Nobody said transformation was pretty

Roots of Asia (AG Muller 2001)

 'Beloved, gaze in thine own heart,

The tree of life is blooming there.'

                                       ~WB Yeats

Today's draw from the Roots of Asia Tarot by Amnart Klanprachar and Thaworn Boonyawan is major arcanum number 13--Death. This is one of the most striking Death cards I have seen. We have two curious rock formations such as sometimes seen in images of Asia, but as the eye moves down the card, you realise that the landscape looks like a woman lying on her back, arms outstretched, knees up. The knees become the mountain formations. Growing from her heart centre is a tree. Her hair streams into the water. Her body is slowly being changed from its human form and becoming a natural landscape. You get the feeling that in time, she'll have disappeared completely into the land. At the top of the card, the sky is dark and there's a glowing orb, could be either sun or moon, encircled by three rings, then the curious wispy orange sky that features in nearly every card in the Roots of Asia pack. The woman's 'body' lies in an abundance of water in rivers, pools and streams, and on the twin peaks of the mountains, there are spectacularly high and dramatic waterfalls. A mist rises over the entire scene from the water. It is a card that is both earthy and ethereal.

Turn turn turn

Roots of Asia Tarot was one of my first decks, purchased as a sort of replacement for my very first deck, Osho Zen. The Osho Zen and I fell out. I decided it made me feel bad, and it just seemed to want me to feel that way. But I resisted buying Roots of Asia because to me the art was muddy, imprecise and, well, foreign. Someone on Aeclectic Tarot recommended it to me because I was seeking a deck with a deeply Buddhist sensibility, and I truly don't think you can get much more Buddhist than this deck. I know the deck is by a Thai artist who is/was possibly a Buddhist monk, and he used his hands and a knife to create the art, but that's all I know and to be honest, I'm not really terribly interested in details like. When it comes to decks, I'm more concerned with my personal reaction.

Two things I really appreciate about this deck. One, the names are all traditional RWS names, which is unusual when a deck is adapted to a theme. It really annoys me when people mess around and change the suit names. You got a Native American deck? Oops, better change the suits to sticks, arrows, rocks and peace pipes. You got a cute girly deck? Uh-oh, quick,  make that buttons, bows, lipstick cases and curling irons. It's ridiculous. But I digress. Two, the LWB is amazing. It's 87 pages long and uses every card meaning as an opportunity to educate the reader in solid Buddhist teachings. Plus it contains 3 powerful spreads and a surprisingly detailed introduction to insight meditation!

One thing I don't like about this deck. The backs. I think they're just repulsive. There's something here that is deeply sinister to me. Some people have that reaction to the Haindl backs. Well, I love the Haindl backs, I find them soulful. But Roots of Asia backs? No...just horrible, nightmarish even. I may have to devote a whole blog entry to parsing this back, but just look at it. A nose spouting smoke out of its nostrils. At the top of the nose, the eyebrows sort of turn into arms and then it looks like a man's back, with the red dot for the back of his head. But the arms/eyebrows are flaming claws, and one eye's a shiny moon that looks like the eyeball has been punched out and this light is piercing through. The other eye is covered over by a buxom angel with glowing nipples. Which then leads the eye around to notice all the big-breasted angels on this card. There's one at the bottom that seems to have three boobs, each one spouting a beam of light onto a smiling mouth. Then you notice the hands at the bottom of the card and realise the whole thing is a portait of a meditator. But if this is the stuff swirling in the mind when meditating--no way! Speaking of swirling, what is that gaping maw in the middle of the card sucking everything into it? Why is it between the nose and the mouth? Oh, it just doesn't bear thinking about. I never look at the backs of these cards if I can help it. They just freak me out.

But back to the reading. I asked the cards, 'Why am I drawn to use Roots of Asia this week'? I then pulled Hermit, Magician, 8 of Cups. Well, I've just embarked on a new project this week, and there's the Magician. I am feeling drawn again into my magical/spiritual/meditative path, which I've been away from for many months, and there's Hermit and 8 of Cups.

Let's have a look at a sample of one of those wonderful LWB tidbits:

8 of Cups. Awareness of Change and Impermanence. As nature has the motions and changes of the seasons of the year, so too our lives hold various changes and times. We wish to hold on to those seasons of happiness and run away from those seasons of anxiety. Our goal is to learn how to move freely within and in between the seasons that continue to come to us. The eight seasons of our lives are: time of accomplishment, time of loss, time of dignity and fame, time of obscurity, time of being blamed, and time of being praised, a time for happiness, and a time for pain.  Divinitory key: Searching for insight. Introspection.

I have noticed something about the seasons in the last couple of days. It's a curious thing. But I'll share that with you later.

Tuning into sorrow

Gaian Tarot (Llewellyn 2011)

Today's card is a curiosity. I don't know what to make of it. It is the Gaian Tarot equivalent of the RWS 9 of Swords, which usually depicts a woman or man awaking abruptly from a nightmare and covering their face in their hands. It has to do with sleeplessness, worry, troubling thoughts, vain imaginings, walking the floor, anxiety, overthinking, etc. The woman in this card has been suffering these symptoms, but she is shown snuggling up to a standing stone and levitating in the purple storm with a cat-eared mask overlooking her.

She Who Watches

The companion book  mentions that the image in the sky is She Who Watches, 'a petroglyph found near the Columbia River on the border of Washington and Oregon.' No other detail is given, other than that She Who Watches is 'the One who always watches over her with love and compassion.'  A Google search reveals that the petroglyph is based on a female chief called Tsagaglal, when people were not yet real people, and so we could still talk to animals. Trickster Fox asked her how she was going to watch over her people when they faced the times of trouble to come, and when she could not answer, he turned her into this stone. That's one version, anyway.

Here is a retelling by Ed Edmo:

I think the card is suggesting that the woman has entered a journey of some sort whilst meditating on her grief. The image in the card is what she may be seeing in her journey, thus the floaty levitation in the purple sky, and the misty appearance of She Who Watches. If I stare at the card, I begin to sense the roiling motion of the clouds, and the image of She Who Watches dematerialises and reappears at different angles. Perhaps this is meant to remind us of the temporary nature of all our emotions. What we feel and think comes and goes, nothing is permanent, and our moment of despair will eventually turn out to be as insubstantial as the dew.

The card doesn't entirely work for me. It lacks the intensity and immediacy of the traditional waking-from-a-nightmare image, and the hands over the face seems to be a universal symbol of crushing hopelessness and despair that is lacking in this card.

On the other hand, the idea of leaning into the pain and experiencing it in all its physical and emotional aspects can be a deep insight meditation practice, and possibly more healing in the long run. The woman strikes me as listening carefully to the vibrations of a tuning fork, the standing stone. She's grounded in and experiencing her grief utterly. Now, I personally find the constant reassurance of this deck that a 'benign force is watching over me' to be unhelpful, but this is the Gaian Tarot, so one would expect this message to keep coming across time and again. In other words, I can do without She Who Watches...but if that's what this woman (and the deck creator) sees on her journey into her own despair, who am I to question. I'm just taking it to represent any images that flit through the mind during these moments of meditation, whatever symbol is of profound comfort to you personally.

Running from Lightning

I have been feeling tired lately, and I asked this morning:

Why have I been so tired lately and what should I do about it?

I drew 3 cards for the why: 2 of Earth, Explorer of Water, and Lightning. Then 2 cards for what to do: 9 of Water and Elder of Fire. And outcome: The Star.

The 2 of Earth shows a man juggling two screaming babies over his shoulders while trying to do his shopping. The Explorer of Water shows a surfer, who is zooming toward the 2 of Earth and AWAY from the Lightning card, which is the equivalent of the Tower, and shows a tree being struck by lightning while 3 human silhouettes fall from the sky. It's hard to find balance when you are running from the fear of disaster. My emotional flight from the uncertainty of my job situation (which is the only Tower event I can see in my life right now) has lead to distinct imbalance in my daily life.

What should I do about it? I drew 9 of Water and Elder of Fire. The 9 of Water shows a woman standing in the mouth of a cave. Sunlight is streaming into the cave, and she is facing this with arms outstretched. A stream is runing into the cave and runs along beside where she is standing. Water also seems to be running down the walls of the cave and trickling over rocks. It's a wet cave, pierced with shafts of light. Okay, so I am in a sort of cave of emotion, I suppose I am meant to find the light. The advice of the companion book is to 'open up to the Divine...dive deep into your heart to find what will bring you true and lasting happiness' (Journey through the Gaian Tarot, p. 198). That's not asking much! Then sitting next to this card is the Elder of Fire. Wow, I love this card. It was one of my favourites, and nearly the top card for me when I did my sorting exercise on the first day I had the deck. This woman looks very serious, but at the same time benevolent. She is intense. She has at her disposal every means of affecting change and transformation. She is most certainly not a victim. This combination of cards is a deep message for me. I must take my time with them.

The outcome card is The Star...It is significant because in the major arcana, The Star card comes directly after The Tower (or in the Gaian Tarot, 'Lightning').

You have the opportunity to relax into a time of calm, healing and grace. Your heart is wide open and you deeply feel your connection to Source...It is a most blessed time of hope peace and well-being. ~ Journey through the Gaian Tarot, Colbert p. 100

That is most certainly the result I would like to see! I must investigate the work of 9 of Water + Elder of Fire. Your thoughts on this are welcome!

Gaian Tarot - 7 of Air

Here's my card of the day from Joanna Powell Colbert's Gaian Tarot (Llewellyn 2011.)

The hiker is stopping on his journey to check his map. He looks very relaxed and confident, so I don't think he's lost. I think he's considering his options. There's lots of stuff on that map to see, and only the rest of the day to see it in. Which way should he go?

Maybe this morning before he set out, he had made a detailed plan of what he would do during this hike. But now that he's out here in the hills, things look different. Maybe the path he'd planned doesn't take him to the place he now realises he would prefer to see. I really think he's about to change plans entirely, much to his surprise. I like this card.

I don't really know what it had to do with my day today. But I like it, anyway. :)