If The Confident Animal

Today I feel a lack of inspiration. Sensing into this disengagement I drew my cards for the day and feeling less than inspired by what I drew I got to work with a bit of half-hearted analysis. Starting with the oracle card from Psycards...

The Skills ~ Psycards

Interestingly, on a day when I feel a real lack of skill in a few particular areas, I drew this card. The little quote that starts each card says of this one :

The arrows in your quiver tell

Go use your precious talents well

The LWB goes on to inform us that "the first question the Skills card asks of us is: what resources do we bring that will help us here?" Today I'm not seeing a lot of personal resources but I also recognize that there is an underlying quality beneath this 'not seeing' that is deliberate. I know I have many but today I seem to be more interested in the resources and skills I don't have. Sigh, such is the human condition and I'm in the thick of it today. 

The two Tarot cards I drew in response to this question of what areas might need the recognition and application of my skills and resources certainly aren't beating around the bush today. No Minors for me in this area but instead the slower, longer, life lessons characterized by the Majors. 

The Empress ~ The Emperor ~ Hudes Tarot

Together we have the Matriarch and the Patriarch of the whole deck. And in the right order! What does that say about my skills, inherent or nascent? I don't have too much bubbling up when I look at these cards together. At least nothing beyond the collaboration and marriage of creative abundance and reasoned authority. It feels like there's something deeper at work here, something just out of view. 

Susan Hudes's focus for the Empress is primarily on the body. She talks a lot about acceptance of its beauty and place within the natural world, of which we are an integral part. It's a slightly different take on the Empress with this emphasis on self-care at the physical level. This is an ongoing concentration for me, as I imagine it is for a lot of women. When I look at The Empress card often the question, 'how does your garden grow?' comes to mind. This can refer to my literal gardens--home, creativity, family etc--but also the various metaphorical gardens I'm tending within.

The Emperor looks to the greater good of his kingdom. Hudes speaks here of his domain in the secular world, seen in the map backdrop of the card.  His focus is larger than that of Kings and Queens, whose interests don't stray much beyond the borders of their principalities. The Emperor takes the large view, with universal order being one of his main foci. The order he brings to the moment helps to stabilize our day-to-day activities thus allowing us to carry out our responsibilities with...skill. Perhaps he is providing a safe container for the Empress to bloom and tend to the physical realm. I am, at least, aware of the various daily rhythms I've put in place that allow for some reflection on the state of my garden on days like this where things feel dry, untended and wanting the shade rather than the sun. These rhythms and sense of order create a container so that rather than being led hither and yon by the various competing emotions I have a place of stability to watch them rise and fall. In that sense this does feel like a collaboration between Empress and Emperor.

Hudes Tarot ~ Psycards

But on the whole I don't feel particularly inspired when I see this trio and as such I imagine I'm being asked to dig deeper than the temporal, to feel below the realm of the manifest though I can't summon the energy to do so. Looking at them all together for some reason this poem of Rilke's from the Eighth Duino Elegy called, If the Confident Animal, comes to mind. Perhaps it's the emphasis on natural, instinctive knowing, or the somatic wisdom we're so quick to dismiss, perhaps it's the arranging of the universe and one's animal place in it...whatever the reasons as I ponder the cards today it's what speaks to me, with the pronouns changed to bring an immediacy into my experience of it.

If the confident animal coming toward us

had a mind like ours,

the change in her would startle us.

But to her her own being is endless,

undefined, and without regard

for her condition: clear, like her eyes.

Where we see future,

she sees all, and herself

in all, made whole for always.