The Lit Angel We Desire

Ace of Swords ~ Slow Down ~ Four of Swords

After yesterday's dalliance with The Moon and Justice, today called for something less tangible. I did draw my Tarot and Oracle cards which spoke to areas of slowing down, resting and meditation, as seen above. Okay, I thought, I can work with that despite a busyish day, as all those swords suggested a rest in the mental realm more than anything else. But later as I hiked with my dog along the ridge I was aware of a vague feeling of agitation, of restlessness and...contraction. I tried to follow it to its source and while I did retrieve some useful stones I was left wanting.

Wanting. That most sacred and profane of alchemies, a place I embrace and reject in the same breath. To want is to acknowledge a world so much more expansive than my own, to want, with its implications of both limit and space, is a profound and ambiguous river to paddle in. As a woman and mother I'm aware of being encouraged not to listen to that voice in both subtle and not so subtle ways. I open my arms and breathe down through to my fingers and beyond to feel into how far my 'wanting reach' extends. It is a dynamic moment to honor and name that. I want what we all want, called by so many names--Presence, Love, Immanence to use a few. And that is why 'wanting' feels like such a sacred station. It is an uncomfortable and unsettling acknowledgement of Mystery's name in and as our lives, a momentary awareness of the span between aspiration and present moment and the realization that their very nature is to co-exist, to inter-be. In that intimate expansion and contraction is how they find each other, taking as many forms as there are breaths.

Upon my return home I felt that Mother Mary's presence was needed here and decided to call on her body for blessings, refuge and a way to work with what was so intangibly-tangibly arising. I love all the manifestations of this aspect of the Mother, from the dark goddess--the Black Madonna of Czestochowa--to the virginal aspect we see so often, to the earthy Virgin of Guadeloupe and more. Her veneration by the Catholic church is a thing about that particular lineage that I love but she lives beyond the claim of any dogma or doctrine. Her realm is as lowly and exalted as the place between the breath, in the pain of childbirth, in the relief of delivery, in the body that is trying to find a voice, in the sinew and sigh of ecstasy, the salt and muscle of tears, in the question, the dance...





Using the Mother Mary Oracle by Shiloh Sophia Cloud and Alana Fairchild, I sat and allowed my body to river into what it was asking for, not quite knowing, myself, what it wanted. I drew my card and then paused before turning it over...

This is such a lovely moment, the point between the unmanifest and the manifest, as I contemplate the back of a card within the context of my altar which is to say, as I contemplate the mystery as it is framed within the sacred, as I become the question. It always feels a potent moment, an indrawn breath.

Our Lady with the Moon at Her Feet ~ Mother Mary Oracle

And there she is again, The Moon from yesterday now inviting me to place my feet within the curve and longing of her intuitive body. This card entitled, Our Lady with the Moon at Her Feet, is one I've drawn already three times in the five or six times of using this oracle. Ahem.

It is a card that speaks to feeling the limits prescribed by 'negative' patterns, habitual consciousness and a narrowing of vision, those breaths that don't support expansion, growth, inspiration or spiritual and creative daring. It is, too, the 'wild card' in the deck empowering and strengthening any other cards that might appear during a reading. As I chose only the one card I shall consider myself the other card and yield to that empowering and strengthening flow, letting it wash over me in a kind of purifying rain.




I am intrigued by the lunar theme being carried over here so seamlessly today. This card is quite beautiful, as are all the cards in this lovely deck in which Mary has been lifted from the confines of the church and given a body in the wild expanse of longing, fear, hope, expectation, desire, sisterhood, the earth and more. In this card she is portrayed with her eyes closed with a halo of roses around her head. Three birds attend to her. Her robes are dark blue with stars of different shapes and sizes sprinkled throughout. On the left side of her body a shape much like a yoni, containing a tree of life drawing, appears beneath her large heart which is gently aflame in a kind of quiet, ecstatic passion. Her feet appear beneath, bare and human as they rest on the gentle ellipse of the crescent moon. Roses embellish the top portion of the card...

What does it mean to wear the Moon at my feet, the crescent moon, moon of effacement and receptivity? For that's what I feel this card is inviting me to do as a way to work with the places in me that are 'wanting', the voice that wants a body but doesn't know what that body looks like. Will my wanting find its voice in that luminous, lunar wilderness? Will the stars bless me with the dazzle and flare of recognition? It feels watery and fluid, anything but static, not anything that could be pinned to the moment. It feels like a dance in which I am both dancer and danced.

Each card comes with an affirmation and a visualization or what the author calls a 'healing process'. There is the suggestion to imagine this Mary as a magnifcent holy woman lit up like a star in the sky, standing on the crescent moon. Her feet glow and light pours from them blessing you. I love the earthiness of this, that it's her feet I can receive blessings from, and thus the ground of my own being opening up to bless the faraway places that want light. Because, of course, Mary is not out there in space somewhere. She is in the silence between these words, between your own thoughts as you read this and mine as I write them, in the country between each beat of your and my radiant heart.

As the day progresses I feel a slight blurring of the limits I was feeling earlier, less a need to chafe against things and more a sense of being limber with the moment. I feel my feet on the earth, both solid and porous, strong and beautiful in their ongoing support of my 'uprightness' as I travel over the ground. I imagine them glowing with opalescent light that reaches far down into the roots and lava of Mother Earth and far up through my limbs and central channel into the sky. And then, remembering my Tarot cards for the day, I do nothing with this. I let it be...

What is precious 
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.

What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire.

What disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.

from, 'The Winter of Listening', by David Whyte.