Parting the Mists

While looking soft and warmly colored, the Lady’s Mantle card is a bit more complex than it seems on the surface. Notice the stormy skies in the background and the Sheila na Gig carved in the stone. These all point to the different potentials of the card.

Blessings,

Thistle

Lady’s Mantle – The Feminine, Detail, and Miracles

Meaning: A dewdrop is a tiny thing but, when you gaze into it, it acts like a crystal ball, revealing the whole world within it; it is reminiscent of William Blake’s famous lines:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an Hour.

This card may be reminding you to treasure the small things in life because it is in the details that a life grows rich, and every person, every subject, every event, grows richer the more we focus upon it.

The card may also urge you to connect more deeply with the Goddess in your spiritual practice or with the Feminine principle in your emotional and psychological life. It may be that you have been used to approaching the world and relationship in an analytical or objective way that is no longer serving you. Now may be the time to open to that less predictable, sometimes wilder, way of relating to and looking at things that could bring miracles into your life.

On the flip side, this card reminds us the most people are quite naturally dismayed when the going gets tough. But if you have chosen this card reverse, it may indicate that you have the good fortune of being able to see opportunities for growth even in the most despairing of situations. The alchemists of old believed that gold could be made out of “base matter” and that this, though dismissed as worthless by many, provided them with their working material. 

In the same way, the challenges and trials of life are seen by the Druid and spiritual alchemist as ideal opportunities for learning and development. Although to some extent this involves reframing a situation in its most positive light, to “make the best of a bad job,” a deeper process is at work. Character, qualities of soul, wisdom, maturity, and compassion come not from a life of ease and tranquility, but from a life in which our hearts, mind, and sometimes even our bodies are pitted against forces we may not understand.

Druid Plant Oracle by authors Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm and artist Will Worthington