Teneice Durrant, creator of Tarot with Ten, will use various tarot and oracle decks to provide monthly readings for writers, with exercises on using imagery and intuition as prompts. June’s prompt is about using the energy of the summer solstice to generate a story explaining why days grow shorter.
Solstice celebrations across cultures
Thursday, June 20, marks the Summer Solstice and the beginning of Cancer season. This month, I thought we’d take a break from exploring and developing the different types of literary conflicts to celebrate the longest day of the year.
Around the world, people celebrate the Summer Solstice in a variety of ways. According to Chen Yanqui at China Culture, “Summer Solstice is one of the important festivals of ancient Chinese culture. Before the Qing Dynasty, people even had a one-day holiday on the Summer Solstice. According to the records of the Song Dynasty, all officials could have three days off during the Summer Solstice.” From this account, we can see how seriously ancient governments took this day. In another ancient book, we find that people called Summer Solstice “chaojie.” Women gave colored fans and sachets to each other. Fans could help them cool down, and the sachets, besides smelling sweet, were for driving away mosquitoes.
People in Ukraine and other Eastern European countries celebrate Ivan Kupala. Verba School describes their ceremonies as such:
“This holiday combines pagan and Christian rites. Kupalo is a pagan deity (a symbol of the summer sun), and the name Ivan was added later, after the arrival of Christianity. It is associated with the name of John (Іван) the Baptist…
“In the evening on Kupala, people always made a big bonfire. They believed that fire on this day has magical power—it cleanses, burns diseases and evil spirits (therefore, girls who did not come to the bonfire on Kupala night were considered witches). The bonfire was a very important symbol of the holiday. In it, they burned the clothes of sick people and believed that this would help fight the disease. Boys and girls gathered around, led round dances, sang songs, and jumped over the fire. Such rites were supposed to protect them from all bad things for a whole year.”
In my current Tarot and Writing course (see below for info), we are using various myths and tarot cards to imagine, or re-imagine, stories. One type of myth, the natural etiological myth, uses these ancient stories to explain natural phenomena. An article from the Boston Public Library explains, “The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, and in some traditions, Litha is when a battle between light and dark takes place. In this battle, the Oak King and the Holly King battle for control. During each solstice, they battle for power, and the balance shifts. The Oak King, who represents daylight, rules from the winter solstice (Yule) to Litha. During this time, the days steadily get longer. However, during Litha, the Holly King wins this battle, and the days get steadily darker until Yule.”
For this month’s writing prompt, we will create new stories to explain why the days get shorter.
Tarot reading for writers
As always, these images are from the Rider Waite tarot deck, via Pixabay (Creative Commons license), and you can flip through all cards from this reading here:
The first force (The Oak King from the example)
Four of Pentacles and Eight of Swords
The Four of Pentacles represents the conservation of resources to the point of being miserly. They believe that there is a finite number of resources and if others have more, they have less.
The Eight of Swords represents a self-imposed prison, being afraid of moving because of imagined dangers or enemies.
The characteristics of their battle
Five of Swords and Two of Pentacles
The Five of Swords represents winning at all costs or being upset that no one is giving them credit for their wins, whereas the Two of Pentacles represents an attempt to balance out the resources fairly. Both cards feature the sea.
The second force (The Yule King from the example)
King of Cups and Strength
The King of Cups represents someone who understands and appreciates the whole range of human emotions, and can experience their emotions without letting it derail their relationships.
The Strength card indicates that the character has learned to tame their inner beast through grace and compassion, not force.
A writing exercise
Reimagining myths through tarot is one of my favorite ways to generate new story ideas. In celebration of this year’s summer solstice, create a new story using the character traits and dynamic outlined in the tarot reading—a story that explains why our days might grow shorter starting the day after the solstice.
Until next month, here’s how to find me outside of the Center:
Podcast anchor.fm/tarotwithten
YouTube Tarot with Ten
What did you think of this tarot reading and the cards as visual prompts for story development? Share with us in the comments, and contact us if you’re interested in working one-on-one with Teneice in part 3 of Writing Toward Balance and Wholeness: Tarot and the Narrative Arc (taking parts 1 and 2 first is not required).
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