Pre Raphaelite Tarot Valeria Menozzi Artwork by Giuliana Costa

The Pre Raphaelite Tarot Deck. From The Little White Book: The art and life of the Pre-Raphaelite painters were wholly devoted to the pursuit of beauty in the sense of the divine essence intrinsic in every aspect of creation. With their ability to transport us to distant worlds and through their symbolic language, these incredible artists still manage, even today, to fascinate us, arouse profound emotions within us and put us in touch with our intuitive side.

Pre Raphaelite Tarot

Pre Raphaelite Tarot

Archetypal Life Cards

Archetypal Tarot by Mary Greer : What Your Birth Card Reveals About Your Personality, Path and Potential. From the Back Cover: Who are you in the tarot? The tarot cards associated with your birthdate and name form a pattern of personal destiny. They describe the theme of your life - the challenges and the gifts. In Archetypal Tarot, tarot scholar and teacher Mary K. Greer connects astrology and numerology to the tarot to create an in-depth personality profile that can be used for self-realization and personal harmony. Archetypal Tarot is a valuable tool to learn how to use the tarot to interpret your strengths and challenges. This is a fascinating book that allows you to go into a deeper study of how the tarot can be used for further exploration.

Overflowing Brady Tarot

Spirit Sleep

In the cradle of time - where echoes softly chime -
A liquid tale unfolds - of sacred waters, untold
Ripple whispers - ancient wise -
Flowing through realms where mystic dreams arise.

Beneath the moon's soft - silver gaze -
Spirited water weave in cosmic ballet -
Glisten stream - veins of earth
Liquid hymns celebrate life -

~Linden
The Bone Lines

The Guardian Tarot

Watchtower

Opening to another requires trust that has become absent - hidden from view
Masked knowing as eyes peer around every corner - honor internal
I stand guard on top of walls built by tired tools
Pace back and forth along rivers screaming past roots -
Uprooted ideas lay waste to a beautiful world - a beautiful Home of earth
Tentacles of knowledge require breast plates to crack - no going back now
A song plays inside of me - hold the line it yells -
As pecking order of scars pile upon heartbeats in yellow slander -
Seeds scatter - branched kingdom crown draws down the bridge -
I hear the loud creaking of the gate -
Scrape rust from cells - imprisoned by lack
Watch tower bullets reign down upon the commons

~Linden
The Bone Lines

Lebanon, CT graveyard

All Soul’s Day is November 2. This walk through a cemetery in Lebanon, CT is one I have been to a number of times. I drive by this place on a hill quite often - coming and going places. It isn’t on a main route - it is just on a route I seem to travel. It is a beautiful graveyard. I always send a blessing to it as I travel by. It is beautiful in all season and all weather. This day is was unusually foggy in the middle of the day. The fog created a melancholy feeling over all of the day as I was out and about. The stones are a bit askew in some places as the earth is beginning to swallow them up. I like how they are a part of the ground so organically. The words are worn off a number of the stones and lichen and moss carve their epitaphs in green. This haphazardly laid out graveyard is typical in New England in old places.

Lebanon, CT graveyard

After visiting the dead - it can be a bit unsettling while also feeling comforting at the same time. It feels a bit time out of time while sitting with the ancestor stones. I did stay for awhile - sending blessings and prayers to the souls there. Sitting on the stone wall felt solid and grounded. All those lives carried out over all these years - laid to rest. It is good to pay respects to the dead at this time of year especially. The ancestors want to be talked to - remembered - held in memory. I hope you will get to visit a cemetery to pay respects to those that have walked here before us. Bring an offering of kindness and a few words of tenderness.

The Halloween Tarot

The Halloween Tarot

How To Use Tarot for Personal Growth from Jessica Dowches-Wheeler . This is a clear and bright article about using tarot for personal growth. I also have Lindsay Mack as one of my lineage teachers. I highly recommend her Soul Tarot School as a resource for you.

Strength - Herbcrafters Tarot

Today is my daughter, Emma’s birthday. October 8. Eight also begins with E. Today I drew the card 8 - Strength - Garlic from The Herbcrafter’s Tarot. E is a good letter for me. This day - long ago is when I became a mother. Some of you may have taken this wide ranging journey. It is filled with many places to discover yourself and perhaps lose yourself at times. The distance of years and time from my being born a mother day - are long in the past. However, it is still ever possible to be right back there in that moment when your life was one way - suddenly it is another way. On the anniversary of her being born and me becoming - I always find a soft reflection going on and a looking back. Where have we travelled together? What have we learned? Where will we go next? What sort of mother have I embodied? A long journey of life with another human being. I know I have learned much.

Mothering is a path and a choice that some of us take. Choosing not to take this path or having the choice made for you is a deep and meaningful pathway as well. Please know I support all decisions in the realm of mothering. I say mothering, as that is a part of who I am. I can only know what I have experienced first hand.

“I’m a worker, and I’m a mother, and all the other stuff is just semantics.”

— Patti Smith

It is true that I am a mother. It seems hard to believe that all the other stuff is just semantics - and it turns out this is true. As the years go by I develop and grow. Curiosity carries me forward and allows the moments of thinking and creative great fun. Mother is there with me always. Carrying one’s strength in this is necessary. Separation of identity requires this strength and constant fortitude. However, through it all - I am a mother. It is the thing that keeps me awake, asks me to research, and creates a flexibility to ride waves of emotion that might be sudden or unasked for. It also brings me wonderful joy and friendship. The complexity of a long and deep relationship with my daughter is a gift I treasure. I feel many deep and numerous blessings for which I am grateful.

On this day - I am ever grateful to be with my daughter in this lifetime as her mother. Happy Birthday to my Emma! May the stars follow you with blessed kindness. May the years always be good to you. May your heart be full of love. May you always have a book nearby! May the forest always welcome you…

Emma at Ocean House in Rhode Island

Never Far From A Book

Us - Sunken Garden Poetry Festival (what are we talking about?!)

Devotion by Patti Smith

A gift from my husband on the anniversary day of my becoming a mother.

Things are slow moving. There is a pencil stub in my pocket.
What is the task? To compose a work that communicates on several levels, as in a parable, devoid of the stain of cleverness.
What is the dream? To write something fine, that would be better than I am, and that would justify my trials and indiscretions. To offer proof, through a scramble of words, that God exists.
Why do I write? My finger, as a stylus, traces the question in the blank air. A familiar riddle posed since youth, withdrawing from play, comrades and the valley of love, girded with words, a beat outside.
Why do we write? A chorus erupts.
Because we simply cannot live.
~Excerpt from Devotion by Patti Smith

I am here to talk with you about the mothering journey if you find yourself exploring this map!

Witches Wisdom Tarot

Eclipse

It is 5:55 am - drizzle drips down window sash -
Water element - rivulets direct themselves nowhere -
Individual droplets merge - swell into full -
Carried to Earth -soaking seeds for future flowers
Bouquet bounty arrives in droplets of water -

Elemental energy - wisdom winding around staff of wisdom -
Desert of mind - nourished by moisture -
Paired knowledge - internal - external - centered
Colored landscape - climb into a cavern of patchwork
Learn - Earthways invite apprenticeship - trusted bedrock

All that stands with you - family of ancestors - medicine
Examined dreams tell stories - catch glimpses in mirrored seeking -
Strength - despite unknown - delay in knowledge -
Contemplation held in flesh - wrapped in sinewed understanding -
Book of Leaves - antidote to over reach - rational wrecked

Fire - autumnal breach - wings flighted messengers held -
Painted trees - orange and gold - camouflage our retreat
Preparation is remedy - aloft in discovery - ribbon of connection -
Tendrils delicate in patterned nuance - message to the gods ever listened to -
Hieroglyph hearts - etched rhythm in flighted work toward - activate

Grizzly - Owl - Hare - community of ancient knowledge - in blood extant
Strands of helix - traverse wide transition - congregation expanse -
Element eclipse shadows - shuttered views framed in ignorance -
Long ago time - present timed story - cloaks discovered knowledge -
Individual claimed - community gathers - eclipsed.

~Linden of The Bone Lines