I've been a fan of Aeclectic Tarot for a long time. I'm pretty sure I was using their rich site to check tarot meanings before I even had cards, myself. I remember once I got to the point of checking the site for meanings, I would see lots of featured decks here and there on the different pages and I looked forward to the day when the Ellis decK would be there as well.

Well, that day is now. :)

"I'm not used to seeing you all butched up!" was the soundbite from yesterday. There was that tiny voice telling me the gig was up. I obviously wouldn't be thought of as a reader with any kind of credibility without my wizard-like beard I had been growing.

Growing until recently, that is. About a week ago, I went under the scissors. It started off innocently enough, one of my lovely housemates was giving me a haircut, and she got down to the facial hair. I told her to go ahead and give it a bit of a trim, and in my mind I was thinking a snip here, a snip there, and *BAMF*, done. What happened before I could speak was the scissors came awfully close to the face, and then, "snip." It was too late. What was once a length of bushy hair coming from my right cheek was freshly trimmed grass. The only thing left to do at that point is go with it. In a short while, a year's worth of beard was gone.
    So now, I have a much shorter, neater, so-much-nicer-in-the-summertime beard with a bit of moustache for fun. It looks good! My mom of all people will be ecstatic (she's hated the beard) and everything seemed great until I thought for a moment "Oh yeah, didn't I look much wiser, older, and capable of divination with that crazy looking beard?" I really did think this for a moment. I started to worry.
    A lot of my peers in the Tarot world put a lot of stock into appearance. That is because people in general put a lot of stock into appearance. There are quite a few readers who go through great pains to look like they're gypsies with a cart parked around the corner and you know what? They look good doing it! I understand this and I can respect this. Many, many readers work as entertainers reading at parties and they had darn better look like a reader is supposed to look.
    I do most of my readings by private appointment and I don't see myself putting together a resume to hand to party planners. I just can't do it. I know my Tarot and I can tell you what is says and I don't try to scare you into coming back for weekly installments. I'm just little old me and I'm pretty good at reading cards. So, I surprised myself when I suddenly felt insecure without the beard. It had become a real moment of the Tower. Something material had fallen away and what was left behind was the Real ol' World.
    Before I found myself totally unrooted, and trying to glue hair back on, I took a moment to think back to my first reading. There I was, in the same room I use now, but totally green. My friend who let me practice on her was good enough to let me use the book Psychic Tarot, for every card. She didn't even mind when I went back over the book AGAIN, when re-explaining the cards. In the end, it was a pretty disjointed experience, but we had gotten down to the bottom of the spread. All I needed was my brain and my gut (and yeah, that book) and the ability to go with the flow.
    The Tower is usually in reference to something a bit more dire than a sudden change in appearance, but when reading, you have to remember that from the perspective of your Querrent, the molehill may be doing the mountain routine. In my case, I related to the Tower card because I felt like I'd lost my "Dumbo Feather." (If you don't remember the story, Dumbo thought the whole reason he could fly had to do with the possession of a feather he had gotten from some blackbirds and then he lost it.) The Universe finds funny ways to teach us lessons when we lose sight of ourselves. Maybe I needed a better look behind all that hair to remember where I was coming from. After all, the best lesson the Tower gives us is we didn't need what we lost.