by JoannaKate Grant
1. The Fool: Admit that you are a Fool
I have been a Fool, I am a Fool, and I will continue to be a Fool, something that I wish that I had realized sooner!
Embracing my “middle years”, I have tried more and more to align myself joyously with the archetype of The Fool, and have discovered, through trial and error, that admitting that I am a Fool, and also accepting that change is imminent is the greatest power that I have.
The knowledge that there is a cliff waiting for you to fall off, will add a confidant elegance as you take the initiative of stepping off the edge into the wild unknown, rather being dragged, legs akimbo, kicking and screaming, as you frantically cling to the last vestiges of your old life.
After you have picked yourself up, dusted yourself down a bit, dried the cuts and found something safe to eat, things will look a little better. After a few weeks or months, you will wonder what all the fuss was about and you will laugh, I promise you, you will!.
2. The Magician: Know That The Power Lies With You.
I absolutely knew this; and then I forgot it!
Somewhere shortly before the third trimester of my first baby, my magical toolkit (which had been quite effective up to a point) got replaced with baby manuals, recipe books, a Moses basket and 4 types of gadgets to amuse fractious infants.
As my daughter entered her teenage years, I rediscovered my magical toolkit whilst clearing out a distant cupboard, and I realized that if I was going to get out of the mess that I was in, that I had better get it working again.
I knew then that rather than giving away my magical powers to others (the men in my life), that I needed to learn to keep hold of them a little tighter, and to try to use them to the best of my ability.
Now is the time to remember your ability to weave spells, to influence your life and to be aware of what is going to happen next.
This is the kind of thing that you never grow out of, not like the clothes you used to wear before you had the kids; remember how powerful and fated your life used to feel?
It can feel like that again, you just need to go into the archives, brush off the dust, and pull out the tools that you need.
Knowing that you have all the skills that you need at any given time, in order to change things around, is a valuable insight, and one worth remembering.
Remember: The power lies with you!
3. The Priestess: Listen to Your Intuition!
Often labelled as having an ‘overactive imagination’, I was trained from an early age to pack away the voices, hold back the ‘strange feelings’ and to focus on being a ‘nice person’.
The parallels that exist between the mid-life phase and the teenage years are intense, and you may well find yourself, like me, in a familiar dilemma, but you get to have another go at it.
This time you are older and wiser, but probably lack the same muscle tone. Hopefully you have a little more cash. You know that it is time to start the journey again, so if you haven’t started doing so already, listen to your intuition.
Regardless of what others have told you over the years, you are in fact likely to be right about most things, if you are able to be totally honest with yourself.
You have lived long enough to see that what goes around comes around, and that it is now time to start embracing uncertainty, with the full knowledge that you will be able to deal with any outcome. So get out your veil, real or imagined, use your oracles, and follow the signs.
Don’t let doubt and fear and mistrust take control again, listen to your intuition and step into your Priestess power.
4. The Empress: Remember That You Are an Empress
Body image has always been an issue for me. A mixture of distorted family values and a large appetite for all things, have ensured that I have often had an intense love hate relationship with my body.
Marriage(s), children, and the drudgery of chief cook and bottle washer had, over the years, rendered me a shadow of my (perceived) former glory, and I had discovered that my “Inner Empress” appeared to be in permanent exile.
After the departure of “The Emperor” (see step 5), I was faced with a difficult period of intense self appraisal, things had been allowed to slip, and the result was not particularly attractive; I realized that I was not in a very good position.
After considering the alarming prospect of meeting a new lover/Emperor, after a period of enforced celibacy, I could see where I may have erred in recent times… and took the practical steps necessary to remedy the situation.
Invoking Venus in all her many guises, from self care , to spending your spare cash on the best haircut and underwear that you can afford, will all help to revive your languishing sense of self.
These days I carry a hand bag, rather than a changing bag, my belly will never again swell with a human child, but I also know that my creative children will continue to flow from me until I die.
Rest assured that if you care for your body, and love it for the service that it can give you, pamper it a little (or a lot, time permitting) then another will care for it too.
You are as Empress as you believe yourself to be!
5. The Emperor: Should he stay or should he go?
Not all of you will have an Emperor, and in some ways this step is easier for those of you who are single.
Sadly my Emperor and I, were forced to part company, because I had given over my own Emperor power and was blaming him for everything that was wrong in my life, and probably in a few other people’s lives into the bargain!!
I was weakened, stressed, angry and paranoid and I needed to take back my throne.
Whether you have an Emperor or not, this is the time of your life, when you seek to step into your own power and take charge of where you are going and when.
This is the time to, (if you have not already), battle it out with any shadowy masculine figures that may still lie undiscovered in your own dark underworld, to bring them into the light of day, and crown them King, for they are the power of your own creative forces.
If this step is left undone, these shadow people will continue to come back at you in the disguise of your partner, or other significant males in your life, disrupting otherwise good relationships, until you set them free to do what they were born to do…. lead you.
This is a time of reorientation towards the future, when you need to make decisions about what stays in your life and what goes.
Strategy and planning are useful at this stage, and sometimes you just need to be ruthless about what is holding you back. Sometimes you just need to accept that you can’t take everything with you, sad though it may be.
The more you live out all the positive aspects of your own inner masculine, the more fulfilling life will be.
6. The Hierophant: Listen to Your Heart
Whatever worked for you before, may not work as efficiently now, and you may need to overhaul the manual that you are operating from.
This is the time in your life, where if you haven’t had the opportunity already, you are now able to write your own rules. New teachers may need to be sought, and there is likely to be a strong awareness of a “final push” that you need to get things sorted, things that you may have been wrestling with for your whole life.
All this means, is that you have now reached a new level of awareness, and that you are able to let more go. What was important becomes less so, and what seemed unimportant becomes central now.
Gone is the needs to fulfil other people’s expectations and to meet their standards, you are building your own framework, that works for you, allowing you to embrace your inner strength with a firmer grasp, safe in the knowledge that the only certainty in life is change.
By the time this phase is finished, you will know with a strong sense of love and gratitude, that the only voice worth listening to is the voice of your own heart.
7. The Lovers: The Art of Self Discovery
Meeting your dark twin in the form of another person is a distinct possibility at this time, but do not be fooled by intense, passionate and hypnotic attractions.
Although this new, exciting and compulsive relationship that you suddenly discover may lead you into dark, dangerous and perhaps previously unexplored territory, the real mission behind it is your own very important, voyage of self discovery, which may be sexual, or otherwise.
This does not mean that said “soul mate” is redundant, but rather that they are a co-pilot, to help you navigate the sometimes stormy waters of your own soul.
Images of being devoured, of devouring, of being consumed by the darkness of your own passion, and exuberant and unrestrained sexuality are all common at this time, even if for some years you have been adopting the habits of a nun, these habits are now apt to be dropped!
Suddenly a need may surface to be all that you never have been, a call to liberation that you may have unconsciously been waiting for, for years. Ultimately, the person that you need to discover, if you haven’t already, is YOU. This may be revealed to you in the midst of a wildly exciting, passionate, no holds barred and torrid affair, but the end result, further knowledge of the self is likely to be what, in the end, it is all about.
At this time in your life, it remains important to remember the words, “If not me then who?, And if not now, then when?”
8. The Chariot: It can be a rough ride, meditation helps
On this journey through mid-life, an important fact to accept is that there is no turning back…. once you are on it, that is it, and no amount of dramatic pleading, cajoling or bribery will help you.
Keeping your chariot upright can be challenging, so much so that it may seem as if the destruction of your entire life is an inevitable and sometimes preferred consequence.
There is no turning back and very often, you feel totally out of control. I have often likened this phase to surfing, where the waves all travel in the same direction.
Battling against the waves is an exhausting and totally fruitless exercise, so the best way to get to the beach, to a point of stability and relative safety, is to ride the waves.
You may wipe out once or twice, as you practice your moves, or even a few times, but when you do finally get to stand up, the exhilarating combination of power, fear, excitement and a bloody good view, can make the journey unforgettable to say the least.
I have found in my experience that regular meditation has prevented me on several occasions, from ending up in the washing machine effect of tidal turbulence that does exist beneath the waves on which we struggle at this time, and that to be beneath the waves is definitely not a happy place!
9. Adjustment: Fine Tuning and Yoga.
Your forties are challenging, and like the early teens, you aren’t young, but you certainly aren’t old, you seem to be in some dreadful no-woman’s land of denial and escapism, unsure as what you need to be wearing and scouring the mirror every morning for both the real and imagined signs of grey hair and lines.
Then one day it happens, you catch your reflection in the mirror unawares, and you do not recognise yourself!
This is a critical moment, because the mid-life is all about adjustment, and admitting that something is actually happening is probably the most difficult part of all.
Like some giant karmic wheel, you will find that the habits of a lifetime, good and bad, start to catch up with you now, and that some things in your life will need to change if they haven’t changed already.
Late nights of hedonistic excess may need to be limited, (although hedonistic sex is to be generally encouraged!).
Water, walking, yoga and meditation became my friends, and although my social life did have to change, the mental stability was worth more than anything else in this uncertain phase, when finding an internal balance within a sea of hormonal chaos is a valuable skill.
10. The Hermit: Know How to Pleasure Yourself
I freely admit that I have spent far too long looking for life’s answers in the shelves of arcane literature that have mushroomed in every house that I have ever lived in.
However, I have come to know, that the answer lies within, and that it always has done ….I can therefore reassure you all, that every one of you is far wiser than you realise and that you all know exactly what is right for you, at any given moment, it’s just that perhaps you may not feel quite so confident about asking for it.
The stuff in the books just reminds us of what we know in our deepest selves already.
The voice within is your guide, your guardian angel and your daemon. You are responsible for your path, your pain, and for your own “divine pleasure”, it is no one else’s “job” just yours.
If you have not yet explored the endless magical permutations that are available from indulging yourself, by yourself, please do take some time at this stage in your life to do so!
Where is it good, and where is it not, and if you don’t know the answers to both those questions, now is the time to find out!
There is no more time to waste on what does not feel good…. we now just want to spend as much time as we can, feeling alive – wonderfully, passionately and vibrantly ALIVE.
While you are at it, you can also take the opportunity to utilize all that wonderful creative energy to draw what you need and want into your life.
So whether you are travelling the Stairway to Heaven or the walking the 12 steps to Lust, know that you are in charge of the rules, it’s your life, and only you have the answers!
11. Fortune: The Wheel Turns
“The Change” as it is referred to in couched terms and hushed whispers, was, in my mind, a terrifying monster that lurked in the far recesses of my psyche, waiting to kill the creative and passionate woman that I am.
In my overactive imagination, my entire life was to be taken from me, and I was to be condemned to a miserable sex starved existence of big knickers, an ever expanding waistline, wrinkles and ugly shoes.
I became filled with a gut wrenching horror of aging, whilst at the same time also wanting to embrace this inevitable phase with all my heart.
I had a sneaking suspicion that within the dangerous forest marked ‘menopause’ that there were secrets worth the knowing, and that strange powers lay beneath the apparent wasteland that beckoned.
In true warrior goddess style, I committed fully to the process, and I will not lie when I say that it was incredibly difficult, and in actual fact, still is.
There are days of divinity, when I feel exhilarated beyond belief, and others that send me crashing into the depths of despair as I remember the smooth skinned, dark haired woman that used to look back at me from the mirror.
Like Fortuna herself, there are the ups…… and there are the downs…. and from the center of this state of flux, I remain mindful that I am in the process of becoming whole.
I have been modest Maiden, fertile Mother, and – like my mother and grandmothers before me, back to time immemorial – I am moving into my wisdom, the power of the Crone, albeit a novice, but a Crone still. It terrifies me, and it is awesome. The wheel turns.
12. Lust: You didn’t just imagine it, that WAS your Kundalini Rising!
Now that you are being released from the biological urge to reproduce, passion suddenly becomes a delectable matter of a choice, rather than a compulsion.
For so long a enslaved by your hormonal cycles, and the instinctual drive to breed, the whole subject of sex seems to open up in a brand new way.
Gone are the good weeks, the bad weeks and the in-between weeks. Banished are the ‘pre’s’ the ‘posts’, the ‘ons’ and the ‘offs’, in fact, you can be on or off whenever you like, and if you want, you can be on all the time; the only limitation is your imagination.
This new freedom is exciting… whoever knew how powerful all those hormones were, in fact they were in control of your whole damn life!
Freedom from the hormonal cycle seems to elicit a far more spontaneous response to the ‘creative’ arena, and where initially the lack of a cycle may be daunting, for example, when do you clean the house if you don’t have PMT? Now you may well find the lack of constraint liberating and exciting.
You now have the space to be who you really are, and without the regular loss of your life’s blood, the power remains within you.
If at this stage of your life, you have found yourself without an Emperor, you may now have the freedom to explore this new country that you have landed in with a new lover, which will, I am sure, add a certain frisson to the whole exciting experience.
This renewed sense of power is not just related to sex, the whole creative arena gets a boost, and you may find yourself launching into a whole new series of projects, now that your child rearing days (if you had them) are coming to a close.
Be reassured readers, that the desire for love and passion are not affected in any way by age, and that the potential for lust, and being lusted after are proportional only to the levels of self acceptance and the degree of intimacy and knowledge that you have of your own self.
Once you have achieved the trust to know what is right for you, a goddess, in all your aspects, and to follow the voice of your own heart, then you will know no bounds to your desires.
So when you feel the heat rise, know it for a sign of power, because yes, what you feel IS power, the power of “She Who Holds On To Her Blood”, and that ladies, is the power of your Kundalini rising!!! Enjoy and celebrate your lust for life to the full.
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Merken