Magical Almanac: Practical Magic for Everyday Living - Lauryn Heineman 2018

Back to the Basics: Self-Care with the Elements and Your Tarot Deck by Melissa Cynova
Water Magic

Ihave an anxiety disorder. I never learned how to properly deal with stress, so my brain instead built up this elaborate catchall of “what to do when stuff goes sideways.” My brain instructed my person that if I clean the entire house at 2 a.m., I definitely won’t get laid off. If I eat a salad instead of that fantastic taco, I will suddenly feel better about my body and myself. It seems that if my family or friends are under stress or experiencing a loss, I feel the need to pile more things on myself to create some sort of hyperaware force field around them. If I stress out, everyone will be just fine, right?

Well, no. That’s actually really stupid, but it’s the way that my brain works. Whether that’s a fixed neurological pathway or really ingrained behavior, I’m not sure. What I do know is that if I need it to stop—that constant braying of fix it, fix it, fix it—then the best thing I can do is sit down.

After I sit down, I try to get back to the basics. What can I control? What is clearly and wholly outside of my control? Usually, the problem is like 99.9 percent out of my control. What I can handle, though, is me. And since I’m me, and I’m a cardslinger, I can control my tarot cards too. I decide which part of my life this particular problem belongs to. Since I am a Witch, I use the elements to do this.

Earth: Home

If, for example, your mother-in-law gifted you all of your Great Aunt Rita’s (may she rest in peace) furniture and antiques and tchotchkes and whatnot, and they’re currently taking up residence in your already crowded house, this can cause stress. You don’t want to upset your mother-in-law, but you know that breathing in your own house is important. So what do you do?

You get your tarot deck out and decide what you’re going to keep or share with a family member. Or are you going to sell or donate the item? For each item or set of items, you pull a card:

Major Arcana: This is meaningful and needs a decision. Do you keep it? Find a home for it in the family?

Minor Arcana: See ya! It goes on its way.

Now, I’m sure you’re ahead of the game already and see the cards as an extraneous decision-maker, but that’s what you need in this situation. How often have you looked at a chair and wanted to get rid of it, but the guilt made you hold on? If you pull a card on it and find that you’re arguing with the decision you’ve made, you know exactly what to do with that chair, right?

After you’ve gone through one room at a time (just one at a time, mind you—this is not a reality show, so no hurry needed), give that room a good once-over with a sage stick or some sweetgrass and reset the energy. It will make everything feel better.

Air: Mind

Are you bored? Are you frustrated or disengaged at work? Some folks are the most destructive when they are bored. That “do something” energy spins around, knocking over lamps and messing with relationships. The best thing to do when you’re anxious or bored about work or even when you just need to refresh your mental acuity is to visit your brain objectively.

Hello, brain. How’s it going? Ooh, not so great, huh? You’ve been doing this work for four years, and it’s become completely tedious? And you work with a bunch of jerks? How frustrating. Tell me, then, the following things:

1. What do you really like to do?

2. Do you need more education to do that?

3. If you’re doing what you want, can you do it somewhere else?

I encourage you to pull out your cards for this exercise. Let them confirm and tease out what the problem is. And then— and this is really the important part—do something about it. Change your job. Go back to school. Find a new position.

Whatever you do, remember that the whole point of it—over everything, really—is to be happy. It’s difficult to achieve happiness when you spend more than forty hours a week at a place you don’t like or can’t thrive in.

Fire: Body

I could write a whole book about body issues that people have (and I am, actually, in the middle of writing one in which the body takes up one-fifth of the space).

A simple exercise to get to the base of your physical self is one of gratitude. Draw a map of your body, and on it draw all the scars, bumps, wrinkles, fissures, scuffs, and stretch marks that you can.

For each event (for that’s what all of these were—events), I want you to pull a card telling you how that event changed your life, for good or for bad. That childbirth, that broken leg, those fifty pounds gained, lost, and gained again. I want you to ask the tarot one question: “How did this shape me?”

You’ll find that even the rough patches were for a cause and that those events led you to who you are today. Say,

Thank you, body, for getting me here. For protecting me. For coming out on the other side.

Say thank you and burn the picture, letting the ashes fly away with your gratitude.

Water: Emotions

A lot of times emotional overwhelm is either from an overabundance of emotional drama or from not knowing what your baseline feels like. As I mentioned earlier, I have an anxiety disorder, so my baseline runs high. I can tell (or my partner can tell) if things are going wackadoo on me because I exhibit certain behavioral tells. I have circular thinking, I get upset over small things that normally wouldn’t matter, I am short tempered, and so on. When these things start up, I have a seat with them and pull out the suit of cups from a deck of tarot.

The cups are aligned with emotion, and I use them to tell me what is a big deal . . . and what is not. What I can control, and what I cannot.

Make a list of up to five stressors, write them down, and pull a card for each. You can put the cards back in the deck after you’ve written which card goes to each stressor. When I do this, I ignore the standard meanings of the cards and go for the numbers. If I pull a 1 through 5, things are manageable or I can put them down. Cards 6 through king are ones I need to tend to. After I put them in order (crisis/king first), I get to work.

These rituals are simple but powerful. It’s important to remember, however, that the power comes after you start the work. It isn’t enough to recognize that there is a problem. You also have to do something about it.

Spirit: Soul

A lot of my clients are surprised when I ask them what their relationship with spirit is. I suppose it is an unusual question. I see matters of religion and spirituality as hugely private, and so don’t often go there with my clients.

I have found, however, that I can tell if there is a lack of spiritual alignment. You can have the best job, have the best partner, and take care of your physical self in an amazing home, but if you don’t have a spiritual element to your life, there is something lacking.

This doesn’t mean go to church, temple, or synagogue every week. This means find a practice outside of your day-to-day, outside of you. You can volunteer, go for a walk in the woods, spend some time with friends once a week. Whatever it is. If you do decide to go for a more traditional spiritual exercise, though, try asking your cards these questions:

1. What is missing in my life spiritually?

2. What spiritual baggage can be removed from me?

3. What can I add to my life to enhance my spiritual connection?

Remembering that a connection to other, to outside, is a spiritual connection. You can find answers in books, in a sacred space, or in a walk in the woods. You can even find it across the table from a dear friend, talking smack and cracking jokes. Spirit can be structured or loose, intense or relaxed. As long as it exists, you will see a difference in your life.