Joy

Welcome to the Tarot Blog Hop!

An international group of tarotists (check out the master list) are all writing on the same topic and then linking to each other so that the reader can hop from one blog to the next, seeing all the permutations and facets that the topic inspired in different writers.

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Joy

The name of my blog is Completely Joyous, so when blog hop wrangler Olivia Destrades of First Earth Tarot proposed the topic of Joy for the 2014 Summer Solstice Blog Hop, I knew right away that I wanted to share with you the origin of my blog name.

In 2006 when the Denver Tarot Meetup first started up, I was just starting to study kabbalah and how it related to the tarot. A guy in the group, Rafi, was very knowledgeable about kabbalah and he and I often were guilty of taking the meetup topic off on esoteric tangents. He started up a kabbalistic meditation group and I became a regular participant for a long time. It was an amazing group, part prayer, part guided meditation, part performance art. I have never participated in anything like it!  (You can listen to an entire session archived here — the whole thing is 1 hour 14 minutes and the Vesamachta bechagecha is at the end at 1:04:15.) It was like a Jewish kirtan, but with a more directed structure. Each month he guided us up the four worlds of the Tree of Life, interspersing poetry and song with prayer and explanations of the current Jewish holiday.

One of the songs that he taught us was called “Vesamachta Bechagecha”–you can hear a version of it online here. How can you listen to it without dancing?! The words are “Vesamachta bechagecha, vehayita ach same’ach.” It comes from the sixteenth chapter of Deuteronomy. Rafi explained that the translation is, “And you will rejoice in your festivals, and you will be completely joyous.” He explained that the word “ach” was translated as “completely” but really meant “only”–you will be only joyous, or nothing but joyous. The way Rafi explained it, I always thought of it as meaning that if you can’t feel anything else, you should at least feel joyous.

Rafi always called it my song since my name is Joy. When I started my blog in 2009, I took the phrase Completely Joyous from this song. On my website I say, “This site is dedicated to helping you discover, connect to, and express your higher self–the part of you that is a perfect expression of who you really are–the part which is completely you.” I think too often we get caught up in masks of adaptation. Every person is amazing when we can get past the layers of the costumes they wear to fit in, and find who they are, their authentic self. If you can’t be anyone else, you should at least be you.

I pulled two cards from the Chrysalis Tarot to…well, ok, admittedly to add some tarot into this Tarot Blog Hop. But I wanted to see what the tarot had to say on this topic. My random draw produced the Six of Mirrors and the Nine of Spirals. My first impression was that a powerful wind was about to blow into this calm and beautiful garden. It seemed destructive, but I also thought about how thrilling it is when the wind picks up and our famous Colorado afternoon thunderstorms blow through.

Then I noticed that the face of the wind in the Nine of Spirals was really the same face as the Pan figure in the garden, blowing the breath that sounded the pipes. The bird in the Six of Mirrors flew across into the frame of the Nine and then off into the distance. I heard the swoosh of the crow’s wings as he flew past my head.

Vibration is magic — sound changes the structure of matter. Speaking, singing, playing music breaks apart who we are and restructures us. The perfect silence and pristine beauty of the garden is destroyed when the pipes beckon the dancers. The word panic comes from the name Pan and refers to the inner vibration that disturbs our core when excited anticipation and fear combine. We fear change; we tremble at the thought of losing what we know to be true. But every word, every noise, changes us, destroys us and recreates us. Pan entices us into the garden where we are seduced into his dance of rejoicing. It is said that one must not approach this god in silence. What word will you say, what song will you sing when you enter the presence of the Divine? What expression is completely you when you can be only joyous?

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Joy Vernon has been studying and teaching energetic and esoteric modalities for more than twenty years. She is the organizer of the Denver Tarot Geeks, Denver Tarot Meetup and Fort Collins Tarot Meetup, and she served on the faculty of Avalon Center for Druidic Studies. She is one of the Psychics of Isis and has been featured at SpiritWays, the Mercury Café and psychic fairs throughout the Denver Metro and Northern Colorado. She is a Certified Professional Tarot Reader and a member of the American Tarot Association. Joy also teaches Traditional Japanese Reiki. For information on upcoming classes or to schedule an appointment, please visit JoyVernon.com.

© 2014 by Joy Vernon. All rights reserved.