Pick a card, any card

So, I’ve started a project that I must finish. I’m working my way through the 78 cards of the Tarot here on this website, giving each card a page with details on traditional meanings, personal experiences and interpretations, and other common associations. It’s a monumental work (in progress) as anyone who has done this before me, and there are many, will know.

My initial approach was a bit scattergun. Pick a card, any card and write about it. But I soon realised that that wasn’t going to work. Too messy. I needed more order in my life… I mean, on the site. I needed more order on the site. A system, a process. And actually, it’s working.

I’m working my way through the Minor Arcana and ‘associated’ Majors. Then I’ll finish the Major Arcana and get cracking on the Court. Simples. Ha!

So far, I’ve reached The Lovers and the 6s. A nice comfortable, balanced place to be. Past the challenge and tipping point of the 5s *rolls eyes* and now at least a third of the way through the deck.

Card by Card

But still only a third of the way through… and I have to just keep telling myself to take it card by card.

Synchronistically, and therefore unsurprisingly given my current endeavour, I just happen to have found my way to Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life.  I’m a little late to the party, I know, but I’m here nonetheless.

Here is the iconic and often-quoted passage from the book, a memory that inspired the title of the book and has been encouraging writers suffering from overwhelm for over 25 years.

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.

So, here I am not even halfway through a huge task, taking it bird by bird. Or in my case card by card.

And I have to stop occasionally to remind myself why I’m doing it. I’m doing it because I want to and have wanted to since long before I knew how to ‘work a website’.

What I didn’t realise is how much I would gain from doing it, and how it would deepen my connection with each card. It’s also been a great exercise and a pleasure to return to the original Rider Waite Tarot which I haven’t used for reading for a while.

Writing like no one is reading

I’ve been strict with myself about the writing. The words are coming straight from the heart and my top-of-head knowledge, accumulated from years of reading Tarot for myself and reading about what others have written on Tarot.

I’ve tried not to edit too much. I want almost it to be stream of consciousness kind of writing, although, of course, I’m checking my references to astrology, quotations and esoteric systems as I go.

And of course, right now on this website, I have the benefit of being able to write like no one is reading.

Wistfully, that may not always be the case. And wishfully, by the time people may be reading, I may have finished writing.

Let’s see.