Reflections on Patrick Valenza´s book: The Deviant Moon Tarot

 

The below images are from the beautiful book on “The Deviant Moon Tarot”, by artist Patrick Valenza.

Look at nature! All nature loafs, while Man alone works for a living!

From: The DruidCraft Tarot

The Fool in the Tarot game is a return to childhood. My concept of The Peter Pan Project builds on this. And this is again connected to philosophy. Poetry, storytelling and philosophy melt together. If we take Wordsworth´s poem, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood", we can see how deeply imbued it is with a kind of natural Platonism. The poem begins with the famous lines:

One Thousand Roads to Mecca

Bird Brain, by Lori Field

I was sitting in an old garden

in the Medina of Tangier.

Oh Birds, Let My Thoughts Follow You

“Hare in April”, by Catherine Hyde (the painting is from her book: The Hare and the Moon – A Calendar of Paintings)

It is morning

and I´m sitting in my chair.

The night has left

an imprint in my mind

of the moon´s mirror.

A Mind Without Thoughts Will Show You a Fathomless Deep

How deep can the mind travel?

Most of our lives are very superficial and is it possible to live at great depth and also function superficially? Is it possible for the mind to dwell or live at great depth?

The Connection Between Shamanic Healing and Creative Unfoldment (essay)

Epona, by Susan Seddon-Boulet

...

The Wound is the Place Where the Light Enters You

Rumi

…

In this essay I will present my ideas of the connection between shamanic healing and creative unfoldment. It is something I make aware of in my philosophical counseling practice, which I combine with forest therapy.

The Beauty of Truth and its Subtleties is not in Belief and Dogma

The beauty of truth and its subtleties is like the mist in the old garden. It is not in belief and dogma; it never is where man can find it for there is no path to its beauty; it is not a fixed point, a haven of shelter.

Seiðr Shamanism and the Art of Song Healing

Merlin, by Alan Lee

In Part One of this article, My Life as a Vagabond, I described how I began to use alcohol in order to calm down my kundalini symptoms. In Aalborg, in Denmark, and on vagabonding trips around the world, I actually lived more or less like a "Dharma Bum" for 10 years. The alcohol abuse ended with a liver disease, hospitalization, and a near-death experience.

My Life as a Vagabond

From: The DruidCraft Tarot

In my Ebook, Karen Blixen – The Devil´s Mistress, I described how I began to use alcohol in order to calm down my kundalini symptoms. In Aalborg, in Denmark, and on vagabonding trips around the world, I actually lived more or less like a "Dharma Bum" for about 30 years (in a certain sense I still do, as this article will reveal). The period could be seen as starting in 1990, and ending in 2008, where I published my first book. But the period is actually longer. It started in London in 1985, and ended in 2016, where I was hospitalized with a liver disease. Here I had a near-death experience.

Children, Wildlife, and the Art of Shapeshifting

Birdbrain, by Lori Field

Long ago the trees thought they were people.

Long ago the mountains thought they were people.
Long ago the animals thought they were people.
Someday they will say, long ago the humans thought
they were people.

Native storyteller Johnny Moses

In his novel, Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, J.M. Barrie writes:

On the Nature of Sensitivity and Beauty

Look at all the birds, the trees, and at the dirty streets. Look at people. Look at your parents and teachers; notice how they talk to you, what kind of words they use.

Storytelling as a Spiritual Exercise

by Carme Magem

In fact, it is only his body that lives and has its residence in the state; his soul, however, holds all this to be puny and meaningless, and contemptuously wanders all over the place, “under the earth,” as Pindar says, and measuring whatever is on its surface, and “above the heavens,” observing the stars, and in general thoroughly investigating the nature of everything that is, but without lowering itself to the level of any of the objects in its vicinity.

Plato, Theactetus, 173c (this is Plato´s description of the philosopher, which, probably with roots in facts, sounds like a description of a shaman. Philosopher in this sense, simply means what the word means: a lover of wisdom. But it also depicts the exercise of a storyteller. Modern philosophers are so removed from this, that it only is the name they have in common). 

“Everything is New” – Morning Meditation

Alley Of The Dream, by Leonid Afremov 

Every morning you are born out of Hara.

You come from Omphalos, the Navel of the World. You come from the metaphysical time, the enchanted time. 

Philosophy, Storytelling and Shamanic Healing

The Arabian Nights illustrated by Charles Folkard

The Thousand and One Night is not something which had died. It is a book so vast that it is not necessary to have read it, for it is a part of our memory – and also, now, a part of tonight.

Jorge Luis Borges, Seven Nights.

Philosophical counseling is about healing the Soul of Man. Therefore you can also call it spiritual healing. The essence of spiritual healing, in my context, is to discover, and especially, accept, your true creative calling in life. If you do this you will experience the enchantment of being helped by the spirits. The first step in this direction is help to become a life artist. All in all, I call my help guided primordial meditation, a return to the Source of consciousness, which again is a return to the Source of nature.

Witchcraft, Shamanism and Storytelling

The Storyteller, by Josephine Wall

Mother Earth is a concept which witches and shamans are working with. They feel at home on Mother Earth. To get into the philosophy of Mother Earth it would be a good idea to read literature on witches and shamans. A good beginning for studying witches is Erica Jong´s wonderful book Witches. In this book you will find a lot of references to further reading on the subject, as for example Margot Adler´s book Drawing Down the Moon, and Margaret Murray´s The Witch-cult in Western Europe and The God of the Witches.