock.
"Fake of Real Malachite?", The Citrine Circle.
"How to Tell If Your Clear Quartz is Fake", Manifest and Flow.
"Real Vs Fake Obsidian Stone", How to Find Rocks.
"Real Vs Fake Malachite: How to Tell Moldavite Is Real", Truly Experiences.
"Toxic Crystals, Fakes, and Forgeries", Solstice Stones.
"Leland Blue Stones", Leelanau.
"Rosarita Stone History", TFD Jewellery.
"(Real vs Fake Citrine) How To Tell If You Have Real Citrine", Rock Seeker.
"'Fake' Crystals — Opalite, Goldstone, and More.", Marble Crow Blog.
"Prasiolite", The Quartz Page.
"Geode", Britannica.
"Are There Fake Geodes? (How To Spot Man-Made Geodes)", Rock Seeker.
A while ago was my first time making it properly, with alcohol, since I used dried herbs and didn’t want it to go bad (yes, I learned from experience lol). So I mixed herbs with 500 ml of alcohol, let it infuse for a week, strained it and done.
The only problem is that it became a strong green colour. Which isn’t exactly a problem, but then when I spray it, it stains things. I can just clean it up of course, but that’s unnecessary extra work and not ideal since I want to be able to spray it around without worry.
I think it happened because I added too many herbs, so I’ll try using less next time. But I’d also appreciate some tips on how to make it better. Can I add water too (in less amount than the alcohol) to make it a bit weaker (and so not get too much colour)?
I treat this as a 2 step process. The first is making the infusion - which is what you have. For this step basically I use lots of herbs with just enough liquid (alcohol, vinegar, olive oil depending on what I’m going for) to cover them. Leave it to sit or with the oil, you can heat over low heat.
Now this is going to give you a concentrated green or green/brown liquid. For a spray, add enough of the concetrate to more alcohol, vinegar or water to get the scent you are looking for without overdoing the color.
The oil you can use for annointing, massage or as a cooking infusion depending on the herbs. But you probably don’t want to go around spraying the oil.
Just dilute what you have right now with more alcohol or some water and you’ll probably find it works better.
@teawitch thanks for the help! I considered diluting it but wasn’t sure if it was a good idea. I’ll also keep in mind this method of seeing it as a 2 step process.
A while ago was my first time making it properly, with alcohol, since I used dried herbs and didn’t want it to go bad (yes, I learned from experience lol). So I mixed herbs with 500 ml of alcohol, let it infuse for a week, strained it and done.
The only problem is that it became a strong green colour. Which isn’t exactly a problem, but then when I spray it, it stains things. I can just clean it up of course, but that’s unnecessary extra work and not ideal since I want to be able to spray it around without worry.
I think it happened because I added too many herbs, so I’ll try using less next time. But I’d also appreciate some tips on how to make it better. Can I add water too (in less amount than the alcohol) to make it a bit weaker (and so not get too much colour)?
I definitely didn’t come up with these, but they’re worth repeating!
Interpreting the suits
The pip (minor arcana) suits can tell you what aspect of life is being discussed. Everyone can have their own definitions, but often –
Pentacles = Earth and reveal income and money, home life, all domestic issues, family, and platonic relationships.
Cups = Water and reveal emotions, romantic relationships, subjective experiences, and personal need.
Swords = Air and reveal mindset, objectivity, professional relationships, pain, and difficult or professional (“it’s just business”) choices.
Wands = Fire and reveal passions, desires, boundaries, sexual relationships, burdens, and choices borne out of inner need.
Noting which suit is dominant, absent, or balanced with another suit can provide instant context to a reading. You can actually provide really insightful interpretations just based on the suits and how they’re arranged next to each other, before ever considering what each card actually is.
Example: If you draw a 6-card spread about finances and there are 4 wands and 2 cups, you know the issue or blockage your client is facing is probably about what they really want out of life and how they feel about their job and current status.
Pip sequence
You don’t have to memorize numerology to use pip numbers. Each suit represents a progression from beginning (Ace) to end (10). If you look at a number 7 card, you don’t have to remember what 7 might mean numerologically. You already know that 7 is getting pretty close to the end of the suit, and this card is going to represent something already well developed and headed towards completion, but it isn’t quite there yet.
Example: You draw a 3-card spread about how someone’s relationship is going. You get an Ac, a 2, and a 9. You can interpret that this person’s relationship is still in the beginning stages, in the phase where a lot is still being worked out. However, there is an aspect of their relationship where they already feel like old friends.
Court cards
If you understand the numbered cards to be events and circumstances, court cards can easily become roles, identities, and behaviors. Switching court cards from having to be a person, and allowing them to be aspects of personhood, can make them easier to read. Using this interpretation, a court card can be:
- The role or persona a person feels they must take
- An aspect of someone’s overall identity
- The category or type of behaviors needed or displayed
- The resulting effect of a situation; the court card is how people are made to feel, act, or react
- Etc.
Generally, pages are beginners, learners, experimenters, and observers. Knights are in the thick of things, taking actionable steps and affecting the world around them. Queens represent the wisdom and knowledge of their suit. Kings represent managing, ruling, and delegating within their suit.
Example: In a spread about becoming a better person, one card is the Knight of Wands. The reader can’t think of anyone they know who is a Knight of Wands type and doesn’t know who it could be referring to. If the card is reframed as a category of behaviors, the reader might see that they should more often take action and stand their ground.
Exercise suggestion!
Take out all the major arcana cards and do practice readings with just the pips and court cards. Only interpret suit, pip number, and title (that is, if the card is a page, knight, queen, or king). See what interpretations you’re able to come up with only using these 3 factors and not the images on the cards or any traditional meanings.
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