Shabbat Community Tarot Reading #3

bur oak

hello my darlings - I'm enjoying doing these community readings, and I hope you are getting something out of them too.  this week, I didn't feel called to ask any specific questions, I just wanted to clear my mind, shuffle, and see what the cards themselves had to offer.  the deck asking to be utilized for the task was the Celtic Tree Oracle - interesting because they're not really cards I use, but cards I keep because they were a gift from a dear friend, and many years ago, a deck belonging to a different dear friend gave me some profound insights into my life at that time.  while there isn't a Celtic bone in my body (though there could be a past life...), I deeply respect the traditions of others, and love the natural connection these cards invite us into through the trees.  as it happened, I had the opportunity to do this reading outdoors, so I sat down under a bur oak, and enjoyed the scent of wild rose in the air while paying attention to the details in the images.  though there is a particular system which one is supposed to employ for their use, I know these cards well enough to know that they don't mind my freestyling.  so - let's see what wisdom they have to offer us:

 

image shows three cards from The Celtic Tree Oracle deck on a pastel colored cloth with silver stripes.  on the left we have 'Quert' (apple), in the center 'Muin' (vine), and on the right Ioho (yew).  each card has the corresponding Ogham lettering in the border on each side of the center tree image, a detail below, and intricate knotwork designs all  around.

Quert - Apple:  ah, the apple!  one of the oldest known cultivated fruits, it is associated with choice, possibly between similarly attractive options, though the options may matter less than the fact of a choice needing to be made.  in Arthurian legend, apples are connected to Merlin and Avalon - a secret mystical island where the uninitiated must not eat of the fruit, for it contains the Pythagorean pentagram (the seeds in the shape of a star, possibly symbolizing divine wisdom).  it was both where Excalibur was forged, and where Arthur was laid to rest, and said to come back from someday. I always think of the Greek goddess Eris in connection to apples, and the chaos she instigated with her golden apple for 'the prettiest one' that started the Trojan War, as well as the Garden of the Hesperides where that golden apple was grown.

from "How Merlin Dwelt Among His Druids in a Secret Orchard in Celyddon, in the Emperor Arthur's Time"

      Seven-core and seven most fruitful Appletrees

               E'en since the very dawn of the age, there

      Had made spring murmurous with bright small bees

      Crooning their tune i' the white bloom-laden air:

      And 'neath the flaunting skies of midsummer

   Had swayed green plumy jewel-luminous seas:

 see also Poem:  Avallennau Myrddin (Merlin's Apple Trees) over at Contemplative Inquiry

Muin - Vine:  this card is associated with Lughnassadh/Lammas, the August 1st Celtic beginning-of-harvest-season festival dedicated to the Sun.  grape vines - in the context of wine - speaks to the release of prophetic powers, letting go of logic and intellect, and letting intuition lead.  permitting instinct to show you what needs doing, allowing emotion to flow freely, and openly trusting your senses to act for you.  be open to noticing all the signs and omens.  *at this point in my meditation of the cards I kept noticing a heavenly scent of flowers which I couldn't identify, but oh, it made me look!  on my way out of the park I found the source - these wild roses in the image posted below.  intoxicating!  I used to work at an apple orchard, and one of the many things I learned from old Mr. Soons was that roses are in the same family as apples, as are peaches, pears, plums, strawberries and cherries.  also, there's a theory that the golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides - the "nymphs of the evening" - may really have been oranges! (signs & omens)

wild roses!

 

Ioho - Yew:  several of the oldest trees on Earth are yews, and as such, are deeply sacred.  their branches grow down into the ground to form new stems and trunks, and when the old trunk dies, new ones grow from it, giving this tree the meaning of rebirth and reincarnation.  a new soul sprung from ancient roots in a new body.  that the eldest of the oldest yew trees (age estimates vary between 2000 to 9000 years old) stand in churchyards shows they were previously sites of ancient Bardic/Druidic groves; interestingly enough, in 2015, one of these appeared to have changed sex (the ongoing reemergence of goddess energy in the collective consciousness?)!  the longbows the Celts were known for their skill with were carved from yew, and while the needles were historically used to brew poison, it can be used homeopathically as well.  this card is direct contact with your past, spiritual strength renewed, a revivification - understanding through wisdom that was always there, which we may have forgotten, or ignored.  things that were, are, always will be ~ 

Ioho (Yew) card detail with intricate boarder knotwork, Ogham letter, center image of tree, and inset detail of trunk, needles, and berries, in muted colors.

look for an upcoming choice, which when paying attention to signs omens, calls for the possibility of a new life growing from the old one.  dive deep into the well of your own understanding, and trust what you find there!

thank you for coming along, commenting, and sharing - this reading is for anyone who wants/needs it!  as always, I hope there's something in here for you, personally, and feel free to contact me for a private reading.  

💙💜💙

resources: 

Avellenau (Appletrees) The Black Book of Carmarthen, XVII

The Theosophical Path, Volume 15 edited by Katherine Augusta Westcott Tingley 

 Mythology and Folklore of Yew from Trees For Life

 The Darkness of the Yew from The Hazel Tree

ABC Wednesday Again? Sure, Why Not!

click the logo to go to the blog

A is for...

come on, you know you want to say apples, unless you want to sing "Alligators All Around", like I do right now!

but that's only because I saw it posted somewhere recently, and didn't play the video, so the chorus has been ringing in my head, and this seemed the perfect opportunity to listen to it.  I've been thinking about doing another round of ABC Wednesday for awhile, and now that's it's back around to 'A' (I've been watching it), I jumped right in, completely unprepared.  but as I mentioned above, a great many of us 50-something Americans think 'apple' when someone says 'A is for', and to follow on the theme started by Roger, who is hosting this round, I thought I'd take us back to The Unused Portion's humble beginnings:

Good to the Core!

aww!  if that isn't my little monkey about to take a bite out of that Empire Apple!  back when he was still just a mini-Vermonter, trying to figure out how to get along in NY, even if Mama did work at an apple orchard.  and that t-shirt...it was a dress on him for years, but once he grew into it, he grew right out of it.  it's long gone, now...this picture was taken the summer before he started kindergarten, when The Unused Portion was 4 months old.  now he's about halfway through his first year of high school, and this blog has been active for 10 years running!

so, the history of this blog and ABC Wednesday is that I first jumped in in September of 2012, on the letter 'I', skipped 'Q', and made it all the way to 'W' before I gave up.  in 2015, I gave 'A' & 'B' a go, but didn't go any further until 2016, when right around this time, I started another round on 'A', in which I commemorated the recent death of David Bowie, and that was the end of it.  until now.  so in the interest of getting this entry into the linkup before there's 4000 people in there, that's all I'm going to post, and start thinking up something for next week!

*and Roger's post isn't about apples, after all - it's about Alaska.  I guess it's the intro post he writes for the ABC Wednesday site that was about apples.  he says his favorite is the Macoun, which I always pronounced "ma-COON", but when I worked at Soons Orchard, Mr. Soons said it "ma-COW-an", and it was his farm (through his daddy and grand-daddy), so that's how I said it, too.  I'm not sure about a favorite...the boy ate an Empire a day back then, so I was always flush with those, but I also liked the Gala, Winesap, Braeburn, Cameo, and Jonagolds!  not working on an orchard, you kind of have to take what you can get, and at my local store, that tends to be Galas and Honeycrisp.  I'm a bit biased against the Honeycrisp, though, so I never buy them!  how do you like them apples?

Summer Stock #10

Welcome to Soons Orchards - open for its 99th season! It took some blood, a LOT of sweat, and maybe a tear or two to get everything ready for the opening this year, but I got it done - even when my employer popped in (after most of the summer here or there) 3 days 'till opening wanting to rearrange and paint all the furniture! I sucked it up, and made it happen. And nobody even said 'thank you'. No 'job well done' or a pat on the back. No glasses of champagne and toasts to a profitable season. Just business as usual - which is to say, disgruntled employees bitching on day one that they don't want to be here, that they need full-time, year-round employment.

And I'm thinking, "then why did you even bother punching in? Why don't you take your bad attitude right back out the door, and leave me to do my job in peace?" The image to the right is the pretty-as-a-picture little nook just to the left of the front door where I come in every morning. This is one of the reasons I consider myself so lucky to be working where I do, as I water and deadhead the flowers so those that choose to take a little break on our bench have a nice place to reflect for a moment before stepping out of our time-warped farm market back into the hustle and bustle of daily life. Could you walk past this happy little scene, and then choose to have a bad day? Talk about stopping to smell the flowers...

This is just a fun juxtaposition between the Farmer's Choice order (right) having come in on time, and the Webster's order (above) having not! Looks good, huh? The Webster's actually came in on Thursday, the day before our 'soft' opening, so the hutch was actually full on opening day (whew!). Kinda makes you want some jam, doesn't it? Doesn't it? I think it does...! Comes in damn near every variety I can think of, and a few I couldn't have made up...

Finally, we have Slingerland's honey, which is significant, because this is the honey made by the bees that are 'rented' to fertilize our Orchards, who live just up the road from us! We sell a lot of Slingerland honey during the allergy season - some of our customers swear by it! I don't have allergies, so I wouldn't know, but I do know that the local-est honey you can get is what is best to take for allergies, and it doesn't get any local-er than this! The Slingerland's have been selling their honey at the Orchard for just about 60 years, as far as he and Mr. Soons can recall, and I'm willing to bet they're right about that - they were both just teen aged farm-boys back then, and I have to say, it makes me glad in my heart to hear those two get going about 'the old days'. If there were ever a reason to go to work in the morning, for me, it is the possibility of hearing cool stories about simpler times from the sort of people who take the effort to make sure those ways don't die out completely by following in the long-standing traditions of producing a quality product with integrity and expertise. I, for one, see no need to look any further for the sort of work one can feel good about doing, and people one can be proud to say they know. My job may be hard, sometimes, but I am thankful that I have found it. I will not get rich doing this work, but I will make an honest living, and the lessons my son will learn on the farm will be invaluable in the world that he will find himself growing up in. Please support your local farms and farmers - they are our past, and also our future! I don't want to even TRY to imagine my world without them!