Sky Within Us

Two thirds of the family woke up on the wrong side of the bed today, dogs and bird excluded. I slept in, unusual for me, which, as captain of this good mothership, meant the day got off to a slower start than usual for everyone. As I was feeling into the thin-skinned emotional body of the nascent day, I drew my cards asking first what wings my heart needed today. I had to laugh when I saw Rooster in all his dawning, dynamic glory. Does this mean we get to start the day over lol?

Rooster presents me with a bold and passionate picture of how I might move through the world. Being a fire sign myself I feel a resonance with all that fiery, creative energy that is feathering off him like so many dancing flames. The LWB tells us...

I am Rooster, the rising sun and break of day. I am vitality. I am sexuality. I am the eternal matrix of fertility. While the feminine nurtures all things created, I am the force that shapes the created. I am creator god, wielding the power of seed and continuity. I am the domain of reproductive potency.

An interesting mix here of fertility and procreative impulse viewed through the lens of the masculine. With this very masculine energy swirling off my altar I settle in a moment to see where I might locate it in my body...there it is, in my hara center and my throat center and I spend a few breaths sensing into the dialogue of what feels like a tremendous potency and power. With this dance actively flowing in my body I draw my two Tarot cards for the day holding the question of where I need to bring this dynamic energy to. I receive Poseidon and Bat, the King of Cups and Five of Swords respectively. It's turning out to be a very masculine day today...

Looking at Poseidon, King of Cups, with his swirls of watery energy and his creatures circling around him I'm reminded of a starry nebula with infinite points of light and life arising out of the constellation. Contrast that with what feels like a 'black hole', an enormous gravitational pull-force depicted in Bat, the Five of Swords. How might these two open up a dialogue together?

 Here we see Poseidon, undisputable god of the Sea, holding a chalice and meditating on the myriad forms of oceanic life. Some of that life arises around him as if out of his meditations, swirling in an active and ongoing mandalic flow. There is a dolphin swimming in the upper portion of the card perhaps representing the awakened psyche, there is an octopus in the lower portion of the card clinging to the rocks reminding me of my own tendency to cling to emotional experiences, there are many fish swimming through the waters suggesting the diversity of collective consciousness, there is a seahorse perhaps representing swiftness and another nod to a masculine-feminine embodiment as it's the father who carries the babies and births them, and there is a seal swimming near the bottom of the card. Seals inspire thoughts of change and mastery with images of selkies and their powers. This king holds and allows them all in his atmosphere and his beard which forms into a swirl at his heart center suggests the integration of all these different aspects of the psyche have a home in the heart if received with equanimity.

Kings are the archetypal masculine principle and symbolize such outward qualities as social responsibility and external accomplishment. They take charge, establish laws, organize and build empires, make decisions and enact them. They are the apotheosis of their suit. As such Poseidon, King of Cups, the suit of emotions, of feeling, presents an interesting marriage of masculine and feminine wisdom much like Rooster seems to. I'm being asked not only to embody a sense of mastery on the feeling level but to carry it out, to actively move from that place. My empire, my home, needs that today, as my son struggles with 'wrong side of the bed' blues and I shall need to be extra skillful in supporting and drawing out his sunnier side if our day is to flow in a harmonious way. Which I, as King of Cups, decree!

With this sense of inner authority in place I look to the black hole offering itself up for my contemplation, Bat, Five of Swords...traditionally the card of bullying, of deceit and trickery. Here we see many bats flying back from their night sojourn into the mouth of their cave away from the rising sun. Such a striking image, to be desperate to fly away from the source of light and quite in line with the feeling of Five of Swords with its themes of shadow energy at work. There are five swords hanging above the entrance to the cave and the cave itself is filled with stalagmites and stalagtites symbols perhaps of memories or emotional patterns that have been allowed to take root and flourish unexamined and unseen by the light of day. The sun is a dramatic presence in this card, piercing through that cave, symbol of our unconscious mind and the bats have no recourse but to enter it. I'm reminded also of the birth canal, the light at the end of the tunnel and descriptions of near death experiences where folks have shared their visions of a tunnel of light. All of these inform my experience of this card.

Bringing the three cards together...

I feel like I'm being asked to embody a distinctly manifest approach to shadow energy today. Those bats appear to be flying right into the mandala that Poseidon is creating with his heart and that feels just about right for today, creating a sacred container for my family's emotional body with our rocky start to the day which Rooster reminds me can begin anew with each creative breath, conception as the ongoing awareness of this. Says Rilke so beautifully in his uncollected poems...

Sky Within Us

Oh, not to be separated,

shut off from the starry dimensions

by so thin a wall.

What is within us

if not intensified sky

traversed with birds

and deep 

with winds of homecoming?