The Luminous Other

Wild Unknown Tarot ~ Alchemist's Oracle

I'll just say straight out here that I don't love it when two Majors show up in my daily draw. I often experience a little bit of an inward clench. I feel I'm being called before The Board to explain myself, to be accountable in a way that doesn't allow much wiggle room, to really be clear with myself. Today's draw is no exception. Not that these Majors are particularly dense just that the Majors, in general, carry an archetypal weight to them, the stuff of myth, dreams and the unconscious, that I experience as...laden with responsibility. And I rarely feel I do them justice when writing about them.

Transition ~ Alchemist's Oracle

This dragonfly (?) with its wings drawn around it protectively is a bit how I feel today. That sense of wanting to withdraw a bit, retreat and hole up beneath a soft, sheltering cover. It's a fairly static image though the vibrant green of the wings intimate much healing work is being accomplished during this period of what appears to be liminality as the bug hangs there between the worlds.

Threshold is such a powerful place to claim though the tendency is to want something more substantive to inhabit. The reality is that each moment is a threshold, a transition. I forget that all.the.time. thinking this moment is fixed, solid, an arrival. It's not, it's an ongoing moment in a larger series of arrival-departures. Today I don't love this. Tomorrow I might embrace it. This afternoon perhaps I'll entertain it. But right now, it's not working for me and perhaps more importantly I'm not working for it.

The Chariot ~ Wild Unknown Tarot

But here comes The Chariot riding in to let me know that, in this case, 'giddy-up' might be a helpful mantra. In this depiction there is no driver and no vehicle. Instead all that has been combined beautifully into one image that implies driver and vehicle. A horse looks out at us, her mane flying in the wind, a waning crescent moon on her forehead and, curiously, a pentacle on a chain around her neck. Behind her a sun radiates strong, glorious rays reaching the edges and red corners of the card. The red and its placement in each corner feels like a nod to the element of will that is so much a part of this card traditionally.

The energy the horse is embodying is fast and strong. She seems like she's just pausing long enough to give us her message, blessed by the protective pentacle around her neck, which in turn blesses us. But the pentacle also tells me she's in service to something larger and less apparent. She exhibits the full sun of control here and yet the crescent moon on her forehead suggests a knowledge of when to yield, when receptivity is required. This dance is an integral aspect of this card.

This card is a Seven and the last card in the first group of seven Majors suggesting that the lessons to be developed and lived out in the next groupings are still in the initial stage here. As such the ability to handle the reins skillfully is still being worked with. The contrast between the dynamic movement and determination of The Chariot compared to the stasis of the Oracle card is pronounced but I sense that perhaps I'm being asked to use my will to bring to bear on the ongoing transition that is life, to the places where I might want to pause longer than serves my unfolding.

Wheel of Fortune ~ Wild Unknown Tarot

The Wheel is certainly not going to allow me that! And this is such a compelling depiction of this Major. A first glance and the word 'dream catcher' comes to mind with its abilities to trap shadow dreams and channel positive dreams to the sleeper. The rainbow-colored ribbons tangled up in the middle don't allow for much micro movement in this wheel which feels like its hurtling through space at a macro pace. They are perhaps a nod to our attachment to preference and how that 'trips things up'. The setting for the top part of the card is midnight, the bottom depicts full daytime with a waxing crescent moon and sun respectively.

The waxing crescent moon, known as the Moon of Regeneration, is the moon of the Maiden. It's associated with beginnings, with change and with invocation. It's a logical moon to have on this card that honors the teachings of mutability. An owl, avian embodiment of wisdom, of mystery, night power and silence, perches on a top branch and peers at us quizzically. Brilliant points of light illuminate the dark night sky. All of these images together make for a compelling depiction of a card that signifies cycles of adjustment and manifestation, of an understanding of form and emptiness, and the knowledge that 'at the still point of the turning world there the dance is,' to quote Eliot.

Kalachakra Mandala

How does this relate to me today? How does it not would be a more skillful question. The philosopher Marcus Aurelius saw time as extending forwards to infinity and backwards to infinity. When I read that I have an image of each of us as static points within that time line, as time catchers spinning our own rhythmic wheel within the larger wheel of existence. The Vajrayana Buddhists have what could be called their own Wheel of Fortune card in the great Kalachakra Tantra, the Wheel of Time. This is an elaborate 12 day ceremony filled with ritual, mantra, prayers, dance, the building of a sand mandala, transmission, blessing and more. The teachings are said to bring about purification of body, speech and mind.


I have the sense of being inseparably bound up with the changing tides that characterize life, that are, in fact, the essence of life with the idea that The Wheel of Fortune does not exist outside of me to the degree that I can yield to the flow. Trying to avoid that stream and suddenly I'm the obstacle. I'm still trying this one on for size but today that feels about right.

Looked at in combination with the other two cards and I feel the tension of holding the impulse to move forwards with the impulse to resist that movement. The Chariot asks me to step in, to take the reins, to feel the directional pull of all that horse energy beneath me and respond accordingly even while I'm experiencing the disorienting effects of transition. The Wheel of Fortune reminds me that this too shall pass, that now is the time to rely on silence and navigating by night power, and focusing on the inner tides and rhythms beneath which breathes the luminous Other.