Guidance

This week has tested my limits, and the worst of it may not even be here yet. I knew it would happen. I knew there was nothing I could do to stop it from happening. It's a situation too personal to write the details here, but I do want to record what I was given when I pulled out my cards tonight to seek guidance.

I'm still getting familiar with my ToA deck. That process doesn't usually take this long, but I've never worked with a deck like this one before. Diving into the Eldritch Mysteries...well, it's possible I'll never truly know this deck like all the other decks and various divination tools I work with. There may always be some surprise, some new method, some unexpected twist.

I pulled out three cards tonight, looking for guidance for the situation I'm currently working my way through.

Reading them with that back and forth flow that I do:

A Wide-Nebulous Shadow

Black Wells Of Wisdom

A Central Black Throne

Beyond The Veil

Colors And Sounds From Space

Grave-Girdled Ground

It all sounds so ominous and dramatic! After meditating on it, looking at the numbers and going through other phrases matching up in the gematria...yeah, I still had no clue. Sometimes a reading makes no sense at the time. Weeks later, something finishes playing out and that lightbulb moment of, "Oh! This explains why I needed to pay attention to that!" happens. Divination is a tool for me to know what to focus on. Sometimes that's because other forces nudge me, sometimes it's just my own mind linking things together. "The cards are never wrong," (thank you, Miss Cleo) because it's all already there and I just need to pay attention. But sometimes it's like a neighbor showing you a picture and saying, "If you see This Guy, trust me on this...watch what he does with his sunglasses." It doesn't really make sense until you finally do see This Guy, notice he's wearing sunglasses, and watch what he does. Then it's all, "Now I see why the neighbor told me to watch!" So I shrug it off when a reading doesn't make sense. It probably will later.

But there was something here tonight, in these cards. Like looking for something in a pile of other things, and looking right past it as you pick it up, set it aside, and keep digging. I needed a different approach.

"Black Wells Of Wisdom"..."Beyond The Veil"..."Grave-Girdled Ground"...

My ancestor work in my devotional practice has been getting stronger since I took up Yog-Sothothery, and that's been making the role Water has been playing in things make more sense. People who know me will tell you I'm an Earth person. In the past three years, Water has become a very important influence. I'm like a stone bathing in a river. There's a lot about Water that is ancestral. Some of that is symbolic, and some of that is actually very literal when you really get into it. And I think there's a lot of that in The Shadow Over Innsmouth.

I've had success before using the numbers of cards from the ToA deck to direct me in which cards to look at from other systems, and using the Southern Gothic Oracle deck brings up some deeply ancestral things for me. I added up the numbers on the ToA cards and got 109, which reduces to 10, which reduces to 1. So I pulled out cards 10 and 1 from the Southern Gothic Oracle deck.

Seeing the Conch Shell with "homecoming - afterlife" and the Hurricane Lamp with "preparedness - inner light", my first thought was that my ancestors will guide me through this, but I have to actually make decisions and take action myself. Don't just sit back and wait for them to carry me through. That makes sense because there have been several signs in the past few days that they are with me.

And then I saw the Water connection...

A lot of the meaning of the conch shell comes from connections to the ocean. A hurricane lamp may be seen as Fire, but it's a hurricane lamp. A storm lantern. I've been through too many hurricanes. It may be the wind that's doing the most damage, but the rain and flooding are no minor issue.

My final interpretation of the cards tonight is just as personal as what led me to get them out. What I will say here is that there ended up being several levels of interpretation, and different ways I can see it all apply. The ToA cards didn't just guide me to get the other cards out, but combined with them and the stories wove together. I got more than just the guidance I was looking for.

Iä Yog-Sothoth!

Iä Father Dagon!

Iä Mother Hydra!

Iä Cthulhu!