The World

Clean Our Slates – ND #24

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Ace of Swords – Tarot of the Crone by Ellen Lorenzi-Prince

Clean Our Slates

2022 has arrived. We’re embarking upon an opportunity to clean our slates, begin anew, and re-set our internal aspiration-clocks.

So much has changed in our personal and collective worlds over the past two years. More, if you start counting at the 2016 election. But the last two years, dominated as they’ve been by a pandemic of the body and a pandemic of the mind, have brought us to the brink – right now – where many people are beginning to crack under the pressure.

I’m concerned that we’re on the precipice of experiencing a pandemic of the spirit.

Wasteland

I’m reminded of the foundational card I chose on our behalf last week from the Tarot of the Crone. I chose the Shadow of Wands – Wasteland. What could be more awful and feel more like we’re living in a wasteland than when we feel unheard, unseen, and misunderstood? Not much.

I look around and try to listen to what’s being said and the pervasive feeling that comes through is hopelessness. And when we lose hope, we lose our vitality.

As we enter this new year, how can we avoid lapsing into despair? Is there something we can focus upon or learn that can help us reclaim hope for ourselves and our world?

A New Perspective

Asking these very same questions of the tarot deck I used last week, I received the following answer:  Ace of Swords/The World.

I have to smile when the cards seem so on point in responding to my query. I promise you, I let the questions in the paragraph above flow out of my fingertips onto the page. I then picked up my deck and shuffled with the essence of the questions filling my heart and reaching out for guidance. And as stated above, I chose the Ace of Swords – and the foundational card was The World.

This looked and felt familiar to me, so I did a search of all my posts and – lo and behold – I discovered that I actually chose both of these cards at the same time back on 31 August 2020. Two months before the election. The only difference was that The World was on top and the Ace of Wands was on the bottom. They’re switched now. But how incredibly fascinating that these cards have shown up for us – together – before?!

I was completely surprised when I read the prior post and saw that I’d chosen the word Perspective the day before! What are the chances that we’re revisiting all of these ‘issues’ again? Given the present state of affairs? The chances are huge. That it’s playing out for us all to see in the cards is especially affirming, and even more concerning.

For Your Contemplation

Perhaps we’re being shown the way to begin healing ourselves and our world (especially our country). Showing up as they have, together again, these cards are at least worthy of our contemplation:

Ace of Swords ~ Thought

“In my Sight/ In my Mind/ Is the Power to Perceive

The One or the Many/ Worlds of Creation

A great blue eye shines with stars within and reaches out to a piercing point. The Ace of Swords, the root power of the Mind is Thought. See now with fresh eyes. Hear with new ears. Perception is a power not to inhibit or to take lightly. Strive now for lucidity. Foresee what may be and speak your truth. Settle for nothing less than original thought. What is your vision? It is time to share what you see, what you know. Let the world not be diminished by the lack of your voice.”

XXI – The World – Tarot of the Crone by Ellen Lorenzi-Prince

XXI ~World

“I am all you have been/ And all you will become

I am the exercise/ Of your power

And the key/ To your future

In the World, a large black figure holds twenty-one smaller figures within her. Each of the smaller figures has a face colored to represent the special power she possesses. The fact of the larger World, however, is transparent. Through it and hallowed around her is the swirling blue and white of a beautiful brave new world. the overall shape evokes a keyhole, outlined in a  glow of blue against rich black.

The entry to a new world and your ability to create it, is in giving all that you are a place, Devil and Empress and Fool. Forget none of their lessons. Give up none of your power. Within your World, all of them come together and create a whole more than the sum of any amount of parts. More than a balance, more than integration like some locking together of pieces, when you are all, you are on another scale entirely.”

My Take

I didn’t initially intend – tonight – to choose another set of cards to help us answer those questions that arose spontaneously. Hence the hour has grown late.

But it bears noticing that the repetition of these cards together is certainly synchronistic.The approaching anniversary of the insurrection feels essential to observe as well. And the fact that we just entered into the year of the mid-term elections feels significant too.

We have to figure out a way to come together.

Here’s to 2022.

(T+24)

Expansion of My Yet Again – Day 661

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XXI ~ World  – from Tarot of the Crone – Photo: L. Weikel

Expansion Of My Yet Again

A few days ago I wrote a post that described an additional message I received through two cards I chose from my Tarot of the Crone deck. As I was writing my post that night, sharing the astonishing synchronicity of the messages I received on my walk that night with the card I’d chosen for ‘all of us’ the night before, I started pushing up against my ‘witching time’ of having to post by 1:00 a.m. As a result, I chose to leave out a paragraph from one of the card descriptions, figuring it wasn’t as important as the paragraph I did include. Well, that card appeared again today, and in re-reading it, yet again, I feel it’s important for me to create this expansion of my Yet Again post.

I’m hoping you’re allowing my posts on Perception and Yet Again to percolate within your consciousness as this week unfolds. There’s a lot going on in our lives and in the world, and it’s important for us to be mindful of how we’re perceiving it all.

To that end, you may recall that the primary card I chose a few days ago was the World.

I’m getting the sense that it’s important for our contemplation to consider the entire reflection on this card, so I offer it here:

XXI ~ World

I am all you have been

And all you will become

 

I am the exercise

Of your power

 

And the key

To your future

“In the World, a large black figure holds twenty-one smaller figures within her. Each of the smaller figures has a face colored to represent the special power she possesses. The face of the larger World, however, is transparent. Through it and haloed around her is the swirling blue and white of a beautiful brave new world. The overall shape evokes a keyhole, outlined in a glow of blue against rich black.

The entry to a new world and your ability to create it, is in giving all that you are a place, Devil and Empress and Fool. Forget none of their lessons. Give up none of your power. Within your World, all of them come together and create a whole more than the sum of any amount of parts. More than a balance, more than integration like some locking together of pieces, when you are all, you are on another scale entirely.”

My Perspective

As I read this card yet again today against the backdrop of so much that we see unfolding in our country right now, it was obvious to me that the highlighted paragraph, above, is an essential component of the process of shifting our perception that we’re being called to undertake. Not only must we claim and integrate the various and unique powers we hold within ourselves, we must also honor, claim, and integrate the unique powers and identities of those with whom we share this planet.

I hope this adds to the richness of your reflections this week.

(T-450)

Yet Again – Day 659

Posted on by Lisa Weikel Leave a comment
Ace of Swords Tarot of the Crone – Photo: L. Weikel

Yet Again

I found the appearance of the Perception card* in last night’s post thought provoking. The encouragement it gave us to pay attention to how and why our perceptions influence what we see and hear and are influenced by what we experience or believe was powerful. I found myself circling these ideas all day. It seems Spirit felt the need to reinforce these ponderings, though, because I received the message yet again – but from an entirely different source.

I love it when this happens! It’s harder to deny the existence of interconnecting and unifying threads within our lives when these types of experiences occur.

Another Walk

Karl and I were taking a walk early this evening, luckily managing to get two miles in before raindrops started splattering around us as we approached the house. Not only had we managed to get all the way around our shorter loop, but we’d also managed to pick cards from another one of my favorite decks, Ellen Lorenzi-Prince’s Tarot of the Crone.

Karl’s choices were clear entreaties for him to continue exploring and honoring his creative process. My choices, on the other hand, were such obvious affirmations of the message I received and shared last night that we both just shook our heads and said, “Wow.”

The foundational card I chose (i.e., the ‘bottom’ card) was the Ace of Swords. I offer you the author’s words, verbatim, because YCMTSU**:

Ace of Swords~Thought

In my Sight

In my Mind

Is the Power to Perceive

The One or the Many

Worlds of Creation

 

“A great blue eye shines with stars within and reaches out to a piercing point. The Ace of Swords, the root power of the Mind is Thought. See now with fresh eyes. Hear with new ears. Perception is a power not to inhibit or to take lightly. Strive now for lucidity. Foresee what may be and speak your truth. Settle for nothing less than original thought. What is your vision? It is time to share what you see, what you know. Let the world not be diminished by the lack of your voice.”

Perception. Its power. Seeing with fresh eyes and hearing with new ears. The power inherent in the words we choose.

78 Cards

It occurs to me that it might be worth remembering that traditional tarot decks contain 78 cards. While certainly the suit of Swords in any deck is associated with the element of air and the powers of the mind and thought, it cannot be said that every person ‘reading’ the Ace of Swords would necessarily utilize the word ‘perception’ in this way or urge us to refresh and renew the lenses through which we perceive the world.

Seriously. What are the chances that perception would be the prominent, foundational message of the cards today?

Quite honestly, it makes me a little uneasy. The power of our perception is being emphasized so profoundly that I worry that I’m not quite ‘getting it.’ It feels like Spirit is saying, “Yeah, you get that this is a powerful concept. And you understand – to a point – the power all of you hold to shape and create your individual and shared worlds. But do you really get how big a deal this is at this particular moment? Do you really comprehend the point at which all of you find yourselves, collectively, at this moment?”

Goosebumps

Which leads me to share the top card I chose as we walked today. Unlike the Ace of Swords, which is only one of 56 cards that comprise the four ‘suits’ of the Minor Arcana, the main card I chose was a ‘Major.’ The 22 ‘Majors” in a tarot deck are the archetypal representatives of the story of our spiritual evolution.

The card I chose on top was the World – the final card of all the Major Arcana – the culmination of our evolution.

World – Tarot of the Crone; Photo: L. Weikel

XXI ~World

I am all you have been

And all you will become

I am the exercise

Of your power

And the key

To your future

“(…) The entry to a new world and your ability to create it, is in giving all that you are a place, Devil and Empress and Fool. Forget none of their lessons. Give up none of your power. Within your World, all of them come together and create a whole more than the sum of any amount of parts. More than a balance, more than integration like some locking together of pieces, when you are all, you are on another scale entirely.”

We are such complex, creative creatures. Our realities are like tapestries woven by the warp and weft of what we perceive and what we create as a result of those perceptions.

This feels big. We have a huge responsibility right now – to ourselves and to each other.

* Mystic Art Medicine Oracle Cards
** YCMTSU = You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

(T-452)