Peg Kerr's Journal

I'm going to be a little bit cryptic about this one, because it involves something I'm not quite ready to talk about yet (note the Elinor Dashwood tag, which I use when I want to be reserved about something). But this collage is about a conversation I had this week with someone I really trust to give me solid life advice. What this trusted person told me is that it is time for me to make a specific life change. A big one. Huge. It will mean a lot of life upheaval. And while what she was advising to do is something that has crossed my mind for several years (since the pandemic started), I think that she made her case so well that I am seriously reassessing things. I think I am going to do it.

If I can.

The first card in the tarot deck is the Fool. The zero card. The Fool is usually depicted as a beggar or a vagabond, wearing ragged clothes & stockings. He is gazing upwards toward the sky (and the Universe) and is seemingly unaware that he is about to skip off a precipice into the unknown. Over his shoulder rests a modest knapsack containing everything he needs – which isn’t much (let’s say he’s a minimalist). The white rose in his left hand represents his purity and innocence. And at his feet is a small white dog, representing loyalty and protection, that encourages him to charge forward and learn the lessons he came to learn. The Fool represents new beginnings, having faith in the future, being inexperienced, not knowing what to expect, having beginner's luck, improvisation, and believing in the universe.

This is the Fool as depicted in the Rider–Waite deck:



I've sometimes told people that I'm a Gryffindor, but one with high-security needs. What I am thinking of doing, what I am actually going to start trying to do will definitely take courage. But--if I am lucky, if my faith in the future is justified--it might address some of those needs that have been unmet for so long.

The background of this collage is a card that my kind mentor gave me when we ended our session. Although you can't see it, I posed for the picture on my back stoop (where I fell and got my concussion last year). The stick on which I hung my sack is my karate bo. I used a picture of my daughter Delia's dog Violet for the dog at my heels.

(See this earlier post I made about The Fool).

Image description: Against a background of words of life advice, Peg stands in the pose of the Tarot Fool: looking at the sky, holding a stick with a sack of possessions in one hand and a stem of flowers in the other (didn’t have a white rose and so used a bunch of silk peonies). A dog capers at her feet.

Reassessment



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

This one will seem a little odd, because I am not going to explain it fully. In fact, it won't make a lot of sense to you if you aren't in my critique group and familiar with my novel as I've written it so far.

I'd mentioned that I'm 20,000 words plus into a book I'd started over twenty years ago. One thing I've often remarked about my writing process is that I am the opposite of what is called a "pantser," i.e., someone who writes by the seat of the pants. I have to figure out something/know where it is going before I can write it. Sorry, those of you who are good at writing exploratory drafts; I am just not that way.

Okay, the next is going to be a bit purposely vague:

Through great effort, picking up from where I left off twenty years ago, I had inched forward enough to finish a new chapter five, and then...I was floundering around, trying to come up with an idea for something that would subvert the rules I had set down for magic in my first book, but still not violate the spirit of what I was trying to do. I planned to introduce some cross-cultural experiences and I wanted to introduce, if you will, a new cultural metaphor, a different way of seeing the world, which could apply to the magical system I set up in the last book, but have it work in an entirely different way.

So I started googling cultural metaphors, and I won't rehash the way my thread of thought unspooled, exactly. But it suddenly occurred to me that the four characters I have been thinking about for over two decades embody--in the story, and in their characters--the entities of Fire, Air, Earth, & Water. And this raises aaaaaaalllllll sorts of possibilities about how the magical system will work, with a cross-cultural twist.

It's weird to be overwhelmingly seized by an idea in the creative process that seems so key, so breathtakingly important--but I can't quite explain it, because my thoughts about are still so incoate. But I think it will really work, and it will help, I think, with structuring the book. And since "structuring a book," i.e., plot, is always the area that I feel the weakest, this is very encouraging, and definitely gives me more hope that I will actually manage to someday finish this book.

I've been rather shy about talking about them (I think one reason the Ice Palace book failed was that I made the mistake about talking too much about it online). But this is a big enough step forward, that I think I can take the risk of introducing you to my four main characters. The costumes aren't right, but ignore that: you'll get an idea of my feel for Falco (Fire), Reynardo (Air), Tavia (Earth), and Elodie (Water).

Tavia and Elodie are twin sisters, and I was perplexed about how to find images for them. But then it suddenly occurred to me: Elodie is a bit crispy about being a twin, and she chopped her hair off to distinguish herself from Tavia. So I googled "Haircut makeover long hair to short hair" and came up with these two images. Am rather smug about that.

The symbols over Falco (upper left), Reynardo (upper right--the original character I started with twenty years ago), Tavia (lower left) and Elodie (lower right) are the Hellenic symbols for, respectively, Fire, Air, Earth, and Water.

Elements



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

I'm knocking this one off early, as I had such a strong (and fortunately positive) impression of Halloween, as I described in my post about doing the Deathly Hallows tarot spread. I recommend that you read that post to make sense of this collage.

The three tarot cards from my Harry Potter deck at the top of the collage are the three cards I pulled for the spread. At the center are the central characters from the movie Coco, which I really recommend. Watching that movie is my new Halloween tradition.

This was a fun card to do that I'm pleased with aesthetically, and I'm glad that my associations with Halloween are cheerful again.

Halloween



Click here to read about the 52 card project and see the year's gallery.

It's just that Halloween is an anniversary--the anniversary of that horrible day at Mayo two years ago that we learned that Rob's lymphoma had morphed into leukemia.

For the second year in a row, I fled the house rather than face trick or treaters. Unfortunately, the restaurant I went to for dinner had a whole bunch of houses on the same block (I had to walk past them to get to my car) that were heavily decked out for Halloween--with graveyards in their front yards. That was a little tough. I ate dinner out, came home and did a Deathly Hallows tarot reading, as I did last year, and then watched Coco, which was comforting under the circumstances. Watching Coco on Halloween may become a new Halloween tradition.

Today is the anniversary of the awful day that Rob and I learned that the suspicious PET scan he had recently received was not lymphoma coming out of remission, it was leukemia (caused by the first chemotherapy he'd received) that would go on to kill him a little less than three months later.

It is Samhain, the day when the souls of the dead are said to approach as close as they ever do to the living, Halloween, the day before All Soul's Day.

It seemed to be an auspicious day to do a Tarot reading, and given the day, the anniversary, and the fact that I most usually use my Harry Potter tarot deck, it seemed right to find a Deathly Hallows Spread. I found one quickly:


1 2 3


1: The Elder Wand - something that is both winning and losing
2: The Resurrection Stone - what has been lost and will not, cannot, come back
3: The Invisibility Cloak - what you've come to accept

Here is the Tale of the Three Brothers and the Deathly Hallows:



I drew three cards. All three were reversed. I thought about the reversals, but the reading seemed clearer if I just ignored them.

1: The King of Cups



The King of Cups. The book about the Harry Potter tarot says this can be the archetype of the injured King, the man who fell into guilt and learned wisdom through pain and suffering.

Well, I don't know about guilt, but this card to me is plainly Rob. Cups are water. Rob was born in November, and that is under Scorpio, which is a water sign. Wounded, pain and suffering: check. He won because he defeated lymphoma, but he lost, defeated by leukemia. And I lost him. Cups seems right, as he is right at the center of my grief (emotion, love).

Edited to add: I've thought more about why Rob's card would be in this position, the Elder Wand position. The fact is, when it came to fighting cancer, Rob thought he was undefeatable. And for a while, it looked as though he was right. He went through four or five chemos, radiation, four surgeries, immunotherapy. He beat the odds to an extent that it astonished his doctors and his--arrogance, I guess, that he would always beat them almost irritated me. At one point, I asked him how long he thought he would live with lymphoma. "Oh, fifteen to twenty years, I guess." Eyebrows raised, I asked the doctor. "I met you a year ago," the doctor said, "and in that year, eighty percent of my patients with your diagnosis have died."

Like the eldest brother in the tale, Rob was undefeated. He beat lymphoma; he was lymphoma-free when he died. But he was taken out by a stealth opponent, who betrayed him, arising directly as a result of his chemotherapy.

He fought cancer for four and a half years, but I think he only really understood he was going to die when the doctor told him so the day before. Like the eldest brother in the tale, Rob died in his sleep, rousing only the last few seconds before his breath stopped to see me and Fiona, keeping watch over him.

2: 6 of Cups - Happiness



What has been lost and will not, cannot, come back? Well, the thought that happiness is lost and never coming back — isn't that a kick in the teeth. Yet, yes, the happiness I had being married to him is over. That is what grief is about. Note that this card specifically references Felix Felices. We always said that Rob was lucky in his fight with cancer...until he ran out of luck.

Another tarot book talked a bit about how this card (if you ignore the reversal) is about the past, previously, formerly. Memories. Thoughts of past loves. Faded, vanished. Longing, yearning. Traumas, mistakes.

As I enter this season of the anniversaries leading up to Rob's death, this also feels right. This feels like I'm looking back at those painful points (Halloween when we learned of the leukemia, Thanksgiving, when he entered the hospital for the last time, Christmas, when we were so sad to be apart, and the end of January, when he died).

Edited to add: After thinking about it, I realized: Harry used up the Felix Felices (gone, never to come back) to appeal to Slughorn on behalf of his mother (gone, never to come back) in order to get a truth he needed. An interesting play off the concept of memory/nostalgia incorporated in the card.

Thinking some more about why this card is in the Resurrection Stone position. The second brother in the story could not stop looking backward toward his lost love (nostalgia), feeling that all his hopes of happiness were tied to her. But she was gone, and the knowledge destroyed him. This card is a warning, like the warning that Dumbledore gave Harry when he was spending too much time gazing into the Mirror of Erised at his lost family: "It does not do to dwell in dreams, Harry, and forget to live."

3: Princess of Disks



This card, I'm pretty sure, is me. Luna is a character we meet in the aftermath of grief. The book says,

"Love, warmth, protection, being in tune with nature, being at rest with oneself, caring, growth.

The Princess of Earth (Disks) [I was born in April, under the sign of Taurus, which is an Earth sign] is a somewhat shy but very creative and warm-hearted young woman. She is trusting and open to new ideas and willing to follow through on her plans, no matter what. She is reliable, kind, and in tune with the cycles of nature within herself and within the world around her. Her insights are powerful, not necessarily at a superficial intellectual level, but because they express a deeper sense of truth....while her unshakeable belief of nargles and blibbering humdingers exposes her to the ridicule of her fellow students, it expresses a deeper truth: that this world is full of magic and surprises, if only we open our eyes and believe. She also acknowledges that sometimes knowledge is only achieved through pain. She can see and befriend thestrals because of the death of her mother."

Yes. I can see thestrals now. And yes, I think my pain and my grief has led to a lot of growth in the last year. I would hope I am reliable and kind. I would be honored to be like Luna in these ways.

I've created a Widow's music playlist. Many of the songs explore the myriad aspects of grief. I like playlists that follow a narrative arc: the beginnings songs focus on widows who want nothing more than to follow the beloved into death (the first song on the list is "I Am Stretched on Your Grave") and the last one that closes it out is a song that is suggestive of the sort of wisdom that Luna has mastered, understanding death as she does. (One my Harry Potter fanfiction stories puts it this way: "Because you know death...Because you've faced it and fought it and feared it and denied it and accepted it and you understand it, as much as anyone still living still can.")

Danny Gokey
"Tell Your Heart To Beat Again"

You're shattered
Like you've never been before
The life you knew
In a thousand pieces on the floor
And words fall short in times like these
When this world drives you to your knees
You think you're never gonna get back
To the you that used to be

Tell your heart to beat again
Close your eyes and breathe it in
Let the shadows fall away
Step into the light of grace
Yesterday's a closing door
You don't live there anymore
Say goodbye to where you've been
And tell your heart to beat again

Beginning
Just let that word wash over you
It's alright now
Love's healing hands have pulled you through
So get back up, take step one
Leave the darkness, feel the sun
Cause your story's far from over
And your journey's just begun

Tell your heart to beat again
Close your eyes and breathe it in
Let the shadows fall away
Step into the light of grace
Yesterday's a closing door
You don't live there anymore
Say goodbye to where you've been
And tell your heart to beat again

Let every heartbreak
And every scar
Be a picture that reminds you
Who has carried you this far
'Cause love sees farther than you ever could
In this moment heaven's working
Everything for your good

Tell your heart to beat again
Close your eyes and breathe it in
Let the shadows fall away
Step into the light of grace
Yesterday's a closing door
You don't live there anymore
Say goodbye to where you've been
And tell your heart to beat again
Your heart to beat again
Beat again

Oh, so tell your heart to beat again

Since yesterday was my birthday, it seemed like an auspicious occasion to try a tarot reading. I've been thinking about Harry Potter a lot lately, since I've been so involved in Alternity, so I decided to use my Harry Potter deck. I became curious to know whether there were any Harry Potter spreads, went Googling, and found this one, which I liked a LOT, the Quidditch Spread:

"...I realize that the format of the Quidditch players would make a good spread. It has Goals, Helpers, Blocker, and of course the Golden Snitch oops I mean reward.

QUIDDITCH:

-------1a-------
------------2a--
3------1b-------
------------2b--
-------1c------4

1-Chasers: Points/Goals
2-Beaters: Bludgers/Helpers
3-Keeper: Blocker/Stops you
4-Seeker: Reward/Outcome

While making this I then realized that a Quidditch "Match" would be appropriate. To give you a better insight to a problem involving two people. 5 through 8 mirroring the first four cards.

-------1a------8------5a-----
------------2a-----6a--------
3------1b-------------5b----7
------------2b-----6b--------
-------1c------4------5c-----"

For my question, I thought about a painful situation which had arisen the past week: I made a dreadful mistake in a personal relationship which led to a permanent breach. Essentially, I chose words without sufficiently considering how the message might be taken, and in doing so, I really hurt several people who have been very kind to our family. I was absolutely mortified and ashamed about this (I'm a WRITER, I should know how to use words for the effect I want, not to wound through sheer carelessness), but the other parties were so furious that I was told, 'Never approach or speak to us again.'

So I've been fretting and grieving over this. Unable to stop thinking about it, really. And after almost a week of being almost unable to sleep or eat, I have been considering my tendency to do what psychologists call 'ruminating' or turning things over and over and OVER in my mind, past the point of helpfulness. I've come to recognize that I need to stop this behavior; it simply adds to my stress enormously without doing much that is helpful.

So my question posed was: Given this painful situation, how do I quit ruminating about it and move on, taking what I need to know to become a better person instead of tormenting myself about it?

The designer of the spread called the Chaser cards "Points or goals." When I did the spread, they seemed to be more "Points about the present situation."

( I laid out the cards and started the reading )

This was, actually, looking at the card meanings, one of the bleakest readings I have ever done. But then it has seemed like a very bleak week, and the reading felt spot on and definitely gave me some valuable--if painful--things to think about. And it gave me one particularly important insight, about the issue that prompted the reading in the first place.

My rumination is like Umbridge's blood quill punishment.

The thing to do is not to keep carving admonitions into myself.

The thing to do is to PUT THE QUILL DOWN. Accept the lesson, as painful as it is, learn what you can from it, and move on.

Another thought: I WAS reading the reversals. It might be interesting to look at the reading again ignoring the reversals: in that case, for example, the Star card becomes a card of hope again; a helper rather than a bludger.

I dunno. It's painful, but I think I learned more by taking the reversals into consideration.

Edited to add: After doing this post, I logged into my Carrot App (see my post about it here). Carrot is ticked with me because I have failed to check off anything for an entire day. When I finally checked off one item, Carrot tartly informed me, 'No one will ever love you again.'

It's extremely interesting, now that I'm actually closing in on black belt, to go back and re-read this entry, in which I used a website to do a tarot reading on the question: "What do I need to know about going for the black belt?" that I posed in October of 2006.

Here's the post that I did after my very first lesson, way back in November of 2004. I've really come a long way!

Occasionally I've run across an image that's pretty much perfect just as it is to make a card, aside from minor resizing or cropping. Here are two new cards I made last night, each based on just one image:

I actually dithered a bit about what to call this one. Options considered and discarded included, 'Divine child,' 'Star child,' 'Child of Light,' 'Purity,' and even 'Virginity.' I played with trying to add another element, like a burst of light generated from her upraised hand, but I couldn't make it look convincing. I considered making it a Committee card (aspect of myself) but eventually decided what it evoked in me felt a little larger than just myself, so I named it 'Innocence' and placed it (tentatively) in the Council suit (archetypes). Perhaps it's a bridge card between the two.

Innocence - Council suit I am the One who is pure of heart, who has never known anything but the Light. I am untouched by guile, cynicism, shame, fear, disappointment or grief. I freely reach out to all whom I meet because I have the sight to see the Divine spark within.

I actually hesitated quite awhile between this image and another from the same ad campaign, wondering which would be better to use. The other picture had the man and woman lying on opposite ends of the bed, their arms forming a mobius/unity symbol. I finally chose this one because the man and woman were embracing--they felt more focused on each other than the camera's eye as in the other one. This image doesn't have quite the balance of the Tarot Lovers card, but instead the woman is a little more central. I decided that was okay because I'm a woman, and so my perspective on being one of a pair of lovers is from the female point of view.

The Lovers I am the One formed by the Two who met and saw the truth within each other and turned from our respective paths to reach out to embrace it. Our joining is a balancing, a fulfillment, a bliss of minds, bodies and spirit. Our love together holds the seeds of creation.

anam_cara told me about Soulcollaging, and I got so interested I ordered the book. This is another thing which could be really rewarding to do on the retreat. I'll need to assemble some of the materials to take with me.

Anyone know a source of used art cards (to cut up for collaging)? And where should I get the mat cards for the base? It looks as though they suggest cards made of mat cardboard, 5" x 8".

Any of you tried doing this?

But once I think about it, probably pretty accurate.

You are The Tower

Ambition, fighting, war, courage. Destruction, danger, fall, ruin.

The Tower represents war, destruction, but also spiritual renewal. Plans are disrupted. Your views and ideas will change as a result.

The Tower is a card about war, a war between the structures of lies and the lightning flash of truth. The Tower stands for "false concepts and institutions that we take for real." You have been shaken up; blinded by a shocking revelation. It sometimes takes that to see a truth that one refuses to see. Or to bring down beliefs that are so well constructed. What's most important to remember is that the tearing down of this structure, however painful, makes room for something new to be built.

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