There Are Two Things Layout

When to use:

• You’ve become entranced with a pair of opposites and you want to know how they are operating in yourself.
• You're just interested in big, philosophical ideas like “loyalty & disloyalty”, “anger & fear”, “love & repulsion”.
• You feel a division within yourself, as if you are two people instead of one, and you are arguing or not seeing each other's point of view.

Shuffle and Deal: Say the two words you’ve selected to work with out loud. Then let those words leave your mind completely as you warm up the deck with a shuffle. Your mind wanders. You hear the sound of the cards riffling together.

Deal all the cards out face down into two piles as you say the words, one for each pile. You decide which pile is which. You don’t have to keep saying the words out loud once you know which pile is which. You may find once you’ve fallen silent, that the cards want to be in one pile or the other. You know which is which now, so throw the cards, one by one, into which ever pile they want.

Straighten the piles and set them next to each other.

Draw the top card from one of the piles and place it face up below (towards you, not underneath) its pile.

Thinking of the word you’ve assigned this pile, look at the card and ask yourself, “What do I need to know about [whatever you named the pile]? You are faced with some aspect of loyalty or anger or love or whatever. It may surprise you or confuse you. You may know exactly what the card is referring to and what it has to say about the subject. You may find the card feels like a rebuke or like praise. All of these emotions you feel when looking at the card, if you feel any at all, are hooks. They are the places where you are snagging yourself on the world. They are gifts and probably the entry into the real reason you are doing this reading.

Let yourself feel and think whatever you’re going to feel and think about this card for at least a breath, better two or three. In that space, allow a question to form in your mind, something further to learn as indicated by the card. If no question comes, do one of the following:

• Pick a symbol on the card and say what it represents to you right now. Ask why you need to pay attention to whatever it symbolizes.
• If there’s a figure on the card, put yourself in its pose. Notice and name whatever change you feel when you take on their posture and gesture. Allow the figure to give you a question to ask.
• Think of the traditional meanings for the card, or ever look them up in a book, and turn the meaning that catches your eye into a question.

Write your question down for later.

Draw a second card from the bottom of the same pile. Read it as you did the first card. Write down this card’s question below the first question.

Draw the top and bottom cards for the other pile in the same way. First the top card, thinking of the name you’ve given this pile, sitting with the card, hearing and recording the question that arises from it. Then the bottom card, placing it next to the top card over on the side of your table next to the pile it comes from. Write down the questions these cards raise.

You should now have four cards, one pair to the left and one pair to the right, and at least four questions. (Some cards may generate more than one question.)

One thing that can be really cool here is to lay each pair of cards into crosses. This gives you two crossed pairs like the opening of the Celtic Cross spread. These crosses can be read as a conversation between cards pointing out two different aspects of a situation. They can show conflict, literally where two aspects clash, but they can also illuminate more subtle nuances. They may show what you know and don’t know, what your heart and head are saying, what is stuck and what has movement. There are many things two crossed cards can tell you. Breathe and see what yours are saying.

If you feel like you want to draw cards for your new questions, now is the time to do that. You don’t even have to draw cards. You’ve asked the questions. They are in your mind and your mind will work on their answer whether or not you have time to lay the cards down. But probably, if you are a reader, you’ll want to know what cards you would have gotten for these questions so go ahead and throw some cards down.

Draw a card for each question that emerged in the first part of the reading. In the answer, find peace, and strength, and understanding, and the desire to do something.

The Speed Of Consciousness

Modern occultists, alchemists, and magicians will sometimes say that consciousness speeds up evolution.  Dion Fortune was a proponent of this. She was pretty experienced when it comes to things like the nature of consciousness, much more than me, so I certainly don’t want to second guess her. But I really don’t think the point of existence is to get through it as fast as possible.  It’s not a race.   

It's not that we are speeding up evolution by doing alchemy. It's that consciousness slows down and complicates the way to the divine source.  Consciousness makes the path tricky.  Consciousness adds turns and switchbacks, dead ends, detours, and the occasional roadside tourist trap.  What had seemed in childhood like an obvious and delightful traipse up the mountain because a lifetime walking in your own shoes.

And I note a cool thing about the effect of consciousness.  It’s like how sometimes, everything just goes by so quickly and other times it goes by slowly.  Consciousness can affect those rates. Sometimes we enter a state of heightened consciousness and it’s like flow. We are apprehending many things at once, easily, a billion points of existence all at once with ease, and we come out of the state to find that hours have gone by in what seemed like a timeless moment. 

And sometimes, consciousness is like a road trip through the back way.  You leave behind the mindless interstate that transports you unchanged to your destination and instead see every tree and roadside attraction, you feel every turn.   You pay attention to all the small places on the map. Consciousness may make evolution go faster, but it also gives us more to evolve.  We end up not going any faster than non-conscious matter, but we have so many more opportunities for doing so, so many ways to do it.

Meet Aphrodite Epistrophia

turn towards
turn your eyes or mind
to a thing,
regard

turn round, turn about,
constantly turning, as if to look behind
turned to gaze on something
a lion retreating

curve, twist, distort
of hair, curl
of a tree, crooked
of fir-needles, bent

turn about, turn round
put an enemy to flight
wheel about
of a wild boar, turn
upon the hunter

go back and forwards
wandering over the earth,
observing, studying
turn to the place
of the sun, revolve

wheeling about
tossing, of a restlessness
renewed assaults of ills unnumbered
wheeling through a right angle
of ships, putting about, tacking
have a relapse

turn from error, correct,
exact, strict, severe,
be converted, return,
conduct oneself,
behave, earnest,
vehement
bring into action

flexible, supple,
modulated, varied
of strands, twisting
of a bow, bending
of a river, winding
of a bay, curve
cause to return to the source
of Being,

pay attention

that by which all the revolving
spheres are turned
thus turned about, changed
returned to yourself


This is a found poem. I found its phrases among the examples given in Liddell & Scott, the preeminent dictionary of Ancient Greek, for the family of words that begin with epistroph-, the root for Epistrophia, one of Aphrodite's epithets.

Pausanias* tells us that Aphrodite Epistrophia had a sanctuary at Megara. In Pausanias’ passage about the goddess, epistrophia is translated as “she who turns men to love.” This is a translator’s best guess as to what the epithet means, but the family of words in which we find epistrophia has little to do with love and everything to do with turning. Aphrodite Epistrophia is “she who turns men’s minds,” and because the she who is doing the turning is the goddess of love, love has to be in the equation somewhere. We are, however, left with the question unanswered whether she is turning minds to love or with love.

Epistrophia \eh-'pis-tro-fee-a\ She who turns.

[*Pausanias 1.40.6]

A Road Travelled, Anyway

[Click Dogs to see all installments of the Legend of Fowl Feng .]

FOWL FENG IS DEAD! KILLED BY RARELY THERE! LONG LIVE FOWL FENG!

Fowl Feng found himself surrounded by moonlight that faded after a moment until he could barely see. He was walking on a path, but he couldn’t tell where. He stopped and looked behind him. This was not his city. The dirt scar of a road just cut through darkness until it disappeared in the distance. He decided to keep going.

After a short time or a long time, the darkness opened up and he came to a campfire surrounded by a startling collection of individuals. Nearest to him was a man with red skin. You been sitting too close to the fire, thought Fowl Feng. The man chuckled. On the other side of the fire was a big bird of some kind. Feng had seen them at the beach. Not a gull.

“A pelican,” said the bird, and Fowl Feng realized something else was going on.

A third figure, off to one side said in a deep voice, “Come Fowl Feng. We’ve been waiting for you.”

Fowl Feng cringed and his fur stood straight up. He tried to see who was speaking, but the firelight didn’t seem to reach that far. Feng could only get a whiff of something metallic overlaid with the scent of decaying leaves.

He was about to run when a small child sitting next to the red man said, “It’s okay, Feng. You can sit next to me.”

The child had black skin and looked just like any other child, except that from her back two large, green wings arched over her head. She patted the ground next to her and Fowl Feng walked to her and lay down.