The Major Arcana are coming thick and fast now …

78 Degrees: The Magician (coyote) … the trickster wizard … [and] the four emblems of the Minor Arcana … Wands and Swords … Cups and Pentacles … the true magic lies in the images themselves and not the explanations …

Kitchen Table Tarot: we are magic … we need only ourselves

The Creative Tarot: a kind of magical zone where … without even thinking about it … the work just flows

My family has been texting pictures of Lolo … who will turn sixteen tomorrow. Here she is but four …

Time goes by so fast … so I’m putting the dark side in its place …

and owning up to who I most love to be …

Drawing The Empress, I immediately thought of these pictures from Don’s one-time blog …

Perfect! Or maybe not. Wasn’t there something in 78 Degrees about a shadow-y side to the card? Thinking that as I pulled out book covers led to a palette trending dark …

And I quickly assembled them thusly …

It was only as I prepared to write this post that I actually looked at 78 Degrees and found nothing at all about shadows. So I checked the other two books and … nada.

Then it hit me: it wasn’t The Empress I had been thinking of, it was the Nine of Pentacles …

Although in my defense, I will point out there is a distinct similarity …

Lesson learned: double check the resources before creating the card/collage. But then I thought maybe I actually got it right in a way … maybe I was actually feeling The Empress reversed …

• 78 Degrees: Right-side up: motherhood, love, gentleness … Reversed: emotional and intuitive … in a negative way

• Kitchen Table Tarot: Right-side up: a lot of love to give … nurturer, protector … Reversed: if that warm enveloping love doesn’t shine gently, it will turn into a laser and burn people

• The Creative Tarot: Right-side up: Venus and the Moon … sensual yet nurturing … creative fertility … Reversed: overwhelmed … distracted

So yeah, that would be me. I want to believe I am the warm, open-hearted, earth mother … but damn, I can be an absolute bitch. I am perpetually right-side up and reversed … running full speed ahead without realizing I’m headed for the dark side … yet again.