🕯️ Rag to Radiance
🕯️ Rag to Radiance: A Throw the Rags Ceremony Reading
Ceremonial Tarot Reflection — June 2025
For the first time in years, I laid my cards down—not for show, not for answers, but to meet myself.
To witness what still lives.
To offer what still hurts.
To ask: What remains when I no longer carry what was never mine?
This reading was part of my ongoing Throw the Rags Ceremony—an act of sacred release and reclamation. The “rags” represent all that has clung to me: shame, silence, distortions, performative expectations. I throw them not in hatred, but as a final offering. Ashes to the earth. Truth to the sky.
This is the record of what came forward.
🖤 1. The Rag — XIX: The Sun
What is being released
I am releasing the illusion of innocence.
The warmth I once trusted was not always pure. Joy, once my compass, was sometimes used to blind me to harm. The Sun here is not betrayal—but disillusionment. The soft light that was taken advantage of. I now release the belief that light must be naïve. I make room for a radiance that sees clearly.
🪞 2. The Root — Six of Wands
Where it began
This wound began in visibility.
Being praised when I performed. Being celebrated only when I succeeded. I learned to wrap myself in victory to be worthy. The wound is not about failure—but about conditional love. This is where the mask first stitched itself. I return now to the self who never needed to earn her light.
🕸️ 3. The Residue — Seven of Swords
What still lingers
The hiding. The distrust. The silent thief.
Not all deception came from others. Some of it, I enacted to protect myself. A kind of quiet survival. I tucked away parts of me in locked boxes. This residue is the cloak I wore to walk unseen. It whispers still—but I am loosening its threads.
🔥 4. The Ember — Seven of Wands
The power hidden in pain
I fought. Quietly, fiercely, endlessly.
This card stands tall. It does not ask for applause. It is the sacred refusal to be erased. Even when misunderstood, outnumbered, or exhausted—I stayed true. The ember is not flashy. It is the soul’s spine. And it is still glowing.
🌱 5. The Spark — X: Fortune Faery (Wheel of Fortune)
What begins to return
The cycle shifts. The spell breaks.
This card is not just luck—it is cosmic agency. I see now that the loops I’ve walked can end. I don’t have to repeat what hurt. I can choose differently, even when the world doesn’t understand. This spark is the scent of freedom—of change on the wind.
🌊 6. The Flame — XIV: Temperance
What radiates now
I become the vessel. The balanced one. The weaver of opposites.
No more swinging from silence to scream. No more extremes of hiding or overexposure. I am the priestess who pours, who mixes grief with grace. I do not reject the fire or the water. I hold both. This is the flame of wholeness.
🌬️ 7. The Rising Smoke — Nine of Swords
What message rises from the ashes
I know what it means to be awake at night, haunted.
This card bears witness. I am not ashamed of my pain—it speaks to the unseen realms now. I am not broken—I am a signal fire to others in the dark. This smoke carries my testimony: "I have walked through torment and did not vanish. I remain."
🌕 Reflection
This reading did not answer a question.
It revealed a passage.
It mirrored my exhaustion and my strength. My grief and my grace. My unraveling—and my return.
I read not to predict. I read to remember.
I document this ceremony as a mark on the path of my soulwork.
If others find resonance here, may it be so. But this record is for the part of me who thought she was lost.
She is not.
She is here.
And she is rising.
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(6) (5)
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(4) (3)
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(1)
Rag To Radiance Spread.
