Thematically, the cards have been showing me again and again that I am where I have put myself, that my limitations are self-imposed. "Why can't I be with the one I love?"was my cry last night in the dark. "Why can't you?" life reflects back, in the cards, in every day experiences, in the words of others, in my own. "Maybe you can't be with that one, but you can be with one you love if you so choose." I had a dream in the summer that I was the Lady of Beasts (the image of the Strength card) only I didn't know. I thought I was human. I lived with a man I once loved but we weren't lovers any more. Still we were together and every night we locked ourselves with a growing pack of dogs into cages to protect us from the night creatures that came out and ravaged the land. We never saw them; we never saw the devastation they caused. We, like every human left, closed ourselves in a cage each night to stay alive. And every day we worked to build our cages, strengthen our houses. We did other things, things apart. I wandered the forests and gathered to me abandoned and lost creatures. I grew wild and my hair untamed. My being swelled in these walks, and yet every night I returned to my cage and slept with a man who no longer loved me, was chained to me out of habit and history, laziness, and fear. And as I fell asleep each night I wondered how I got here, how he did, how the goddess of me in the days, became a tired, sorrowful human at night.
One day he came to me with a pregnant woman. While I had been among the animals, gathering lost souls, he was with her. They were lovers. And he brought her to me to save. "Let her stay," he pleaded, knowing how much he hurt me and not caring. I had given him everything and he expected more. Night was coming. I could feel it. I looked out the window in the tower we lived, my back to the cages we spent our nights in. I imagined I would sleep in one now, he and her in the other, and I was pretty sure I could not live that way. I didn't want her to pay. I didn't want to hurt her. But I also didn't want to live the life he was proposing. And it struck me that maybe we didn't have to live in cages. Maybe what came at night, in the dark, wasn't bad, just different. Maybe night and day could be ours and we could move freely through both the way once did and took for granted.
I gathered my animals around me and I walked into the twilight. I left them the cages, and I became the Lady of Beasts. And my heart ached but my soul grew large, and I became a goddess, she who walks through all times and all places, wild and present, strong and compassionate.
Joan Bunning writes: "The Ten of Wands indicates that your life is going to be tougher than usual for a time. You will have to fight uphill for every little gain. Each step will feel like a struggle. When you see this card, be kind to yourself. Lighten the load wherever you can, and let others help you. You don't have to handle everything yourself."
In the Jane Austen Tarot, the 10 of Candlesticks depicts Anne Eliot at the piano, playing so that the man she loves, has always loved, but turned down, can dance with another, woo another. Astrologically the card is represented by Saturn in Sagittarius, limits imposed on free-reaching Sagittarius. "You may yearn to dance with your spiritual partner, as Anne does with Captain Wentworth, yet you have put yourself in a position of servitude and self-denial. For reasons of circumstance or misguided notions of nobility and correctness, you may find yourself yoking your will and energies to fulfill the desires of others, often in direct contrast to your own wishes."
I suppose this is why the dream came back to me. Time to channel my desires creatively, even though this may be in the opposite direction to what I so want. Time to be the Lady of Beasts in all her glory.
No comments:
Post a Comment