tarotpagan

Journalling my daily Wild Unknown tarot card, they/them

[tarotpagan]

5/8/26: Six of Swords

Permission to fall into a bit of a heap, in the assurance that good things are still coming. We're both pretty physically tired by now, having spent several days tramping around various parts of Northumberland, and although our days off are flying fast there is still time. We'd meant to take it easier today, but that didn't quite work out, and we had a bit of an emotional time of it again: my wife lost a piece of jewellery on Lindisfarne, and I ran comprehensively out of energy on a walk round the island's north coast, and also got possibly overly stressed about tide times. But afterwards, back on the mainland, we spent some time on a sandy beach, and had a good dinner, and the evening slipped by nicely. So...the bad with the good, the good with the bad.

[tarotpagan]

4/8/26: Strength

A bit of a struggle of a day. I did not keep my Holiday Anxiety in check very well (how do we best Optimise our free time given the ever-looming spectre of Back to Work?) and my wife ended up feeling pretty upset with me for not being clear about what I wanted (I don't know! My brain is a mystery even to me!). We had a chat and I think managed to turn the day around, with the lion's message of patience and compassion. But, ugh. Not in a good headspace at the moment.

[tarotpagan]

3/8/26: Three of Pentacles

It's maybe a little odd to see this card when I'm on holiday, given its implication that there is a specific challenge to be tackled, a specific mountain to climb, but actually it turned out more relevant than expected, given that my wife and I ended up climbing a literal hill - scrambling up the steep ridge at Cragside, the estate whose landscape was reshaped by a Victorian industrialist so he could power his house with hydroelectricity. More broadly, I think the card ended up gesturing at the importance of collaborating and supporting each other through the process of Planning the Day, which I think is a thing that stresses me out unwontedly when we're on holiday (how do we make the most of the day? where shall we eat and when?). It's been a pretty good day, though - lots of walking at Cragside, and then dinner in Alnmouth after a quick trip to the beach, and an early return to the Airbnb to lounge around with books and the Internet. So, a successful collaboration.

[perfumedetempestad-deactivated2]

Divination: Effective Questions

Moving forward

What is holding me back?

What can I learn from the past?

What am I ignoring?

What is my biggest block at the moment?

How can I overcome x?

What do I need to know/see/understand right now?

What do I need to focus on?

What do I need more of in my life?

What do I need less of in my life?

What is the next step I should take to make my desire a reality?

Personal

What is trying to come forth in my life?

How can I be more powerful and effective in my life?

What is my greatest source of strength?

How can I improve my ability to x?

What talent do I have that I need to use more?

What characteristics do I need to fully embrace?

What skills and talents will best serve me?

What spiritual lesson am I trying to master right now?

How does my current path align with my spiritual purpose?

What message do my patron deity/spirit guide/angel have for me?

Love

What is blocking my self-love flow?

What should I let go to increase my self-love?

What’s my major self-love challenge?

How can I increase my ability to give love?

How can I increase my ability to receive love?

How can I improve my relationship with x?

What do I need to know about my relationship with x?

Are our paths compatible?

What should I do to attract my partner?

Is there anything in the past that’s stopping me from meeting my partner?

NOTE: Nothing is set in stone! Divination is for advice.

[tarotpagan]

1/8/26: Knight of Swords

My Wild Unknown and Alleyman's decks were packed for holiday this morning, so here's a brief foray into the Light Seer's Tarot. The Knight of Swords was actually very appropriate today: we spent the day travelling up to Northumberland for our week away, and as we can see from this illustration the Knight of Swords is very much about movement, determination, striking out in a specific direction. It's also Lughnasa today, the First Harvest, and I think there's something there about - the focus, the action the harvest demands; if you're in a farming community it's all hands on deck this time of year, to bring the bounty in on time. Time to get a wiggle on, to plunge into the stuff of life!

[tarotpagan]

31/7/26: Ace of Cups

I find this card a bit fuzzy to think with, to be honest, even after having looked at examples in other decks; I think because it symbolises the raw energy of the Cups, rather than suggesting ways it might be applied as in higher cards in the suit. It's usually read as an emotional new beginning, but today, being Friday, felt almost more like an ending. I suppose I am shifting into Holiday Mode: I'm off work for a week now, and have the opportunity to move emotionally towards Real Me rather than Work Me. The week feels full of potential.

[tarotpagan]

30/7/26: Four of Wands

The Four of Wands sometimes turns up at slightly weird times: midweek, often mid-deadline. What's to celebrate then? But that's the point: carving out space in the midst of the everyday simply to have fun. And in fact there was cause for celebration on Thursday: a friend coming over for late evening board games, bringing interesting drinks and an excuse for my wife to make cookies. And, too, the promise of an upcoming holiday, with just Friday to get through beforehand. A spurt of energy through the end of the week.

[tarotpagan]

2/7/26: Two of Swords

Yep, this checks out: an inability to move forward, to progress. I had to run two meetings this morning, one of them at short notice, both of which were stressful in their own ways: lots of masking, lots of social energy. So that left me pretty tired, afterwards. Then I spent the afternoon fielding periodic rapid-fire messages from a colleague reviewing my work, who was clearly under the apprehension that I had nothing better to do than leap immediately to attention every single time. This made me extremely anxious and also made it virtually impossible to focus on anything else, including a project that I really need to make some decent progress on. And then, this evening, I couldn't do as much editorial work as I wanted to because there was dinner to cook, and I had to let someone else down re. something I'd said I was going to do because of work travel, and, basically, nothing is turning out quite how I want it to today.

[tarotpagan]

1/7/26: The World

This card instilled in me a restless anxiety that lasted all day. I am, basically, not very content right now, and the World, the card that points towards fulfilment, wholeness, a sense of true spiritual oneness with all that is - well, it's hard to see how to get there from here.

Hard to figure out what my desired there is in the first place. I got very stressed today over a trivial work conversation with my colleague (I didn't really understand what they were suggesting I do, and then I worried that they thought I was being useless and not self-reliant enough), which made me think about how my general intolerance for ambiguity and reluctance to inconvenience other people even mildly is having an outsize impact on my life and what I am capable of doing. I finished When There Are Wolves Again at lunchtime and felt pulled towards environmental activism and work, but I don't see how I can get there without better social skills, or at least other hard skills that I don't currently have. I'm dissatisfied with my current job, but is that just "grass is greener" syndrome, the enervating effects of middle-class knowledge work? Would I be happy with any job? And do I have the energy to do anything about any of this, when I'm already feeling out of balance work-life wise?

I managed to navigate myself slightly out of this fog after work by spending some time in the garden participating in the Big Butterfly Count, and then researching and emailing a therapist for some potential support with my social anxiety, and then faffing around trying to do some very bad art in Paint, but I look back on the evening and feel it was bitty, unfocused, maybe wasted. Too big a card, too much pressure.

[tarotpagan]

30/6/26: Five of Cups

Plodding onwards, through toil; maybe to a brighter horizon. Not a particularly bad day today, but tiring; I had a big meeting to run at lunchtime, and then work on a mildly stressful project, and then an evening trip to the library and dinner in town with my wife. Not that the latter is a bad thing at all, but it does contribute to a feeling that all of my time is taken up with general busyness, that there is no space to take a breath. Busy weekends, busy workdays. Probably I just need a holiday.

[tarotpagan]

29/6/26: Daughter of Cups

The Daughter of Cups is, first and foremost, open to emotion - to innocent wonder as well as to sharper sensations. Every feeling is keen, present, immediate, there to be explored and experienced curiously and hopefully.

Today felt like a day of - low-key rediscovery; of showing up authentically, with all my metaphorical nerve endings bared, vulnerable, in the hope of finding new wonders in return. Mainly this is because of the book I'm reading at the moment: E.J. Swift's When There Are Wolves Again, a cli-fi novel filled with characters who pay attention to the natural world, who grieve our losses but cling to the beauty of what remains and work to save it. I think it reopened my eyes to what is still possible within the confines of my own life - to the ways in which my job, meaningless as it occasionally seems, is in fact contributing to the slow shift towards a more sustainable future. This, together with a facilitated workshop this afternoon, has re-energised me a little on that front; given me new emotional resources to cope with the longer hours and heavier workload I've been feeling drained by lately. As part of said workshop I also shared some of my feelings about J.R.R. Tolkien's writing (it was just about relevant, I promise!), letting my emotion show in a way that was probably a little nerdy but also honest: sharing a piece of myself with my colleagues, in a setting where I'm often performing, masking, intensively. Reminding myself of who I am and why I'm doing what I'm doing.

[tarotpagan]

24/6/26: Justice

Not a card I see very often or have thought a lot about, but: it signifies a choice to be made, an Objectively Correct way to go about things. I've been actively trying to work against this kind of thinking, to accept that there are many ways of succeeding at many different things, but sometimes returning to this framing can be helpful, especially when there's a moral dimension at play, so: here we are. I actually found myself in several conversations about AI today at work, pushing back on people who want it to replace our thinking; this probably isn't strategic, politically, in the long run, but I've basically decided that this is a hill I'm willing to die on. Might as well use what voice and influence I have to oppose the erosion of what makes my work worthwhile. We've also been thinking about what kind of outside access to give our cat now that she is back from her extended absence; I did some googling into catios, which might be the best solution from the point of view both of her welfare and that of the local wildlife. But we don't have to decide that right now; we'll be keeping her in for a little while in any case.

[tarotpagan]

23/6/26: Six of Cups

The card of nostalgia, a hearkening-back to the creative play of childhood. Not that I had a huge amount of time to explore that today, what with the day job and editorial work and cooking - but I grabbed a bit of time to listen to an old favourite band (and one my wife hates), Muse, and to watch some Black Books over dinner (still hilarious). Wish I'd managed to get a bit deeper into exploring this, though.

[tarotpagan]

22/6/26: Ace of Wands

A purposeful new beginning to the week, after the scattered energies of the Five of Wands. The cat turned up again for breakfast this morning, relieving our fears that she'd scarpered after yesterday's attempted trapping, and even spent a good chunk of my workday stretched out next to me on the sofa, demanding (and receiving) cuddles and purring ecstatically. We had both doors open for the breeze, so there was no point trying to shut her in, and I think that no-pressure interaction was good for her - for rebuilding trust.

I got a number of admin tasks done this morning, setting my week up for success; had a good one-to-one with my manager about the more strategic aspects of my role, something I feel I'm really starting to think about and get into; participated fairly heavily in a project kick-off meeting; had a good RPG session, summoning up the creative will to steer my character to interesting places. A successful day in many respects - but the cat's return is what I'm most grateful for.

[tarotpagan]

21/6/26: Five of Wands

How to interpret this for the solstice? Litha is a time of conflicting energies, I guess: the longest day, the height of summer; and yet implicit in its promise is the dark creeping back in. Winter's coldness at the heart of the heat.

Perhaps accordingly, Sunday felt scattershot, unfocused. I woke before dawn, sat in the garden as the sun rose; but the morning quiet was, for me, tinged with worry about our lost cat. I went back to sleep for a few hours afterwards, which I don't regret but which I think dissipated my solstice energy somewhat. Once properly up, we drove to Bristol Aquarium for our weekly date; it was hot, and I was tired, and it felt less celebratory than I would have hoped. The aquarium was very nice, but we emerged earlier than we'd planned for, having had a sandwich lunch larger than we'd anticipated, into the baking heat of the city centre, a little at a loss as to what to do next. I'd envisaged a light dinner with a cold glass of wine on a sunny terrace, but neither of us were hungry yet, and the heat made it impractical to wander around much, or find another activity to do. We decided to make for Cheltenham and find dinner there, which we did in a Korean fusion restaurant, where, slightly heatstruck, we overordered dramatically, in a hot room with an open kitchen - not quite the vibe we'd imagined. Even bedtime went awry, albeit for a happy reason - our cat turned up, after a month away, ravenously hungry and desperate for cuddles, bringing with her another cat who was also extremely hungry. I spent a lot of time attempting to coax our own cat in (having fed them both a decent meal), finally managing to shut her in - only for her to flee the door I shut hurriedly, straight out of the window my wife had opened upstairs to cool the house. It was...emotional; a moment of extreme relief, the belief that we had finally got her, and then the disappointment of her escape.

So: a day of slight misses, opposing energies, nothing quite achieved. Not a bad day, by any stretch of the imagination, but a day where most things felt a little off. Distracted. Disordered.

[tarotpagan]

19/6/26: Judgement

Judgement, again: a sign to keep following my fulfilment, to focus my time on what adds value and what feels important. Friday was warm and sunny, the beginning of another heatwave here in the UK, and it was also a meeting-free day, a rarity for me at the moment. I had a draft to focus on, product of a collaboration whose process I came up with and which is bearing all the fruit I hoped it would. I spent as much time outside as I could, given the constraints of internet access (non-existent in our garden), soaking up the warm sun and writing uninterruptedly, putting off administrative tasks for another, less blessedly quiet, day. I messaged a colleague who was leaving because it felt like the right thing to do. I was asked to contribute to a future meeting by my manager on a topic I have been somewhat harping on for a month or so now. Good to feel things paying off, coming to fruition.

Yesterday evening was just as meaningful: we headed out to a birthday party, a big shared dinner out and then karaoke; some surprisingly successful socialising with people I don't know that well, and of course the joy of shared song. A good day, a movement towards the life I'd like to have.

[tarotpagan]

18/6/26: Three of Cups

Always a pleasure to see this one: a card about friendship, trust, showing up authentically in relationships. We didn't actually see any friends today, but I took the card as a prompt to restart a stalled discussion about finding a date for a board game gathering. This took all day, because apparently our friends are the busiest people on earth, but we're nearly there, and in the process I was reminded of a queer swimming event that my wife and I have gone to before but had forgotten was happening, so we'll be joining a friend at that in a few weeks. So: good outcomes.