Tarot Tuesday: The Three of Disks, or Art for All

Nautilus help me

Love both spiral to and from

My changing children

If you have more than one Tarot Deck, I’m sure you can relate to having favorite depictions of certain cards for certain times in your life. Before I raised children, the Thoth deck Two of Disks “spoke to me” and in fact, “spoke to my cat” enough to elicit his response to the snake in the card: My Cat, My Familiar: Manifesting Totems.

I love the figure eight the crowned snake in the Thoth deck makes; I recognized in Robyn’s divine nautilus a similar palette of pale violets and golds. Both mobius and spiral patterns of motion invite me to be peaceful no matter where I am in the day between dusk and dawn, between thinking and being, between head and body. I love the pattern in this image: increments of time, chambers of memory, a visible structure of growth.

Having spent the last fifteen years as a mother, the other Tarot Two of Disks image I love is the Motherpeace image in which we see a mother holding her twins, one nursing, one crying. Vicki Noble describes the state of the young mother: “Sometimes she feels like a two-headed snake writhing in opposite directions, as one baby wants to eat while the other wants to sleep” (Motherpeace: A Way to the Goddess Trough Myth, Art, and Tarot). While I’m far past the early days of nursing infants, I’m still learning, as all mothers do, how to remember to care for my own body in the same way I effortlessly and habitually feed and nurture the family.

At first, I admit I was resistant to still seeing the Two of Disks through my “Mother Eyes.” But who am I kidding? I still wear the Mother Boots, still helm a house with three dynamic and vibrant children under the age of sixteen. I am ever evolving into a more “conscious juggler” (see last week’s writing prompt) mustering up love and compassion for myself as I keep my writing goals in balance with what it takes to love up these kids I’m so blessed and grateful to raise.

Tuesday’s Prompt: The Three of Disks

Threes are often about synthesis and harmony. In the Rider Waite Smith Three of Disks, we see a church archway and three figures…. “A nun and a monk watch a sculptor putting the finishing touches on a carving he is doing for the church” (Eden Gray, A Complete Guide to the Tarot). This card belongs to The Empress (numerically as a three) so we can see the creative impulse behind the card as relating to states of harmony and beauty. At the helm of not just her own family but a larger community, the Empress shares her bounty with others or may seek to create it in concert with others. Rachel Pollack talks about the spiritual development we gain through the suit of pentacles and mentions the opportunity to consider “the needs of the community” (Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom).

Which project are you actively working on at present with established patterns or rituals for creating?  Are you creating for a specific recipient, audience, or community? Do you share your process of making art or writing with others just learning their craft? If you are not actively engaged with your creative process, which Three of Disks project would stretch you (to grow) as an artist/writer and as a spiritual seeker?

Or enter the card as one of three figures lending their energies to the manifesting of a project: as the architect/writer holding the plans or outline, as the artist/sculptor defending her project and putting finishing touches on it, or as the spiritual advisor suggesting ways to share and apply the finished work to fulfill the needs or desires of a larger community.

Feel free to respond in comments here or to join the conversation at Tarot Tuesday’s Facebook page to share your word or image response.

Photos in this post are by my poetry movie collaborator Robyn Beattie.