Here we go again - AGAIN

    As mentioned way back when in May in my post “When is it right to hurt someone?” and the post “un-home-like” in June, the club I belong to at school has had issues with two people in particular whom I’ve dubbed Michel* and Joe.*
    I’ll get to Joe in a minute, but the focus of today’s post is Michel, and keeping track of what is apparently an ongoing situation.

    In the first post I linked to above, I explained how Michel ended up leaving the room in a huff during a club meeting when the tension between her and group came to a head. Within a week of her leaving the room, Michel’s mother came to the school and caused a fuss with Student Life, complaining about her daughter’s treatment by our club. Student Life asked to our President about what happened, and once they understood they didn’t tell us to do anything specific, they didn’t reprimand us, and they certainly didn’t tell us that we had to let her back into the room (though we weren’t actively banning her, so it really didn’t matter). After all, who in the world, with any common sense, would continue trying to interact with a group that was hostile towards them at worse, and tolerates them at best?
    They thanked us for handling it as best we could, gave us a heads-up that Michel’s mother came in complaining on her behalf, and asked us to try to be a little less aggressive if it happened again (the implication being with someone else, as they too assumed that the issue was settled).    
    Still, a month or so later, Michel resumed coming into club. Mostly she sat towards the back of the room, avoiding conversation, but she had returned despite knowing that most of the group had no interest in interacting with her.
    Why?

Cracked Views on Mysticism

    A recent article from the popular humor website Cracked.com was titled “7 ‘Ancient’ Forms of Mysticism That Are Recent Inventions.”

    I took a deep breath and braced myself for a semi-humorous anti-religion smear - because though I love the website and visit it daily, any time an article pops up on any topic having to do with something touchy (politics, religion, etc) it not only tends to lean strongly in one direction or the other opinion-wise, but they also stir up a lot of bad feelings. That, and the trend lately seems to be for Numbered Lists of ‘Facts’ (usually more along the line of facts + opinions) to make the front page as the three main articles of the day.

    The “7 ‘Ancient’ Forms” addressed were Yoga, Tarot, Satanism, Ouija boards, Ninjitsu, Friday the 13th (though I’m not sure how a superstition about a date qualifies as a Form of Mysticism comparable with a religion), and - drum roll please - The Viking Religion.

    I laughed a little as I read - this was an extremely sarcastic article, in which the writer C. Coville  (who’s profile declares “preachin' Jesus and blowing up meth labs”) did her best to compare the systems examined with things like Dungeons & Dragons and angry teenagers rebelling against the church. Though I did smile at times, there wasn’t much humor to be found. I nodded at the dates and facts she presented, having come across most of the same things on my own during my reading and research this past year, I couldn’t help but sense a strong dislike of ‘New Age’ systems. What surprised me (though it shouldn’t have, especially coming from a white, Christian woman in the US military, with the website like http://www.godgirlsguns.com) was the venom dished out against reconstructionist religions, especially Asatru - for example, the caption beneath a rather famous depiction of Odin calling him a hobo seemed a little much.

Really?

Still, one person’s opinion is just an opinion. Facts are facts, and how you react to them and treat them individually are what’s important.

Un-home-like.

"Oh boy," I find myself saying- "here we go again."

I outlined in a previous post how the student-club where I hang out with friends tends to deal with people who just don’t ‘fit in,’ typically due to behavioral issues, in a sort of cycle. To save you the click,

-The person comes in and rather than sit and watch what’s on the screen, will attempt to strike up loud or unrelated conversation. (If it’s not a ‘noise’ issue we’re dealing with, it can be generalized as something we just find disagreeable.)
-They are asked to please quiet down or leave the room if it‘s really bad. This may happen multiple times before a Warning occurs.
-Feeling like the people who issue the Warning (typically one of the top three officers of the club) are ‘mean‘ or ‘unfair,’ the person being Warned will sit in the back of the room and complain to anyone who will listen about how rude and hateful we are.
-The person being Warned will continue to attend the club, every week, and continue to complain from the back, or carry on having loud conversations or being distracting, and receiving warnings.
-Tension will eventually reach a head, and the person is confronted by our ‘Warden’ - aka, the Officer responsible for dealing with people who are being a constant bother.
-The person storms out and may return at a later date, more subdued, or not at all - though they may continue to complain about us outside of the group.

By this point, we‘ve encountered this cycle enough times that we’ve learned to spot escalation coming pretty early on. Our major concern with any problematic member is to give them as many chances as they can to redeem themselves if they’re being disagreeable and try to avoid confrontation - the last thing we want is to cause people to leave a group where the goal is to just hang out and have a good time.
    In any case where we’re having issues with someone, while we may feel bad about having to deal with someone who shouts, swears or threatens to report us to Student Life (for what exactly? Enforcing our rules?), how do we deal with someone who’s only real fault is trying too hard to be friendly?

The current issue is with a guy we’ll call Joe.

Wrapping up January

So far, January has been pretty good to me. I recently finished an illustration job doing a series of speculative covers for some children’s books, as well as a handful of commissions for random designs for people. I’ve been to see some fantastic movies - Black Swan, for instance - while others, such as Season of the Witch, were just terrible (I‘ll go into that in another post).

My relationship with A’jm has been through some odd little patches - nothing I’d even go as far as to describe as ‘bumpy,’ but things feel… restless. I just feel sort of ’bleh’ lately, and I’m not completely sure why. Though I don’t believe in Tarot telling the future, I do like sitting down to do ‘year’ reading now and then. Curious about what the cards may have said about this month ahead of time, and looking for some perspective, I looked back to one such reading, which I did in August of 2010 and recorded the draw from. January was drawn as such: 

1) Moving behind me: The Knight of Pentacles
2) In love and relationships: Judgement
3) In Worldly issues: The Nine of wands
4) In Spiritual issues: The Ten of Cups
5) Things to come in February: The Knight of wands
6) The overall tone of January: The Nine of Pentacles

Spreading the cards out once more, I took a look at the reading for January a second time.

Using a New Tarot Deck

It’s strange for me to consider that I’ve been doing Tarot for over a year - close to two, now that I think of it - and the Rider Waite deck has become my favorite. Though I’ve misplaced my first deck somewhere at my mom’s house (A tiny pocket size tarot that cost me $5), not counting that one, I now own three decks. The first deck is the Thoth Tarot, which was given to me by some friends who found it in a room they were cleaning out, the second my Rider Waite, and the third the new deck which I mentioned in my last post - the Manga Tarot.

I’ll admit - when I first unwrapped it, I was a little tentative. A Manga based tarot? My first instinct was that it would be sort of cheesy and childish - for me, other decks using a ’manga’ theme are usually just fad decks, cashing in on people who enjoy anime and Japanese comics. In my opinion, most of these look terrible because it’s not truly manga style art but imitation, and cheap looking to boot.

However, as I looked through the deck, my excitement grew. Though this art doesn’t look precisely ‘manga-ish’ (in fact the work of an Italian illustrator), and while the images and symbols chosen for each card are perhaps more blunt than the traditional deck, they are still very well thought out.

Strange Dreams 2 - and The Wheel of Dharma

I'm gonna be honest - this one is RIDICULOUSLY long. Today’s post is about another dream, in which I met sort of a spiritual guide. If you’re more interested in reading about The Wheel of Dharma - which I’m sure is the more interesting topic for most people who might visit this blog - then hit the jump and scroll down until you see “The Wheel of Dharma” in bold. Otherwise... well, you'll probably be bored. Just a warning.

Tarot

At the beginning of the summer, I was at Colossalcon in Ohio. When I started to get bored between bigger events, I decided to walk around with my tarot deck, and get some practice doing readings for profit (read: $1 a reading). I only got a few bites, but the people that got readings were across the board impressed. Two of the girls I did readings for ended up crying by the end of the reading, shocked by how accurate the things coming up were.

However, following a reading where the guy I reading for was particularly impressed, a guy that had sat down to watch made some comments.

Grinning and scoffing, he said something along the lines of;

“Well yeah, but see the descriptions of these cards are so vague that it could fit anybody. A few key words that could work with anybody make it seem true, it’s all fake.”

I let him go on for a few minutes about how buzz words - words that affect everybody - were being used to make it seem like I knew things that I didn't about the guy I was doing a reading for. He was right and wrong at the same time.

When he was done, I just smiled, and explained to him something that I think anybody who wishes to use tarot needs to understand.

“First of all, Tarot does NOT tell the future.”

Tarot in the Student Life Center

I was sitting in the student life center at the college I go to, relaxing with my boyfriend as we waited for my class time to roll around. I took out my tarot deck and did a quick reading for myself – the results told me for the second time in two weeks that I needed to turn to my boyfriend for help with my bad dreams and worries – and was about to do a reading for him, when;

“Hey, what is that, a tarot deck there?”

There was an older man, latino, with a bushy mustache with a few threads of white in it. He was smiling, and seemed curious.

“Yeah,” I smiled back.

“You know how to do it?”

“Yeah, but I just started doing it earlier this year.”

I described the kind of spread I was using*, and he responded by telling me the style he used.

Pictured: Celtic Cross and Staff layout - aka, the style I use.

“How long have you been doing it?” I asked.

“All my life,” he responded.

He explained that his mother had taught him and his siblings, and that her mother had taught her, and so on. Grinning, he moved to our booth and asked me to do a reading for him. When I finished, he seemed pleased, and told me I’d read correctly. He then asked if I’d mind if he did a reading for me.

I was more than happy, and handed him the cards.

He then spread the cards out, flipping a card up every four cards. A top row of cards was my past and present, and the next three told my future. He used the entire deck in the reading, and used a method that depended almost completely on the face image of the card, rather than the symbols in the picture. But still, he touched on key points –

“Your father is worried a lot about you… he wants to protect you.” Another card – “A man in your family who loves you is waiting for your call.” He also made references to marriage and fortune coming my way.

Overall, it was a very strange and unfamiliar way (to me) to read the cards, but the things he said still made sense to me.

I couldn’t help but think of my dream – tarot cards with meanings I’d never heard of before, with images and values I’d never seen or thought of, but still having meaning nonetheless. I understood, then, the lesson I was supposed to learn:

There are many valid methods of doing a reading, or interpreting the cards – many of them are traditional, and blend different beliefs (he had me make the sign of the cross on the deck before the reading) but all work. It just depends on the person.

In my dream, the new form of Tarot was handed from one practitioner to another, who then inadvertently handed it to me.

The man had pointed to one card, and told me: “Someone old and wise will send you a message, in a dream - or already did.”

Smiling, and wondering what his grandmother and mother looked like in their youth, I nodded. Maybe they already had.

*there are different interpretations regarding what position in cross/staff means what, but I use this:

1) the key issue of the reading

2) Obstacles in the way of resolving problems related to the issue

3) Subconscious traits

4) Conscious traits

5) Past

6) Present

7) Who the questioner is to the people around them

8) Who the people around the questioner are

9) hopes and fears

10) Probable outcome

Strange Dreams

I think that most people who dream (and remember their dreams) experience at some point or another 'meaningful' dreams. Dreams that seem to predict something about upcoming events, or just seem like they're trying to send a message.

I typically have several very odd dreams every night - ranging from flying over the countryside to fighting zombies en masse. But I also have highly emotional dreams, mostly about my parents or loved ones, about regrets, and things I feel frustrated about.

Many Native American beliefs teach that to ignore your dreams is dangerous, and could cause illness and madness - certainly, many people believe that dreams are the mind's way of working out problems it can't deal with during the day; a pressure valve, so to speak, or a filter. Freud believed that our dreams were the result of our desires and wishes combined with the activities we do all day, and that nothing we see in a dream can be made up. Rather, everything in a dream is remembered from our lives in some shape or form. There are countless theories about dreams and dream interpretation, what causes us to dream and why we do it, but no one really knows for sure.

I'd like to believe, for me at least, that dreams really do act as a way for the mind to work out problems in a safe environment. A way to deal with stress or maybe just experience something wonderful. Like I said, I dream a lot about my parents - I worry about my mother, and my relationship with my father right now is more or less nonexistent because I'm afraid of talking to him. So in my dreams, I endure situations with my mom where we're fighting or angry (I worry about our relationship going bad) and I have nightmares about my father controlling my life with fear and guilt. In my dreams I can react in ways I wouldn't (or couldn't) in real life, for fear of retaliation. The consequences I experience in dreams are impermanent, but the implications are powerful and can be a great aid in every day life and dealing with life problems.