Tarot and gaining

Did some tarot reading today (sometime in mid-February 2023). Interesting things came up.

Of course it did.

So here is my take on tarot. Is it occult? Evil? Of course not. Does it tell the future? No. But it offers ideas and insights that one can dwell on that may change one's thoughts and actions—hopefully for the better.

I haven't really done much with my tarot deck (a Rider-Waite—no, I'm not original). Shuffled it and asked it a number of times things like "What does the year ahead hold?" and "What does the time between Imbolc and Ostara hold?" Nothing out of the ordinary.

Today, I asked about the wisdom of going to tomorrow's memorial dinner in honor of Dad. See, there's a moderate storm hitting tomorrow, and it might not be the best of road conditions. But who knows? The tarot revealed the Ten of Cups, a very auspicious card basically meaning great family relations, happiness, comfort...that sort of thing. Which is nice and all, but it didn't really tell me about the wisdom of driving tomorrow. A second draw revealed a reverse Moon, implying that negative thoughts and influences of those thoughts are subsiding, and I can be free from those influences. Um...okay. Didn't really answer the question, but the positivity from both these cards has been noted, and I'm grateful for them.

But a big question that comes up quite often is the matter of my size. I like being big, as has been addressed ad nauseam. For health issues, I've had to lose weight, and while engaging in intermittent fasting, I lost 25 pounds this past year. I'm discontinuing it for the time being, partly because it's been cold for a while, and I'm done with feeling cold. Fasting tends to make people cold, as I've learned. But the health benefits I got from it seemed quite significant. So I had to ask "How would I pursue getting big again?" As it turns out, it may have been a past-present-future pull I did.

• Past: Judgement
• Present: Five of Pentacles (not particularly good)
• Future: Five of Swords (also not particularly good)

Judgement (I'm using the R-W spelling) in the past may have represented me starting a new phase, like back in 2011, when I decided to really start putting on weight. It was positive because I was also putting on muscle, and doing Stronglifts 5x5 was a great way to go about it. I took this card to represent a new beginning after a death of sorts.

As for the Five of Pentacles, it's a fairly negative card, with two poorly clad figures in a winter scene, one limping on crutches with a leg in a cast. Walking past a window of a church brightly lit inside, implying that there is help to be had. Heck, the figure limping is getting some succor from the other figure. It's not all bad, but it's tough.

Later...like 3/27/23

It's interesting to note that I went to Grommr with the insight of the Five of Swords. This card basically describes, to me, a Pyrrhic victory. Basically, I could continue gaining. But this card asks "at what cost?" And I would pay for being bigger/fatter. Once I posted this on Grommr, someone made the following, more optimistic response: "The Five of Swords can also tell you to look back at previous battles (experiences and lessons you've learned) and have you ask yourself 'Thinking back on what happened to me back then, how can I use the knowledge I've gained to give me a better advantage of what is to come?'"

His response was noted, but doesn't feel quite apposite to my situation.

Incidentally, around the time of the first half of this post, I chose to abandon intermittent fasting for a while. I wasn't seeing continued improvement from it, and one of the effects—feeling cold—wasn't coinciding with the cold weather very well. For the first three weeks, it was fine. But then I began feeling worse in general. Mood, energy, inspiration, motivation, digestion, libido, appetite, you name it. It all was going down the tubes. (Maybe having a dozen Krispy Kremes  once a week every week had a bit to do with it.) So I decided to start IF again.

It was okay at first, and my body definitely responded to it. I decided to do a 40-hour fast as well, which resulted in a very cold night with me curled up to stay warm, as well as about four pounds lost quickly. Then I decided to feast once done. A full pizza for dinner, plus a lot of honeyed herbal tea afterward. Yipes. My liver and gall bladder did NOT like that. Sore for about 4 days afterward. But weight has been steadily dropping, and I've steadily and generally been feeling a bit better each day.

So I will take what I saw from the tarot. This journey is not over yet. I still sometimes toy with going on Actos to counter the actual fat in the liver, to supplement with the vitamin E I'm taking to reduce inflammation and (hopefully) fibrosis. That's a huge can of worms worthy of its own post.