Parting the Mists

It’s another spot-on card for many of us – our world has been blasted apart, but many of us are seeking more solid ground from which to rebuild. Don’t assume this is a “bad” card – give a read and think on it. Blessings!

The Blasted Oak

Reading Points: What appears to be a random dissolution or destruction of your beliefs and relationships is timely and natural. The sea swallows what was built on shifting sand and you were liberated from being a powerless victim. Now you have a base on which your inner strength can adapt and evolve. This may happen suddenly, with a shocking speed. The trauma may leave you stunned and confused, but the fiery blast that sent you falling to earth has jolted you from a state of trance that allowed you to avoid dealing with profound and fundamental issues. Don’t be angry or bitter at this passing, for whatever has gone never really belong to you. Be patient, wait, and learn from the process of loss.

Meaning: Just as the Universe has the power to create, so it also has the power to destroy. The sudden catabolic power of natural c catastrophe and disaster is almost unimaginable. With a sideways flick of its tail, the hurricane can uproot a bridge, just as a shudder in the Earth’s crust can reduce whole cities to rubble and send tidal shock waves around the world. On the human level, we build our seemingly indestructible edifices of theory, technical endeavor and civilization, believing they are immovable and eternal. We wrap ourselves in the trappings of power and position, but in the end we own nothing; we only borrow for the time we are here. All we truly have is what we have learned.

This image combines two of the traditional Tarot cards: the Hanged Man and the Tower. Here the great forest oak is shattered by the power of the storm. For those who have climbed the tree and lashed themselves to a branch, the fall may be long. So too the arrogance and pretension of material life may be torn apart by a single act of nature and fate. But the fires that blasts the limb also burns the bonds that have held us in a position of false security. Just as the Hanged Man is caught in a state of divine sacrifice and linked to the threefold death, here in the Blasted Oak, the tree itself is shaken and scarred. Likewise, the tower is shattered by the storm and believing in the illusion of material power can only end in spiritual isolation, stagnation, and collapse.

But even as we fall, the power that floods our senses with pain also cleanses and burns away the illusions and falsehoods. As our hand reach for the stable earth, the power grounds itself through us. Our senses are alive with the heat of life. Our emotions are ablaze with passion. Perhaps we had forgotten the intensity of desire, the need to keep struggling for understanding. The essence of true strength and enduring spirit cannot be bought with gold or position or grandiose esoteric theory. It is found in the ashes and flames of nature’s own “wild”card.

Description: A figure falls from a severed branch of the lightning-struck Oak. Flames dancer on the following figure, turning the hair to flame and burning the bonds appear to have tied the person to the branch. As the figure falls, attached to neither tree nor earth, the powerful Lightning energy charges the very air with dancing fingers of light and seeks to earth itself by passing through the figure and shooting from the outstretched fingers that seem to be reaching for the ground.

The Wildwood Tarot by authors Mark Ryan and John Matthews and artist Will Worthington