Sorrow, Letting Go and Tarot's 5 of Cups

                                                                                                  5 of Cups - Loss, sorrow, grief 

5 of Cups as depicted in "Wizard's Tarot"©
by Corrine Kenner and John J. Blumen

During winter, the Pacific Northwest, reflects a grieving world.  The sky is a solid mass of grey - varying hues, but grey nonetheless.  Rain comes down in cold sheets that penetrate everything that isn't Gortex.  Fashion is all but forgotten in the quest for dryness and rubber boots that are big enough to allow for heavy socks are your closest friends.

Death, or Transition comes at any time, but in winter it feels particularly deep.  Symbolically, The Green Man is no more and though he will come again when oak leaves burst open to life, right now it feels as if Spring has been imprisoned on the other side of eternity.  This is the world of tarot's 5 of Cups.

In the RWCS tarot deck, a cloaked figure stands huddled against the wounds of the world.  Before him, three cups have spilled their contents on the bank of the river.  Their liquid creates a small rivulet that seeks to rejoin the river as it moves purposefully towards eternity.  Our cloaked friend stands mute, deep in the sorrow of what has been lost and can never be reclaimed.  There is a time to grieve and that time must be honored.  We are of this world and can have only limited understanding of the next one.  We want things to remain the same - to stay in a form and content that our concept of reality can understand.  Unfortunately, that's not the way the universe works.  The universe sees the big picture and we only see a shadowbox.

Grieving is an individual process.  There are no timetables, no list

5 of Cups, RWCS
US Games© Edition

of standardized events that truly signal its end.  Grieving takes as long as it takes because what you are doing is trying to catch your breath by once more synchronizing with the universal flow.  That's hard to do when the person or people that helped you set your pace are no longer there to guide you.  You are alienated from the rest of life and you've momentarily forgotten your way home.

The figure in the 5 of Cups doesn't see that there are still two cups standing with their contents intact.  His back is turned to them, as if their life-affirming presence is to painful to handle.  Eventually, he will begin to breathe in a pattern close to the old, familiar one.  There will be enough moments between the new normal and the profound agony of loss that he will be able to get his bearings.  He'll turn and see what has been left to him.  In that pivotal moment, our friend must decide whether he remains fixed at the riverbank, continuing to long for what has passed away, or whether he releases his grief and moves on.  Most of us turn around in our own good time and see the remaining cups.  We pick them up, working our fingertips over their battered, but familiar surfaces and holding them close to our hearts, we follow the path that leads us to the bridge that takes us home.

December brings us the Solstice and Yule - celebrations of light and hope.  We mark the return of light to the world and even though we may not be in a space to reflect on its brilliance, we appreciate the fact that the light is there.  So it is with the world in the 5 of Cups. It's a long journey from the riverbank to the bridge and a lot of soul searching is done along the way. There's an old proverb that says, "It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness."  Our friend in the 5 of Cups comes to understand that very thing as he stands on the bridge looking up at the lighted windows of his home.  Inside is the warmth of hearth, friends and family and it is ultimately their glow that drives away the darkness.


LADY ORACLE

May Day and the Traditions of Beltane

"May I make my fond excuses for the lateness of the hour;
But we accept your invitation, and would bring you Beltane's flower.
For the May Day is the great day, sung along the old
straight track.
And those who ancient lines did ley will heed this song 
that calls them back."
                              
                                                                     Ian Anderson
                                                                    Jethro Tull, 
                                                                   "Songs From the Wood"



If you've never listened to Jethro Tull's "Songs From the Wood,"

The Green Man

you must download a copy from your favorite site (legally, of course) and allow yourself to be transported back to a time when men and women danced and frolicked to honor the transition of Spring to Summer.  With the harshness of Winter behind them, the long hours of sowing and planting done, people went into May hopeful. They symbolically chased away the specter of famine and disease.  May 1st marks the beginning of the ancient Celtic Summer and was considered to be a time of great energy.  Psychic powers were said to run higher during the last full moon before the first of May.

The origin's of what we now call May Day began as an ancient

The Hierophant from Stephanie
Pui-Mun Law's fae deck, "Shadowscapes"©

Druid fire festival celebrating the 'death' of Winter and the 'birth' of Spring.  The Druid festival morphed into the pagan celebration, Beltane,  celebrating the marriage of Mother Earth to her male consort, the Green Man.  You've seen the Green Man's image as garden art - the face covered in oak leaves, his mouth open as if exhaling the breath of life.  The Earth's marriage to the Green Man was symbolized by the planting of a large pole into the earth.  We can all get the symbolism of that.  The villagers danced wildly around the pole clockwise, celebrating the Mother and the Green Man whose union would ensure an abundant harvest of fruits in the Fall.

Beltane also kept the Druid tradition of setting bonfires ablaze at midnight.  Historically built on hilltops, these fires were constructed from nine pieces of wood, gathered by nine different men from nine different trees.  Fetching the hawthorn blossoms was called, "bringing in the May." Villagers would go into the woods on Beltane Eve (April 30th) to blow cow horns and gather hawthorn blossoms to bring back to their homes.  The revelers stayed out all night, probably enjoying cup after cup of May Wine, a wine flavored with herbs and blossoms.  They returned home with their blooms in the wee hours before dawn.  Eventually, Christian church doctrine outlawed the wild over-night trips into the woods.  I'm guessing because of the significant increase in unwed mothers nine months later.

This oracle card comes from "The Druid Plant
Oracle"© by Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm,
illustrated by Will Worthington. Beautiful depictions
reads great!

On May Day, the villagers declared the prettiest girl in the village "Queen of the May," She sat on a throne decorated with flowers and her Green Man sprang out of the bushes to claim her as his dancing partner at the May-Pole.  Beltane, or May Day celebrations as they became known, were outlawed in England during Oliver Cromwell's time along with just about anything else that sounded like fun.

May Day returned to England with the return of Charles II- a historical player whose exploits in the bedroom were the stuff of legend.  However, the festivities were more sedate - at least in mainstream society.  The May-Pole became a fifty foot log with long ribbons attached to the top.  Dancers wore costumes and though they still danced clockwise, they twisted ribbons down the pole in what was probably a much more artistic way than anything their forefathers designed.  Soon May Day became a day for children to tie garlands of flowers to willow sticks and take them from houses to house for people to admire.  Sometimes their efforts were rewarded with cakes and coins. The garlands eventually gave way to baskets of flowers left anonymously on doorsteps and even today it's not unheard of to honor special friends and neighbors with flowers on May Day.

I think it's a nice tradition to celebrate May Day.  I make up my

April 30, 2014 adds up to #14,
Temperance - seen here in the fae world
of "Shadscapes"© by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law
Watch your consumption of May Wine!

own traditions to celebrate the coming of May, borrowing as I please from various cultures along the way.  You can do the same.  On April 30th why not go out and bless your garden.  Give thanks for the growing season yet to be.  You can do this whether you live on a farm,  have a container garden on a patio, or just a couple of houseplants.  Claim and celebrate the fertile spaces in your life.  Sometimes the smallest ideas yield the largest results.


The Beltane Fire Festival in an international celebration hosted in Edinburgh, Scotland.  Here's a link to explain the history and majesty of this event.  Enjoy!

Did you know?

Beltane is considered to be the biggest moving day in the year for the fae world and the time of year when fairies are the most active.  Legend says that they move between the fairy mounds at this time.  If you have a fairy mound around you, or suspect their are fairies at the bottom of your garden, put out a dish of cream and a piece of sponge cake for them.

Other names for May Day:


Rood Day, Rudemas
Beltane
Walpurgisnacht






LADY ORACLE


Disregard the following "Green Man" product links, as they have been de-googlized