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

Sunday, November 15, 2015

No Bright Ideas Left

This week I'll be using the Fairytale Tarot created by Alex Ukolov, Karen Mahony and Irina Triskova; this set is published by Magic Realist Press. Along with it I'll be drawing from the Tree Affirmation Cards, created and self-published by Victoria Sofia Lewis. Today's cards are the Devil and "Kashmirian Rowan:"
          The Hans Anderson story of "The Red Shoes" illustrates the consequences of being lured by vanity and forgetting one's duties and obligations. What seemed a harmless pair of shoes, something that could make her feel better about herself, became a young woman's burden and bane. The Devil is a reminder that those tempting, quick fixes can become our addictions and obsessions that cause more problems than they solve.
          The Kashmirian rowan tree, with golden russet foliage and white berries, is one of the last trees to lose its leaves in the autumn. It seems to stand as a symbol for last chances among the other bare trees. Lewis associates it with grace, a word often used to represent mercy that comes with surrender. In the story above, such surrender came with acknowledgment and sacrifice (the loss of her feet). I personally choose to think of grace as the shrinking of my ego; it is a matter of acceptance rather than earning something. Anne Lamott explains it well:
It's the help you receive when you have no bright ideas left, when you are empty and desperate and have discovered that your best thinking and most charming charm have failed you. Grace is the light or electricity or juice or breeze that takes you from that isolated place and puts you with others who are as startled and embarrassed and eventually grateful as you are to be there.

5 comments:

  1. When you are spiritually connected, you are not looking for occasions to be offended, and you are not judging and labeling others. You are in a state of grace in which you know you are connected to God and thus free from the effects of anyone or anything external to yourself.""
    Wayne Dyer
    Even a pair of red shoes :D

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    1. To make a spiritual connection - however one might define it - is the key for moving past the dictates of the ego. :)

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  2. In Celtic symbolism the Rowan tree is the Sacred Tree of Life I believe. Grace, the beautiful, merciful gift, I'd been dead in the water with out it a long time ago when I'd run out of bright ideas!.
    I so love Anne Lamott, she's my favourite writer. She's so real and laugh out loud funny.

    http://catherinemeyersartist.blogspot.ca/2015/03/the-work-is-to-keep-doing-work.html

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    1. I like Lamott too. :D She is a gritty yet funny story-teller! I first came across her as a writer when I read "Traveling Mercies."

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  3. We've talked about her before Bev...it's coming back to me ;) Traveling Mercies was my first introduction to her as well. I was hooked from then on.

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