Anicca

15. The Devil

The Devil is the card of indulgences and material pleasure. When The Devil appears, it urges you to take a look at the feel good factors in your life and pay attention to whether they are actually good for you. In case the card pops up when you are feeling low, it may be a sign that a little fun may be exactly what you need.

For The Fool's next lesson in his journey, he needs to realise that The Devil isn't an outside influence. It is the little voice within us that makes us a slave to the material world and often lead us to ignorance and hopelessness. The power to overcome it is also within us.

Keywords:

Upright – Attachments, Restrictions, Commitment, Limitations
Reverse – Breaking Free, Quitting, Hitting Rock Bottom, Broken agreements and Commitments.

16. The Tower

Tower is the card for shock and Chaos. Something unexpected and surprising could shake up your beliefs, assumptions and the things you took for granted. Drastic changes are required.

The Fool realizes that sometimes a shock is exactly what one needs when they are too comfortable in their life not realising that people, things and situations in his life aren't actually serving him anymore. Time to make drastic changes.

Keywords:
Upright – Sudden Shock, Destruction, Questioning Beliefs, Chaos
Reverse – Warning, Mounting Pressure, Ongoing Chaos, Stubbornness

17. The Star

The Star is the card of hope, peace and Renewal. It brings optimism for a fresh start. It urges you to do what is practically required of you in the moment, but also continue dreaming of what an ideal future looks like to you.

After his entanglements with The Devil and The Tower, The Star brings in a serene calm for The Fool. He is now optimistic and feels the need to share his optimism for those around him. The Fool discovers the peace after a storm.

Keywords:

Upright – Optimism, Renewal, Boundlessness, Peace
Reverse – Hope without Action, Unethical Healer, Pessimistic Outlook

18. The Moon

The Moon is the card of darkness, illusion and the unconscious. It is time to let go the last bit of pretence and confront what you fear.

The peace after the storm can also be a deceiving feeling if there are things that you have not confronted from your past experiences. The Fool's lesson from this card is to take stock of everything around him and within him to be able to pick up on and false illusions that he still may be carrying with him.

Keywords:

Upright – The Unconscious, The Shadow Self, Confusion, Dreams, Intuition
Reverse – Denial, repressed emotions, Projecting onto Others

19. The Sun

The Sun is the card of light. It urges you to reveal and share your true feelings and emotions. It is also a time to celebrate and aligning yourself with your authentic self.

With this card, The Fool finally understand that no challenge is too much. He can face anything as long as he draws from his experiences and lessons to understand exactly how great his own capabilities are and is confident about them.

Keywords:

Upright – Enthusiasm, Clarity, Personal Growth, Self Acceptance
Reverse – Afraid to Shine, Burnout, Painful Truth, Attention Seeking

20. Judgement

Judgement is the card of drastic change, review and release. This is the one last reminder that change is inevitable and continuous. It urges you to look objectively at what has come before and measure up your success and failure to learn from them. Be honest.

The Fool now needs to make the final Judgement about his life. Now that he has shed his false ego and is more equipped to see and accept himself for who truly is, he needs to decide what to shed and what to keep with him to move forward.

Keywords:
Upright – Rite of Passage, Mature, Review, Transition
Reverse – Refusing to Change, Feeling Stuck, Numbness, Feeling Judged, Being Judgemental

21. The World

This card brings in an ending and a new beginning. It urges you to move beyond your own personal quest and think in terms of what you can give back to the world.

This card brings The Fool's Journey to a full circle as his current journey ends and he is ready to take on a new adventure. What kind of journey will he take on next?

Keywords:
Upright – Integration, Completion, Options, Wholeness, Connection
Reverse – Overwhelmed, Difficulty Finishing, Clinging to Past

That is it! We have now covered the Major Arcana through The Fool's Journey. We have certainly covered your Soul/Personality/Shadow Card today if we hadn't done it before. Did it resonate with you?

Shall we take a break and take time to get more acclimated with the Major Arcana cards? Or would you like a round up? Or shall we move on to Minor Arcana. Leave your intentions in the comment section.

QOTD: What is your main takeaway from The Fool's Journey. Which Major Aracana card did you feel most & least drawn to?

I am taking my blog to the next level with Blogchatter’s #MyFriendAlexa.

I am a typical Bheto Bengali. Food and I go hand in hand. It’s mutual love, we both love each other. I love to cook and eat and the food loves to be eaten by me.

I left Kolkata in 2009. However, no matter where I am, I try to find food like Kolkata. Most of the places disappoint me; still, I am always able to find something tasty to eat.

I am here in Vizag for the last three years, and was able to find some food joints that I love.

Disclaimer: I am in no way claiming these are the best places to eat or make the best food or the other places do not offer good food. All I want to say is they are my favourite.

The Chaiwala in front of SFS State Board Gate:

Kolkata Roll Centre:

The Momowala in front of Bay View Hotel:

Upland Bistro:

Cafe Military:

Soda Paniwala:

Samosa from Sea Pearl:

 What’s your Poison... She asked me

I replied, Pain

She seems disappointed with my answer.

I asked, 

What’s yours?

She said...Love

Looking at my own reflection, I enquired, 

How can it be? Aren’t we the same.

She smiled and said......NO

I am taking my blog to the next level with Blogchatter’s #MyFriendAlexa.

So, did you guys read my last post ‘How would you like to discover yourself in the cards?’ and did you look up your personality, soul and shadow cards? And did they truly resonate with you?

Traditional Tarot decks – like The Rider-Waite deck, have 78 cards. 22 Major Arcana cards and 56 Minor Arcana cards, with 4 suits of 14 cards each. The Major Arcana represents major incidents, situations and learning curves of your life while the Minor Arcana cards deals with the everyday trials, tribulations, and situations of your everyday life.

The Major Arcana cards appear in your reading when you need to stop, take a moment, and pay attention to the theme in your life and the lesson that life is offering you. They also set the ‘scene’ for a reading and let the Minor Arcana cards add some more important details and some shades that relate to the bigger picture that the Major Arcana is painting.

Today, we will take on the Fool’s Journey to study the Major Arcana cards. The Fool’s Journey is a story that we can tell in order to help us get a glimpse into each Major Arcana making it easier to understand the set.

The first card in the Major Arcana is ‘0. The Fool’

1. The Magician

2. The High Priestess

3. The Empress

4. The Emperor

5. The Hierophant

6. The Lovers

QOTD: Have we covered your Soul/Personality/Shadow Card today? If yes, what impressions do you have of your cards so far?

I started watching Law & Order: Special Victims Unit after reading Piu’s post about her favourite TV shows. And once I started watching, I was hooked!

SVU, as the name suggests, is about special victims and mostly known as the sex crimes unit. In the first season we find out that it is a unit made up of agents who join it voluntarily. Once you know that, and watch a few of the episodes, you have a certain amount of respect for the agents who work there. It is not easy to handle the cases that they handle and then go back to normal life. It is no wonder that most of the agents who work there are single. After the kind of crimes, they deal with every day – the fact that some of them still believe in decent humans is nothing but a wonder to me.

As the seasons’ progressed, I collected quite a few favourite characters. Olivia Benson, the face of the series, is an amazing character. The amount of compassion she has for each victim, the way she turns up at her job day after day with all heart is really amazing! There’s Odafin ‘Fin’ Tutuola who his just there, every day, doing his job and a background that he doesn’t talk much about. Then there is Dominick Carisi who enters the scenes with an attitude that has Olivia Benson asking, ‘Carisi, remind me why you're SVU, again?’

Carisi’s response was:

I worked Homicide, couple years. It's the women who get you. I mean, they're dead, but their hair's clean, they're nicely dressed, they're made up. And that means their husbands, or their boyfriends did it. It's like they knew. They knew it was coming. They don't even look surprised.

And the way he says it – it surprises you and he grows as the show progresses.

But the one character that will stay with me even after the show is over is Rafael Barba, Assistant District Attorney. Barba is introduced to the audience in Season 14 as a recurring character and then becomes a part of the main cast till Season 19.

When Barba first shows up, he is almost ruthless – with the reputation as someone who will take on the toughest cases, even the ones that no one else will touch. He slowly warms up to the SVU and develops a good friendship with Olivia Benson. He is ruthless – he pushes the members of the SVU, the suspects and sometimes even the victims to get the results that we want. At the same time, he can also be calm and composed in the courtroom. Some of my favourite scenes involves him being extremely quiet and calm when the defence attorneys are ripping the witnesses apart and using the dirtiest tricks in the book. 

I liked him from almost the beginning, but as the show progressed his character arc grew by leaps and bounds. Everyone on SVU do their best to make the world a better place by placing their faith in the victims and then fighting to put the perpetrators behind the bars. But then Barba doesn’t just do his own job but goes one step further!

In Flight Risk (Season 19, Episode 11), a flight attendant is raped by the pilot, and the company not only covers it up but forces the flight attendant to continue working with him in close quarters despite promising her otherwise. Once SVU manages to put the pilot away for rape – this is a (slightly paraphrased – as much as I can remember) discussion that Olivia Benson and Barba has shortly after:

Benson: Putting away a single pilot rapist isn’t enough?
Barba: No, it's not. The whole culture has to change. All the people who enabled Captain Carter should be in that cell with him.
Benson: Yes, they should. But unfortunately, being sexist, misogynistic pigs isn't a crime.
Barba: It should be.

Barba goes on to hold a grand jury  to charge the airline company with grand larceny. It is his way of trying to make a difference - by trying to change the law that lets people look away and pretend that nothing is wrong. He knows that it is a long shot; that he can only try and probably not be able to make such a huge change in his lifetime, yet he fights for it anyway.

Now the point is, we all talk about female stereotypes, we all fight it in our own way (I hope we all do). But face it, female stereotypes are the real issue, but we also need to address the other elephant in the room, the male stereotypes. They are so interconnected that we can’t move forwards without addressing both issues.

According to various analysts and researchers, male characters fall within a range of stereotypes. 

The most popular stereotypes of male characters are:

The Joker: The funny who no one takes seriously, he is there just for the comic relief, most importantly, no girl wants to date him.

The Jock: He is athletic, muscular, date the sexiest girl, is usually dumb, and sucks at studies.

The Strong Silent Type: He exudes strength by taking action without expressing or worrying about their emotions. He loves to deny his emotions and feelings. Denial is his poison. 

The Big Shot: These are the people who think they are mighty or they are acting like they are better than everybody else when in reality they are not.

The Action Hero: This is the one with a savior complex. It’s his job to save someone, especially a girl. We see them everywhere with their inflated muscles and egos. 

The Buffoon: Commonly described as a bungling father figure. They are usually well-intentioned and light-hearted, however completely hopeless when it comes to parenting, dealing with domestic or career issues.

However, when we dig dipper, one common theme in all the stereotypes are “be a man, suck it up,”

Let us see what are the most common male stereotypes:

Vulnerability: The biggest stereotyped male behaviour is showing Vulnerability. Hey are suppose to be the MAN, can’t ask for help, can’t show fear, he will not express his love, in short, a robot with muscles.

And when they actually ask for help, they have penalized for the challenge of this notion.

Emotions (Sadness): The only emotion a man is allowed to show is his anger. In various cultures, men are socialized to be stoic.

And when they show any other emotion other than anger they are showed with amazing adjectives like being pussy.

Love for Sports: Men are supposed to love sports, especially the aggressive ones, like rugby, football, basketball.

Control their woman: A man have to be in control of his home, especially his wife. If one can’t control their wife, it’s a big shame.

Modesty: Men are expected to be proud of their achievements. Research shows that men who were more modest about their qualifications were evaluated as less likable.

Now, what we can do about it…

The simplest answer here is to teach our children to be more compassionate to everyone, celebrate men who dare to express their emotions, broaden gender stereotypical roles, most importantly do not gender police.

Let’s start this discussion with the wise words of Nelson Mandela,

“We slaughter one another in our words and attitudes. We slaughter one another in the stereotypes and mistrust that linger in our heads, and the words of hate we spew from our lips.” 

I am taking my blog to the next level with Blogchatter’s #MyFriendAlexa.