You Enter the Marvelous
I’m not sure where this stuff comes from, but this one is particularly lovely.
I’ve written it a bit differently this month because it makes it easier for me to explain its message.
In other news, an uptick of bots from China are scraping this website; I can see them in my analytics, searching for tech vulnerabilites or personal info, or harvesting for AI. I can tell you that for now I’ll carry on and post, as unnerving as I find this.
We begin with La Chalupa, from Loteria Remedios Oracle.
An offering.
What we at one time wanted is now ours. We are finally on firmer ground.
But there is still more, she says.
Stay open and pay attention, she says, and try to get good sleeps.
Next, we have what seems like two sets of pairs from my second-ever tarot deck, a bonafide classic called The Wild Unknown Tarot by Kim Krans.
On the left is the 5 of Pentacles with the Son of Swords, and on the right the Father of Swords with the 10 of Pentacles.
This line of cards I can tell you, on the spectrum of tarot possibilities, is uncannily symmetrical.
We have a pentacle card with a sword card (an owl). Then a sword card (another owl) with a pentacle that is exactly double the value of the other pentacle (5 + 5 = 10).
Cool.
Let’s take the pair on the left first.
This combination represents where we’ve been in the weeks leading up to this reading.
The 5 of Pentacles means worry—in the form of illness, money issues, rejection, or loneliness, or it may just be that although your life is pretty comfortable you’ve been feeling a large amount of concern. And, yes, ok, maybe moments of spiralling.
It’s not all for nothing though. We’ve been looking hard at our hardship, it’s shape and substance. What is it really? And how are we contributing to our own crap?
Like our Knight of Swords owl aggressively stabbing at it, our methods haven’t been as effective as they could be.
Knights.
They go galloping in with all the intention in the world but sometimes they’re all over the place.
Except then we’ve got this king.
The wiser owl. More settled, and with a luminous sword he does not wield unnecessarily.
King of Swords with his good head is like an effective parent, and note my use of the word effective.
You can begin again exactly where you are now. This may mean you’ll be going slower but accomplishing more. Or you’ll be better at accepting the limits of time and energy but create more days that get you closer to what you actually want.
Psychologist Jessica Dore writes about the King of Swords like this:
We worship—giving worth to—anything we focus on, and our attention is a precious resource.
King of Swords is about making a commitment to put your mind somewhere and then bring it back as often as you need to. The bringing it back is the integral part and it needs to be ongoing, like brushing your teeth—sustained.
This king represents the kind of focus that helps you return and get good at returning. No matter where you find yourself, you know the way back.
You don’t beat yourself up (that’s distraction too, frankly). You just come back. When your thoughts are in a loop of unhelpful patterns, you have the power to take your attention elsewhere, and the strength of the unhelpful thought then diminishes.
It’s about control of attention.
This is not control of thoughts—that’s not possible. But we can hone our ability to put focus on what we truly want to worship.
Even better … what clarifies the King of Swords is our pentacle card, now doubled and abundant :)
The 10 of Pentacles is the jackpot card :)
Our past decisions are becoming more integrated into our lives and we are finally deepening into what we’ve spent a LONG time figuring out.
That’s the jackpot—and we enter the marvelous as it sweeps us under its wing.
The Oracles
The oracles take everything I’ve said up a notch, and they seem to give off a before and after vibe.
From Kim Krans’ Wild Unknown Archetypes, Thanatos and Aletheia appear on either side of the Awakening card (from the Wild & Sacred Feminine).
These archetypes belong to a category in Krans’ deck called the initiations, big energies similar to major arcana cards in tarot, which represent junctures or situations in life that carry major significance.
Thanatos means Death.
Aletheia means Truth.
And Awakening acts like a bridge across the threshold between them. It carries us, like La Chalupa, from an old way that is gone and ferries us across to what is truly meant for us.
Unlike that Princess Bride scene, what’s gone from our lives is not mostly dead, it’s all dead. Even Miracle Max can’t bring it back. Something, too, has become crystal clear and the emergence of a truer truth is by no means easy (the initiations are also called the ordeal). The fabric of life has changed.
What will help us on the trip across this harrowing divide?
Compassion and kindness, Bodhisattva says.
Toward colleagues, friends, your spouse, strangers and store clerks, neighbours, siblings, parents and kids—especially if they bug us. Aspire to be loving—because we’re all in this together, moving through the marvelous.
And try to get good sleeps.
Resources
Dewart, Niki, and Elizabeth Marglin. Artwrok by Jenny Kostecki-Shaw. The Wild & Sacred Feminine Deck. Shambhala Publications, Inc., 2022.
Dore, Jessica. Tarot for Change. Penguin Random House, Canada, 2021.
Gonzalez, Xelena. Artwork by Jose Sotelo Yamasaki. Loteria Remedios Oracle. Soulful Remedies and Affirmations from Mexican Loteria. Penguin Random House, Canada, 2024.
Krans, Kim. The Wild Unknown Archetypes. HarperCollins Canada, 2019.
Krans, Kim. The Wild Unknown Tarot. HarperCollins, Cananda, 2012.
