I am certainly beginning to notice a theme with the shells, this being the third shell I’ve drawn in the last four days. Shells are equivalent to cups in other tarot decks. They represent the element of water and are tied to the energy of emotions and imagination. The water theme seems particularly relevant to me as I have just in the last couple of months made a deep connection to water, after spending a lifetime being ruled by FIRE (and being fairly terrified of water).

When I was a small child, under the age of ten, we had a pool in our back yard. I can remember at one point as a very young, probably 3 year old child being deathly afraid of the water, clinging to my mother desperately anytime I went anywhere near it. And then because of that pool and my daily summer adventures in it, I gradually let go of that fear and began to embrace the ease and flow of being one with the water. I turned into a water bug, pushing myself to extend the amount of time I could hold my breath, turning myself around and around doing underwater somersaults– trying to continuously push past my previous count.

Then at the end of the summer before my sixth grade year we were having a big party and one of my brother’s friends was vacuuming the pool in preparation and ripped a hole in the bottom of the lining. There went our pool, and with it my comfort and trust of the water slowly faded. To this day I have an intangible fear of water. I am a competent swimmer– but have a deeply rooted irrational fear of being in water. I’m working on it, and as strange as it may seem, these shell cards seem to be helping.

The first thing that strikes me about this card is how grounded the flamingo is in the water. It is exactly the balance I am striving for as I attempt to incorporate the element of water with my fiery undercurrents. Unlike the other two shell cards I have drawn, this card feels like it blends a rooted stability and the allowance of the flow of currents. It affirms the balance I am seeking in all aspects of myself, emotion and intellect, masculine and feminine, giving and receiving, holding on and letting go…