After reading Briana Saussy’s fascinating post on watching for omens during the 12 days of Epiphany (or, the twelve days of Christmas, if you prefer), I was inspired to try pulling a card each day of Epiphany, asking for a message for the new year.
Today, from the Wildwood Tarot, I pulled the Ten of Arrows/Instruction. Isn’t the Wildwood’s take on this card lovely? In the Rider Waite, the Ten of Swords shows a fellow with ten swords in his back. It looks grisly and painful. The Ten of Arrows may be a painful moment too, but it doesn’t focus on the pain of the moment. Instead, it focuses on learning. Every moment of our lives–but honestly, especially the painful ones–are what we might call (using 90s parenting jargon) “teachable moments.” The new day that dawns after the Ten of Swords moment comes about because we take time to reflect, learn, and integrate that learning into the rest of our lives.
So it seems incredibly appropriate to me to see this card for the first day of Epiphany. The first step to letting go of the last year and ushering in the new must surely be to complete the full integration and learning of the lessons that we faced in 2015. Let us embrace those experiences, see them fully for what they are, learn, and then release those arrows so that they hit their targets–which might be our goals for 2016.
What were the ten most difficult moments, for you, of 2015? Are there ways in which those difficult moments are moving you forward into your goals for 2016?
Quiet Mystic 