Breaking Through with Chrysalis

Card of the Day  on Facebook today is Sorceress (High Priestess)  from Chrysalis Tarot.  A fitting card, as using this deck definitely taps into the magic the Sorceress brings us. Today is a day to especially look for intuition, synchronicity, and messengers from the natural world; what is hidden may be revealed in the most unexpected ways.

The more I work with Chrysalis, the more I love it and the more I'm getting out of it. My infatuation with this deck began immediately; I was awed by Holly Sierra's brightly colored artwork, and inspired by Tonie Brooks explanations in the LWB that came with the deck. When I began to read Tonie's weekly blog posts featuring various Chrysalis cards in more depth, that's when my excitement really took off. I love Tonie's spiritual/esoteric knowledge and its application to Chrysalis card meanings, making my experience of the deck much deeper and richer.

Normally, I'm reluctant to take on a deck which diverts much from the more traditional RWS system. After all, it took a long time and lots of work to learn it (and I'm always learning more), so why complicate things with yet a new set of meanings? So, I have to admit, after the initial glow of my newly acquired Chrysalis honeymoon began to fade, I retreated just a bit - balking at having to learn new and/or extended meanings of the cards in order to fully be able to use the deck for readings. No longer was it sufficient to pull up my mental keywords/meanings lists and weave a progressive story of prediction and trends. No, Chrysalis was something else and demanded attention in its own right.

Well, here's the good news -- its magic is beginning to work. Tonie insists that Chrysalis is a healing and gentle deck, designed to transform its users. And it is, and does. One problem I've always had is being too much in my reasoning head, even with Tarot. It's a constant dance to allow myself to push through my mental barriers into the creative, intuitive, magical place from which all inspiration and spiritual insights emerge. I cannot easily stay in my left-brain place when using Chrysalis. At the beginning,  I resisted its call to deeper spiritual insight by sticking to my RWS mental lists and labels, and the results I got were difficult to grasp and frustrating to apply. However, my perseverance is paying off now in richer readings that tap into a deeper place and lead me down interesting pathways. Rather than merely reflecting daily life issues, Chrysalis reveals the currents that run beneath. I don't think I'll go back to using RWS (or clones) as much as I used to now that I've tasted Chrysalis magic!

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