“We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.”

—W. H. Auden, “In Memory of Ernst Toller”

The Wizard’s Reflection

Sitting In The Fire

The raw truth of the animal is in the land, the seed, and stone and egg. It is in the wave, the wind, and the fires, both great and small. It is embedded within us in ways we can only understand directly. Life is overflowing with this vivid vitality, this energy that has a mind all its own. To wield such powers without being dominated by them requires we learn to communicate with them. Yet because these forces are ever-changing, such communications must always be forged each moment anew.

While we must each find our own way through our experiential wilderness, the most basic step is to learn to rest within it. Listening to bird songs and flowing rivers is perhaps where we start and learn, thereby borrowing their serenity. Listening to the dislocated fires of wrath or grief as they arise in us or others is altogether different listening. Such fires compel us to take uninformed actions or threaten to ruin us if we don’t. To claim such energy yet bend it to the heart-mind will of the Sage, to turn the destructive flow of the volcano into fertile land, we must cultivate the patience of one who knows how to burn.

Suggested Divination Meanings

What deep forces are driving me, and how can I harness them?

What power am I not allowing to emerge from me, that is pushing to get out?

How can I more skillfully tend to the facts of nature?

What external dances in life are calling to my inner pulsing?

How can I more directly, less conceptually, encounter my own creativity/experience?

What needs to be cleared away for growth to occur?

How have destructive forces clear the way for more creartivity to emerge?

What in me can I melt down to open into expanded movement?

What hidden or secret pulses or impulses can I tune in to in order to proceed with power?