Monday 27 January 2014

Let sleeping dogs lie?

Thoth Tarot
It's the last week of my 2nd annual Winter Solstice - Imbolc Thoth-a-thon, and I've decided to use my borderless deck for it. I have three editions of the Thoth, my first, the small purple box one, then this green box one which I trimmed of all borders and titles and rounded the corners on, and finally my favourite, the beautiful, silky, deeply colour-saturated 1986 AG Muller Thoth in the dark blue box.

Today's card is Moon. It features some of the usual elements of a Moon card - a crab (in this case, a water spider/scarab creature) emerging from murky depths at the bottom of the card, rising up toward a path that passes between two dogs (in this case, Anubis), two towers, and toward a horizon and a large moon. In this card, Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the afterlife, holding his set of keys, a black dog at his feet, stands guard to the path. He is the Lord of the Place of Embalming, patron of mummification and the dead on their path to the underworld. He was the god of the dead before Osiris took over, when he became lumped in with the many sons of Osiris. He is a very ancient god. The scarab, as usual, is depicted with a solar disk between its claws, a symbol of immortality. In fact, he is sometimes known as Lord of Midnight Sun. Falling through the sky from the disk of the moon are nine red yods, from the Hebrew alphabet. Yod, the first letter of the Tetragrammaton (Yod-He-Vau-He), the name of God, is thought to be representative of a totality, the absolute supernal. This symbol drips from the moon toward the path up from the depths of the water, which the scarab beetle rises toward. It suggests truths revealed.

It is an appropriate card for me to draw today. Yesterday I spent a lot of time thinking about people, about our many, many layers and depths. I felt awe and even dread of the frightening complexity of our selves, how we actually seem to relate to one another, even to those we are closest to and love the most, on only the most superficial of those many planes. We may think we know a person, but we've only scratched the surface. Even after 20, 40, 60 years. Can we ever -- do we dare -- to uncover those many layers, reveal the truth of our full person and theirs, bring up into light our weakness, our pain, our hurt, our anger? I don't mean the passing emotions of a day, but the true depths. Can we ever know our own strength, nobility, higher nature, let alone anyone else's? Is it possible to uncover those depths within ourselves and our loved ones, without destroying ourselves or each other? Or is it better, or at least easier, to just keep things on familiar ground, an even keel, just stay at the surface level and let the other stuff roil on in the deep, undisturbed by consciousness? It would be beautiful to have the full diamond of self, its many facets, revealed to one another. We've been scarred by its very formation, could we ever endure the mining of it?  Could we then endure the radiance of it revealed? Or is this something that can only be done on another plane of existence entirely, beyond this earthly realm? .... I sense only the danger of the entire proposition, lately. And thus this card, of murky depths and foreboding.

3 comments:

  1. I don't think we can ever truly know another, though I do feel it's part of our challenge in this life to try to know ourselves. Deep waters for a Monday morning!

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  2. This is a beautiful post!

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  3. I think I know what brought this on. There were things roiling under the surface, all right. They came up in October 2014. You know something's happening, you just don't know why you think so.

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