As promised, here a closer look at associations. And why so?

ASSOCIATION(1) is one of the important factors of tarot and the cards are a link to trigger these. When talking of association, I refer to the following definitions:

• the act of associating or state of being associated.
• connection or combination.
• the connection or relation of ideas, feelings, sensations, etc.; correlation of elements of perception, reasoning, or the like.
• an idea, image, feeling, etc., suggested by or connected with something other than itself; an accompanying thought, emotion, or the like; an overtone or connotation: My associations with that painting are of springlike days.

Another important factor when getting involved with tarot - as a matter of fact with any other esoteric discipline - is to realize and always to remember that YOU are the driving force here. It is a game in which you are letting images and concepts and their associations have an effect on you. And it is you who chooses which of the many association is going to be THE association, the ‘result’, the ‘answer’, to that specific laid tarot or astrology reading in that specific moment. And you always need to remember that the moment you are telling yourself “this is it”, or “this is what it means”, you are agreeing with this being “a fact” and are now ready to walk the path where this will become visible in your life. So you need to realize that the moment you agree with the fact that “all Cancers are shy and withdrawn and thus I am too” you WILL be shy and withdrawn as you’ve just agreed to being that and at a later stage in life you might have a hard time of breaking again away from that.

It is not a “bad” thing to play with these labeling systems, but do realize that you are setting up boundaries for yourself and a sort of cage: the more solidly you give these labeling systems power, the more you will be bound by them as the more you’ve agreed to them. You don’t HAVE TO agree to those boundaries and you can be completely different - a funny effect this can have is that it makes people struggle to explain why you are such an atypic Cancer, let THEM try to come up with some strings they can connect between certain constellations to explain this fact, usually they will be able but this is also because the system is set up in such a manner that you have buffer zones and elasticity for allowing you to connect strings which you never would be able to if it would be a rigid system and all in absolutes.