As I look into the image of the August full moon card from the Journey Oracle deck, I first notice the eyes. While both are staring out to meet my gaze, only the right eye has sight. This right eye is surrounded by deep brown and intense red, with hatched and ragged lines defining its edges. The look is wary, perhaps alarmed, and certainly attentive. The line that extends from this eye defines both the nose and what seems like the spine of a book, before dropping into a tiny, square mouth. It seems the lower half of the face is a book, or is perhaps behind one. The right ear is small and set inside red flame-like shapes; intense purple, red, orange and yellow flow and cut across the face. What might be several fingers of one hand appear beneath the mouth; one possibly is raised in a gesture for silence.
What does this image show me about a safe place? This face does not look safe to me, yet it looks like someone who is paying attention. What does it mean to me to only see from my right eye? I understand the right to be my side of action in this world, because I am right handed. I understand the left to be my spirit side. Am I looking for safety only in this reality? Am I blind to being safe in the spirit realms? Is my seeking for safety in this world causing me alarm? Do I define my sense of safety from what I read, or the flaming words I hear, rather than from my knowing the scent and sound of what is truly dangerous? Does this tiny mouth mean that it is better to see than to speak? What do these intense, flowing colors mean to me? I understand red, orange and yellow to be the first three chakra colors. Caroline Myss writes that these represent the red root of our tribal connections to group and family, the orange vibration of our separation from them as we become a unique being, and the yellow energy of our personal power. These colors are edged by stripes of purple-violet. The right eye is also this intense purple. This is the color of the crown chakra that opens to our sense of the Divine. Is seeing spirit a way of being safe?
What I name something is the frame I look through when I see this thing. When I use someone else’s frame for naming what is safe, I allow my own discernment to atrophy. As Richard Louv says in his book Last Child in the Woods, Nature does not reward her creatures with safety; she equips them with attention. I create my own safe place by looking up from this sensory numbing modern life; and by paying attention rather than by being cautious.
