Dreams and hands

Book of Shadows, LoS 2012 

The Book of Shadows Tarot Vol 1, Barbara Moore, gives me Ace of Air today. It's timely I should draw this card today, as my mind has been in complete overdrive for the last few days. I'm completely stressed out and the overthinking isn't helping me at all.

The card here, Ace of Air, shows a sylph orchestrating dreams for the sleeping figure. These dreams might be happy ones, or they might be nightmares. The card is ambiguous. Is he dreaming of his bright future--a lovely house, a new car, a fulfilling career--or is he having nightmares about his mortgage, car payments, and failing investment portfolio? Could be either, depends on the surrounding cards, the querent, and the question. The expressions on the faces of the sylph and the sleeper are giving nothing away.

Because this card speaks so deeply to me of my current state of mind, I thought I'd draw two more cards: Do this. Don't do this. These are 'solution' cards to the current rather intolerable situation I find in my mind. What should I do and what should I not do to ease my mind about this situation, and about my general unsettled feelings and disturbed sleep of late?

                        Do this.                                        Don't do this.

Do this: 5 of Air. This card is the 5 of Swords card in a traditional tarot deck, and usually shows a smug victor and the dejected defeated foe. Nothing of the kind here. We see five sylphs tracing the lines on a palm. Like all cards in the Air suit, this card stands for a type of divination, in this case obviously palmistry. The image of the hand, though, is quite evocative. It makes us think of our humanity, our uniqueness as a species, our skill and dexterity, and all of our potential to heal and to harm. I was struck by the apt phrase used in the LWB: 'It is time to use your own strengths to their best advantage to change the situation.' Not only does this card remind me that I have the strength and skill to deal with the situation, but that the time has come to actually change the situation. If I had lost sight of that option, the card reminds me that it is always there. It is up to me to use the creativity and skill symbolised by the human hand to do that.

Don't do this: XV Lammas. The Lammas card is major arcanum XV, The Devil. This card keeps popping up in my readings lately. It challenges me to deal with it, figure it out, come to grips with it. Now's not the time to go into the Lammas festival or what it means, really. Suffice to say it has to do with ripeness, fecundity, and indulgence in fruits of the earth. Following along from that it could obviously lead to overindulgence, and move right on into some very dark spheres of selfishness, lust, obsession and so on. Thus we get the link to The Devil, I presume. Turning to the LWB again, I read, ''Not taking into consideration the consequences, taking chances.'

So the advice here is, use your strengths to change the situation, but think carefully before you act, and do not take chances. 

Trouble is for me, sometimes I don't see what I do as 'taking a chance', and still don't see why it was a big deal even when I'm facing consequences. This usually has to do with my habit of speaking up and saying what I think about a situation, particularly when it opposes my sense of justice and/or reason.

I shall sit in silence and ponder my hands. What are my strengths? What are my skills? What have these hands experienced? What have they got me through in the past? What are these marks, these veins, these lines? What is this delicate pulse I feel fluttering just beneath the skin? I will lay my hand across my wrist and contemplate that pulse and let my mind fold in on itself. The pulse of the wrist. The om of the universe. What do these frustrations mean in the face of such vastness? So little, really.

And this is the song I will listen to: