We Draw a Veil

Welcome to this Hallowe’en/Samhain edition of the Tarot Blog Hop. Before we continue on to the topic, here are the navigation links to take you to my neighbours’ posts and the Master List in case you are completely lost:

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Our wrangler, Arwen, gave us the following directive for this Hop:

This is the last of the three harvests in the Northern Hemisphere and the advent of Spring in the Southern hemisphere. It is a time that I know as being a thinning of the veil…a time for the honoring of those who have crossed over before us. This will be a hop focused on communing, communicating and commemorating our loved ones.

Samhain is the time of the feast of the dead in many cultures. For our topic, I would like you to post about a loved one or someone you admired/disliked (historical figures are fair game) that ties in with Tarot, Lenormand or an Oracle deck. 

It was the reference to veils that immediately brought my dear, late friend, Dee*, aka Madame Fifie, to mind. You know how it’s a struggle to maintain a conversation with some people? Difficult to think what to say? Awkward silences? Well that wasn’t it…at all…ever. “We draw a veil” was a favourite phrase of hers when closing a particular line of conversation that might have been heading (far and away) beyond the realms of decency. Yes, we had quite a few of those and, indeed, left more than a few donkeys limbless with almost daily telephone conversations measured in hours and then often following emails exchanges. We talked about Tarot, knitting, life and everything around the edges and in between the cracks. There was a lot to be said. We did our best to cover it. And then she died.

It’s been a while since we’ve spoken.

.

So that’s that.

.

Well…maybe not. In the spirit of the season, I thought I’d give her a shout and see if she’d fancy a chat through the medium of my cards and, since poetry was very much her thing, I’ll endeavour to frame her responses in the form of verse. (Yeah, I know…it’s OK, they tell me poetry’s good therapy for insanity :D)

I don’t have any Hallowe’en themed decks, so I was going to use the Bohemian Gothic, but then again, I haven’t used my Wild Unknown for a while and this is something of a leap into the unknown and a bit wild, what with the poetry and all. So, here goes:

I think that, on balance, asking specific questions is a bit limiting (and possibly a bit rude as an opening gambit), so I’m just going to pull three cards and see what she wants to say to me…

There once was an old gal called Dee,
Who was exceptionally fond of her tea.
I asked her advice,
(She was very nice)
And relayed this verse to me:

Be strong and persevere, my friend,
Be hearty and be hale
But as for life’s unpleasantry
O’er this, we draw a veil

Be true unto yourself, my friend,
Fly straight and do not bail.
And as for others’ morality
O’er this, we draw a veil

Keep smiling and have fun, my friend
Eat well and quaff some ale
And as for others’ misery
O’er this, we draw a veil

The worms will get you in the end
Though do not weep and wail
There’s more than your mortality
But o’er this, we draw a veil.

I hope you enjoyed my little verse, thoug I suspect a corporeal Dee would have done better job of it 😀

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*We met online, on the very first public TABI training course way back in 2000-and-something-not very much (I forget exactly), and then met in real life soon after. She and I became TABI members 1 and 2 respectively, when the founder group decided to introduce an official membership numbering system. She fell off the grid for a while not long after that and I later discovered this was due to health problems, which I won’t go into here. Suffice to say that she rarely spoke about it, never complained and just got on with it as best she could despite needing to take enough drugs to make her rattle. Very few people knew.