Gaian Tarot Artist's Journal

The View from Your Window - Pt 4

Today we have views from Australia, New York, North Carolina, Kazakhstan and Ethiopia!

Jodi in northern NSW in Australia writes: "This is the view from my north facing window this morning. And it isn't going to be here much longer. Our whole 15 acres, which is mostly like this, with lots of wildlife and trees and natural beauty, is soon to become a service road for the Pacific Highway. So all this lushness will be gone. It makes me very sad, but I thought I'd share it while it's still here. :-( "

 

The View from Your Window - Pt 3

Today we have views from Toronto, Hawaii and Ohio — very cool!

Judy in Toronto writes:  "I live in downtown Toronto.  This is the view from the window and wee deck off my bedroom into my little jungle paradise.  I don't miss grass and space because my front windows look onto a large park . . . beautifully treed, flowered and dogged!"

  

Nine of Earth - Gaian Tarot Card of the Week

What wisdom do I need to keep in mind this coming week?

       Nine of Earth

The 9 of Earth is one of the cards in the deck that is uniquely me.  It's based on a photo that Craig took a few years ago during the island Lavender Festival and represents a time in my life when I was very happy and satisfied.  

I think of the 9's as the culmination of a cycle, before a new cycle begins. It's a time when you get to rest on your laurels, so to speak, and enjoy the abundance in your life. As I wrote in the book:

You’ve enjoying a time of accomplishment and comfort. You’re at the peak of your creative powers, and are well paid for your work. You are connected to your family and community, yet have time alone for creative and spiritual pursuits. It is a time of peace and plenty in your life, both internal and external.

So I have to ask myself how this card applies to me now, today, this week.  

The View from Your Window - Pt 2

And the views from your windows have started rolling in!

Nancy in San Diego, California says:  "I'm enjoying watching the tomatoes grow — I'm pretty sure they're growing 6 inches every day!"

Lunaea in the Santa Cruz mountains of California says: "I have to cheat a bit, as my camera is broken, but my view is pretty much unchanging anyway, season to season, throughout the year. It's the view from my front windows."

The View from Your Window

I was utterly charmed as I caught up on my blog reading this week and saw page upon page of views from people's windows all over the world on Terri Windling's blog, The Drawing Board. I am inspired to try it here, especially since the rhodies outside my kitchen window are putting on their once-a-year glory show. (Truly spectacular!) Won't you email a photograph of the view from your window to me? I'll post it here so we can all see it. (Terri in turn was inspired by blogger Andrew Sullivan of the Atlantic Monthly.)

 

I especially love the way you can see the pink reflection on the underside of the top windowframe in the first photo, and the way the pink lights up the bevels on the Celtic knot lightcatcher in the second.  Sigh. So lovely.

Can't wait to see the view from your window!

 

Finding Your Secret Place

(Another one from the archives. I wrote this before I started working on the Gaian Tarot, and it was published in SageWoman in the Summer of 1999.)

 

"Following the spring branch was how I found the secret place. It was a little ways up the side of the mountain and hemmed in with laurel. It was not very big, a grass knoll with an old sweet gum tree bending down. When I saw it, I knew it was my secret place, and so I went there a lot.

Granma said . . . she reckined most everybody had a secret place, but she couldn't be certain, as she had never made inquiries of it. Granma said it was necessary. Which made me feel right good about having one."

- Forrest Carter, The Education of Little Tree ¹

This passage from the award-winning children's book The Education of Little Tree strikes a chord in just about everyone who reads it. Who among us does not remember a secret place we stole away to as a child, that was magical, special, and sacred? Mine was a apricot tree in the backyard of my suburban Los Angeles home. I spent countless hours in her branches. When we went camping in the mountains, I always found some rock by a bend in a stream where I could settle in with my books and sketching pad, and dream the time away.

Maybe our childhood souls knew something we've forgotten as adults.

I was introduced to the concept of a "Secret Spot" as an adult through the Kamana Naturalist Training Program. As a naturalist-mentor, Jon Young teaches his students that the key to learning any nature skill is getting to know one place really, really well. We are so engrained by the dominant culture to be consumers that we are often consumers of natural places too. How many mountains have we climbed, how many valleys or seasides explored? Jon Young's assertion is that, as enticing as it is to visit many beautiful and wild places, we will never learn as much about nature (and about ourselves) as we will by being deeply intimate with one place.²

Wordless Wednesday: Green Beach Glass

 

Card of the Week: Guardian of Water

How appropriate for the Guardian of Water to show up this week, when so much of our attention is focused on the Gulf of Mexico and the devastation there.  What can we do to help?  Sia Vogel is doing a great job of keeping us up with the latest news from the Gulf on her blog and on Twitter.  Blog reader (and Gaian Tarot aficionado) Deborah Sam wrote to tell me about an event happening this Friday called "Unity Wave for Gulf Restoration." I plan to take part.  How about you? 

The website says:

The oil spill in the Gulf is a disaster for the ecosystem and all its life forms. This is a call to action for people of every faith, creed, tribe, nation and origin to focus the power of group intention to restore this area. You can contribute by actively and consciously holding a focused intention. Together we create a powerful group synergy, the Unity Wave.

The Guardian of Water, to my mind, is an embodiment of Kwan Yin and Tara and Mary, all Mothers of Mercy, Goddesses of Compassion pouring out their waters upon a troubled world.  We need Her more than ever.

What does this card say to you, dear Reader, either globally or personally?

Wordless Wednesday: Spring at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

GaianTarotCircle.com: Charter Membership is open!

 Hooray! GaianTarotCircle.com will open its doors on May 13th, the New Moon in Taurus, and you can sign up to be a Charter Member now!  (We are already 80 members strong!)

This has been a dream of mine for quite some time. Most of you know I'm all about community. I love going to Tarot conferences, and I love my own local community. But I also wanted to create a place online where lovers of the Gaian Tarot can gather to study the deck, swap readings with each other, share what's up with Mama Gaia in their neighborhoods, and much, much more. I'm very excited about the possibilities!

There's more to say about GTC than will fit in this newsletter. Please click here to learn about all the yummy details and to become a Charter Member of the Gaian Tarot Circle!