Joy Vernon’s The Four Corners of the Barn Tarot spread. I encourage you to experience this original Tarot spread by Joy Vernon to get a taste of her uniquely actionable and creative and effective perspective to utilize your cards in new ways. Enjoy!
This is from 2013, right after I went radio silent, and I just discovered it 7 years later now that I’m not. Thanks Joy!
I resonate with what you have created that was sparked into being from my expression of my bread making experience! I full-on dig that! Your original Tarot spread, The Four Corners of the Barn, takes the idea I was kneading and places it anew without armature to rise again in a wholly different iteration of what-da-heck’s-gonna-come-outa-da-oven-this-time? An original Tarot spread was inspired!
The structure that your Four Corners of the Barn method puts in place is akin to An Emperor Move which establishes the four corners of place, setting the tone of someone’s space of inquiry with a single card. And, in that sense it makes more bread. And, differently each time.
Instead of one of the definitions of insanity Einstein expressed, repeating the same things expecting a different result, your spread provides a way to use this Emperor Move that breeds a genius loci in a single card to repeat the same things to expect a new experience, much like when one kneads the bread the next time. The house STILL smells grand, though… comfortable with the not-knowing of what’s going to come out of the oven? I love that point of not-knowing where it’s ok to be courageous and have fear at the same time. Though, just because fear is present doesn’t mean being afraid has any need to be there.
Fear can simply be an indicator, a beacon in one’s own awareness. Fear can be seen simply like flashing lights and signs on highway road construction that indicate to merge, to adjust course, to be aware of and navigate around or blast through/around/over a potential danger ahead. We just don’t know what’s going to come out of the oven each time. Nothing to be afraid of with the iterational alchemy of that. The comfortability with the not-knowing in those bread making operations is a joy, Heck, after a while the process expertises itself and only occasionally requires the 1-800-Take-Out move with open windows and fans and air freshener when you OOPS Towering Inferno burn the heck out of something, or the other, without fanfare, it’s stillborn and falls flat. It’s part of the process, and I love that part of the process that Tarot in the Land of Mystereum and my experiences with bread have produced an inspiration where a single card that plays its place-making tune in your original Tarot spread.
Thanks much for your original The Four Corner of the Barn spread! That’s one that strikes card-chords to resonate in a wonderful new way. That’s one that evolves how to look at and read a Tarot card!
[[[[insert the Strength card]]]] Well, hmmm. The archived oven door won’t open. Uh oh. For some reason I cannot find the icon to add an image of the Strength card. Oh well, 1-800-Take-Out came sooner than I thought. Par for the course for raising my head back up. OOPS, tallest blade of grass is the first to get cut. Then, NOPE. I can duck. Indiana Jones not my 8th degree Grandmaster taught me how to do that years ago with the Voice of… DOWN!
OH! THERE it is. I forgot about drop-downs, and I haven’t used these things in a while. Shaking head. Chuckling. Found it!
Thanks Joy! The Four Corners of the Barn is a full 4-card Tarot spread in a single card. Love the ingoing that settles in to establish an empire of place from a single card!
self-control, natural voice, simplicity
card image (c) 2011 Jordan Hoggard from Tarot in the Land of Mystereum. Used by permission, sovereign permission. 🙂
Blog (c) 2020 Jordan Hoggard
Jordan Hoggard
Pure & Blessed
April 4, 2020 at 2:19 am
The who
Jordan Hoggard
April 4, 2020 at 2:14 pm
Hey KS!
Pure & Blessed
April 4, 2020 at 5:19 pm
JJH! How’s it going?
Jordan Hoggard
April 4, 2020 at 8:28 pm
KS! Inside, home, healthy, and creative is how it’s going. You?
Pure & Blessed
April 5, 2020 at 1:25 am
Straddling two worlds. I spend the twilight hours driving bank staff to and from care homes, the rest of my time at home reading, scribbling… catnapping… So pretty much business as usual. I’m happy, healthy (touch wood) and a little bit puzzled when I hear people complain of being bored! Good to hear from you.
Jordan Hoggard
April 5, 2020 at 10:56 am
That’s wonderful to hear.I agree on the oddity of people being bored, just not something I personally fathom. Though, if I venture into an empathy (possibly folly) of their perspective in their situation, it seems everything is work/life/compulsory for them. Without that there’s not much else. I asked a neighbor how he was doing, “Bored,” he said. “Mucho Bored-o.” “Write a book,” I replied. “Yeah right. I’ll get right on that,” shaking his head. That expressed to me a common quality now more present that it is exposed by the drought of the daily minutiae overgrowth now that that has been removed. What’s the word or words for that quality? I think it’s grief, and it’s a proper pause for them. I just hope they acclimate across the false summit drought and walk into their garden to tune out the cars and ear up into birdsong. Hearing that might strike a chord to resonate. I did steal that specific tuning out except to tune in to the birds from you. Great to hear from you as well.
Pure & Blessed
April 5, 2020 at 5:12 pm
Yes, that removal of the daily minutiae, absolutely! Though I’m not sure it’s grief maybe more panic/bewilderment of what goes on in their heads when left with their own thoughts. One of the girls who I drive to work, came out at the end of her shift last week looking very puzzled. She said – Karen, I just don’t know what’s happening to me. I was changing a bed and looking out the window and watching the sheep in the fields and I asked my colleague – what do you think it’s like to be a sheep? What do you think they think about? Then she says oh! Karen? Why am I so random? What’s wrong with me?
I said nothing is wrong with you. You’ve just ditched your day to day small talk and found your imagination! Have fun with it!
Man you pinched my lines! All this time on your hands and you”re pilfering passages 🤣 plus ca change…
Jordan Hoggard
April 5, 2020 at 5:18 pm
Great point about people seeing inside now that a great deal of the chatter and noise has suddenly disappeared, experiencing their imagination AS something valuable, and it’s entirely their own.
Pure & Blessed
April 5, 2020 at 5:20 pm
I feel as though I’ve learnt more about some of my passengers in the last week than in the last two years. It’s pretty neat.
Jordan Hoggard
April 5, 2020 at 7:10 pm
That’s a wonderful perspective. Experience and connection.
It reminds me a little bit of a writer friend years back who happily started driving a cab, to bring random people into his life to use for character development and test characters, taking on their persona in the cab, for a novel he was writing.
Good for you! Taking some of that birdsong out into the world. I bet they enjoy it as well?
Pure & Blessed
April 5, 2020 at 7:47 pm
Oh yes, cab driving would be perfect for that. Do they enjoy it? Well let’s just say it’s not unknown for folks to ring the transport manager and request a change of shift so they don’t have to ride with the other driver… Though tbf he’s a ranting, road raging loon, so I may just be the lesser of two evils… 🤣
Jordan Hoggard
April 5, 2020 at 8:46 pm
I resonated When you indicated “it’s pretty neat.” That’s a wonderful perspective from my perspective.
Funny you ask about that writer-cabbie. It was 30-ish years ago. I think he ended up getting caught up in “all this research via cab” which then simply translated to it being ANOTHER reason to over-analyze it all and procrastinate via blame and distance himself further from not just typing stuff to dive in, and consequently not write.
I guess he allowed his experiential impetus and form-giver notion to be drowned. I’d chalk his blame up to self-disrespect peppered with a dash of desperation — that didn’t seem to actionably induce much urgency. I don’t know, though. I don’t know h9w it shook out. I was always trying to teach him that if he did his dishes when he was finished with them, that they wouldn’t build up like they did. 🙂 That was a while ago. Touch with that is almost ancient.
Pure & Blessed
April 6, 2020 at 2:48 am
Maybe you were trying to teach the wrong chore. Maybe polishing was what needed to be learnt. He was data mining his fares to build characters, perhaps he should have been buffing up what fate had dealt him, tossing his pages into a binder then slapping on the title – A Cabbie’s Diary. That’s a gonzo journey I’d read.
I don’t know 😜
Jordan Hoggard
April 6, 2020 at 6:47 pm
That would have been another work for his repertoire, though he was focused on mining people’s characters and personalities for characters in a novel he was working on. I wasn’t trying to teach him anything. At that point HE was the novelist, I simply the artist-architect-writer roommate. Also, early 20s the both of us. His writing was great. I think his having a bear of a time getting a publisher’s ears to perk up weighed him down. He certainly DID the work, and was understandably deflated about the WTF of rejection letters. He liked that I made free wallpaper out of all of mine, almost covered 4 full walls floor to ceiling. A poor man’s renaissance style painting hanging mosaic with NO spaces between. Laughing, it wasn’t fun patching and painting the walls when I moved. All the pin holes, all the colored paper dyes bleeding through the walls that also telegraphed back through the new paint. I guess I didn’t really begin to empathize with his pain until I started disassembling that mosaic. Then, I understood that he was understandably deflated. “HEY, take another shot! I’m so full of holes that you’ll miss.” 🙂
Pure & Blessed
April 6, 2020 at 6:58 pm
Sounds like Denver’s version of Withnail & I.
Jordan Hoggard
April 6, 2020 at 8:48 pm
Yes, in a way it does.
I value the conversation, though as well we’ve digressed way away from the topic of this post into what could be Considered a personal email in public. I value my subscribers’ time, and broach this a bit uncomfortably and at the same time wonder about people out there who get barraged with a comment email every time we go back and forth..Thoughts of yours, and from all subscribers out there? Par for the course for a blog, or too much?
Subscribers out there, my Inquiring mind would like to know so I can run a more effective blog. Please chime in in the comments. I don’t necessarily need to set up protocols, though I’m learning from all the things I unsubscribe from when they become too much, and I would like to hear your thoughts specifically and/or in general.
Thanks in advance!
Bonnie Cehovet
April 4, 2020 at 6:06 am
Happy to see that radio silence is over! Thank you for sharing this amazing spread!
Jordan Hoggard
April 4, 2020 at 11:39 am
Thank you, Bonnie! Nice to open my mouth again. You’re welcome for sharing this amazing spread. I LOVE that Joy Vernon created a 4-card reading out of a single card! I see it as a tool like a Marshall stack is a tool. When focusing on a particular card in a reading… WONDROUS how Joy’s “The Four Corners of the Barn” takes the reader on a quadrant by quadrant journey through the world of the card itself. I see the potential of the off-ramp arabesque side trip and then back onto the highway in a larger reading. And, of course, only one card? Still a journey, one card that elucidates inner and outer N S E & W! I’m gathering in this comment I’m writing to comment on your comment realizing I can’t say enough about how pleased I am that I love this spread so much. SO not Humpty Dumpty, Joy’s spread cracks open the card, though respectfully and surgically in such a way to provide that place to fully scuba style drop in to a card, or jump out of a perfectly good airplane into it’s potential. Loud. Quiet. Silent. Full. Deep. Intense. Respectful. Identity. THis spread provides such a great introduction on how to get to know a card, and of course consequently oneself.
Jordan Hoggard
April 6, 2020 at 11:10 pm
Thanks much for posting this on Pure & Blessed Tarot, Karen! I am suddenly no longer uncomfortable at all. I appreciate your perspective, and look forward to experiencing what others express about theirs. I gather it’s NOT too much. In fact it may be the BEST thing when comments generate dialogue whether fluid or on topic, and/or/neither or all. Go You! Thanks again for posting this question for the whole world to answer. It popped that concerned bubble of ego that formed. Now comes more good stuff. And/Or or Both/And, we’ll see what others feel no holds barred. Good stuff. Where’s Uranus right now? Oh! There. Cool, the Shaker-Upper is in da house squaring Pluto. SaWEET. Buckle up.
Jordan Hoggard
April 6, 2020 at 11:44 pm
And, the question rings out further at Pure & Blessed Tarot to see how people resonate with it:
https://pureblessedtarot.wordpress.com/2020/04/07/personal-emails-in-public/