What gives meaning to meaning?

Sounds tautological, and yet it invites some perusal.

How do we experience our lives? What is it that is valuable to us? How do we experience meaning?

Tarot card readings reveal the network of our relationships, not only with other people, but with ourselves.

Thomas Attig reminds us: we derive meaning from our experiences; from our connections; from our sense of purpose in life. And these may show in all sorts of areas.

The beauty of tarot card readings is that they can show up precisely where and in what areas those meanings will appear.

For instance, many of us are vitally interested in the possibility of a soul mate being in our lives. And we'd run through in our minds what a soul mate might look like for us, or how they might act in their lives, how they would be, how they would relate to us.

With the Four of Swords in the DruidCraft tarot we enter again the world of decision-making, of coming to grips with the way we think, how we go about the cognitive landscapes of our lives.

Fours suggest order, structure, the building props of existence.

Often in today's world people feel they are leading busier and busier lives. Many feel on edge, and are quick to temper.

In this tarot card, which depicts a man leaning back against the immense roots and trunk of a tree, we are encouraged to take some time out, to dwell awhile.

Thomas Attig wrote in his The Way We Grieve, that the bereaved are faced with the task of relearning the world. It's a poignant reflection at this time of the year when the events of September 11th so dramatically bring to the fore the pain of loss, and the pain of loss in a world suddenly so different.

So what in the tarot can help us re-learn the world, as Attig put it?

What comes to mind firstly is the major Arcana tarot card, the Wheel of Fortune.

(It's also a card which, aptly, synchronistically, emerged out of a shuffling of cards that I did whilst thinking of Attig's phrase).

How DO we handle change? What type of change? Change in one area of life more than another? How do we recognize change? Is change, transformation? Revolution? Reaction?

It will differ for each of us, depending on the circumstances of our lives.

The Wheel of Fortune, turns, and keeps on turning. Seasons come and go. We are born, we live, we die. The old gives way to the new, and the new, in turn, becomes old.

But re-learning the world, that's a powerful phrase, an opening into action, in a way, as well as a description of an activity.

It's often suggested tarot cards are like mirrors for each of us. They mirror what's happening and they reveal to us sides of our characters we might not ordinarily be so aware of.

Let's see how this might appear in the four of wands in the DruidCraft tarot.

It's a deck of tarot cards I keep finding myself drawn to; it's the sense of the green, the Celtic sight, the visionary shamanism of older ways.

Wands express the element of fire.