#I'll post Apollo's in a bit - I was supposed to post it last night but last night was rough lmao

[gingermintpepper]

I know October is typically a month where people try their hand at somewhat elaborate creative challenges and really test themselves and their ability to stay consistent for a month but this time, I wanted to do something a little different.

The thing I'm challenging myself to do this October is to take one step. My mental health has been aggressively declining and while I'm still pulling myself together to reach out to friends for support, the one thing that does consistently give me joy and does make me feel settled is my story and I finally want to take some steps to talk about it in a meaningful way.

The concept really is simple, every day for October, I'll do my best to introduce a new character and their place in Pursuing Daybreak. A lot of the concepts and characters are, thankfully, already grouped together in sevens for this work so it did end up being a pretty neat prompt list altogether:

Apollo, who is the beating heart of this concept and story

The seven main characters (Hyacinthus to Eros)

Zephyrus who, like Apollo, is vital but haunts the story rather than participates

The seven people who are in possession of larkspurs (Penthesilea to Aphrodite)

Seven gods besides Apollo who are important to the story (Artemis to Erebus)

and finally, seven lovers and mothers to match the main cast (Leto to Eurydice) Mostly, I'm just hoping to generate some happiness for myself this month, even if it comes exclusively in the form of taking a few minutes every day to post a little goofy drawing of one of these characters I've come to cherish so much.

[missbecky]

Okay, time for another long post about a cool weird thing that happened with my cards last night. I still don't know how I feel about deities, I don't know that I'll ever worship one, as that's just not me to worship. But I have felt as though there was an entity, goddess, force, something trying to reach me. Any time I've tried to glean information on who it was, I kept getting a door slammed in my face. I kept getting messages that I wasn't ready. And I was totally fine with that.

I'm unemployed right now, I'm a single mom, and I live with my disabled mother to help take care of her. With COVID-19, we don't take chances as my mom is in the high risk category. What that all means is that I've had way too much time on my hands. So I've been like a sponge, soaking up all the knowledge I can when it comes to witchcraft. Not being ready wasn't that big of a deal, because it just meant I got to do more research and keep putting off stuff I didn't really want to do.

Yesterday, I did my daily card draw, and the message was suddenly way different. Change has always been in the messages, but also the stopping in order to be ready for the changes. Yesterday morning I drew the the star, the chariot, and the hanged man reversed. I took that as a go for it.

Later that day I was prowling all the research servers, and the went to Google something about deities, and found an article/blog post someone had written about wishing people would stop using a very specific tarot spread for deity identification. Naturally, I decide to do that very spread. It was a five card spread, I wrote down what I wanted to know, and started shuffling. I shuffled for what felt like forever, and then when I laid the cards out, without thinking, I laid out 7. At first I was going to put the last two back, but decided to leave them. And the cards were all over the place. But I looked at it, and thought, "whoa, whoever this is, is not messing around.

So this is what I laid out.

Before I get into breaking down what these cards meant and how each one directly correlates to one specific deity, I want to point out where my head was at going into this.

I basically really actually got started with everything like 2 weeks ago. I'm basically still a newborn, right? Anyway, as soon as I start researching, I keep getting drawn to Deities. That's weird because I'm an agnostic and basically have no interest in higher powers. If they're there cool, if not cool. I have always believed that if there is some kind of being that could mold and shape the world, then my puny human brain can't comprehend them anyway, and it's really none of my concern. So, it's been really strange that this repeatedly keeps sticking out for me. I get the distinct impression that whatever energy is reaching out to me is female, a tie to the moon, the feeling of 3 was there, I knew it had to be associated with motherhood, and just a general overall feel of the empowerment of women. Naturally, I just kind of assumed Hecate, but that never actually felt correct to me.

So the 3 of cups being the first card just kind of reinforced the sense of 3 to me, and the whole sisterhood aspects of women empowering women. I wrote down 3, sisterhood, and good times. In the spread that was supposed to be 5 cards (and I did 7), the first card was supposed to sum up who the deity was.

I love my tarot deck for the strength card the most, I think. Strength is a mama bear. Again, this confirms my feeling of being tied to motherhood. The second card was supposed to represent the deities weakness. I wrote mama bear, power, and overly protective.

The third card was the chariot, and according to the spread this was their strength, their power. I wrote down action, strength, determination, will-power.

Then I get to the 4th card, the lovers. This is supposed to be what they rule. This one had me scratching my head. Now the author said this one will be harder to figure out, because the deities could even try to be snarky with this. I didn't even know what to do with this card, but like it made sense later. As I was going through each card individually, however, I came up with nothing, and in turn wrote nothing.

Card 5 was to be their symbol or association, and I had drawn 7 card. Anyway, I began analyzing the reversed hierophant, and the reversed 2 of cups. By that point I'm feeling personally attacked. And then the King of swords felt like a slap in the face. Words like logical, smart, level headed came up, which is honestly the person I've always prided myself on being. What was that person doing trying to contact a deity? I basically had to stop and ask myself wtf I was doing.

Like all shadow work, I decided to go browse the internet to distract myself from having to think about it too much. So I start googling triple Goddess and love, even though the lovers definitely didn't feel right, I'm like what the hell? Why not? Hecate and Diana come up, well that's not right. So I decide to take away the triple deciding I could just be way off base with the whole 3 thing. So I Google goddess of female empowerment and found a list of badass goddesses, and Artemis stuck out to me. But I'm like, no, that can't be right. This peace loving hippie couldn't possibly identify with the goddess of the hunt (which was the extent of my knowledge about Artemis). I then Google goddess of sisterhood, envisioning a woman running with a girl gang fucking shit up. What the fuck do you know, but that is Artemis.

After that Google search, I decide I clearly don't know enough about Artemis, and had recently downloaded some Greek mythology books, have never had the slightest interest in Greek mythology, but I saved them in my Google drive just in case. After finding out a bit about Artemis from Google, I turned to the digital books I had.

It was crazy how each of the cards began actually tying into the mythology of Artemis. She traveled with like a gang of nymphs, which I'm sure there was some sisterhood there. She helped her mother deliver her twin brother, and became like the patron God of childbirth. She defended babies and Young girls. She only ever wanted to belong to herself and so she requested everlasting virginity. From what I read she was very protective, straight up murdered rapists, and she was strong to a fault, which made sense why the strength card was listed as weakness. Apollo challenged her to hit a target way out in the ocean that she couldn't see, telling her she couldn't do it, she did it to prove she could and there was no better sharpshooter than her. The target was Orion, the only person she ever loved. So the reversed two of cards made sense. The reversed hierophant made sense because she was not traditional, she went against the grain. Her story is far from ordinary, even by mythological standards. She was a straight up badass that lived life on her terms and no one else's. There's nothing more rebellious than a woman with such control of her own life and destiny. And of course the chariot would be her strength identification, she was nothing but action oriented. The lovers could be interpreted several ways, but I take it as a woman who loves herself so fiercely she had no need for any other kind. But also when I think of love, I don't think of romantic love, I think of the bond i share with my daughter. She fiercely loved her brother, and maybe because she helped with his birth it connected her to him similar to that of a mother and child? That of course speculation. But the lovers card could also be a jab at her eternal virginity. And the King of swords sounded exactly like Artemis.

So I'm convinced this spread is talking about Artemis, but I can't shake the aspect of 3. Can't let that one go. Don't know why. So I'm looking through the l The Greek Myths by Robert Graves, and in it he speculated that Artemis was in fact a triad/triple Goddess!!!

Needless to say, I lost my fucking shit after reading that one. I was right in what I felt about what traits I felt the energy having, and the fucking spread related with every gd card.

Oh, and apparently Artemis chose to spend most of her time in the mountains. One of my favorite thing in all of the things is the mountains of Colorado, second only to my daughter, and I even identify as connected with earth elements the most because of my love for mountains. Makes me wonder how long Artemis has been trying to get my attention 😉

Anyway, I don't know what this all means to me personally yet. I've been ridiculously drained today, it's already 11 pm, and I only just now felt like I had enough energy and focus to write this out. So haven't had much time to sit with everything I experienced and felt last night.

However, it was very exciting! And I had to share my experience!