In the cards this week: Reason and chaos

A not unusual combination for these Interesting Times

This week's Minoan Tarot cards:

Eight of Labryses: You may feel powerless or like you have no options, but that's an illusion. Anxiety may be clouding your thinking. Look behind the emotions to reach the state of clear thinking that will allow you to see where the solutions lie.

The Tower: These are the times we live in. Turbulent, yes. Unprecedented, no. The world goes through cycles of chaos and destruction before rebuilding anew. Recognize the pattern and find your own pathway through.

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This week’s cards carry a more positive message than might immediately appear. I was a little concerned to turn over the Tower first thing on a Monday morning, but after some thought, it made perfect sense.

Let’s start with the first card, though, the one from the top of the deck: the Eight of Labryses, which speaks to the best way to deal with any problems that might confront us this week.

As I’ve mentioned before, the Minor Arcana cards in this deck aren’t pips. Each image illustrates the meaning of the card. You just have to look.

In the Eight of Labryses, we see a stack of labryses with their handles bound tightly together. But examining more carefully, you may notice that the ends of those cords are hanging loose — so the labryses aren’t actually stuck together. It just looks that way at first glance.

Life is like that sometimes. You feel like you don’t have any options, or like the options you do have are all bad ones: stuck between a rock and a hard place.

The Eight of Labryses has a helpful message for those situations. It suggests that you’re not seeing the situation clearly due to emotions such as anxiety (gee, I can’t imagine why anyone would be anxious these days, can you?).

So this week, take the time to sift through those roiling emotions. Part the curtain and peer into the more rational part of yourself. And allow your sense of reason and your ability to analyze a situation based on its facts to come to the fore.

That’s where you’ll find your solutions.

Now back to that Tower card…

Nobody likes to see it turn up in a reading. But it’s this week’s second card, the “secret treasure” one that’s supposed to help us make our way through the mess and maybe even find a little joy in it.

So when I pulled it off the bottom of the deck, my first thought was, “It’s time to accept that we’re in one of those chaos periods that happen every so often in human history.”

The Bronze Age collapse. The fall of the Roman Empire. The Egyptian Intermediate Periods.

Empires rise and empires fall. But ordinary people like you and me, we just keep on keepin’ on.

The history books talk about kings and generals and empires. But that’s not what daily life is about for most people.

From ancient farmers to modern office workers, we’ve always just gone about our daily lives, taking care of ourselves and our families and friends, doing our best to navigate the chaos that those big leaders generate in their ridiculous attempts to gather even more power to themselves.

When will they ever learn?

So even though the Tower is usually a pretty daunting card, having it show up in today’s reading actually makes me feel a little better.

We’ve done this before, over and over again, throughout human history. Our ancestors survived — otherwise we wouldn’t be here.

We’ll ride the crazy waves of this tsunami of chaos and change until we reach the far shore. And then we’ll continue keepin’ on keepin’ on, as humans have always done.

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About Laura Perry

I'm the founder and Temple Mom of Ariadne's Tribe, a worldwide inclusive Minoan spiritual tradition. I'm also an author, artist, and creator who works magic with words, paint, ink, music, textiles, and herbs. My spiritual practice includes spirit work and herbalism through the lens of lifelong animism. I write pagan / polytheist / magical non-fiction and fiction across several different subjects and genres. My Minoan title in the Moon Books Pantheons series is now available for pre-order and will be released on 26 August 2025. While that process percolates along, I’m finishing up the illustrations for a book of modern Minoan myths which will be released this summer. I’m also an avid herb and vegetable gardener and living history demonstrator.