Everyday Tarot

Each morning, I draw a “focus card” to help guide me through the day. Often, that card helps me filter my thinking. Sometimes it points me in  a direction for the day’s writing. Other times, it helps remind me why I’m doing what I do. This morning, I drew the Queen of Cups - a lovely coincidence on Only the Good Friday.

So who is the Queen of Cups?

The Queen of Cups sits on her throne, her gaze directed at the cup she holds in her hands. In most decks, her expression is directed inward, thoughtful and dreamy. It’s a reference to the general overall meaning of the Cups in the Tarot - a directive to be in touch with your emotions, to go with the flow, to know yourself and understand from whence your motivations bloom.

But there is a side to the Queen of Cups that is less often discussed - a Fool-ish tendency to follow her emotions and believe in the best outcome.  And when she, like the Fool, follows her instincts to believe the best of people, her belief in the goodness of others is often borne out. She may be seen as naive by many of her friends, but that very naivete seems to draw out the protective instinct in nearly everyone who knows her.

I am a firm believer in believing the best. That doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize that there are some people out there who take advantage of the naive. It just means that I believe that most people want to do good things, most people want to treat you well, and if you give them the opportunity to be good to you, they will happily take you up on it.

Of course, that pressupposes that you are behaving in the same way. At her best, the Queen of Cups does things like open her home to people in need, offer her help to those who need it and generally make her way through life by “feel”. She is the embodiment of the old 60s hippie mantra that was soooo distorted:

If it feels good, do it!

The problem is, of course, that too many of us have lost our way and our understanding about what “feels good”. The phrase was picked up by those who never understood that it referred to something beyond momentary physical sensations. It was adopted by those whose bodies had lost their centers, the part of them that told them something “feels good”. After all, if you slam your head against a wall long enough, your brain starts feeling -wrong- when it’s not scrambled up.

The Queen of Cups is a reminder to turn inward and find your center. Figure out the things that make you feel good - really GOOD - about yourself. She invites you to follow your instinct to be good to the world and to others, and reap goodness from others in return.

So go ahead and try it. Start small. Next time you feel like smiling at someone, just SMILE AT THEM. Don’t worry what they’ll think. Don’t wonder how they’ll interpret it. Don’t let fear stop you. Just smile. And when they smile back, revel in how good it feels.

Before you know it, you’ll be doing other dangerous things like telling a stranger you love the color of her dress and they way it highlights her hair. Or offering the mail carrier a cup of icy water on a hot day. Or pulling out a buck to cover the 69 cent shortfall for that young mother in front of you in the grocery line so she doesn’t have to decide between the half gallon of milk and the stick of butter to make mac and cheese for dinner.

I know I’m an idealist. It’s my inner Queen of Cups speaking. But can you just imagine a world where we were all in touch with our inner Queen of Cups?

Go on - I dare you. Do something today just because it FEELS GOOD to do it. And don’t be surprised if you find that other people want to make you feel good right back.

More Only the Good Friday

Only the Good Friday is the brainchild of Shelly at This Eclectic Life. She has a vision of helping to change the world by getting people to focus on the GOOD things just one day a week. Her Only the Good Friday blogroll is growing week by week. Right now, it consists of:

RV Poetry; Candid Karina; All My Great, or Not So Great Adventures; Inside Mo’s Mind; Thorne’s World; Down River Drivel; Duward Discussion; Ramblings of an Unstable Mind; Insightful Nana; Newbie Lifeline; Everyday Tarot; West of Mars; Life’s Journey; A Letter To Me; This Eclectic Life;

Go check them out - go on, you know you want to! Then post your own Only the Good Friday post, and go tell Shelly you’re jumping on her bandwagon. It will feel good!

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