The Queen Issue (v. 17)

EVERY CARD TURNED
WHAT THE QUEEN OF CUPS TAUGHT ME ABOUT
ART, LOVE, AND ENDINGS by Maggie Grimason
The Queen sits on the edge of the sea, her feet cloaked in a
sky colored coat, resting on a mound of round seashells. A
beachy scrim of light blue and sheer golden cliffs surround
her. The Queen of Cups belongs to the element of water,
so it matters, then, that she came to me on an island.
I sat on moss covered rocks around a driftwood fire
while he cooked nettles over an open flame. The Salish
Sea lapped rhythmically, bioluminescence faintly glimmering
on each wave while the far North sun lingered on the
horizon until well near 11pm. That is the place where the
Queen sits enthroned. Later on, we troubled the water to
agitate the lights and see them spark. He, spooning nettles
and avocado into a tortilla for me. His dog laying between
us. Then, nearly three years later, we broke apart in the
desert during a year of a drought. The inverse of the water
element, the card turned on its head.
Again and again—the card turned up. The card
turned over. Fish, sea nymphs, shells surfacing with each
reading. The unconscious mind, the encroaching water. It
felt almost like a threat.
I shuffled myself into a small room at Blue Eagle Metaphysical
and sat down with Rev. Rhonda Harris-Choudhry—a
metaphysician and empath—with my questions held close.
My partner and I had then been broken up for five months,
and while the mourning had yet to really happen, what I
wanted to know was why the Queen of Cups kept coming up
again and again for me. As I a waded through in a quest to understand
Her, I had three advisors—Harris-Choudry, Heather
Enders, maker of the Tarot of Plants, and my youngest
sister, Maureen, and her mystical eye.
In December Maureen had given me two readings
where the Queen of Cups came up twice—as a significator,
indicating “what’s at hand,” and once, in a position illumining
the future. It made me feel confident—Maureen’s
book enumerated the meanings: calm, intuition, emotional
security, compassion, spirituality, tenderheartedness, all
with a suitable undercurrent of moodiness. I think that’s
just the way of water.
I asked Harris-Choudhry about the card and the answer
came immediately, “Oh, she’s the queen of hearts. It
has a connection to love. What’s been going on with that?”
And like floodgate opening, I told her about the Capricorn
(that turned out to be significant) who I had met on
the seashore and had left me feeling the opposite of what
the Queen of Cups card seemed to tell me—I was less than
emotionally secure. She unpacked her psychic’s tarot deck
and gave me a reading about he and I. “Let’s see what the
outcome is if you stay in this relationship,” she said purposefully
as she shuffled the cards.
She laid them down and I saw a trajectory play out—
there was heartache and loss and new beginnings. I braced
myself. “No worries, no fears,” Harris-Choudhry cooed
when she noticed, in a tranquilizing voice that makes her
so apt at her work. She continued laying out the cards.
“Oh, it doesn’t look like you’re going to have a choice actually.
Yeah. You have no choice but to stay.”
Soul mates. I didn’t know if that was a relief or bad
news. “We have two soul mate cards here,” Harris-Choudry’s
jeweled hands indicated each one. “The soul mate
relationship is not what television makes it out to be. They
romanticize it. It’s actually an I-hate-you-I-love-you-comecloser-stay-back,
dramatic relationship.” This certainly
aligned with my experience. “We learn through conflict,”
she explained.
Mother of Summer from Heather Enders’ Plant Tarot deck which represents the Queen of Cup