Like Our Tendrilled Life

Archeon Tarot

Using the lovely and evocative Archeon Tarot by Timothy Lantz this morning. I like this deck a lot. It reads very easily for me. A perfect message for a day spent at home with my family. Today's pair suggests opportunities for learning to choose my words carefully when communicating with my beloveds, as my son asks again and again for tea, toast, tylenol, hugs, blankets, hugs, hugs, hugs. We're all down with the cold so my husband is at home today, too--very much a Ten of Cups day for us though in a slightly different light.

Ten of Cups ~ Archeon Tarot

This is such a lovely Ten of Cups with its themes of tradition and beauty seen through a Japanese lens. The woman tends lovingly to the luminous cups in the foreground as if she knows the treasure they contain. She is conducting a tea ceremony and her focus and intention are clear.

The Japanese tea ceremony is an ancient and sacred ritual. I've been to a few and they are circumscribed by a rigorous formality that determines each movement, each breath even. One can't think of them without calling to mind Basho's poetry...

On a withered bough
a crow alone is perching;
autumn evening now.






Her head is illuminated by the Moon creating the kind of halo seen in Russian orthodox icons and giving her the qualities of a lunar goddess. A hawk flies across the moon paying his respects to the sacred scene below and calling forth all the qualities associated with his kind--vision, spiritual awareness and the invitation to focus on the task at hand. These are all good qualities to look at the lens of family through, to feel the thread that unites us, the present moment that contains all moments and the quiet joy that comes with the awareness of that connection. And on a purely practical level, half-way through the day seeing all those cups lined up for the ceremony and I realize that making cup after cup of tea is what this card is really getting at lol.

Herald of Swords ~ Archeon Tarot

This Herald of Swords, traditionally the Page of Swords, is so much more accessible to me because of the sensuality she exudes. Her whole body is involved, poised and ready for action, and I love this. Her nakedness an intimation that the mind can be sensual, can be voluptuous and full of eros and beauty as well as clear and to the point. So different from what we see traditionally and are led to believe, that words don't have a body, that thought and mind are separate from physicality.

Being a Herald she's endowed with feathery white wings that flare out behind her and when I feel into her body and what it might be like to wield a sword, naked and sprouting wings...well, dynamic is the word that comes to mind lol, a heady feeling of power, skill and focus and yes, sensuality. I resonate with this Herald and her announcements of the somatic presence and exploration possible in the landscape of the mind, of the breath.


Where do these two parts of me intersect, this sensual communication and devotion to family harmony? Reading these words of Basho's and I feel a peculiar confluence of the cards in his haiku...my breath-body as swinging bridge, my son and husband the beautiful tendrils of my heart...

Now the swinging bridge
Is quieted with creepers …
Like our tendrilled life.