I use tarot and oracle cards as tools for reflection and contemplation. Rather than divining the future, they are a way for me to look more deeply at the "now."
"The goal isn't to arrive, but to meander, to saunter, to make your life a holy wandering." ~ Rami Shapiro

Wednesday, September 17, 2014

Long and Winding Road

From the Margarete Petersen Tarot, the Moon; from the Elemental Dice, "Wind + Earth:"
Petersen describes the Moon as: "groping its way from the ocean of unconsciousness to the mountains of knowing." While Freud believed the unconscious held only boogeymen ― memories of traumatic experiences, irrational desires and instincts, etc. ― modern-day psychologists consider it a file cabinet of both good and bad. It preserves and runs the physical body, stores and organizes memories, and makes associations between experiences. The domestic dog and the wild wolf show the problem with conscious and unconscious communication - the first uses logic and reason and the latter uses emotion and symbolism. I do agree with C.G. Jung somewhat: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." There are choices I make that are not based in reason. Some of these decisions can have a negative effect on my life, if I'm unaware of what triggers them. To solve the puzzle, I need to understand why I choose an emotional reaction over common sense. I'll have to use the language of the unconscious to do so, which means working with dreams, tracing emotional triggers from present to past experiences, creative expression through journaling and art, and working with stories (tarot is useful here). No wonder the path that crustacean has to crawl is so long and winding.
The Elemental Dice combination forms "dust storm." My mom just got back from Africa where she encountered such a storm. It doesn't just blind your eyesight, it gets up your nose, in your ears and in your mouth. All of your senses are basically useless; in the same way, trying to objectively identify and rationalize what comes up from the unconscious will not work. I'm going to have to think outside of the box.   

9 comments:

  1. I like the metaphor of the dust storm. Although life would be so much easier if we could make our unconscious conscious it would be predictable and boring. Instead of a winding road we would have a highway with road signs and traffic lights :)
    No I prefer this ongoing quest with it's ups and downs and even with it's "dogfights"

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    1. Yes, to instantly (rationally) try to make the unconscious conscious would probably just create conscious chaos! :D

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  2. great reasoning post today.
    My dad's folks with 9 children came out of the dust bowl during the depression. Grama said the same thing as your mom. I watched a documentary many years ago that had early moving pictures of that huge blackish cloud coming, wall to wall and sky high. That we can be made of sterner stuff is a credit to humankind

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    1. You aren't kidding about being made of sturdy stuff to deal with that. And I forgot to mention how it sandblasts your skin too. Egads!

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  3. Interesting, for a card associated with lack of clarity and the mysteries of the deep, this one from the MP is the clearest I've seen so far… Good luck with diving into the depths :)

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    1. I was wondering how this would present itself, but now that its the end of the day, I think it was a reaction I had at book club to the word dogma - a definite trigger for me.

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    2. Ha, yes, not a word I get on with well, either!

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  4. What beautiful imagery in this deck. A great post Bev! Of course any reference to Carl Jung. well ya got me right away!

    Like the crustacean we all have to have some sort of protection on the outside to protect that soft underbelly.
    The unconscious is a wondrous thing, but more wonderful when it meets up with the conscious.

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    1. Yep, another Jung fan here. :) The crustacean's shell is is good analogy for the conscious and unconscious!

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