#veevigil

Roots: Queen of Summer

Admiring and admired, she enjoys a little bit of pleasure for every sense at once. For you is coming a bit of time to be this Queen, to enjoy some serenity and emotional comfort. Pride, even. This sumptuous calm enables the Queen to see clearly without effort, with a strength born of struggle’s cease. Autumn’s going to bring you a bit of that, it seems. 

Stem: The Moon

It would be easy to say that this all came from a dream. The image in the card, though, is so much deeper than it appears. The sky has darker layers and goes on forever. The luna moths actually glow, and their wings make soft sounds. It’s more than a dream, it’s a world beyond worlds, a life beyond life. What’s continuing from this last season into this one is a mixture of subconscious stirrings and those otherworldly influences.

First Branch: Five of Summer

This Five represents the disruption of unstable plans— frustrating, but not unexpected. A fairy’s elaborate sand castle is destroyed by the tide, something she should have known was coming. It’s distressing, yes, but completely possible to handle it well and learn from it. It feels like the kind of thing where overreaction can spin it out of control. How you handle a minor setback or irritation could determine part of the way the Queen’s energy unfolds, whether by blocking it or increasing the flow.

Second Branch: Knight of Winter

This Knight is less cold and calculating than his counterpart in Swords, but still shrewd, impulsive, and determined. I love that there are blackthorns in this card, because of the intense defensiveness Lunantishees. Every time I think of them, I practically see them hovering around, ever watchful. This Knight is tempered enough that he may not seek out conflict, but he’s always ready for it, and he’s glad to know that it’s just a matter of time. A warrior kept in check by honor and little else, prepared for any opportunity to unleash. As another possible path, it seems to me as though you could get the opportunity to be the Knight, too. But, as far as I know, you have no liege to direct you, which means that you monitor yourself.

Broken Branch: Knight of Summer

I find it absolutely fascinating that this card should come up in the same place for two readings in a row, and after a lot of shuffling, too.

It seems brighter to me, now, and more alive. I feel the lift of a warm updraft, and the exhilaration of flying. He’s Icharus at his zenith, and getting carried away must be an incredible feeling. At the same time, I’m also struck by the kinship between the turtledove and the Knight. It seems like the purest partnership, the kind of love that wasn’t necessarily founded in sex or romance. This is a pitfall not because the relationship itself is dangerous, but because it’s so exciting and enveloping that other things may fall by the wayside. Prioritizing this over all else would have consequences and complications, especially in conjunction with others. Unlike most pitfalls, it doesn’t quite seem like something to be avoided, more something of which to be watchful.

First Leaf: Awakening

In this deck’s version of Judgement, a fairy pauses a journey to gaze into his reflection as if for the first time. The momentary lapse of the first branch, it would seem, can have larger consequences of awareness. Seeing yourself and your behaviors in a clearer, different way like this makes a small event have great meaning, appropriate when a major card follows a pip. It also feels like a break in difficulty and a chance to change paths or reaffirm your commitment to your first one. It’s a golden relief, rich and crisp and full, and it has a beautiful simplicity.

Second Leaf: The Wheel of Time

The Victorian Fairy Tarot takes as its guide here not fate or fortune, but the inevitability of time and its passage. The natural world has cycles and laws, and much of this deck is bound by it even as it crosses into the fairy world. It’s interesting to get a card with more passivity in its potential right after the Knight of Winter. Arguably, this is because that great, immutable certainty presents a challenge to that independent streak of knight-errand in you. The more I think about the conflict between these two cards, the more right it seems. It’s not so simple as “finding your place” within a natural order, not at all. That doesn’t even suit you. No, it’s an understanding of something greater, humbling without removing anything from you. An epiphany, more or less, about the world at large.

Bonus: Ace of Spring

It just fluttered out of the deck while I was shuffling, and since it flashed like the petals drawn on the card, I figured it came out for a reason. The gift of energy and beginnings for you, with a cool sort of purity, like an early breeze laced with melting snow. It feels wonderful, like a little kiss of blessing from the deck itself. :)