A TRICKY PORTRAIT: TO STAY OR TO LEAVE

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the channel. Thank you for tuning back in. Today, I want to share with you a tricky portrait that I recently drew. And it is tricky mainly because of the question that I wanted to answer. I drew this portrait for myself, and the question was about whether I stay or leave from a certain place.

You can pause the video and have thought about this, and you will see why the reading was generally tricky. So I suggest you do this to sort of juggle a little bit your interpretation of the portrait and un-pause the video to hear what I have to say about it and why I came to the conclusion that I initially did, and then at the end of the video I will tell you what the answer turned out to be in real life. Obviously I kept a record of it and I checked back in after I got the information that I needed to draw the conclusion.

CENTRAL CARDS AND DIAGONALS

So when I ask whether to stay or to leave, obviously the Coffin is going to be a key card. The problem with the Coffin as far as I'm concerned is that it can suggest both an ending as well as a waiting time. So from the get-go, the Coffin in a key position (which are the first and the central cards of the portrait) was more or less confusing.

On top of this, there was the Tower in the center. The Tower is a card of longevity and the long term. It is not a moving card, so it does not represent change. So this card suggested that I stay.

And on top of this, we have the Flowers, and the Flowers is a card of renewal, so it points again to this idea of continuing with the current path.

So I took the first diagonal to suggest waiting until, waiting for this phase to pan out instead of leaving. So I took the first line to mean staying.

The second diagonal is also very suggestive of the idea of staying. The Tree, Tower and Lily, are three slow cards. They unfold over time. They are unmoving time cards. And again, they suggest the idea of staying.

Now, the other cards came in to bring in the confusion about whether to stay or to leave, and how to answer the question.

THE ROWS

The top row is a combination of change. So with the Ship, on the other side of the Coffin and the Lily, on the other side of the Ship, suggesting a new lease of life, I felt that this top line could suggest a change.

The middle row again suggested the idea of staying. There was an administrative element in the picture. It had to do with a renewal of my current stay. So this pair here (Letter and Tower) suggested that the contract or the agreement, and then with the Garden and Tower suggested the idea of staying.

But then again, the bottom row suggested a change because we had this Scythe on the other side of the Tree. And that is clearly an uprooting. And the Flowers, on the other side of the Scythe, wouldn't be so much a renewal or a continuation like it would in the first diagonal, but it would suggest a happy change, the idea of refreshing yourself after you've moved, you've changed, and you've left. So this added to the confusion.

THE COLUMNS

Moving on to the columns, we have the Coffin and the Letter and the Tree. And I found that this one could go both ways as well. The idea of leaving and with the Letter and Tree can suggest this announcement or this agreement of sorts that I was going to leave. But it could go in the other direction as well with the Coffin and Tree suggesting the idea of staying. And again, the Letter being that administrative element, the agreement - so sticking with the initial decision of staying, which was the case.

Now, the central column added to the confusion and suggested leaving because we have the Scythe, and this card T-crosses both lines. So the Scythe on the other side of the Tower, as far as I'm concerned, has to do with releasing the past, so it cuts short the phase that is represented by the Tower, suggesting leaving. And on top of that, we have the Ship, which is also a card of travel and movement.

And then the last column added to the idea of staying. So the Lily and Garden being in a place, being settled, and the Flowers, the idea again of renewing the situation and enjoying the stay while I'm at it - a bit like how the Flowers played out with the Tower.

I felt it sort of played out as well with the Garden, just adding a sense of well-being and happiness in the current location, suggesting that I should take advantage of the time in this place instead of leaving or moving.

So these were a mixed bag and this portrait was confusing.

MY ANSWER

There were other indications that suggested leaving. And these are the arrows, especially the one with the first card here with the Coffin and Scythe, and the Coffin and Garden, and the Scythe and Garden, as you see in the inner diagonals. It was clear that there were additional indications of leaving.

Lily with the Scythe and Letter could have also suggested that. And then there was this one with the Coffin and Scythe, like cutting short the stay.

So I had lots of reasons to be confused about whether the portrait was saying whether I should stay or leave.

But I went with the idea of staying because for me, the first diagonal is very important because it carries the two key cards.

And also, the Tower is in the center of the portrait. And this is a key card suggesting the idea of staying and waiting, and letting things pan out over time. So in terms of my question, whether to stay or to leave, it's clearly about staying.

It can also influence the Coffin and suggest that the Coffin in this case is not so much an ending, but it is a card of patience and waiting. And also with the Flowers in the first diagonal, the idea of renewing and extending the stay came through.

I also felt that the second diagonal was pretty potent. And all three cards in this line have to do with staying.

And then I also looked at the last column here. The right column is associated with the idea of the later part of a situation, not always the outcome. Some people can read it as the outcome, but it is associated with the later parts of the reading or the story as it unfolds. And it is a combination that clearly has to do with staying. So I took that as a suggestion of staying as well.

Now, what's tricky about these columns is that the first column can point to staying, the third column can point to staying, but the middle column is very much about change. But in light of the two, on either side of the central column, this could also be a change of plan and letting go of the idea of moving for the time being, like releasing this idea of moving right away and instead just sticking with it. So again, the portrait could have gone both ways pretty easily.

I ended up going with the idea of staying because of the two diagonals and the influence of the right hand side column.

And also other arrows such as the Tree, Ship, and Garden, so waiting before leaving as well. I picked that up and I came to the conclusion that it's best to wait and finish off this phase before leaving. So the idea is that I'm going to leave anyway, but I wanted to cut it short and leave sooner than it was planned, which was the initial question - whether I leave before the end of the initial commitment period or not.

And I decided that this portrait is telling me that I should wait it out and finish off the phase.

The top row could have also been read as postponing the trip. The corner cards could also suggest that pretty strongly. So the Coffin and Flowers, the idea of renewing where I'm staying, and then the Tree and Lily also sticking around.

Admittedly, this comes in contrast with the inner diamond, which is also a clear combination of a change, but it can also point to a change of plans. So whereas I wanted to leave, I could change this plan and wait before I leave, wait a while longer before I leave. And notice also that there are both elements at play and both elements are truly at play in this situation.

So there is a point where I'm going to leave. The question was more about the timing.

The Tower is very helpful in this regard, as far as I'm concerned, because the Tower is a card of time and longevity. As it figures in the center of the portrait, it really helps me tip the balance towards the conclusion that I should stick it out and be patient before I leave.

And I was trying to negotiate the change, negotiate the exit, but that wasn't successful. So the portrait and my interpretation of it turned out to be accurate and the idea that I should wait it out and stick around was what came out in reality. So it turned out to be an accurate prediction.

So I wanted to share with you this portrait as an example of how sometimes readings can be tricky and the reason really I wanted to do that is because they are not usually tricky. You are free to combine the cards in a way that makes sense. So contradictions are not necessarily going to happen if you are flexible with how you interpret the cards. You can interpret the cards in a way that is not contradictory.

But in this portrait, I felt that there were potentially some contradictions. And so what really helped with tipping the balance towards the idea of staying and not so much leaving was, for me, the Tower and how it played out in different diagonals and in different combinations, in addition to other structures and other lines that contributed to the strength of the Tower. So let me know how you would have read this portrait.

Let me know your thoughts about it. Let me know if there were other things you picked up that could have maybe changed the interpretation. And also, I would be interested to know if you came across readings like that where the cards could have gone in a couple of different ways, but then you decided to rely on some cards like a central card or some other key indication that you felt stood out in the reading so you could make a choice of an interpretation over another.

And I've said before, if there are different ways to interpret the cards and they don't contradict each other, you can go with all of these interpretations. But if there are different interpretations that do contradict each other, then you will need to make a decision, which is the case in this portrait.

So let me know how you like this interpretation. Let me know if you have additional thoughts about the way the cards can be read and other insights we can draw from them. And let me know also if you've come across such a reading where there were real contradictions and you had to make a decision about which interpretation to go with.

I hope this was helpful by way of example. Again, I look forward to your comments as always. Thank you for watching and until next time, take very good care of yourself.

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