Shadow Work Whatever, Day 15 (18 & 19)
Apr. 5th, 2016 08:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

I'm not sure what today's first question ("What do I hate about myself? Why?") has to do with purgatory, but I'll just let that sit. But what do I hate about myself? I had plenty of time to sit and stew on this question before I actually flipped over a card. I thought about my tendency to be loud and domineering in circles; my tendency to just hold forth without actually facilitating a conversation. I thought about my need to always be right; to have the last word; to be sarcastic.
Five of Swords wouldn't be too far off the mark, I thought, and then drew my card. Page of Swords. Not too far off the mark, then?
The trick is connecting the Page of Swords to the reversed 10 of Pentacles, which came up way back on Day 11. I want to like that spread. I really do, but I had such a weird non-reading with it. Maybe that means I need to try it again. And if you go waaay back to the very first spread in this monthly meme, the Page of Swords comes up as my quest. But reversed. So if the Page of Swords is what I hate about myself, is the quest about ridding myself of that energy? Hm. Hmmm.
Likewise with the 4 of Cups: we've seen this card before: what I can't accept about myself. But this is in the Victorian Romantic Tarot, not the St. Petersburg or any other Waite-Smith clone, so the image is a bit different:
Someone is not having a good time! But seriously: what do I hate in other people, and why?
This one I didn't think as much about beforehand. I hate when people are greedy, hateful, self-serving, and so on...but that isn't what the 4 of Cups is about. It's about something so much more mundane and harmless: being grumpy.That's kind of low-key thing to hate, isn't it? So...petty. But I guess it isn't just any kind of grumpy that grinds my gears. It's the self-indulgent and childish sort of "I didn't get a pony for my brithday wah" grumpy. Depression is real, and we do all have to process disappointment and despair to be healthy, but then when it becomes that masochistic and self-destructive grumpy...no thanks. There's so much worse stuff going on that you should save your grumpy dollars for.
This is one I hate in myself, too. I know I can get this way fairly easily. And I guess you often hate in others what you don't want to admit to yourself....