Instead of plan to make a new year’s resolution before January 1st, 2013, I decided to ask the Journey Oracle to show me a resolution. This resolution would no doubt require translating from the magical correspondences in the Oracle deck that uses the Celtic tree months, full moons, Wiccan wheel of the year and Shamanic journey to create links between the card images, text pages and my lived experience with magical meaning.
When I decided to ask for instead of make a new year’s resolution yesterday, the first number I saw, while riding on a bus, was #4—so this is the oracle card with which I will work. In the new form of the Journey Oracle, this is now the text accompanying the phrase of this image.
TAKE THIS CHANCE
AN EYE WITH TWO FACES
I am interpreting this to be the resolution for 2013: to take the chance of being an eye with two faces. But what does this mean? I look for insight in the oracle card image. First I see a fox face with two eyes—just the reverse of my instruction. Yet the eyes are not looking in the same direction. One looks up and the other out. A dog face in profile seems to emerge on the left. I relate immediately to these particular two faces: many years ago I read a book about shamanic familiars and learned that in shamanic teaching, a totem is a force or creature that is your family in the unseen world, and not the same as a helper or ally. One of these creatures is my totem, and the other is the way my most mysterious stone teacher—a Sastun—presents itself in my dreamtime. So each face has one eye, and each face is partially composed of the other face. Seeing with the eye in the face of self, and seeing with the eye in the face of Sastun, is my resolution for 2013. But what do I change to become this way of seeing?
This is the Oracle card #4 text describing aspects of change in my situation, so next I must decide what is my situation with this resolution? Although I have had a Sastun since 2007, I have yet to understand how to bring its wisdom into my spiritual practice and into my helping others through shamanic counseling.
CHANGE
The power needed to shift this situation will be an inner sound.
Change will come by finding the way to proceed.
Your relationship to the change in this situation is floating.
The primary moment of letting go into the change will smell blocked.
The concern to be avoided within this change will taste of manna.
I am especially intrigued by the first two and the fourth sentences. I am in the process of clearing some karmic traces from past lives that I believe are the cause of my not having a sense of smell. I have been exploring the origins of this hidden handicap for many years and understand that our ability to smell is also connected to our ability to see inner images with the mind’s eye. I was told in a dream that to work with the Sastun I “must see spirit / no other door.” All of these little fragments of mystery are becoming connected in this resolve to find a way to proceed through that door. The subtle meaning of the other phrases are the puzzles to be solved as my resolution unfolds.
When I turn the Oracle card over I am met with the heart of the mystery in this resolution to be an eye with two faces:
DIVINE WILL IS THESE QUESTIONS
Why are you trying to get under it?
Are you the one willing to undo it?
AND IS IN THIS ANSWER
Falling
