Reprograming

This week I'll be using the Victoria Regina Tarot, a deck and book set created by Sarah Ovenall with text assistance from Georg Patterson. This tarot set was published by Llewellyn. I'll be pairing it with the Alchemist Oracle (aka Connected and Free), a deck and booklet set self-published by Lauren Aletta. Today's draws are the King of Cups and Slow Down:

...staying calm comes from healing our own anger.

—Mindy Newman

          The King of Cups shows Albert, whose marriage to Victoria began as a political alliance. Victoria was emotionally demonstrative while Albert was rational and pragmatic. Their marriage of opposites filed the sharp edges off of each and eventually became a true marriage of enduring love. Like the King of Cups, Albert opened his heart while retaining the ability not to get emotionally entangled with the outbursts and dramas of others. The Slow Down card invites us to get off our bulldozer and look at our own motives and reactions. As psychotherapist Mindy Newman explains, "We experience the world through the lens of our own habitual patterns: our cognitive mental patterns, our emotional patterns, and the legacy of all our interactions with other people. ...It’s not just that in that moment somebody’s entitlement and rudeness is producing anger in you. It’s actually igniting something that was already there." It's like we are preprogrammed robots - push this button and automatically a particular reaction occurs. Instead, as the snail suggests, we can pause to consider what's beneath the surface driving our reaction, then choose an appropriate response.