Bound Joy

This week I'll be using the Medieval Tarot; originally created by Guido Zibordi and published by Lo Scarabeo, this version has had the background recolored by Christian Schenk and is published by Card-Shark.  This morning's draw is the Eight of Cups:

I imagine a boar on a leash is about as manageable as herding cats.  The number eight of this card represents solidity, but not the beneficial, stable kind.  Here is a place where people and their emotions get stuck, because they keep trying to bend outer circumstances to make them happy.  They're the ones who constantly ask the same questions over and over, wondering why their life won't change and become more fulfilling, yet clueless that the change must be within them.  This card reminds me that if I feel discouraged and in a rut, and outer circumstances and people aren't changing, then perhaps I need to do it myself.  But in order to do so, I'm going to have to let go of the leash and leave those people and situations behind. 

The oracle deck I'll be using this week is the Tea Leaf Fortune Cards created by Rae Hepburn and published by U.S. Games.  It has a "fortune phrase" on the bottom of each card, but I've chosen to interpret them with the images only, so I've removed them with the help of Paint.  Today's draw is "Tulip:"

In flower symbolism, the tulip represents perfect love and passion.  But anyone who's ever lived on earth long enough knows that true perfection is an illusion.  We may get caught up emotionally, floating on our pink cloud.  But eventually reality inserts itself, and we experience the crash of gravity when the cloud dissipates.  Tulip teaches me of transience, of the fragility of trying to hold on to emotions as if they were solid and real.  As William Blake wrote, "He who binds to himself a joy / Does the winged life destroy; / But he who kisses the joy as it flies / Lives in eternity's sunrise."