As October wafts onward, the air gets cooler on this (where I live) side of the globe, and as the popular saying goes, one can almost feel the veil between this world and the unseen get thinner. I have briefly put down my varying Tarot de Marseilles expeditions in favor of meditating with Robert Place’s bloodsucking, vibrant, and darkly enticing Vampire Tarot. Also, started reading Women Who Run With Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by the Jungian Clarissa Pinkola Estés. These two, the deck and the book, work marvelously well in combination.
Whether because of these actions (reading the book and using this deck) or in tandem, I have, much like the hermit you see in the above card, retreated within in search for answers. Choosing denial, limitation, of the external in favor of internal explorations. October is a fitting month for these sorts of travels. Where one goes inward in search for answers to basic, intrinsic, and vital questions. What do I want? What is the measure of a decent life for myself? How do I value myself? Where am I headed? What is important? Who am I?
Much like the hermit, one starts to face these questions and strip away the superfluous, leaving only the barest, to the marrow, the essence of the thing. This just reminded me of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. However, instead of retreating into the forest to contemplate the lake and trees in the comfort of my cabin to the music of warbling birds, I am retreating to the desert, the valley of my inner world. There is no music, no cabin, barely any trees. But there is a full moon and a small candle somewhere.
This month is a month of reconnecting. After traversing inside it is also good to touch base with our past, those that have been alive before us, those that paved the way for us. An honest encounter with our ancestors helps us reach the nucleus, the crux of the matter, removing what is not needed from our lives, from our points of view, from our assumptions and presumptions, and from our desires.
This is a good month for us, for me, to look in the mirror, reconnect and uncover what truly is the measure of a decent life, a good life. What are my desires and where are they leading? And what am I doing to change, to evolve?
As the veil gets thinner, let us honour our past, our ancestors, light a candle, whisper a prayer, create a sigil, whichever, and put to death whatever is not needed in our life so that what is needed, what is essential can guide us like the flickering flame guides the hermit through the forest in the night.
Like the 3 fates creating, measuring, and cutting life, I want to discern what needs to be created, what needs to be allotted, and what needs to die. Incidentally, this happens to be a worthwhile spread.
The spread of the 3 fates:
- what needs to die?
- what needs to be allotted?
- what needs to be created?
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