Of Nagas and Nuance

Year Ahead Spread with The Wild Unknown Tarot 

This year I decided to do a Year Ahead spread. I've thought a lot about how to view this kind of long range reading. Because the moment is as fluid and mutable as life looking at it predictively doesn't work for me. What does work however is to view the card for each month as a theme to explore and deepen with, to see where and how it lives in me and the ways that livingness moves me into and through my life.

This intentional exploration of themes I might not otherwise examine feels like an act of co-creation with the universe, an act of looking with awareness, with presence. It allows me to bring my unknown self to the table and welcome her with interest, with curiosity, with generosity.

Mother of Wands

I'm happy to see the Mother of Wands as my theme card. Here is she feels protective and nurturing at the same time as she both guards and gestates her eggs. This is my significator astrologically and she is Water of Fire, the fluid aspect of flame. Elementally I think of steam, of hot baths, of a warmth that replenishes and moistens. A year to give myself permission to visit our local Japanese-inspired women's spa perhaps more frequently than I normally would. 

I do love the serpent energy that I'm being offered for this year. Nagas, the Tibetans call this energy. I feel very connected to this creature as totem, as spirit being. There is a particularly beautiful snake who lives up on the ridge where I hike with my pup. I've been graced to see her or him once a year in the heat of the summer and feel very blessed when S/He crosses my path. I make my offerings and spend some time quietly sitting with its presence, soaking up whatever it has to offer. Decades ago I came across a complete shed snakeskin, beautiful, intricate and which felt as holy as the robes of any guru. And of course there have been dream visitations. 

Mother of Wands ~ Seven of Wands

Each month of the year has a theme card and another way I'll be working with this year long spread is to look at the relationship between each month card as it interfaces with the year card. January's card is the Seven of Wands. I'm being asked to step into the year as a series of pithy questions. What are the ways I resist the Mother of Wands' energy? Why do I shrink from her influence? Who do I imagine her to be, the power she holds? How has it been necessary to hold my own against her elemental energy? Does it serve me? How has my resistance contributed to a feeling of division and inner schism? 

The Seven of Wands is an interesting card in that traditionally as there is the suggestion of activity but without any real momentum. The movement is very controlled, as though the real movement is taking place within. Here with the depiction in the Wild Unknown there is a similar kind of tension. The one flaming Wand shining a brilliant light while the other Wands fall to either side. 

And so this is how my New Year has begun Tarot-wise, with the lovely energy of the Mother of Wands as she guides me into question, beyond resolution and into Her fluid, sinuous, ongoing mystery as she glides across the loam and soma of my awareness, silently, with presence, with poetry.

Resident Naga on the ridge