THE TWO OF CUPS, A REVERSE FOUR OF RODS, AND THE QUEEN OF PENTACLES
Cindy Maddera
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Every Wednesday morning I shuffle the deck of Tarot cards. This Wednesday morning is no different. I pull the deck of cards from my desk drawer and start shuffling. The cards are still fairly new, or at least newish. I’ve had them for over a year before I started actually playing around with them. I had a thought once that it would be fun to tell outrageous fortunes to people. That thought didn’t last long. After reading through all of the various cards and descriptions, I decided that I didn’t have enough room inside this brain to remember them all. I would always be relying on the card description pamphlet that is tucked inside the box with the cards. The deck of Tarot cards got tossed into my desk drawer until recently. The cards are stiff as I flip them through their shuffle, not bendy enough for any fancy card shuffle tricks.
I draw the top three cards, placing them down one by one. In the weeks that I have been doing this, the cards have been an eerie reflection of the times. Plague and destruction. I stare at them and I am surprised that I can thoroughly shuffle the deck of cards and still manage to draw three cards that speak a bit of truth. I stare at them and contemplate how I’m going to spin them into a short story of fiction. I am not a believer. I sit on a fence of wanting to believe, but my Vulcan personality keeps me from jumping over that fence. Chris was a believer in the unexplainable, always half jokingly and half not on the hunt for aliens, ghosts, and Bigfoot. His enthusiasm was contagious and he could often get me to briefly hang out on the believer side of that fence. I was always the skeptic. It is one of the things that made us the Two of Cups. We were a mix of art and science, an epitome of our liberal arts education. Every Sherlock needs his Watson, Wallace needs his Gromit, Don Quixoti needs his Sancho Ponza, and Kirk needs his Spock. I may have been the voice of reason in many of Chris’s schemes, but I ended up going along with them any way. Because even the most ridiculous ideas where entertaining. Chris’s death is the reverse Four of Rods. It was not an end to a relationship of trials and disappointment. It was an end to his trials and disappointment.
My name is Cindy and I am the Queen of Pentacles, maybe not highly intelligent, but somewhat intelligent. I consider myself to be ordered and efficient. I like to think I am generous. I once had the Two of Cups, a great love and friendship based on respect. The cards have circled back around and I now find myself with another Two of Cups. This set of cups is different. Now I am the one with the schemes. Michael has become more of the sidekick to my shenanigans. Not necessarily the voice of reason, but definitely the one that goes along with my crazy ideas. He is harder to convince for the go along than I was. Michael is more skeptic, but he eventually comes around. I am currently stuck on the reverse of The Four of Rods, waiting for the end of this particular trial of working from home. That card should just be implied with every reading. There is always a new set of trials and disappointments. Trials end and new ones pop up to take the place of the old.
This set of cards could be fiction. I could write a story of a smart woman and her dog. I could twist them into a tale of young love. I knew a woman who refused to marry her love until he paid off all of his debt. I could flip that story into fiction. Sometimes it is just best to tell the story as you see it and today, I saw more truth than any fiction I could conjure up. I decided to hang out on the believer side of that fence. Briefly. Then again, my Vulcan personality is fully aware that we interpret the cards as we want to see them.