In Search of the Warm, the Wild, the Instinctual

 To Learn from Animal Being

Nearer to the earth's heart,
Deeper within its silence:
Animals know this world
In a way we never will.

We who are ever
Distanced and distracted

By the parade of bright
Windows thought opens:
Their seamless presence
Is not fractured thus.

Stranded between time
Gone and time emerging,
We manage seldom
To be where we are:
Looking out from
The here and now...

The above excerpt from a poem by John O'Donohue sets the tone this week for as the week begins anew so do I with a new Tarot/Oracle combination. After my week with the Angels and with classical imagery I was feeling the need for the earth, for some animal wisdom and the embrace of the warm, the wild and the instinctual. This week I'll be using the Winged Enchantment Oracle by Lisa Hunt and the Animals Divine Tarot also by Lisa Hunt.

As if in response to my need for the instinctual my Oracle draw for the day is Swallow...

 There is so much beauty and movement in this card. A woman who seems part Swallow herself is gazing up at the golden sky in which a mandala of swallows circles emanating from her hara center, center of power. A swallow head appears as part of her own and her body appears to be rising out of the waters, Buddha-like, in a swirl of feathers, droplets and swirls of energy. The LWB tells us...

I am Swallow the direction changer. I am the swiftness of every great move. I am the exploration of new angles, the bold agility to catch what is yours. I am the right place at the right time, the most efficient use of skill. I am the spontaneity of a single, fleeting moment when everything can change.

You are pure instinct.

You are Swallow.

With this expansive and charged feeling of movement I asked what areas of my life today needed the blessing of Swallow's energy. I drew Tortoise and Octopus, the Ten of Wands and the Eight of Cups respectively. The image I have here is of an older person trying to make the sidewalk before the light turns red, a kind of slow, hurried walk, Saturn combined with Mercury. 

Traditionally the Ten of Wands is the card of heavy burden, of responsibility and overload. Here we see a tortoise struggling to continue with its heavy load crawling slowly between two rows of wands. They are both aglow and askew reminding me of the phrase 'the Great Way is easy for those with no preferences'. This tortoise has come far, judging from the path behind her but her destination is not in sight in this card suggesting she'll have to seek her own inner counsel with regards to rest and self-care. 

As tens are about both beginnings and endings there is the sense with this card of a transition to a deeper wisdom, a glimpse of something more. Though there is no structural goal in view in this card, as there is in the RWS version, there is nevertheless a sense of directional wisdom here. And that sense of having something worthy to work towards is often a key in lightening the load. The Wands here are all illuminated suggesting that Tortoise is working towards something that will serve Spirit, that is more than just about the small-shelled self. I feel a sense of expansion when I tune in to this aspect of the card and with this feeling of lightness move on to Octopus, the Eight of Cups.

Octopus swims beneath a moonlit ocean. In each of its tentacles it holds a cup. The cups are being held any which way, some upside down, some sideways.  There is a feeling of chaos here, of not being able to maintain equilibrium. Octopus is trying to receive the moon's radiance but is struggling to do so as a result of trying to manage all the cups. Fish swim through Octopus's tentacles and up to the moon, starlight bathes Octopus at different points below.

This is a variation on the traditional depiction of a figure leaving behind eight upright cups as s/he walks towards a mountain range beneath a moon-lit sky. And yet I can see, in Octopus's attempts to grasp all the cups and being unable to do so, the theme of needing to release old emotional patterns in search of a new way of manifesting. That this is done by the light of the moon suggests the way will be blessed by the unknown, by tuning in to intuition and a more receptive, inward gesture. There is a feeling of needing to consciously detach. Octopus must actively release all those cups to re-find equilibrium and a more resonant way of being. 

 

Together these two cards are presenting me with a dynamic theme of polarity. I'm being asked to hold a tension that doesn't come easily. One the one hand there is the suggestion to stay the course and rather than putting down my load, to look at in relation to the goal of serving Spirit. At the same time I'm being asked to look at how I'm holding on to old emotional patterns that might want release so as to free up the inner landscape for further exploration. And all of this overseen by Swallow, by the impulse to instinctual action, to spontaneity and a sudden change in direction.

How might this look on a sunny, summer Monday? My duties today include a long commute in rush traffic later in the day as I drive my son to dance classes and music rehearsal. My initial response is to feel this as a burden, a chore but having drawn these cards I might now be free to embrace the larger picture, to feel how my mothering is serving the Goddess by choosing to support my son's musical and dance dharma and making sure to pack a good dinner and some books and music to nourish me. Inner explorations of new landscapes might ensue from the release of habitual patterns of a self that identifies with passively doing its duties. As I was musing on how I might embrace this polarity I turned to one of the faces of the Goddess, Mother Mary, for guidance. Apparently not one to beat around the bush she simply says, "Be Strong". Leaving me to ponder the nature of what it means to be strong I arrive back where I began, with the soft animal body that loves what it loves and knows what it knows without complication. That kind of intimate knowledge is where my strength is to be found. The poem I quoted at the beginning of my post finishes up in a gracious and affirming way reminding us of our natural and blessed yearning for the wild, warm, the instinctual.

May we learn to return
And rest in the beauty
Of animal being,
Learn to lean low,
Leave our locked minds,
And with freed senses
Feel the earth
Breathing with us.

May we enter
Into lightness of spirit,
And slip frequently into
The feel of the wild.

Let the clear silence 
Of our animal being
Cleanse our hearts
Of corrosive words.

May we learn to walk
Upon the earth
With all their confidence
And clear-eyed stillness
So that our minds 
Might be baptized

In the name of the wind
And the light and the rain.