past perfected

This was November, 2010. I decided to do something different that month, and went to one of those "get your cards read for free" sites. For some reason, it was a 4-card draw, even though I wanted my usual 3 cards.

The fourth card wasn't in the same row as the others. It was here, in the line just below.

Then came December, and another appearance of le fou, this time as the only picture card in the center of a spread, between the 10 cups, the performers' card (I was teaching a lot of yoga then), and marching toward prosperity. 2011 Did turn out to be a very good year financially.

In January I read with a non-tarot deck (Mexican lottery cards), and in February the fool didn't make an appearance.

However, he was back the next month, in what I see as the most significant position among his three appearances -- a two-trump draw in which the fool is walking toward trump XXI the world, our segué to the present.

The way I interpret all this is as commentary on states of mind. In 2010 I was feeling rootless and homeless. I'd been divorced for a few years but was still wearing singleness uncomfortably, adjusting to a new and compromised physical condition, and living in an urban one-bedroom on a busy street. I was alienated from my environment and unsettled.

My living situation now is, if anything, more tenuous. I've got a nice place to live, but it's for sale. However, my attitude toward things has changed. I told my sister a few weeks ago that I felt as if no matter where I am in the world, I'm home.

The meaning of the cards, like the quality of our lives, is in our  minds, and a very sagacious person once observed, many, many years ago, that "With our thoughts, we make the world."