12/19/12—Being The Ant

Today's Draw: #58 from the Golden Moth Illumination Deck by Aijung Kim. What value and import do you place on community? How much do you give to your community? Do you feel there's room in your life to kick it up a notch?

You may remember this deck from last week where there was a cracked egg visual. Oddly, that same card is the card I chose first tonight. So I chose again and got the ants. I want to use this card to talk some about community, but first I wanted to impart some ant trivia. 

• The ant has the largest brain, in proportion to its size, in the animal kingdom. 
• The little dude can lift 50x his weight and pull 30x times his weight (you'd think he could pull more than he can lift, but I guess not.)
• Ants can yawn. 
• An ant can live for up to two weeks under water. They're hard to drown because water can't penetrate their miniscule breathing tubes. 
• Ants have two stomachs—one for their own needs and one to feed others. 

This last bit of trivia kind of dovetails with the community thing I was going to talk about. Ant colonies are strong communities where everyone works for the common good. In a way, they create socialist societies. And the understanding that runs those societies has, in part, made them one of earth's most successful species. They have roamed the earth for more than 100 million years and there are more than 20,000 species of ants living in nearly every climate on earth.

Everything I've ever read about survival and the success of the human race has stressed the importance of community. I've been thinking about the idea of community more and more lately. I'm a little of a loner and I like it that way. So the idea of my survival depending on me being part of a community scares me a little. But perhaps not as much as being alone in a survival situation does.

This thought of having two stomachs...one to feed yourself and one to feed others...seems to me to be the epitome of community and dedication. In humans, it's what happens during pregnancy and after birth where a mother shares her nutrients with her child. It's also kind of what people like Oprah and Bill Gates do when they share so much of their wealth with others.

For a long time now, I've devoted part of my life to helping others in one way or another. I was a literacy and ESL volunteer for many years. I lead free meetups for people wanting to learn tarot. I make blog posts to help others think more consciously about their lives. There is no such thing as being selfless. There's nothing we do that doesn't have some sort of payoff for us, even it just makes us feel good about our walk on earth. I know I've always gotten more back than I give.

But I don't have an extra stomach set aside to feed another. That's kicking it up a notch. Or three...haha. So it's got me thinking. Part of the path we've chosen to walk is that we kick it up a notch when we start to feel comfortable or when we see we might be lacking.

I love my lone wolf life. I have friends and family and they are part of my community. But I'm thinking more and more about how to feel more a part of my local community, as well as the larger community of man in more of that extra stomach way. I see a lot of "what best serves Tierney" going on in my life. And while I don't think that's any different than most people around me, I do believe I can do better. 

12/10/12—Breaking Out of Your Shell

Today's Draw: #17 from the Golden Moth Illumination Deck by Aijung Kim. What do you see in this card? Does your interpretation relate to something in your own life right now? What message does it hold for you?


The Golden Moth Illumination Deck is an oracle deck with 75 cards, a handful of which are blank so you can draw your own images. All the images are simple, like this one. And all the cards are done in just blue and yellow. 

I held off on getting this deck for a while, because I'm not huge on oracle decks (outside of the Lenormand) and it's not a cheap deck. But let me tell you, I'm so glad I finally got it. Everything about this deck is pure class. The stock is beautiful. The printing is beautiful. Even the design of the tuck box is beautiful. Really. You've never tucked a box like this. Aijung must have the soul of a graphic designer, because she has the impeccable taste and attention to detail of one. 

The deck also comes with a 30-page handbook. And you'd expect that, somewhere on the 30 pages, there would be a key as to the meanings of the cards. But there is none. She leaves it to you to figure it out. 

Now, you guys have seen me around. I'm pretty confident and intuitive with my tarot cards. And there was even a time years ago that I worked only with oracle cards that had no guidebook, just to exercise my intuitive muscle. But it wasn't until this deck came along that I realized how comfortable I had gotten with the set meanings of my tarot cards over the years. 

Now, before anyone objects, you can interpret a tarot card any way you want. I teach my students to learn the "book" meanings, but to always note their intuitive hits first...what jumps out at you in each card as you turn it over? To do that, you need hold back the dude in your head that says, "three of swords, that means heartbreak" for a second so you can get those hits. Then you marry your hits with your interpretation of the card within the context of the reading. So you're being intuitive. But it's a "safe" kind of intuitive, because you know what the card really means. And because you know what it means, you always have that meaning to lean on if you don't get any intuitive hits. 

But with a deck like this, you really just have to trust that what you're getting and go with it. It takes that extra bit of juju...and balls...to wield a deck like this around. Which means it's perfect for a beginner who's just trying to get their chops. And it's also perfect for an old bird like me who needs to push outside of her comfort zone a little to exercise certain neurons that have become couch potatoes of late. 

So look at the card and can you see how lightning bolts of realization about my comfort zone have come down to crack my creative shell? That's what I saw. But someone else will see the bolts coming out of the shell. And still others won't even see a shell at all. They'll see a rock. Or they'll think about an earthquake. Or something else entirely. 

Many times what we see in these cards is colored by where we are and where we've been in our lives. We apply our personal experience to the interpretation of the cards. So I can see a few places in my life where I'm being cracked open and have to come out of my shell...or where I should come out of my shell. 

I also see a warning about how it's better to crack your own eggshell than to have the universe do it for you....because waiting for the universe to do it often comes with a consequence for having waited so long. So I can read this card as saying "you may as well be self motivated, because change is going to come whether you like it or not. And you may not like the way it comes if you wait too long."

What do you see in this card?