This Sunday I will be demonstrating techniques with the Faerie Oracle and the Heart of Faerie Oracle cards, among other oracle and tarot decks. As we work with these cards, a question to consider is, how can these fairies help us to enhance our relationship with a Universe that is intensely alive and in constant communication with us? (See my March 30th post on communications from the Living Universe.)
Wendy Froud, who has done the write-up for the Heart of Faerie cards, describes the cards as revealing, “how the wisdom of Faerie transforms life & relationships.” Transforming life and relationships suggests possibilities for shamanic engagement, because it recalls Serge Kahili King’s definition of the shaman as, “a healer of relationships: between mind and body, between people, between people and circumstances, between humans and Nature, and between matter and spirit” [“Urban Shaman” 14].
Pursuing an interest in shamanic healing, I have been re-reading Margie McArthur’s book, “Faery Healing.” (She also maintains a site at www.faeryhealing.com). Margie defines Faery Healing as “the practice of reestablishing communication and working relationship with our kin of the subtle realms of the Earth, the Elementals, the Earth Beings, the Faeries, and ‘the small clans of the Earth’s delight,’ to use Fiona Macleod’s charming phrase” [183]. Margie’s assertion that, “To do Faery Healing we must be prepared to go into the Heart of the World, that innerworld place where the Flame of Being burns brightly and connects us all by virtue of the Fire of Life which sparks and blazes within all life,” is echoed by Brian Froud’s desire to “experience the love and wisdom that comes from the hearts of the faeries and from the heart of Faerie itself.” The second part of “Faery Healing,” provides different healing techniques, starting out with suggestions for the art of “being hollow,” “body sensing,” how to clear intention and attention—note that the Frouds also emphasize paying attention as part of your bargain for the faeries’ insight and wisdom—different levels of grounding techniques, working with the elements and quarters, shapeshifting, finding faery healing allies, and so on. Something that I hope to learn more about as we explore these things together is how the different types of fairy cards might be used to help with grounding, (for example, cards portraying beings with their roots in the Earth), issues around being in touch with your body and with Nature, (the cards have a lot of images of bodies in harmony with Nature, even aspects of nature that some might consider icky), achieving that “hollowness,” paying attention, shape-shifting, and so on.
By the way, in the March 30 post, I was wondering if others had encountered decks that give a sense of a highly animated universe, and Javier responded with a number of suggestions with links, so you might want to refer back and take a peek at some of those. I do think that there is a lot more that could be done here, by aspiring tarot artists, in conveying ways that the Universe can communicate to us through the cards.
Showing posts with label Wendy Froud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wendy Froud. Show all posts
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Faeries into Poetry
Looking forward to next Sunday, May 2nd. In honor of Beltane, a time when the energies of the Faery World are amplified, I will demonstrate different types of readings with Faery Oracle cards. Because the Frouds have just released a new deck, the “Heart of Faery” Oracle, these cards will be included among the others passed out as Faery Friends talismans to take home. However, as this deck is so new, I’m still in the process of familiarizing myself with it.
To help get to know this deck, I’ve been using it in bibliomantic experiments. For example, last night I went to hear the poet Diane Wakoski read from her new work, “The Diamond Dog,” at the Triple Goddess. To help get attuned, I was going through some of her other poetry books, and because she is known for her deep imagery, where the juxtaposition of striking images provokes striking insights and sensations, I got the notion to insert Faery cards into the books, and then consider how the Faery imagery and card meanings might provoke additional insights.
So, to demonstrate the technique for this blogpost, I have just shuffled and inserted random cards into random pages of “The Diamond Dog.” Among these, I find card 38 between pages 42 and 43 of The Diamond Dog. The card features a boyish sprite with silvery opalescent wings and a silvery opalescent glow; he flies by an ancient tree whose twisted form shines silver-gray in the moonlight. A little golden door at the base of the tree features Dagaz, the Day-rune, which some notable runelorists say can serve as a portal into other dimensions. Meanwhile, goblin faces take shape in the folds of the tree. This card is titled, “The Pan,” with reference to the immortal boy. Glancing at the two poems on these pages, I notice that in “The Secret of the Ring” on page 43, the poetess speaks of glancing at her “old hands,” which, “seem ringless except in owl-light, when Silver Boy points to the stone set in an invisible band on my marriage finger.” Aside from the obvious image of the silver boy, one can see a correspondence with the old hands and the gnarled tree, which then suggests a correspondence between the envisioned diamond on the ring finger and the jewel-like door in the tree.
Incidentally, in last night’s conversation with Diane, I mentioned that I enjoy her works because of her material imagery, including sensual images of things like fruits and gemstones, because for me as an Asperger’s person, it’s easy to relate to things, but difficult to get into concepts, except that material things provide me the entryway into deeper concepts. Diane replied that things serve as the entryway for her, too.
Continuing to consider the resonance between the card and the poem, I see that in the Wendy Froud write-up for the manual, she mentions how the Pan sees life and death as “an awfully big adventure.” This is a reference to the book “Peter Pan,” where, at a certain point, Peter thinks he’s going to die, and tells himself, “Death will be such an awfully big adventure!” Applied to this poem, this isn’t necessarily a portent of death--though of course, we’re all headed in that direction, and the older you get, the more you’re reminded of that fact. Rather, I think it says something about an artist’s mindfulness of death, as in the Heinrich Böll quote cited in a recent post, that, “The artist carries Death within him, like a good priest his breviary.”
Well, I could go on and on about the other poem-card image associations I have in front of me, but the silver boy image is especially serendipitous. This technique of making associations between cards and texts could actually work with any pack of cards, (even ordinary playing cards), and any book, (even the dictionary or phone book).
To help get to know this deck, I’ve been using it in bibliomantic experiments. For example, last night I went to hear the poet Diane Wakoski read from her new work, “The Diamond Dog,” at the Triple Goddess. To help get attuned, I was going through some of her other poetry books, and because she is known for her deep imagery, where the juxtaposition of striking images provokes striking insights and sensations, I got the notion to insert Faery cards into the books, and then consider how the Faery imagery and card meanings might provoke additional insights.
So, to demonstrate the technique for this blogpost, I have just shuffled and inserted random cards into random pages of “The Diamond Dog.” Among these, I find card 38 between pages 42 and 43 of The Diamond Dog. The card features a boyish sprite with silvery opalescent wings and a silvery opalescent glow; he flies by an ancient tree whose twisted form shines silver-gray in the moonlight. A little golden door at the base of the tree features Dagaz, the Day-rune, which some notable runelorists say can serve as a portal into other dimensions. Meanwhile, goblin faces take shape in the folds of the tree. This card is titled, “The Pan,” with reference to the immortal boy. Glancing at the two poems on these pages, I notice that in “The Secret of the Ring” on page 43, the poetess speaks of glancing at her “old hands,” which, “seem ringless except in owl-light, when Silver Boy points to the stone set in an invisible band on my marriage finger.” Aside from the obvious image of the silver boy, one can see a correspondence with the old hands and the gnarled tree, which then suggests a correspondence between the envisioned diamond on the ring finger and the jewel-like door in the tree.
Incidentally, in last night’s conversation with Diane, I mentioned that I enjoy her works because of her material imagery, including sensual images of things like fruits and gemstones, because for me as an Asperger’s person, it’s easy to relate to things, but difficult to get into concepts, except that material things provide me the entryway into deeper concepts. Diane replied that things serve as the entryway for her, too.
Continuing to consider the resonance between the card and the poem, I see that in the Wendy Froud write-up for the manual, she mentions how the Pan sees life and death as “an awfully big adventure.” This is a reference to the book “Peter Pan,” where, at a certain point, Peter thinks he’s going to die, and tells himself, “Death will be such an awfully big adventure!” Applied to this poem, this isn’t necessarily a portent of death--though of course, we’re all headed in that direction, and the older you get, the more you’re reminded of that fact. Rather, I think it says something about an artist’s mindfulness of death, as in the Heinrich Böll quote cited in a recent post, that, “The artist carries Death within him, like a good priest his breviary.”
Well, I could go on and on about the other poem-card image associations I have in front of me, but the silver boy image is especially serendipitous. This technique of making associations between cards and texts could actually work with any pack of cards, (even ordinary playing cards), and any book, (even the dictionary or phone book).
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