Lent / Tarot / The Queen of Cups

A bit over forty days ago, Facebook friend Daiva Markelis bid us all a temporary farewell, saying that she would be taking a "Facebook fast" for Lent.

This year, on a whim, I decided to do something I'd never done before: choose a tarot card at random, and blog about it, in relation to Lent.

Today is the last day.

The card I just drew is just perfect.

It's the queen of cups.

The queen of cups is a highly sensitive, intuitive, reflective woman. She can get deeply involved in others' feelings. Because she is so sensitive, she is also especially vulnerable. She is the one card I identify as being, herself, a tarot card reader. Because she can be a tarot reader, and she's my last card in this Lenten observation, I see her as me, reading cards for forty days of Lent.

The queen of cups is gazing at something. I wonder how tarot readers who don't like Christianity read this card. The queen of cups is gazing at a ciborium. Ciboriums are made of precious metal, like gold. They are often elaborately decorated. The queen of cups' ciborium depicts two worshipping angels facing the central container, and a cross crowns the ciborium. Ciboriums are the containers for the Eucharist. The queen of cups is gazing at, and meditating on, the vessel in which Christ's body is stored.

Just like Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, two thousand years ago. These women waited, outside the tomb, for the biggest event in history to take place.

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I'd like to thank Jeanne Piquet, Karen Wyle, and Liron Rubin for being the most likely readers of these posts, and anyone else who stopped by to offer a comment or two: Sue, Sue, Melanie, Judy, and everyone else. Doing this for forty days has been a discipline. I posted some of the entries close to six a.m., because I needed to get to an early class.

I tried not to post other material during Lent, so I restrained myself from posting as much about politics or nature or personal woes as I usually do. Starting on Monday, I've got a bucket-load of stuff I need to discuss.