Getting the fears out

So, let me introduce you to a little friend of mine. It's a new friend, and I'm just making their acquaintance. It's called the Deviant Moon Tarot.
Depicted here is the Six of Wands (I figured I'd clarify, since the picture is flipped). This is a good example of what this deck looks like, and perhaps explains my original fear of doing a reading with it. It is very dark-feeling... from the colors and from the skewed figures on the cards. Made me feel slightly insane looking at them. Of course, the name of the spread that came with the deck is the Lunatic Spread.
I was asked to do a reading with this deck, so I did, and it turned out better than I expected. I have introduced my energy to this deck, and it has revealed its energy to me, and I think we'll get along just swimmingly with it playing second fiddle to my main deck.
In short, I was scared to work with this deck. I was asked to read using this deck, and I did it. Remember Eleanor Roosevelt's quote: "Do one thing every day that scares you." Your fear is never equivalent to what you experience when you actually get over your fear and just do it! You can surprise yourself!

The Deviant Moon Tarot

So, I talked about fear in my last entry. It's time for me to put up or shut up, and use a deck that I was initially going to either return or give away: the Deviant Moon Tarot. Because I saw the images on it, and it scared the crud out of me!

However, it caught my eye again as it sat on my bookshelf, and I decided to read a review of it (http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/deviant-moon/review.shtml). I think I'm only afraid of the images and the deck because I'm afraid to explore the darker side of my psyche. So I'm not going to return it or give it away; I'm going to use the deck because it was bought for me by a friend (the wonderful Karen), and because there is no denying our deeper nature.

I'm not going to use this deck with kids, though! :)

Throwing out the book

Lately (the past year or so) I've been more serious about my readings... getting better at them and really using more of my intuition and personal thoughts about what I'm seeing in the cards instead of the traditional meanings that I learned out of either a book or the little instructional booklet that comes with a deck of tarot cards. I've been reading tarot for over twelve years (whoa, that makes me feel old, and I'm not!), and I've only started to learn to trust in my own interpretations now. But from doing so, I have become an immensely better tarot reader, and a better person all around.

So what is it about tarot that makes us so afraid of our own gut instincts? Is it because these cards are outside ourselves, being laid out on the table for us? Does it feel so final and set in stone when those cards are staring up at us from the table, accusing us of our mistakes and faults? Do we feel naked and our souls bared when a spread is laid in front of us for the world to see? What is it exactly that makes us feel we are incapable of reading what the cards have to say without a road map and a guide of symbols as to what each card means?

I think it all boils down to fear. Fear of what we might discover about ourselves, fear of not being capable of reading our cards for ourselves, of not making the right interpretations, of being dead wrong. Fear of looking stupid, or of making a mistake. I've decided to embrace my fears and keeping going in spite of them, and in some cases, because of them.

How about you?