I’m (once again) doing Miss Sugar’s New Year New You Experiment in Radical Magical Transformation because I find it’s a really good way to kick my own ass into getting things done. It’s a good mix of practical, magical, and thought-based exercises to help accomplish specific and significant change in your own life. If it’s relevant to your interests, give it a try!
Instructions:“Let’s face it, Charmers, the critical component to success or failure in your goals is your ability to do shit you don’t want to do. […] Close your eyes and grit your teeth and just do it.”
Tarot Card: I was strongly tempted to go with The World for this one, because of it’s association with Being Involved (I literally looked up “what is the opposite of The Hermit” for this), but it has more to do with the end-result of achieved goals than the work that goes into getting there. Given what my goals actually are, I think a better bet would be the Three of Cups or the Four of Wands.
On the left is the 3 of Water from my Osho Zen deck. On the right is the 4 of Bows from my Wildwood deck. Both cards are named “Celebration” and both images involves women dancing joyfully with each other alongside a powerful representation of the element in question (A thunderstorm for Water, a bonfire for Bows).
Now, full disclosure, the three of cups is typically my Polyamoury card.
In the case of the Wildwood deck, where the three of vessels – a bunch of gawky birds with large, heavy chalices, that doesn’t even seem to relate much to the rest of its own suit – just leaves me cold? I was both delighted and super relieved to discover that the four of bows not only shares its name, but also its general imagery, with the familiar Three of Water from my Osho Zen deck.
Which is all well and good, BUT my Goals for this project are only partially/tangentially about finding additional people to date. So I’ve chose these two cards more for their social (Three of Cups) and interactive (Four of Wands) aspects, even though their respective “building good relationships in the styles you actually want” aspects are also relevant.
I’ve talked before about not being massively comfortable with “putting myself out there” and, while I am getting way better at things like cold-calling (well, cold-emailing) potential modeling clients and have been stepping back into the arena in terms of letting other people (friends, strangers at open mics, magazine editors) read/hear my poetry – and, in fact, just got the good news that one of the poems I submitted during January is going to be published. Go me! (I hope this becomes a trend! :-D) – the thought of being “on the make” in any concrete way is just… not comfortable. For a slew of reasons. Everything from “I am embarrassed at the though of looking ‘desperate'” to “I can’t control every aspect of this and am at risk of making a huge, heart-crushing mistake, as has happened in the past”.
Ugh.
Speaking of The Past: I’ve been dreaming, recently, of various inappropriate crushes and exes-I-should-be-over-by-now. Not sex dreams, thank fuck, but dreams. See Also weird feelings about Those People that are equal parts simmering but intense emotions and just… massive indifference. Like, it would be really nice if I could figure out how (hahaha) to let go of the low-level-but-pretty-constant feelings of longing, without ending up in a weird, chilly desert of “I guess I’d call So-And-So an acquaintance? We were never really that close”. Y’know?
Which is a round-about-way of saying that, by that particular token, and for various “Reasons” beyond it, AND in-so-far as you can “let something go” on command… I’ve been putting off Getting Over various people because, on some level, it feels very all-or-nothing to me, and I would rather not opt for “nothing” when I do want to be friends with these folks.
I don’t know what to do about it. I wrote the other day about how change takes time and magic has to build up in layers, and that trying to draw a map of where I want to go, when I don’t have much in the way of landmarks to even visualize, is difficult. And it is. Sometimes I’m pretty sure I hang onto what didn’t work because at least I can recognize the good bits in among the bad fits and lousy experiences, whereas looking forward is like trying to steer through fog. I can’t see where anything is going.
None the less, my list of actions for how to achieve my Empress Goals includes “teaching myself to stop chasing” the people who don’t step up and ask me for my company, and giving myself opportunities to meet new people who might do that asking.
It’s Imbolg. A good time for fresh starts, trying new things, and general quickening. Not a bad time to be doing this. To that end: In addition to things like “finally shaving my legs” and “anointing my sternum with Let The Right One(s) In ritual oil” (physical and magical glamour stuff, basically), I’m picking out Events that I can (make myself) go to in the near future that involve people I’ll probably like talking to (Mender Night at the Ottawa Tool Library was one such place) but that I haven’t been to before.
Wish me luck.
Cheers,
Meliad the Birch Maiden.
Urban Meliad 