Druidry and Tarot

…The office of the Sanctuary has received a rather nasty e-mail, asking why I would stoop so low, as a spiritual coach, as to use Tarot and Druidry as my tools in my work with people. The mail ended on the note of… ”and since you are a so-called Druid, here I leave you playing with your potions and your enchantments!”… (Suspensive space).Wow. Really nasty.

I didn´t like the tone of the e-mail, but I must say that it started me thinking, both about my use of Tarot (I use Caitlin Matthew´s Arthurian Tarot deck) and my use of Druidry, and found that I have a few things to clear up for certain people I have known in the past. And maybe, at the same time, for certain new and current friends.

I am definitely not using Druidry as a role-playing PlayStation,  and I´m not a fantasy druid, not “a” Druid, I am a Druid Graduate of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, UK. I don´t claim any superior or mysterious knowledge or powers, but I do stand for having finished said Course (OBOD), and that has been four years of very intense innner Journeying. I am most definitely not using Tarot as do the mercantile channelers and seers that you find in some magazines. (If that was the meaning of the e-mail.)

Tarot is a very old tool for self-knowledge, and its archetypes most useful in any personal journey, when you want to know your place in the grand scheme of things (in our western civilization, since it is mostly  a tool in Western esotericism). Astrology would be another, for example, though I do not agree that stars can have a psychological effect on the human soul. (That´s just my opinion, please respect it for whatever it is worth).

I use Tarot in my personal journey, but have never, ever, used it for another person (not even family), since I think that our Quest for our very own personal Dharma (the Path of Individuation, as Jung described it), can only be that : personal. I do not believe in seers, and I do not believe that anyone except oneself is responsible for their destiny. I wouldn´t dare intervene between a person and their soul journey. Not my business, at all.

As for Druidry, I think that I explained elsewhere, that I am not much for rituals (except private ones), that I am not in any collective group except my heart family, and that my Druidry has a clear ecopsychological flavour: I am most concerned about the well-being of our planet, and about the well-being of all its inhabitants. So. No white robes, no mistletoe at midnight. No weird magic wavings at full moons, either.

I might have, certainly, talked about “potions and enchantments” somewhere in this blog, and it must have been as a hearty joke about people who see “Druids” as “super-power Merlins”, who – of course, do not exist in real life. My use of the image of Goscinny´s Panoramix – a few blogs below - was due to my sense of humour, as well as the frog right above. Hope I won´t be blamed for that.

Hope all is clear.

Good day.

Soul cards

(Image : The Winter Queen, soul card 121, SG, 2009)

So, what are soul cards?

I have started my collage work years and years ago, long before it was “invented” in California by a lady called Seena Frost. An artist friend of mine showed me how to cut stuff in old magazines to create stunning collage work (her own being abstract). As my drawing was not up to the kind of images that I got in my mind, the technique really worked for me. I can decide on perspective, and create architecture, layers and depths. Through the years I evolved my own style and my own themes.

When I started my Psychosynthesis Diploma Course in the year 2000, I realized that I could actually document my inner processes, so the collage work soon became an expression of all the phases of my PS process. Now they are an extension of my inner Journey. 

Anything can start a collage card, an inner impulse, a colour, something somebody says, an image in a magazine, sometimes just an emotion, or a state of mind. Through time I have elaborated my own “vocabulary”, so I  immediately know what the card means when I look at it. It is a sort of stenography of the soul. 

When I show the cards I let the viewers elaborate on their own meanings, and am glad to see that my cards evoke lots of interesting ideas. It rather works like an unconventional Tarot deck (of 121 cards!). Nowadays I mostly use them to illustrate this blog, which allows me to show things that words cannot communicate.

All the images you see in this blog are simple scissors-and-glue work. I don´t do Photoshop. And of course, I don´t sell them, though I did, at one time, create book covers with them for a friend of mine who is a publisher.

Initiation: The Tower

(Image : The Sannyasin and the Labyrinth, soul card 87, SG, 06)

Essentially initiation is a soul journey. It may be stepped into consciously, or it may overwhelm us when we least expect it. It often comes upon us unbidden, with the elemental force of a hurricane, or an earthquake. A loss, or death of a loved one, or any sudden drastic change of our life circumstances can push us into the unknown. It is the passage of awakening to the new and unfamiliar circumstances that tests our capacity for evolution. The willingness to surrender control of the old and familiar condition, requires a maturity of soul that arises through the challenge of living. There is a necessary shattering of innocence, of trust in the safety and comfort of the known. Facing our fears, and meeting these often painful points of transition in a human life, is to consciously connect with the Mystery of the Self, with the order of the cosmos, with existence itself, and to be opened by its infinite potential.

“Obey the Teacher on the Way. Prepare for the tests. Pass through each Gate and in the sphere which they reveal and guard, perform the labor which befits their sphere. Learn thus the lesson and begin with love to serve humanity.

Then, to the Teacher went the final word : “Prepare the candidate. Give him his labours to perform and place his name upon the tablets of the living Way.”

(The Tibetan Master)

” Within the light shall you see light; walk in that light and there see light. Your light must brighter shine.” (The Old Commentary).

Oh!

The silence of the vultures

Thickens the plot, no doubt.Follow the threads, follow the trails,

Follow the hints and the winks,

We are on to something.

Staunchly we walk

Back to the Shire,

The Ring has  ben destroyed,

My friends.

We fight for freedom.

This is no race for amateurs.

Too many strange-sounding names,

Too many nuts to Nibble-ungen on.

Hahaha.

The Lady Dragon *being esoteric*

Conjunctio : The Lovers

(Image : Conjunctio, soul card, SG, 2005)

Each one of them: complete.

Each one of them, a perfect jewel.

Neither only man, neither only woman.

They are what each one is. Just that. They will cry and they will bleed, and they will share the gift of life.

As they touch they feel the same life force

 flowing in their veins, like living fire.

And so they shine, perfect jewels in a perfect necklace,

Glowing ruby-red on the throat of the Goddess.

Alchemy, practiced throughout the ancient world, is a science or art through which material is subjected to a serie of operations in order to produce gold or the so-called philosopher´s stone, the key to understanding everything. This latter was to be reached by the union of opposites in the final process called the conjunctio, normally imaged as the union of male and female in the form of the divine androgyne. Although alchemy was practiced as literal chemistry, it was also imaged metaphorically as a process of psychospiritual growth. In this sense, even the literal chemical process was imagined to hold the mental projections of the alchemist. It was Jung´s metaphor for the process of individuation whereby opposites are held in tension and brought into harmony through the constellation of a third possibility. The Lovers of Tarot come to mind, too, in which a couple is seen looking up at the blessing hands of an angel (Rider Waite).

Oh Hidden Life, vibrant in every atom,

Oh Hidden Light, shining in every creature,

Oh Hidden Love, embracing all in oneness,

May all who feel themselves as one with thee,

Know they are therefore one with each other.

(Annie Besant)