The Forest Lark

Category: Tarot

  • The Empress

    Prior to sexual differentiation, Life was self-sustaining and self-generative, relying on proliferation instead of sexual reproduction. The organisms were simple, though still miraculous. But growth depends on biological diversity, which proliferation cannot achieve alone. Increased complexity demanded differentiation of some sort in order to sustain itself, to build something new.

    Consider that prior to sexual differentiation, disparate microorganisms were able to reproduce by combining traits and producing a new organism different from either originating factor. Life was genetically hereditary prior to the introduction of sexual difference.

    We have devised many names for sexual differentiation. Male and female are the terms used most often to denote biological sex. While those terms are useful in some circumstances, they also create a binary and binary thinking is an imposed limitation on the mind’s understanding of reality as it is. It necessitates a false division of qualities inherent to all of Life into specific boxes per dominant cultural ideology i.e. females are nurturing while males are violent, females are passive while males are active. This then gives rise to further obfuscations of reality by way of structured archetypes which, again, can be based on cognitive distortions underpinned by cultural norms. They can be useful, but here serve only to impose artificial structure.

    If I want to know The Empress, and I do, I want her unshackled from preconceived meanings and that requires going back further than sexual and gender differentiation and the cultural imposition of binaries, back even further than the emergence of our last universal common ancestor (LUCA), and back even before the formation of the Earth.

    We’re going back to the explosion that incited all of this, everything we see now, everything we are now, everything that is now: the initial singularity that occurred 13.787±0.02 billion years ago and caused the slow formation of the universe.

    Ascribing the generative power of Life on our planet to The Empress insufficiently describes the explosive, generative power the Empress holds. But this, the explosion of the initial singularity aka The Big Bang, is an apt representation. I posit that The Empress is the explosion of life by extrapolation from its predecessor: the explosion of potential and, therefore, possibility.

    The potential and possibility of reckoning with the self through heartache, as seen in the Three of Swords.
    The potential and possibility of desire and inspiration to effect necessary change, as seen in the Three of Wands.
    The potential and possibility of communion as revelation of interdependence, as seen in the Three of Cups.
    The potential and possibility of resultant durable structure as revealed through experiential learning, as seen in the Three of Pentacles.

    Here, I am diverging from the concept of the Aces as explosive potential, I understand. Consider that prior to understanding the potential of a gift, one must first accept it and then recognize its qualities. The Aces symbolize this acceptance and recognition and all that recognition entails. Then, the rub of utilizing that quality becomes apparent in the Twos. In the Threes, the potential of the quality is understood as something needing to be honed in order to be of aid. We do our best learning experientially, and there is no better way to experience the qualities of the suits than in conjunction with others who are undergoing the same educative process knowing oneself and knowing oneself in the world entails.

    The Magician has mastered the suits and the elements they represent. He is a sound teacher in the exploration implied by dawning recognition. The High Priestess knows the truth beyond the form, truth that defies and then informs logic, cultural reasoning, and language. The Priestess is a firm teacher of inexplicable clarity and knows that prior to clarity, one must learn to see through shadows.

    Understanding the potential of the qualities represented by the suits is an initiation into them. Every Three is an invitation to engage that potential and use it in some way that will not only be of benefit, but adhere to the natural rhythms of Terra.

    These rhythms could also be considered rules of physical reality as defined by physics. Terra’s cycles depend on the rules of time and space in order to exist, and these were born during the moment of the initial singularity. Translated into the arcana, The Empress and The Emperor came into being at once, The Empress expressed as the explosion of possible life and the potential energy of matter and the Emperor as the container of time, matter, and space and the rules governing them.

    The Empress, then, is Life yearning to live itself, know itself, reproduce itself, propagate itself, not out of a drive to dominate, but diversify and know/express itself more fully through diversification. Diversification also ensures that every niche of life is filled, that nothing is wasted, all maintained, all situations taken into account because it is the nature of Life to be interdependent. Life requires all aspects of It to be Itself and, while these aspects shift and change throughout the containers of matter, time, and space, their interdependence does not fluctuate. As one aspect shifts, all others shift to accommodate the alteration. Change occurs in relation to the environment in which the aspect of Life exists, according to what is most advantageous to its continuation.

    It is the nature of The Empress to continue, to reveal all obstacles as possibility, to reveal Herself in and as the interdependence sustaining the container of Life. She is the vitality evidenced by spring blossoms and the bloom of yeast, the flow inherent in the river and the lava stream, the loft resounding in the flight of birds and cloud formations, a quality unseen, yet not unknowable. The Empress is the felt experience of aliveness, the energy that flows through a body, animating it, strengthening it, sustaining it, nurturing it.

    Aliveness is not always comfortable. It can diverge into places we would rather not venture, but even in the shadowlands of our wildness, The Empress is already there because aliveness is, too. She beckons us to those shadowlands with the twin promises of potential and possibility, that we may know ourselves as Life more fully than we had before. She can draw our eyes up into the heavens and remind us of our own origin story, an explosion of vitality that occurred over 13 billion years ago and in every moment since.

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      The Empress

      Prior to sexual differentiation, Life was self-sustaining and self-generative, relying on proliferation instead of sexual…

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      Death

      “Death doesn’t mean literal death,” is a common sentiment in contemporary Tarot teachings. If the…

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  • Death

    “Death doesn’t mean literal death,” is a common sentiment in contemporary Tarot teachings. If the Death card pops up in a spread, it can be scary, so it has come to mean transition, change, the end of cycles, transformation, closing of doors, etc. Scariness necessitates sanitizing to make the scary approachable sometimes, but we do ourselves, and Death, a deep disservice by failing to remember that Death does, in fact, mean literal death.

    If you want a gentle treatise on the transformations demanded by the human condition and metaphors about caterpillars dissolving into viscous goo and emerging from stasis as resplendent butterflies, there are plenty of entries out there and they’re worth the read. Some may even delve into the tension necessary in the emergence to push fluid into the butterfly’s body and how that’s a metaphor for how difficult the transition can be.

    We’re very skilled at turning the natural world into metaphors for our experiences. We forget that those experiences are literal Life and Death struggles for the creatures experiencing them. The metaphor removes us from the reality that if the butterfly does not have the strength to push through the shell of the chrysalis, it will die. It doesn’t go back to the way it was before. It doesn’t stay in the bad relationship or keep the soul sucking job. It dies. We forget that if the trees do not drop their leaves, they will not have the nutrients they require in the coming year and they will suffer greatly. We forget that if the tides of the ocean stop, so does all Life on Earth. We forget that if the moon stops its cycles, it means we have first.

    Instead of metaphors, I’m taking you to actual, literal Death. Because Death is real and it is the soulmate of Life. If you want to know Life fully, you need to reckon with actual, literal, flesh and blood, heart stopping Death. The Death that ends the continuation of your body and escorts you into what no one can know for certain. We’re not stopping at “transition,” we’re going all the way through to Mystery.

    I met Death for the first time when I was five years old. The toes of my pink sparkly boots poked over the edge of a wooden bridge suspended over a river flush with snowmelt, the froth and spit of the newborn rapids churning bubbles just feet under my soles. In that moment, and in countless moments after, I wanted to jump. I did not want to retrace my steps back to the house. I imagined myself engulfed in the river, surrounded by those bubbles, the swift currents, the smooth rocks I knew paved the riverbed.

    The fact of Death didn’t scare me. It liberated me. At five, I ached for the river to take my body away, away from me, away from my circumstances, away to wherever it was that the river went, to the home that River knew. I wanted what I knew of myself to be freed of the weird, fleshy thing that overwhelmed me constantly. Its ears heard too much, its eyes saw too much, its skin felt every shift, every texture, every nuance of its environment.  It hurt all of the time in strange ways that defied my five year old vocabulary to explain the pain. Forty years and tens of thousands of accumulated words later, and the pain still stymies my vocabulary and Death is still my companion.

    Death wasn’t fearful then and it isn’t now. I think Death claimed me that day in a way that was, perhaps unconsciously, mutual. I wanted Death beside me. Death was recourse, a companion I felt safe with because they could rescue me from my circumstances if necessary. No one else could claim that. Death was gentle, kind, natural. A means to the bones and marrow of what was really true. Death didn’t lie. Instead, it pared away the effluvia and the flotsam until truth was all that was left.  Death was the skeleton, the structure of Life.

    If you’re thinking that it isn’t “normal” for a five year old to be suicidal, I would ask you to interrogate your idea of “normal child.” But, on the whole and according to modern child development, you’d be correct. I was not a “normal” child. I experienced many things most children do not. I heard what others could not hear, saw what they could not see, and had access to information I technically should not have. My intuition operated on full blast and I had no direction or boundaries. Childhood is flush with confusion anyway, but add to that my natural relationship with the unseen and that confusion flourished into constant overwhelm.

    When I was twelve, I wrote a story about a child who was neither a girl nor a boy who lived halfway between this world and the land of the dead. I meant “dead” as what is unheard, unseen, unspoken, unknown, unfelt, the massive, beautiful, heartbreaking, strange world that lay beyond the body and form. That world was far more real to me than anything my hands could touch or my wide open eyes could see. Again, that hasn’t changed, but time, harsh experience, and acculturation wore away my confidence in it. With the aid of Death, I’m slowly gaining it back.

    The child in my story never had a name. They were simply “the child.” To name them felt to fence them into an identity when their identity needed to remain as liminal as the space they held.

    Every time I pull the Death card, I am invited to inhabit that land again. I am reminded of my child self who knew with utter clarity and confidence enough to write a story about it, that the world beyond the physical was more real and tangible than the world the body senses. Death is the threshold to that place. Death is the thing we engage when we realize we do not know, we do not understand, and, despite all of our planning, we do not know where the fuck we are going. Death is what welcomes us, arms wide open, when we pull a spread, ask the Oracle a question, seek for a glimpse of understanding, direction, guidance. We do not interrogate our certainty for answers, but the intractable Mystery of all we cannot fathom. That Mystery is Death.

    Death is the King of Life’s Mystery. They are the structure of the skeleton, the fossilized bones of the dinosaur, the fuel in the tank, the whisper of the ancestor over the baby’s crib. Death feeds us daily. What we call “ripe” is the state of decomposition we find most pleasing. The juices of Death roll down your chin in August when you bite into a tree ripened Peach and again in September when Pear is at their peak. The sweetness of Strawberry is its symphony of decay. Crack the shell of Death and suck out the crab meat, the unfertilized egg, the brains of the crayfish. The flesh we cook for dinner, the cured meats in our sandwiches; the grain we grind to make the bread; the corpses of trees we use to build our houses, make our paper, send messages back and forth, keep record of our daily experiences; the skin of our animal kin that protects our feet, our hands, that gets all stitched up to hold our essentials; the plastic that has slowly become the structure and container of most of our goods; the oils in our lotions and balms, the sweat and tears of a Plant made accessible through its decay–it’s all Death, all the way down. Death is the foundation of our lives, Death makes our lives possible. Death fulfills our needs. Without Death, we cannot live.

    Surrounded as we are by It, it only makes sense to accept Death’s companionship. Otherwise, we’re running scared of the structure of our living.

    For me, the Death card isn’t an invitation to shed my leaves or break out of my chrysalis. It isn’t asking me what needs to decompose, what is decaying, what transition I need to undertake next. It doesn’t encourage me to chase the best possible version of myself on the hamster wheel of self-improvement and personal growth. It’s an invitation into what I knew as a child–that Death is the structure of Life, the Mystery pulsing behind the form, enlivening it, giving it a shape, a context, a meaning. It’s a reminder that the threshold between Life and Death is an open door. I am free to leave, to return, to stand with one foot in Life and one in Death. I get to be liminal, not this, not that, but wholly undefined.

    A child without a name.

    Liberation, to me, means being who and what you are. That will necessarily be different for everyone. In our culture of conformity, knowing what you know and being what you are is perhaps the most courageous undertaking. It is a crucial one, though, if one is to inhabit the fullness of their vitality. The threshold of that vitality is the confluence of Life and Death, the arena where Death is not a pretty metaphor, but a reality. The place where Death is not sanitized into transformation and transition, but allowed to keep its teeth. Death is, like Life, a wild thing, and wild things are made ambiguous and safe in taming. And Death, like Life, is anything but safe. 

    Let Death be what it is. Let it run rampant through your living. Let it off its leash of transition and transformation and caterpillar goo. Let it breathe itself into you, decay your flesh into food for worms and beetles and fruiting fungi until all that remains is your fossil record. Let yourself be a child without a name, without a face, without any defining characteristics except that you are here, in this space where Life and Death blur together. Give yourself to the Mystery of Life and call it by its Name:

    Death, King of all that Lives.

    Terra’s Emissary for Death

    All Plants know Death intimately and all of them will aid us with it in one way or another. The plant that I know by heart who has a strong relationship with Death is Elder. Elder is the keeper of thresholds and straddles the liminal space of Life and Death. Elder is caretaker of the newly born and the newly dead, a keeper of Mystery, and an excellent teacher of navigating thresholds and liminal spaces. They watch over travelers and all forms of transit, be that physical, mental, emotional, or psychic. Their guidance ranges from the unseen to the physical. I do not drive my car without calling on Elder for aid. They have navigated me around traffic and accidents, and helped me find parking. They have also led me down roads I wouldn’t have otherwise taken in order to see mountain vistas I never would have otherwise experienced. 

    Elder connects us to the liminal otherplaces that feed us, enliven us, and give us strength. 

    Elixer for Navigating the Liminal

    This one is a bit more complicated than making a tea, but absolutely doable. Ask Elder to be present with you as you make it and rest confident that the elixir will do its job well.

    Supplies

    • 4oz Elderberries
    • 2oz Bilberries (These have gotten expensive of late. You can use dried, not fresh, blueberries if that’s more accessible, but the medicinal properties aren’t as potent. If you use blueberries, try to find dried, wild ones, like wild Maine blueberries.) 
    • ½ oz Angelica root
    • 16 oz water
    • Brandy (You’re using it as a preservative, so the higher the proof, the longer this will last. And get the good stuff, nothing flavored.)
    • Local honey (Again, get the good stuff. Creamed honey works nicely. Honey is a preservative in this recipe and cannot be omitted. You can substitute sugar if necessary. The amount will remain the same.)

    Method

    In a 1.5-2 quart saucepan, combine the berries, Angelica root, and water. Bring it to a boil and then turn it down to a simmer. Stir occasionally. Simmer until the mixture has reduced by half. Get yourself lost in the astounding depth of that purple. 

    Place a large fine mesh strainer over a quart size mixing bowl. (Or whatever smallish mixing bowl you have.) Place two layers of cheesecloth over the sieve and strain the mixture into the bowl, letting all of the berries and roots drain through the cheesecloth. Leave it be until it is cool enough to handle and then squeeze as much liquid as you can out of the marc (spent Plant material). You can squeeze it directly into the bowl, but any solid matter in the finished product will reduce shelf life. I strain over the sieve.

    Pour the mixture into a 2 cup measuring cup and take note of how much liquid you have. That amount of liquid is one part. Divide that number in half. (If you have a weird amount, don’t get too caught up in specifics.) You’re going to add one half part brandy and one half part honey.

    Example: If you end up with 8oz of liquid, add 4oz brandy and 4oz honey. 

    Add your amount of both honey and brandy and stir to dissolve the honey. If the honey isn’t dissolving well, wash out the saucepan you used, pour the elixir back into it, and warm it gently until the honey dissolves. Do not heat it more than necessary. You may wish to warm the liquid prior to adding the brandy and honey, add the honey first, dissolve it, and then add the brandy once the mixture cools. 

    Taste and adjust honey and brandy according to your preference. 

    When the elixir is room temperature, bottle, label, cap, and store in a dark, cool place. Shelf life is six months. You may also keep it in the fridge to extend shelf life by three months. 

    Dosage: 2-3 T up to three times a day. It doubles as an anti-viral. If using it in that capacity, use 3T/3x daily. 

    Note: The dark amber bottles of G.T.’s Kombucha Mushroom Elixers are ideal for storing liquid medicinal remedies.