Tarot Year Card 2023 - Strength/Justice

  

Last year my Tarot Year Card was Key10 the Wheel of Fortune, and it definitely ended up being a year that turned my life upside down. There was a big part of last year that was, for me, the worst I had ever experienced. There was also a house move and a shake-up in our working lives. After all that we are now mostly settled and in a better place, both physically and emotionally.

    

This year according to the book Archetypal Tarot by Mary K. Greer, my Tarot Year Card is Key11, which for the Marseille and Thoth is Force and Lust. These would equal the Strength card in the RWS however the RWS has Justice not Strength at Key11, as it switched these two. Even after reading the entries for these card positions in Archetypal Tarot I am not sure which card should be this years card. So I guess I will re-evaluate at the end of the year to see whether this turns out to be a Strength or Justice year for me.

    

This years card was found using the formula below, you add your birth day, birth month and current year together, then add the numbers from that sum together until you end up with the highest number under 23, with the number 22 representing The Fool.

Hopefully this example given should help to clarify this.
    month of birth            8
    dayof birth        +     26
    current year       + 2014
    total                      2048

The total number is then added together to give your year card, 2 + 0 + 4 + 8 = 14 (Temperance)

  

Some interesting notes in Archetypal Tarot talk about the positioning of Strength and Justice historically with one source speculating that these cards at one time were the one card, as both represent the two aspects of a single power. That power being Law, with Strength as the natural law of nature and Justice as society's law. Even S. L. MacGregor Mathers talks about Strength as "power not arrested" and Justice as "Strength and Force, but arrested, as in the act of Judgement".

       

Other sources also note the similarities of these cards with a Golden Dawn cipher manuscript describing the astrological correlation's of Justice as Leo and Strength as Libra. This was due to the sword of Justice being linked to the Egyptian knife symbol of the sickle of Leo and the scales as showing the Sun from the point of the summer solstice. For the Strength card, the female and lion represented Venus, Lady of Libra and the fire of Vulcan, which is Saturn in Libra. 

    

However another part of this same cipher manuscript stated the Lion Goddess, being Strength, was related to Leo and the goddess Ma'at with her scales, being Justice, related to Libra. Showing that I am not the only one to be somewhat unsure of the placement of these two cards in the positions of Key8 and Key11.

Wheel of the Year - Lughnasadh

This time of year in the Southern Hemisphere is known either as Lughnasadh or Lammas. While both refer to the start of the harvest season, Lammas or Loaf Mass Day has more Christian roots and so for myself I think I prefer to refer to it as Lughnasadh. This is because Lughnasadh also references the Celtic God Lugh. Lugh was said to have created the celebrations at this time as a way of honouring his foster mother Tailtiu.

Wheel of the Year (Southern Hemisphere)

While I have not planed any great celebration, or small celebration for that matter, I still take some time to pause and reflect and watch as the seasons slowly change outside my window. So while the days are still quite warm with with Summers sun the nights are slowly beginning to cool a bit, which is a welcome relief from the heat of the days.

As with the previous Solstices I have my decorative Lughnasadh Beads and Lughnasadh oracle card from the Witches Wisdom Oracle deck. If your interest in how I went about making these Solstice beads you can visit  HERE. Pictured above are all eight of my sabbat beads I made for each turn of the Wheel of the Year and below are my Lughnasadh beads and Lughnasadh oracle card together.

Witches' Wisdom oracle cards - Lughnasadh

Wheel of the Year Reading 2023 - Litha

For 2023 I decided to do a Wheel of the Year reading, this means pulling a card for each of the eight sabbats or festivals of the year. The deck I chose to use for this is the Literary Witches Oracle, a 70 card deck comprising of 30 cards of witches/authors and 40 cards of witches materials. Although this is my 2023 reading I am technically starting in 2022 on the Summer Solstice, which for me living in Australia is around December 21st.

Wheel of the Year (Southern Hemisphere)

The main cards for this reading were chosen from the 30 witches cards with a secondary card from the 40 materials cards also chosen for each position. So starting with the Summer Solstice, the cards I have pulled for this sabbat are the witch/author Audre Lorde and the materials card the Snail.

According to the guidebook for this deck the keyword for Audre Lorde is Justice, it is about fighting for yourself, your values, your community. The keywords for the Snail are taking your time, the sacred and fragility. But in order to dive deeper with this deck I am also using the book Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers. This is the book the Literary Witches Oracle is based upon and conjurers more literary insights into these magical women, including creative descriptions and recommended reading lists.

On first glance using the guidebook alone there may seem to be little in common with Audre Lorde and Snails but in reading the book Literary Witches and in exploring the recommended reading list I have quickly discovered that there are connections present with these two cards. Along with the Literary Witches book I have also acquired the book The Black Unicorn, which is a book of poems by Audre Lorde that I intent to explore during this sabbat.

Wheel of the Year - Litha

Australian Christmas' are unique, they are hot and usually outdoors, even when they are indoors we always manage to get outside and into the sunshine. For a lot of us they also involve the beach or a pool or some kind of water activity to bring a bit of relief from the soaring temperatures that usually accompany an Australian Christmas, being so close to the Summer Solstice.

Wheel of the Year (Southern Hemisphere)

So although I am happy to celebrate our unique Australian Christmas I understand that, for me living in the southern hemisphere, Christmas is not the same as Yule. Yule is the midwinter celebration and for me that means June, when the weather is cold and the nights are long.

So as part of my Summer Solstice decorations I include my Litha Beads and Litha oracle card from the Witches Wisdom Oracle deck. If your interest in how I went about making these Litha beads you can visit  HERE. Pictured above all all eight of my sabbat beads I made for each turn of the Wheel of the Year and below are my Litha beads and Litha oracle card together.

Witches' Wisdom oracle cards - Litha

Embrace The Magical

Last year I decided to join in #embracethemagical for the first time and loved it. Despite living in the southern hemisphere where we are moving into Spring while it seems everyone else is getting excited for Samhain and Halloween, I still felt able to embrace the magic that is found in every season.

For several years now the month of October has been #embracethemagical month, thanks to Kelly from The Truth In Story, who has provided a daily keyword or prompt and/or weekly spread to celebrate this magical time of year.

Still being fairly new to tarot myself, when I joined last year I found these daily keywords a great way to dive into a single card. Previously I had been pulling a card a day and finding the meaning for that card, but it was very general as meaning can be broad and relate to any number of things. However, I found the daily keywords were a wonderful way of looking into each card with a fresh perspective and purpose.

For this year I am starting week one with the Pagan Otherworlds Tarot, this is a new deck for me and  actually the first time I have used this deck which is quite exciting. I don't have the big book so I will just be going with the meanings as I know them. For day one I pulled the Ace of Cups, to follow along with my card pulls for the prompts visit my instagram.

Oracle Card Of The Week - Healing With The Fairies Oracle Cards

For the past couple of weeks I have been pulling a card of the week from the Healing with the Fairies Oracle Cards deck. This is actually a deck that I have been carrying around for many years but had not given too much thought to until recently. I actually almost sold this deck a few months back when I was moving because it was a deck I basically never used. Now, however, I am glad I held onto it.

This deck was a gift from my sister who knew I had a love of faeries and I suppose that was partly the reason I didn't end up selling it. But I think part of why I never really reached for this deck in the past was because it always felt a little too cute with all its sweet meanings, that and the artwork being totally inconsistent due to having nine artists threw me a bit.

But I have actually come to really enjoy using this deck as a card of the week, now that I am actually paying attention to the meanings for these cards, and although the fairies depicted with their butterfly wings are not my usual aesthetic, the messages they convey are nurturing and healing and I suppose something I need to be hearing right now.

This Family Harmony card talks of healing, acceptance and love, and along with the cards meanings in the guidebook is practical advice and an affirmation that for this card reads: I see the goodness within each member of my family. My family life is harmonious and filled with love and joy.

Tarot Year Card 2022 - Wheel of Fortune

At the end of last year Benebell Wen posted about her Tarot Year Card and that got me inspired to find out my own Tarot Year Card. In the book Archetypal Tarot by Mary K. Greer the formula for discovering your Tarot Year Card is to add your birth day, birth month and current year together, then to add the numbers from that sum together until you end up with the highest number under 23, with the number 22 representing The Fool.

Hopefully this example given should help to clarify this.
    month of birth            8
    day of birth       +     26
    current year       + 2014
    total                      2048

The total number is then added together to give your year card, 2 + 0 + 4 + 8 = 14 (Temperance)

After completing this with my own details I found that 2022 for me is a Wheel of Fortune year. After reading about what this may mean for the coming year in Archetypal Tarot I was a bit apprehensive. Like a lot of people, I don't like change, but as a Wheel of Fortune year, I'm about to experience it whether I'm ready for it or not.

To find out more insight I started to pull the Wheel of Fortune card from a few different decks I own to see what else their meanings may offer. The Wheel cards from DruidCraft Tarot and Wildwood Tarot both spoke of the changing of seasons, of the passing of time and the natural cycles in nature. The Wildwood card with its eight spoked wheel for the turning of the seasons, the presence of both the sun and moon and the three herons as the three fates was beautiful. However, I was particularly draw to the DruidCraft card with its depiction of Arianrhod on the liminal place of the beach, between land and sea, with the cave representing both womb and tomb behind her.

Other cards I looked at speak more to the Wheel of Fortune as being related to luck and fortune, with the Halloween Tarot depicting a man on a roulette wheel being spun by an elephant who is being spooked by a mouse. The Vacchetta Tarot, on the other hand, depicts the classic "wheel" and features the goddess Fortuna herself at the top where she is able to see all, and at the bottom a misfortunate woman is being crushed by life's circumstances. Hopefully that woman does not turn out to be me.

Being tarot key 10, The Wheel of Fortune is numerologically related to the Aces and 10's of the minor arcana, meaning this will be a year of beginnings and completions. Basically from all these cards there is the sense that there is no fighting change and what is to come. So as a wise person once said "No good sittin' worryin' abou' it," ... "What's comin' will come, an' we'll meet it when it does."- J. K. Rowling