I thought all week about groups of three individuals working together as I considered last week’s writing prompt: Shifting Perceptions of Brokenness and a Three of Wands prompt, and in particular this phrase:

If the three wands represent three individuals in your life, what might the virtue, aligned ideals, warmth and creativity of the Three of Wands bring to a project or ongoing conversation or mode of learning you collectively share?

When I think of the Empress in her incarnation as someone with intuitive sensibilities offering practical and tangible paths to inspire healing in others, and doing so in both serious and playful ways, I recognize that presence in exchanges I’ve had with three women, three sisters of heart, I’ve met online.

Nancy Seibel at Keys to Change facilitates a lively conversation on her Keys to Change Facebook page for her online community. I fell in love with Nancy over her concept of a Department of Hope—I first saw the phrase in her Twitter feed and it lit my heart right up, and it still does.

Last week I was grateful to converse on the Keys to Change Facebook page with two other incredible women, Ginny Lee Taylor of the Women of Wonder Circle and Loraine Van Tuyl of The Sacred Healing Well.

All three of these women have expanded my understanding of how to share one’s story in the service of helping others; from them, and many others I’m blessed to know, I learn how to make lemonade from the lemons in my life. I couldn’t help but fall in love with Robyn’s image of these three lemons against a deep snakeskin blue sky.

What did you discover during your Three of Wands week? If you wrote about various groupings of three in your heart circles, did you share any of your thoughts or gratitudes with your “beloveds of heart”?

Tarot Tuesday: Four of Wands Writing Prompt

In the Rider Waite Smith Deck depiction of the Four of Wands, we see four wands, tips garlanded. Between the inner most two wands, we can see two figures raising bouquets to the sky and a castle on the horizon in their immediate future. The Thoth deck assigns the word, Completion, to the Four of Wands, and we see four staffs crossing in the middle, ends splayed and bound by the image of a circle beneath them.

We can think of this card as exuberance expressed outwardly, a gratitude and celebration for a structure well made. When we consider this wand energy as it might course through the Emperor, Arcanum IV, we can also think about how a benevolent and loving leader might channel his passion through constructive paths of communication and celebration in order to convey the importance of finishing a task or project.

If not making a physical garland to deck your own abode, what other outwardly visible way could you celebrate your dwelling or project? Write a poem of twelve lines, one blessing per line, on behalf of your domicile.  Or in prose, write your way from room to room of your abode, as if seeing it for the first time, describing the best features of each room in detail for a lover you wish to entice to visit you.

Scan your “inner foundation” where your passion and creative fire burns. Is each corner securely in place? What does this inner home or inner temple look like? Write a description of the first time you discovered this temple, or discover it now, in words.

In meditation, how might you lean on your inner Emperor in the service of channeling your enthusiasm in order to put forth a compelling and constructive argument for completing and finishing your latest project? Alternately, which structure or project is near completion or recently completed that deserves a moment of unabashed and heartfelt celebration?

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.

The photos in this post were taken by my poetry movie collaborator Robyn Beattie.

Related Link:

Words as Spiral Path, with gratitude for Ginny Lee Taylor’s invitation to share my own survivor story in poems with backstory as a guest post at Women of Wonder.