Wrapping up the Obscure Sorrows Tarot Challenge - I like to look back over the month and get a general sense of the influences. This month is a little different because its been a shadow work challenge, very directed and purposeful. Still there are some things worth mentioning and making mental notes about.
1. It’s a big deal to speak about your shadow / shadow self publicly. I was very conscientious that its really “not done”, that these are thoughts, feelings, aspects of self that we {like} to keep hidden - that’s what makes them shadowy! I found it quite confronting to be authentic - but also felt it was critically important that I push myself to do it. I really wanted to drag these shadowy bits of business forward and expose them to the light of conscious awareness. Will doing so banish the shadows? ... well, some of them perhaps - others were just made explicit and brought forward where I can actively work with them.
2. About 6 days into the challenge I was reminded that I need to be bloody careful about what I invoke. Doing shadow work is serious business. Invoking the shadow is a big deal. Thinking we can contain or control it is a naive mistake. Once you begin, you have to hope you have the resources and resilience to see it through, and its not limited by the 31 days that make up the challenge. Once Pandora’s box is opened, the consequences must be lived. As a therapist I am well aware that not everyone who opens that box is able to cope with the results successfully. True shadow work, once begun, can last for weeks, months, even years. It’s not something to enter into casually. I know I have opened myself up to the shadow and I also know its not over. I am changed, altered. I am thinking, feeling, moving in ways and places that people around me find challenging, confronting, possibly depressing. It’s a personal journey. Shadow work always is.
3. I have been thinking a LOT across the past weeks about liminality - there’s quite a few posts on my feed about it. Liminality is the space that is “inbetween” -- when we have left one place, and haven’t arrived at the next. When we are no longer who we were but haven’t become someone different - when we can’t remain where we were, but may not know where we are going. A lot of shadow work is confronting the tension, uncertainty and messiness of those places and learning to “sit with” them rather than imposing our will to banish the shadows. I was interested to review the cards I drew across the challenge and see how many of them were “liminal” cards - and in which areas they arose in.
4. I chose to use only majors for this challenge. That has meant big, powerful messages and intense, confronting learning. I also chose to only use the Steampunk deck, which I find very direct. At the beginning of the month I separated all the minor cards from the deck and have not used them, or the deck, for anything else. I think this amplified the process and the messages. Just as we may want to dodge or avoid someone who is always putting out heavy vibes, I found myself, many times, wanting to change decks, or lighten things up by using the minors, or by drawing “clarifying” cards. I am glad I honoured my intuition and stuck with one card draws and using the majors, but it was heavy going, many days.
5. I have also been thinking quite a bit about cards that represent “dying away” from parts or aspects of self, refining, and renewing ourselves in the process - it’s kind of an alchemical undertaking. Interestingly, some of the cards which I consider “dying away from self “cards are very ‘willful’ cards, not liminal at all. I think especially of Judgement and Justice, who both made appearances this past month.
6. The big themes:
i. Relationships / people, navigating the tension between connection, disconnection, compromise and dissension, beginnings and endings, closeness and distance. ii. Power, control and authority iii. Cycles of completion and ending, learning what is there to be learned, and making different choices
7. Lastly I thought it was interesting that most of the majors made an appearance across the last month. Sometimes what goes unsaid, or what is not represented has just as much value as that which has been said. So the only majors that didn’t appear this month were: The Magician, The Chariot, The Hermit and the Wheel of Fortune. I will ponder that some more!
So that, I think, is that. It’s been an interesting, heavy month, and while I know the shadow work is not complete, I will be very happy to pull minor cards, from less challenging decks, to remind me that the day to day of living doesn’t need to be so damn confronting!
