Fire into Water into Fire

Shadows capes Tarot ~ Stephanie Mun-Pui Law

In many ways this pair of archetypal energies is a study in elemental contrasts, Fire and Water. Where the two meet is the realm of transformation, it's where the dialogue leaves off and a subtler alchemy begins, more lasting than words.

I drew these cards a few days ago and found I had nothing to say about them. Nothing. They fit together within me so intrinsically that anything I thought about them felt extraneous. And yet clearly they had wisdom to impart, something to choreograph me with. Why was nothing coming through from such resonant archetypal energy? 

Shadowscapes Tarot ~ Strength

So I waited. Photographed them a bunch of times. Deleted all the photos because no one was speaking. Worked with some stones. Some plants. And then all of a sudden there they were--a relationship unfolding, a story. Their presence to be experienced inclusively, interdependently.

The goddess in Strength finding her oracular wings, her intuitive voice in the High Priestess, as she dares to give way to dream, to subtlety. Her Lion familiar shapeshifting into the Wisdom-Owl. The fiery sun energy slipping beneath the horizon, taking form as the subtle, crepuscular moon. Yellow into blue. And what will come of that color alchemy?!!! The green of manifestation. Such bodhisattvic potential there is here. 

They are two rays of the same divine feminine body. Sekhmet, Durga, Freya slipping off the voluptuous red robes of noon, of soma and drawing around her the sylph-body gown of the liminal, the Delphic night, Selene, Wadjet, Isis, Persephone...hidden, cached in the betwixt and between world. She who resists interpretation.

Shadowscapes Tarot ~ The High Priestess

They are sisters who communicate obliquely. Secrets whispered back and forth across mysteries. The threshold of the self is their byway. 

I carry both of these sovereign energies within me. Both these majesties have claim on my own betwixt and between body, the one who roams the night skies and knows how to navigate the Moon's fluctuating attentions and the one who pads through the sun drenched fields of the robust world of name and form, appetite and limit. 

I bow to both of them. Simultaneously. For that is the point, that simultaneity is their wisdom, their truth.