魔女のタロット：Witches Tarot

Recently my main working tarot deck has changed, I am now using Ellen Dugan's "Witches Tarot". It is a beautiful, highly symbolic tarot with a fantastic feeling.  

 

 

The companion book is beautifully written and an inspirational work. It includes some new spreads, for example the "The Triple Goddess Spread" using the High Priestess, the Empress and the Moon.  I have a thirty year relationship with the "Mythic Tarot", which I still believe is a truly beautiful deck and it will always have a special place in my heart. But now the "Witches Tarot" is inspiring me.

 

彼岸： Higan, Mabon Revisited

The Autumnal Equinox is a national holiday here in Japan. It is the middle day of the Buddhist week Higan. It is a week where Japanese Buddhists visit family graves. I am not a Buddhist, but my mother's birthday is in Higan. She passed away a number of years ago, so the 25th of September can be a little sad for me. Living in a different culture to your own, can be very exciting and fullfilling, but on days like this it can be hard.  Mabon is all about gratitude and Higan is about gratitude for passed loved ones. So I wanted to show my thankfulness in some way. My friend Naomi had the idea that I should cook something in my Mother's honour. I thought this was a great idea and decided to cook something she often cooked, curry.  I can cook different types of Indian and Thai curries, but I had never tried to make my Mother's very British style curry.  Obviously I had eaten it many times, so I tried to recreate it. It was not perfect, but pretty close to the real thing. It has been over 15 years since I last tasted that curry, so the taste was so nostalgic. It opened a flood gate of memories, I felt very close to my Mother. I really believe that there is magick in homemade food, it can feed the soul as well as the body.

The Red Magick Lilly of Mabon

The Red Magic Lilly or Red Tiger Lilly ( Lyocoris radiata 彼岸花 ) is ubiquitous along the waterways, around the paddy fields and in cemeteries in Japan at Mabon. For Japanese Buddhists they are a symbol of Autumn. They have a strong symbolism of death, guiding the dead to their next reincarnation. They are often used at funerals in Japan. Their bulbs are poisonous, so Japanese rice farmers have traditionally planted them around rice fields to protect the rice from mice. In the West, Red Tiger Lillie's have the symbolism of erotic love, but can mean shyness here in Japan. The erotic love aspect is easy to understand, but I did not understand the shyness aspect until I tried photographing them. They are one of the most difficult flowers I have tried to photograph, they seem to blur into a group and hide. I love these bright flowers, seeing them signals Autumn is here for me. The Red Magick Lilly of Mabon.

 

 

 

Mabon's Equilibrium

The Wiccan festival of Mabon will soon be here, the autumnal equinox, where day and night are equal. A time of the second harvest, a time to be grateful for all the good things that have come and also for the lessons that the bad things brought.  At this time of year I believe not only light and dark are equal, but nature and life itself seem to have equilibrium. For me it feels like when I was a child playing on  a swing, at the top you stop for a second before going down again. This second is charged with emotion: excitement from going up and anticipation of going back down. For that moment there is no movement, but it is full of energy and potential. This is how I feel around Mabon, a time of stillness ripe with excited gratitude for what has been, but ready

(when the time is right) to embrace the future.

 

秋分はウイか人の特別な祭りです。昼と夜の長さは同じです。祭りの一番大切な意味は感謝です。二番目は収穫期に感謝をすることです。でも、その時までその年のいい事にも感謝をすることも大切です。私の場合、秋分の日はブランコみたい、一番高い所でブランコは一秒だけ動きがありません。その時は気持ちがいいし、わくわくします。秋分も動きがありません、でも平和に過去の事に感謝をしながら、将来をわくわく待っています。その時バランスが保てます。

Haiku Inspired by Benzaiten, The Goddess of Flow

 

Sanpo michi

Mirai shiranai

Kisetsu dake

 

Walking road

Future unknown

Only the season

 

 

 

Aki Kiita

Natsu no tomo ni

Ai ni iku

 

I heard Autumn

Summer's friends

Go to meet

 

 

Shizen no iro

Midori owatte

Aka ni naru

 

Nature's colour

Green ends

Becomes red

 

 

Fune ga nai

kokoro wa tonde

Saa Matou

 

No boat

The heart flies

Well, wait

 

 

The final picture was taken looking across Lake Biwa from the beautiful island of Chikubushima, an island dedicated to the goddess Benzaiten. She is a goddess of flow, through her I am aligning with the element of water, these poems are a dedication to her.

 

 

The other pictures were taken at Bunka Zone, a beautiful park land with an excellent art gallery at it's centre. Through my friend Naomi I recently learnt about the works of one of the founding fathers of manga, Osamu Tezuka . She told me about an exhibition of his works and I was lucky enough to go on the last day.  Naomi had taught me about his work "Buddha", at the exhibition I found some of these pictures both moving and inspiring. On leaving I was inspired to take photos and after editing them at home, some of the images inspired me to write these haiku. Finally the flow took me back to Naomi, who helped me brush my Japanese. Arigatou Naomi.

 

 

 

Water, Water, Heaven's Daughter, Teach me the Lesson of Flowing.

 

The Incredible String Band