Hitched to Everything

From the Tarot of the Cat People, the Knight of Wands; from the Insectorum Divinorum, Arachnid:

The bobcat sniffs the air but also engages the sensory organ in the roof of its mouth to analyze scents. He knows his rider is about to head off into an adventure, but unlike his rider, he likes to get the lay of the land. This Knight's mindset is all about putting his ideas into action - less thinking and more doing is his motto. Yet the Arachnid attempts to send him the same warning given to hikers: leave things as they were found. In a new environment, even small changes can have big consequences. As John Muir stated, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe." 

More than five centuries ago, Pope Nicholas V, in his Doctrine of Discovery, told European Christians to go forth and conquer even those “in the remotest parts unknown to us all.” He gave permission to “invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue” all nonbelievers, take their possessions, and “reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.” Hence we have this myth of someone “discovering” a place that’s already there, where people already are. (A fellow once said to me, “If you want to see how much of a myth it is, just leave your purses and your wallets here, and let me discover them.” See how that feels.) —Rev. angel Kyodo williams