Allowing the cards to set their own pace
As I've written about before, my IDS is really about making working with the cards less "work," which it had become, and more about fun and play. I'm really focussing on playing with my intuition and creativity, and how the cards can help me form a closer bond with both. Right now I am learning a valuable lesson about allowing myself to take my time with the cards and allowing my study to go at its own pace. Lately, I haven't been reading much with my deck, just playing around, getting to know the language the deck speaks and how it speaks to me. Nothing major, just feeling out the cards.
I usually have this same "getting to know you" phase with a new deck, but it is always rushed, maybe a day or two, because there are other decks that I want to be moving on to. Lots of hopping around from deck to deck meant each got my undivided attention for about a week or two. Now that I'm looking at a vast stretch of time with just the Four Elements, I feel like the pressure is off and I can just take my time and learn the cards. It has been very freeing.
After playing around with the cards for about a month, last night I finally decided to open the book and see what the author had to say about the cards. In my "normal" tarot practice, I would have done this about a month ago, maybe the same day I got the deck. Again, because I've comitted to the Four Elements for the foreseeable future I felt free to just wait until it seemed like the right time. Now that I know my deck pretty well, I know the author's oppinion won't influence mine about a specific card.
Here is one part of the book I found very encouraging:
I encourage you to engage with each image through feeling, imagination, and intuition. Empowering these three senses connects us with our primal truth. Let your ideas and visions inspire free association and spontaneity...Play and enjoy.
Which is what I have been doing. I didn't need the author's validation, but its good to know she and I are on the same page.
I think I've decided how I'm going to work through the cards (or rather, play through the cards,
). I'm going to move through the majors, focusing on each one in order, and then I'm going to bounce around the minors in a free association sort of way.
Last night I started with the Fool, and decided to journal about the card in a creative way. I decided not to write about what I saw in the card's symbolism and how it spoke to me (my usual form of journalling about a specific card), but rather to write a memoir-ish journal entry about a time in my life that I think really embodied the Fool. I might go back over my journal entry and flesh it out a bit, and
then write about what in the card speaks to me about that particular time in my life and the energies of the Fool card.
So far that's what is working for me. I hope everyone else is having as much fun as I am!