Invoking the Silent Sage

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Invoking the Silent Sage

Here is a tarot spread I developed five years ago for my Denver Tarot Geeks meetup. You can use it to channel your inner Queen of Pentacles, or invoke any other court card that you’d like to get to know better!

To channel your Inner Queen of Pentacles, place that card (or the card you would like to work with) in the Significator position.

Write an invocation to the significator card, considering it as a spiritual guide or silent sage. Then say the invocation out loud.

Here’s my invocation that I wrote for the Queen of Pentacles:

Queen of Earth
You are Demeter who makes the grain grow.
You are her daughter Persephone who rules the treasures of the underworld.
You are the harvest that bows low the heavy branches.
You are the seed which will renew.
You are the royal oak, strong and enduring; you are the mighty door shut tight.
Queen of Earth, we name you Cerdo the craftsman and Cardo the hinge.
You are Cardia who inspires the locksmith.
Your power is to open what is shut; to shut what is open.
Yours is the door of renewal.
You look both back and forward.

Prepare, shuffle and cut as you normally would for a reading, meditating on the Significator card as a guide and on the invocation you performed.

Lay out cards 1-3. These cards will result randomly from the shuffle and cutting of the deck. Based on the spread positions, interpret these cards before continuing. It helps to journal your thoughts.

Intentionally select cards 4-6 as a synthesis of the Significator and each of the first three cards. To do this, card 4 will be the result of combining a visual cue from the Significator and a visual cue from card 1; card 5 will reflect the visual cues of the Significator and card 2, etc. To find a synthesis card, compare two or more cards and note any visual details or cues common to each card being compared. Also consider what detail on each card most specifically summarizes the meaning you see in the card. Note such a cue for each card being compared. Now look through the deck for a single card that contains the visual cues you have made note of. This card is the “synthesis” of the other cards. (This is a special technique I developed in August 2008.)

Spread positions:

1. Queen of Pentacles, this is how I see you in others.
2. Queen of Pentacles, this is the question you ask me.
3. Queen of Pentacles, this is the action you encourage me to take.
4. Queen of Pentacles, this is the quality you ask me to embody.
5. Queen of Pentacles, this is what you think it’s important for me to consider.
6. Queen of Pentacles, this is the goal you inspire me towards.

Here is a pdf of the Invoking the Silent Sage Tarot Spread.

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N.B. Much of the symbolism in the invocation is taken from: Graves, Robert. The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. Amended and Enlarged ed. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966. pp 67-73 and 176-179. I first used some of this material for a summer solstice ritual developed by the Cottonwood Coven (Bellvue, CO) in 1994.

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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.