NEW BLOG!!!!

Blogger just isn't working any more for me ...

It's taken ages just to write this ...

Pop-ups, not uploading, etc etc.

For those who I haven't responded to (re comments), I apologise, since
this site has made it difficult for me to do so.

So, as sad as it is to leave my old posts behind, I am now trying out

a new place.

Please come and find me there. It would be nice to see you. I think you have to 

click on the posts themselves if you wish to comment. The comments options
are at the bottom of each post but you have to click on them from the 'Recent
Posts' section at the top right!

Thank you all for all of the input you have given this blog. All of your comments

have been very, very much appreciated.

Kindest Regards

PLN

MY NEW BLOG: princelenormand.wordpress.com

The Messenger of Good News

I liked this Page of Cups the first time I saw him. I bought The New Palladini Tarot during a date in London some four years ago. God, was it really that long ago? I think it was my first date with a guy eleven years my junior. He was 26. Even though our dating didn't last for an awful long time, the day was pleasant. We had walked hand in hand through Green Park and kissed for the first time. He was gentle and romantic like this young page. He walked me to Victoria Station to get my train home in the evening. On the ride back, I opened the deck and it felt warm after my day in London. The guy is no longer in my life. But the deck is. I sometimes consider trimming it. There's just so much white on it.

I see the pages of the tarot as messengers. This one brings emotional news. When we think of emotional news, we more often think of the negative stuff, but he brings words of comfort too. Today, he brought my dad a letter from the surgeon who performed his biopsies. He still doesn't have the proper results, but the guy apparently thinks that the treatment has worked. It's what my parents needed to hear. They are big-time worriers. That's where I get it from.

I spent today at my boyfriend's house while he was at work. When I am there, I usually spend time with his sister, who lives a few doors away. Today, it was her children's sports days, so we went and watched all three of them in their events. The two elder ones both came second in their races, but the littlest, Sophie, was too busy looking around at what everyone else was doing when she was supposed to be taking part in her relay race. She is only 4 and such a cutie. But Dame Kelly Holmes, she is not.

On my way back to the house, I bought up the ingredients for dinner and cooked for my boyfriend. Because his parents are back from Italy tomorrow, I whipped the hoover about and made everywhere look nice. I flung open the patio doors on the conservatory and set the table up for us to eat when he got home. I enjoy doing these kind of things for him. He works hard and deserves a bit of pampering from time to time.

As we get nearer to the Olympics, the fever is getting greater. The television is full of people making the route in stages with the torch and I am proud to say that one of my old friends, Natalie, was a torch bearer in Ashford. I have known her for 23 years and caught up with her not so long ago for a small reunion. You can see her in her glory here.


Illustrations from The New Palladini Tarot by David Palladini

Brand New World

My post about the internet and how the world has changed yesterday made me feel a little down after writing it. We are fed these things, sold to us as necessities we cannot live without, and when they are taken away like pills, we notice the side effects. I was visibly frustrated by my lack of internet connection, emails and not being able to enter my blog. Can we live without Facebook? I can tell you from experience that we can. But in this world of logins, iPhones and Ping It, waiting three days for a printed statement or handwritten postcard is just too long in this fast moving brand new world. One friend commented on my post, noticing how we are being pulled along by wireless boxes, mobile apps and self-service checkouts without choice. We have to put up or shut up. I feel this too. 


But do we have a choice?


Ok, I am not going to move into the woods and hunt for my dinner any time soon, but there are some choices I can make. I don't need to become a slave to technology and I could spend more time reacquainting myself with what nature can be found beneath the rubble of modern life. Sitting here at my mac, I can see that I am falling flat on my face before I have even started, but finding a way to connect to a vibration deeper than the alert of my Blackberry is something I wish for. It was my motivation for pulling out The Wildwood Tarot.


I think that the last time I used this deck was around November. I know it was cold, anyway. I had been babysitting Kate's cottage and without a scanner, positioned these cards amongst the ornaments of her home to photograph for my blog. I remember there not being much of a telephone connection in her village and I rarely turned on the television. I spent a lot of time by myself that week, playing with the Wildwood, while listening to Celtic music and taking walks with just my thoughts and feelings. Pretty apt, it seems now. When I returned to the chaos of the house move and all that went with it, this deck went back on the shelf. Today feels like the right time to bring it out again as I once feel like fingering my way through the forest of nature and season. I need to access my own natural and built in wireless router.


The Green Man is an interesting card. Sure, he has the masculine drive of the traditional Emperor, but like his wife, The Green Woman, his empire is the natural world. You might see him as a defender of the land; the land being his child. I guess that hese two are the parents of nature and the world we live in. Like a father who scolds his offspring when they do wrong, this domineering leader and protector is enraged by how he sees people treating this natural planet we are simple guests on. He could be about taking a stance or becoming a leader for others to follow in such ways as I have already mentioned.

Even though I do feel a need for nourishment from the earth and nature, I must admit that I don't feel the leadership of The Green Man so much today. I don't feel particularly authoritative. With the drab grey sky outside my window, I'd far rather slip back into bed than take any kind of control over my day. I have a barely-started painting on an easel in my room. I keep looking at the lips on the figure, knowing that they are not quite right, but I cannot be bothered to change them. That kind of sums life up, doesn't it? There is so much in my own life that is not quite right, but which I cannot be bothered to get up off of my tired ass and change.



Illustration from The Wildwood Tarot by Will Worthington

Back in the Driver's Seat

Am I the only one who feels as though I am drowning beneath the waves of modern technology? I have been trying to access my accounts online, but due to trouble with doing so, have had to talk to overseas operators about problem routers and connection difficulties; all of this (while trying to work out why I could no longer get into my near-on three year old blog) has taken it’s toll. I thought these things were here to make life easier.

It is with resistance that I found myself trying to fit into a new home at WordPress; mainly due to the fact that it isn’t half as easy for me to navigate as my old pad and many standard features seem to require payment. I know my way around Blogger but  for a while there, it seemed as if the locks had been changed. It continued to tell me that ‘someone has signed out from a different location’. What does that even mean?!

I have just got off of the phone. The Internet lady was pleasant but didn’t help much. She suggested plugging our computers into the wall if our wireless connection doesn’t work. Oh right, you mean like we used to before we were sent new-fangled box #2? Oldy-worldy internet? She then suggested we unplug our telephone for twenty-four hours to see if that helps. Great. No phone calls. By the time she asked me to unscrew the wall socket and mess about with the wiring, she had lost me. Thanks Orange Customer Services. The internet still isn’t working properly. I don't know what I did to make Blogger work again. I tried it [for what I told myself would be] one last time and I was able to write again. If this post ever sees the light of day, I guess I should be thankful.

I hate how the world has become. I hate that I don't get phone bills through the door anymore and that I have to check on line to see what I am paying for (if only I could remember my blessed password). My bank account is online and similarly, I have to remember some strange line of digits to check how much money I don't have.. I ended up having a fifteen minute conversation with a yoga instructor a month ago because my registration through their site wouldn't work. The darned thing wouldn't accept my house number and kept spewing my details back at me like school work with red pen scrawled over it. As much as I love keeping this blog, today's situations (which are still half-unresolved) made me want to go and sit under a tree with a pen and pencil instead. What has the world turned into? Some people even have sex online, you know!. Jeezus.

I didn't need any more complications, so I pulled out my wolves. Nothing OTT here. No Golden Dawn password required or an initiation into the dark arts needed to unravel their messages. Today's card is about new beginnings. I have only been away from the blog for a few days, but I feel different about it after the struggle of trying to punch away the pop-ups and get back in the driver's seat. I thought I may not be able to get back into it at all or have to set up elsewhere, so for today, I see this post as a new beginning. I am not sure what is at the end of that rainbow, but today marks my first step on a mission to find out.


Illustration from The Wolf Pack Tarot by Pat Morris

An Opening .. and a Closing

The green cards in this reading played out pretty much as I suggested they might do. My friend sent me a message while I was getting ready this morning, asking whether I would be able to keep things going by myself for a bit as she was going to be in a bit later. She is not coping well with her nephew's death and her head is all over the place. It could be her emotions and physical state that is described by the 10 of Wands. So I arrived amongst the rain and worked with the two curators to get the gallery in shape before the opening. That's me in the central card, as I thought, keeping the disks in the air. The 6 of Pentacles is about sharing responsibility while my friend is in grief. When I look at the 10 of Wands and The High Priestess, the sentence 'knowing how much you can take' comes to mind. This is an assessment she has made and is also one I made for myself physically, that bit later. Being on my feet in my pointy shoes took it's toll and I was very tired by the time my boyfriend came to look around the exhibition and then drive me home.

The opening ...

The morning went well. The young artists who we had given workshops to became curators and helped to clean the gallery and sort out refreshments for their visitors. The artist who was shown drawing on the floor in one of my previous posts, began to paint seagulls onto the window and by the time that it was time to pull open the large doors, everything looked good in it's space.

The girls all behaved with real maturity and I think they were secretly chuffed to have their work in a gallery space alongside older and more seasoned artists (not that a 15 year old will let on). There was an interesting mixture of pieces. I was particularly mesmerised by a film that was being projected on the back wall. The artist, a student of dance, played on the movement of the seagull as her dance was juxtaposed with the sights and sounds of the city. It really was very beautiful to watch her movements in black and white and will probably be the art piece which sticks in my memory from the show. I can still hear the sound of the seagull as the camera shows her moving this way and that.

The youngsters were lucky enough to meet some of the artists, including one woman who created four prints based on her struggle with Dyslexia. Being the largest pieces in the show, they grabbed everyone's attention and were quite the talking point, as people tried to unravel their meaning in the same way as the artist tries her best to unravel words through her Dyslexia.

One of my particular favourites in the show was a selection of jewellery created around Bach's story. With the idea of Jonathan being individual and scratching out his own path, Clair Archer created a series of pieces, where one bird in a silver flock was picked out in gold. They were extremely beautiful. Her site is worth a visit.

One of Clair Archer's pieces of jewellery, based on John Livingstone Seagull by Richard Bach

I feel as though my reading for the past few days has now played out. I was shuffling the cards back into the deck this morning and The World threw itself from the pack. This is a card of completion. Yes, the project is now over for us, since the pieces are finished and now in the exhibition, but it had that bit more relevance when we spoke with the two curators in charge of the space this afternoon. Due to cuts being made in their university, the gallery is being closed down after the next two weeks, so with some success, this will be their closing exhibition.



Illustrations from The Path Finder's Tarot by Sylvie Daigneault

Being Mother

Don't these cards simply light up a reading? One of the reasons I like [well done] pip decks is due to how a dominant suit can be instantly recognised in a reading. A lot of scenic minors can not always manage that. Here, you can see the wash of green on the left, which lends itself to the suit of Pentacles. What I first found interesting is how the Prince (or Knight) of Pentacles in the centre juggles those same three disks we can see in the Three of Pentacles at the top left. That's got to mean something, right? I'd say he is mastering his working life at the moment and is exercising control over it nicely. Besides, look at his horse. It's simply grazing in the background, suggesting that all is okay. He keeps his eyes on the spheres. This is the kind of guy who stays concentrated and involved in his work. It might make him a bit dull at times, but you know you can depend on him.

Looking at the three green cards, I think they relate to my being dependable and able to step in and keep those pentacles in the air. I have been voluntarily attending the gallery to help out a friend, and right now, this is more relevant than when we started some weeks ago. She heard that her 18 year old nephew had died at the end of last week and his funeral was today. The Six of Pentacles is about helping others out when we can and accepting help when we need it. I see the prince in the centre as myself, stepping in and juggling all that needs to be done at the gallery while she is amongst such extreme grief. The work that I do with these friends is often about covering each others backs and supporting each other through the process. It is more often about team work (my word for the Three of Pentacles) than anything else. We have our private view tomorrow, so I think these cards will continue to play out their parts until the end of the weekend.

The 10 of Wands sits at the top of this reading, suggesting burn-out and burden. I guess it isn't difficult for me to wonder if this is a wash of fatigue. It's warmth sets over the spread like a sunset, laying energy to rest. I am not entirely sure what the High Priestess is referring to just yet, but I will use her as a reminder to lean on my intuition.

I have had a quiet day today. While my boyfriend's mother is away, I seem to have taken her place. His sister came around for coffee this morning and then we went out clothes shopping and had some lunch. I started to fade around midday, so when I got back, I took advantage of having the house to myself by having a nap. I don't feel so guilty about doing that when there is nobody else about.

My boyfriend is cooking dinner and we have another quiet evening ahead of us. A couple of our friends are going out and hitting the pubs to watch bands, but I declined their invitation. It's just not what we need at the moment. It's been over two months since I have touched alcohol and I like it. We started watching a two-part drama last night and will watch the second episode tonight. Maybe it's a bit of a dull option, like the Prince of Pentacles, but it will allow us to be up earlyish tomorrow, before driving down to the gallery. You can depend on these quiet kind of nights. This reading seems to be hinged on the prince's ability to get on with things and keep those pentacles spinning.


Illustrations from The Path Finder's Tarot by Sylvie Daigneault