Parting the Mists

So, I’m finally back to posting here rather than just on this blog’s Facebook page. We had a good trip overall, though we are tired of driving from our 5 long trips this spring and summer. So we are homebodies for a while! 🙂

Anyway, these two cards, I believe, needed to be posted together. They were equally strong to me today, and truly do support each other thematically. Don’t fear your wild side – its a part of you for a reason. Don’t fear trying something new or adventurous. There is good sense and then there is being overly cautious. The latter makes for a dull and unexplored life and soul.

Blessings!

WEREWOLF – Exploring Wildness

Luminosity triggers it
A wild moon rises
Fur and howling and wolfen guises

After a painful, excruciating, bone-jarring struggle against the change, the man releases to the magic. Howling unrestrained under the full moon, now the half-man half-wolf rises up, snarling, and goes looking for blood! Yes! We all know the power of the werewolf!

After the end of the European witch trials, an intense interest in the werewolf developed in folklore tales and evolved to become the stuff of horror stories. Fairly consistently since then, the wolf-man or “lycan” has featured regularly in tales both oral and written. Of course, during the last one hundred years, there have been many hugely popular movies including “American Werewolf in London” and themes in books such as the recent Twilight Saga series.

The werewolf is a kind of shapeshifter – but one that has traditionally had little control over his wildness. In a way, an inner battle between civilization and wild nature fights inside the one body. The vitality, strength, and freedom of the animal versus the reason, control and intellect of the man – which one, though, is the dominant force? What is the healthy balance between our animal nature – one that is wild, free, and connected to nature – and our radically “civilized” humanness separate from or dominant over nature?

The werewolf asks us to consider this balance and to delve into our own ideas of wildness, independence and custodianship of the planet. When is the last time you spent all day outside? When is the last time you threw your head back and howled at the moon? Do you quash the vitality and curiosity of your body and mind by sitting all day in front of a computer? The werewolf challenges you to weave a balance between nature and our own nature.

GRAVEYARD – Unnecessary fear

The stones they mark
The eternal resting place
Yet the spirits they are walking
And they are ready for the chase!

Today’s modern graveyards are restful places – normally highly manicured and very well set out. Whilst they can be places of profound sadness, few are the creepy gothic places of old, yet they still hold an undercurrent of fear and seem frightening places.

Due to countless stories of haunted graveyards, the thought of walking through cemeteries evokes fear in many of us – we imagine zombies and ghosts rising from the graves and bad spirits hiding out, waiting to harm an unsuspecting living person walking by. The idea of being at a graveyard after dark, or worse, at midnight, is the stuff of dares and nightmares.

But this isn’t the way with every culture. On the Mexican Day of the Dead, whole families picnic on the graves of their loved ones who have passed. Children play upon the graves, people play music, drink wine and share food all in the “company of the dead.” Graveyard dust is used as an ingredient in protective spells, not in curses.

Pull this card and know that you fear unnecessarily. Things are not as they seem and you can overcome your obstacles. The anxieties you have, although real, should be put aside before they haunt you long term. Instead, trust that you know the correct next steps and that you will act upon them.

The Halloween Oracle by Stacey Demarco, art by Jimmy Manton