"Speak to the earth, and it will teach you".......Job 12:8
"We're living IN the Earth, not ON the Earth but IN the Earth.
And what we do to the Earth we are doing to ourselves."
....... Rachel Rosenthal
EARTHMIND is included in this deck because today both science and spirituality have converged in our understanding that all life on planet Earth is interdependent, a vast network of ecologies. In 1979 James Lovelock, with Lynn Margulis, developed the Gaia Hypothesis, demonstrating that the Earth is one living, self-regulating organism. They named their theory after the primal Mother Goddess of Greek mythology, Gaia.
How would we live if we truly experienced Gaia as mother, friend, as self? We are the Earth, and it's important that we live and act sustainably, and with reverence, for the benefit of all beings of the Earth. Future generations depend on us. Thank you for your caring, and your efforts.
Reversed: Without caring, effort, and work for a sustainable future, the outcome is reversed for everyone. We're all together on this one.
Without Desire, nothing is conceived. All that birth of new life, new possibilities, new hope begins with desire for union, for experience, for pleasure, for knowledge. Desire is the engine of creation, and profound, authentic desire is profoundly connected to the life force. But desire can be sublimated, denied, or perverted into lust or superficial acquisition, even hoarding where authentic desire has become mistrusted. What do you truly desire, deep in your soul? Real love, meaningful work, engaging creativity, beauty, travel, knowledge? This card encourages you to connect with that deep source, and like a rose opening to the sun, focus on your true desire and make it manifest in your life.
Reversed: You have become far too resigned to never get what you desire or truly want. You are dangerously close to becoming an angry and disappointed person, a scrooge of the heart. Stop it right now, and re-connect to your true, and sacred, desires.
“Psychologists have not begun to ponder the emotional toll of the loss of our fellow life. Nor have theologians reckoned the spiritual impoverishment that extinction brings. To forget what we had is to forget what we have lost. And to forget what we have lost means never knowing what we had to begin with."
…… Mark Jerome Walters (1998)
This card is a litany of extinct and vanishing species, our great collective loss. Some losses cannot be healed from: all we can do is continue living with them, hopefully to learn new ways of being from them. Loss is grief. Grief can be a profound teacher, if one does not attempt to avoid it in the many ways human beings avoid pain. Grief must be passed through to heal. Ultimately, grief is praise and gratitude for that which we have loved. In this sense, the other side of loss is gain.
Reversed: It is time for you to allow yourself to grieve instead of madly filling your days with overly busy activity or numbing heartache with addictions of various kinds. Allow yourself to cry, to name what has been lost. There is a light at the end of that tunnel of the heart.
"The world is made of stories. And a good story you can honestly
call your own is an incredible gift. These stories are part of a
bigger story that connects us all."
......Gary Snyder
In the traditional Tarot The World, a dancing woman, said to represent Sophia, the incarnation of Wisdom, is encircled by symbols of the Four Elements. Here Sophia represents the World Soul, Anima Mundi, whose hands bear the flower and the fruit of the World Tree. We are always turning, evolving in a spiral motion. Be that circle the union of the 4 elements that makeup the whole of life's diverse powers and experiences, or the round globe of the Earth, ultimately we return Home. Here at last the beginning place, the Fool's Journey, is fulfilled as he returns from whence he began. At Journey's end (at least, until the next cycle begins) is found the fruit of the Tree of Life - Wisdom.
The meaning of this card is completion. Now is the time to celebrate the "hero's return" - and part of that return is to give back to the World what has been gained, to share the stories gathered along the way.
Reversed: You may feel that you are finished now, but you're not. There is something more you need to do or find to finish what you began.
"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then, I contradict myself.
I am large, I contain multitudes."
Walt Whitman
We're all shape-shifters. The Greek word for mask is persona, and the truth is we wear many different masks or personalities throughout our lives. Our faces are dissolving before our eyes daily, through time and space, and the "I" brought to the passing parade of our many different roles assumed in the course of being a child, parent, lover, employee, elder, artist, soldier, martyred mother, class clown........and so on. Although the mask is ever changing, some of them have a way of getting "stuck on the face". It's hard to take it off, because we've identified so strongly with it. So how can one have more fun, and be far more fluid, with the masks that are ever changing? One way is to consciously put on and take off the faces we wear to become self-aware shape-shifters.
Using actual masks to explore personae with others in the safe arena of improvisation can be very self-revealing. What happens when you wear the mask of the Clown, or Mouse, or the Debutante, for example? Congratulations on being so versatile!
Reversed: You are probably far too stuck in one role, to the detriment of all the other people inside just clamoring for a chance to express themselves. Time to throw a "Persona Party".
“They’ll need a little water from another time”
The Memory Keeper resides deep within each of us and is more than what we ordinarily think of as “memory.” She is the Ancestral story that weaves through each generation. She is Instinctual Intelligence. She is the collective human wisdom that can, and often needs to be, accessed for not only survival, but as a base from which each generation can securely contribute its new innovations, innovations added to the evolutionary knowledge. Without the Memory Keeper, we are like lost children, blundering into danger or starvation.
Reversed: Your instincts and internal psychic compass are badly out of touch, so that you are indiscriminately making mistakes and lacking judgement, often without realizing what you are doing. Learn how to listen to that small, silent voice within, alerting you to what is needed, and what must be avoided.
“The best laid plans of mice and men……” Robert Burns
Chaos is the other side of Order. All things in planetary life decay, fall apart, deconstruct in one way or another. Sometimes we can delay that decomposition through care and steady efforts, and sometimes no matter what we do greater forces than our own are at work, such as war, the economy, the environment, or the choices of others that spin our lives out of control. Sometimes it is necessary and appropriate to let go and allow things to fall apart. The faceless figure in this painting, it should be noted, is pregnant. Because whenever things fall apart, something new arises.
Reversed: You live with far too much Chaos – time to get organized. And in fact, you yourself may be a force of Chaos.
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