‘Why Still Small Voice Tarot? I love it, but what does it mean? You don’t really explain.’
This was a recent question from a friend of mine who, having had a look at this website, prompted me to explain.
No surprises here, (TLDR) the Still Small Voice in me is the voice of my intuition
Long version: This is a voice that is always quiet and calm, yet firm and sometimes insistent. A voice that at times states what is so obvious that I think it is my rational mind posing as my intuition. hahahaha. I just made myself laugh there…. overthinking. Again.
My intuition definitely speaks to me through an internal voice. And that comes through most strongly in the middle of the night – the early hours when it’s still and dark. The voice has a tendency to wake me up with something I really need to know that apparently I’m not hearing during the day. Like a gentle tap on the shoulder.
Backstory ~ the voice
I became most aware of the voice – and this is when it changed the course of my life – about 7 years ago when I was in a bad long term situation (diplomatic). I don’t need to go into details here, but the truth is I was wasting my life (living in a beautiful country but far from home, family and friends) and I had kind of accepted things and told myself that I could cope with it, that I didn’t need (perhaps, didn’t deserve) more. The thought of doing anything else but staying was too much of a mountain to face – too much of a life to untangle.
Then I started waking up most nights to a quiet voice asking me simply “what are you doing?” and in that moment the answer was always “I have to leave. I have to go home”. But in the daylight I would rationalise my situation and reasons for staying. So much easier. Pesky voice. What does she know?
The voice, however, wouldn’t leave me alone and I couldn’t ignore it.
Eventually, as hugely hard and complicated and scary as I thought it would be, I made the decision to leave… and once I did that, it was like the seas parting (biblical). Like everything, and everybody around me seemed to be working for me, helping me, easing my way. Angels all around me in fact. Many of them in human form.
And, while it wasn’t easy, actually, it wasn’t anywhere near as difficult as I thought it would be.
I think that my intuition saved my life back then. Not from death (so dramatic) but from a life that wasn’t really living. And, if I had stayed, I knew I couldn’t be who I needed to be for myself or for the people who love me and depend on me.
So, now I listen to the voice 🤷🏻♀️ I don’t always follow the guidance, but I recognise it when I hear it. Mostly.
I’m sharing a picture of my Spanish rescue cat, aka Kitty Tarotpaws 🐾🐈 caught in a big yawn – she was one of the precious things that I packed up in my car to come home with me and my daughter (and my sister who loves a mission and came along for the long ride).
The Tarot card in this image is from the luminous Light Seer’s deck by Chris-Anne
Even further backstory ~ the friend
This friend of mine, who asked about the name, I have known since our early teens. She’s my oldest friend actually, now a successful screenwriter and author. Anyway, we used to spend hours at her kitchen table reading Tarot with her very beautiful, much handled original 1970s Sheridan-Douglas deck. The deck was from her mother, a formidable woman, Tarot reader, astrologer and Jungian analyst – and I didn’t think to wonder or ask how all those things were related at the time.
I still have a handwritten Tarot meanings cheatsheet from this friend that she gave me along with a mini Tarot de Marseille deck when I was at university. I guess she was my first Tarot teacher.
I absolutely loved those times. Hanging at her house, playing with the Tarot. Endless readings and yes/no questions about about boys and parties, smoking Benson & Hedges (what?! it was the 80s) and making endless cups of tea and coffee… probably.
Back in the here and now, she and I both remember the line from the final verse of the Christian hymn Dear Lord and Father of Mankind*, which we sang at school (hymns at school? also acceptable in the 80s).
Breathe through the heats of our desire
thy coolness and thy balm;
let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm!
~ J.G.Whittier
Still & calm vs roaring and thundering
When I started this website in 2020/21, before I forked out £8.99 (or whatever amount it was that I agonised over) for the domain name and made some kind of biblical faux pas for all the internet to see, I went in search and found the bible reference to that still, small voice of calm. Here it is:
…and after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.
And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave.
~ 1 Kings 19:12-13
It refers (as I understand it… a bit sketchy, brace yourselves) to the voice of God when he (yes, the white bearded man in the sky) is trying to get through to Elijah who is at the end of his tether because he’s the only one doing any bloody work around here and spreading the word of God and everyone else is behaving, well, pretty badly actually.
And, after using his roaring, thundering voice, and crashing about and breaking things with earthquake, wind and fire, God uses his still small voice. A bit like a parent when they realise that shouting at a child is not getting through to them. Roaring and thundering actually frightens them. And it’s not kind.
That said, when I was a kid, I found that the really furious parent was the parent that had gone beyond the shouting part of the ‘Parent Loosing their Shit Show’. Instead, the truly livid parent was calm, quiet and very disappointed.
The point is, the Still Small Voice wins the race.
Ach. Terrible analogy. Needs work. It’s not a race.
The point is, the Still Small Voice is calm, quiet and kind. And above all, right.
Origin story in a nutshell
And there you go: origin story in a nutshell. The name comes from a line in a beautiful hymn that I sang in school as a child.
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