Inner Vistas

Medicine Woman Tarot ~ Carol Bridges

I'm very much enjoying my Medicine Woman Tarot, surprisingly so as this was a deck I passed by many times. Right now with its combination of earth-based imagery and pastel drawings it feels just right. The Inner Guidbook, as it's called, is full of lots of meditations, visualizations and exercises to do in relation to the cards. Some of them resonate others don't but there's a lot to choose from and I'm enjoying deepening with the cards when I feel moved to do one of the offerings. Today Eagle is the oracle card I drew and the Six of Arrows (Swords) from the Tarot.

Eagle ~ Medicine Cards

Eagle (shown here with my magnificent Raven's feather, the perfection of which can't be fully seen in this pic) is the first card in the deck, sovereign, masterful, encompassing, initiating. The medicine for Eagle is Spirit. To that I would add vision and perspective. The LWB says, If Eagle has majestically soared into your cards, you are being put on notice to reconnect with the element of air. If you've been walking in the shadows of former realities Eagle brings illumination. See the beauty in both...Eagle medicine is the gift we give ourselves to remind us of the freedom of the skies.

The air element is an element I'm comfortable in so reconnecting with it feels less applicable than does seeing all the ways it permeates my day to day. I've never had the gift of seeing one of these majestic creatures in the wild though I have seen them at sanctuaries and even there they lived up to their sovereign energy. I remember a particular scene from the movie 'Winged Migration' in which an eagle coming in to land on a crag was filmed in slo-mo. Being up close to the bird like that as it landed allowed the viewer to see the full extent of its body, its muscular strength and its grace. I could see so easily why so many cultures revered this bird for in that moment it embodied qualities that were both avian and human, a blending of which one might ascribe to a god.

Six of Arrows ~ Medicine Woman Tarot

The Six of Arrows carries on the theme of air today with the suit of Arrows replacing the more traditional suit of Swords. The Six of Swords is one of my favorite cards in a deck and there are certain elements I like to see. This has very few of them and yet, perhaps because it's been renamed and the whole deck veers away from the RWS version fairly consistently, I don't mind this representation.

We see a man clothed in the sun wearing a mantle of green over his back. Before him lies an ocean of possibility, a sun on the horizon is positioned in such a way as to illuminate his own head ascribing to him a state of haloed grace. There are mountains the distance with their promise of higher learning, of wisdom gained, new vistas. A broken arrow lies at his feet suggesting that he must leave behind outworn concepts that don't serve him anymore, that keep him from wholeness.

He is poised to step forward into the living stream, has taken the first step but needs to take that leap of faith to continue on his way. Both of these cards speak to new vistas, vison with perspective. Bridging them might look like something Rumi describes in one of his poems...

Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom
How do they learn it?
They fall and falling
they're given wings.