(no subject)

[nny]

*shakes self*

Eurgh, I don't like deleting.

I'm still not really going to be back until after the weekend, because I have kenovay coming to stay, but that means I won't check my f-list by default, so self-imposed limitations still stand.

Nothing much is new. I've started looking at tarot cards - I've had a pack for ages and never really played with them because I didn't have any kind of reference. Smaller bought me a book (and, incidentally, finding neverland so please insert small SCOTTISH JOHNNY! SQUEE!) and I've done a couple of readings; I was expecting them to make a lot less sense, straight off the bat, but they're already going pretty well. It's interesting.

Job? Bad. I'm going to start looking into getting another one. Because... I had a review, and I was told that the opticians from the other shop thought me rude and lazy.

Okay. Well. I understand that I can on occasion be lazy. It's a character trait I'm aware of, and I'm making an effort to change it - which is why I work so damned hard at not being so at work. I'm quite often a couple of minutes late, and I have been sitting down a lot due to concussion, but I am never lazy. I start working as soon as I come in, being the first person on the shop floor, and I will not stop unless there is literally nothing to do. Whereas today, while I was inputting prescriptions into the computer, there were three sales staff and three opticians having a natter behind the counter. At work? I am not lazy.

And anyone who has dealt with me in any official capacity will tell you that I am polite to a fault. I am not rude to people - in fact, tests show that it takes twenty hours of dealing with complaints before I will snap, and then immediately afterward I will apologise.

So I've spoken to my manager, and asked for specifics. I can't fix it if I genuinely haven't the slightest bloody idea what she's talking about. I'm pretty damned annoyed about that.

Anyway, yes. I'll be back after the weekend, people. Take care of yourselves, please.

Comments

[quean-of-swords.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm glad you're back, even if only for a little while. I'd missed your previous post and I was all like, "OMG! villainny is gone! But I like her! Cry!" etc.

I am a fan of tarot. Been into it for about a year, but I found that even before I got any decent books, it worked decently well for me. Of course, I'd rather get a reading from a friend than give myself one because hers are far more cheerful than mine. Hehe.

Have a good weekend!

[campkilkare]

*uses Tarot icon*

! Nny, dear, if I'd known, I'd have poked http://www.learntarot.com at you.

It's an excellent reference site; not horribly deeply mystical with all the astrological and elemental and sepherotical connections, and it really only goes into the Celtic Cross method, but it's damn handy for newbies. I essentially taught myself Tarot from it. I've since got my hands on this book, which does cover all the supplementary stuff, as it were, but I don't think you need that right off; it adds too damn much complexity.

--John

[villainny.livejournal.com]

Wow, shiny book. And I'm definitely bookmarking the site, cheers! I think I'm going to make a journal for tarotness so I can easily cross reference with tabs, see what's coming up where and suchlike.

I've got the complete illustrated guide to Tarot by Rachel Pollack; brief overview, really, but it's worked for me on the couple of three card spreads I've done, and it's got a cool variety of spreads to try. I'm definitely not confident enough to try the more complicated ones yet, but since I only started poking about the day before yesterday... :)

What deck do you have?

[campkilkare]

...Livejournal is being profoundly weird for me.

I have a cheap Rider-Waite deck I picked up in China and a deck called "The Essential Tarot" my wife got me for my birthday a few years back. The artwork is very shiny, almost cartoonish, but I like it in its way. I'm really cheap about getting new decks, because I'm both very picky and not at all picky at the same time. I taught myself using that set and a couple of Bike decks shuffled together, so I've kind of got my interpretations firmly stuck in my head. I get irritated with lots of decks for going for pretty over symbololically accurate.

To that end, I've been working periodically on my own deck for some time now, slowed down both by sloth and utter lack of talent.

--John

[(Anonymous)]

...site. the Learn Tarot site. Not set. What the hell is going on with Livejournal?

[villainny.livejournal.com]

My deck, I confess, is seriously pretty - this makes me happy because your first deck traditionally is a gift, and I was pretty pleased that the giver associated this deck with me - art noveau deck, lots of intensely pretty and intensely gay ladies.

*grins*

I haven't read for myself yet, I'm kinda leery of it because I have a habit of taking things how I want to, y'know? I think it would be easy to interpret things in a way I wanted to hear them. That's kind of why I wouldn't consider making my own deck, I think. Is it harder than reading for others?

[campkilkare]

Well, it depends on your style. I have a very right-brain rationalist approach to most of life, and I bring it to Tarot in my way, even, although it naturally demands a certain amount of intuitiveness. So the following reflects that.

I think it in a reading for yourself, it's very important to read the cards first and the situation second. What I mean to say is, the Tarot and imagery are concretized symbols of abstract and common emotional events in human life. They are, or attempt to be, the basic building blocks of our social, emotional, practical and intellectual lives. So I try to figure out the essental relationships between the cards--I have a dichotomy bug, so I look for corresponding pairs, frex a eight of one suit in the past position and an eight of another in the future. Once I have enough interpretation to get an framework, I examine my life for those relationships.

Now, you may not instantly see those relationships present in the situation you queried about. Sometimes a reading is a bad fit--but sometimes a reading makes you look at your situation in a new way. That's the key; you always try to change your perception of the situation to match the cards, not alter your initial interpretation of the cards to match your view of the situation. Because the whole point of the reading is to open yourself up to a new perception of the query. You may, ultimately, reject the interpretation the cards (by which I mean you as the reader reading the cards) is presenting. But in that moment, you aren't the querent; you're the reader. You're doing the thinking for the cards, and you have to be faithful to them.

It's a bit like roleplaying, in fact, I think; as if you were asking Aziraphael for advice, and then you had to stay IC in his response, even though the IC response might be something you'd really not like to hear.

--John

[campkilkare]

For reference, here is a reading I did for a friend about a year ago, when she was in the States and I was in China. I did it in my room, wrote down the cards, then went to the computer lab to interpret and write up.

I was going to go through first and strip out personal information, but as you can see, there really isn't any, which kind of reflects my principles. In this case, the fit was really very good--she was a graduating senior who'd just gone through an exhausting year trying to make a relationship work with a mutual friend of ours, someone who was a nice guy but emotionally distant and reluctant to face up to his own emotions and choices.

Part 3, because I am quite a twonk

[campkilkare]

In counterpoint to my own self, I'll admit it isn't hard to deceive yourself. There are cards that can read either way; is the ten of swords a martyr, or making a martyr of himself? Does the seven of swords represent a friend betraying you, or that you've been treacherous to a friend?

Even when you're in a situation like that, though, the cards are at least valuable in that they give you a snapshot of your emotional state. Sometimes you don't know what it is you want or believe until you see that you've cunningly inserted it into your reading. If you do ten readings and you see them all as telling you to dump your girlfriend... you probably kind of ought to, just because your mind keeps going persistently in that direction.

[soupytwist.livejournal.com]

I think a new job is a good idea anyway, but dude, rude and lazy? WTF? Finding out what the hell's going on there sounds like a plan, because wow, rude is the last thing I'd ever describe you as, and you are absolutely not lazy when it's something you've got in your head a duty (which work counts as). That's bizarre.

And I once started a fic based on the tarot; with each chapter from a different person's POV who represented one of the tarot cards. It was a bit up its own arse, heh, but I might have to get that out again and talk to you about it, maybe. Hmm. Yay cool tarotness, anyway, and yay Scottish!Johnny. :)

*love*

[iibnf.livejournal.com]

Glad to see you back (wondered if it was a head-bang problem), and they are all bastards at your work. Poison them.