Cards & Stories is an intuitive process: I pull a Tarot or Oracle card and let the imagery tell me a story. I never look or research the conventional meaning of the card, but let the story come through it, by itself.
"There is no initiation without dream".
That phrase was all that was left of my night when I woke up. It was still dark outside when I opened my eyes, a cool morning on the Autumn equinox. I have never dreamed of an owl before, and I could feel the deep unfamiliarity of the animal's presence on my naked skin - a lingering sensation from my encounter with the fascinating bird in the realm of dreams and spirits. My skin was trying to tell me something about this strange dream, a humming vibration that I could track from my fingertips all the way down to my thighs. It was something deep, made of layers and truths.
I can write poems and stories in English or in French, the two languages that separate the before from the now; but when I write on my skin, it is never in a tongue that someone else would comprehend.
The writing on the skin is made of lines and circles, scales and feathers, wings of bees full of life and mysteries. I like to reach with a dark pen toward my wrist or my fingers. The ink sometimes stays overnight, creating threads of gold that travel through my dreams, and I slowly wash them with warm water the next day. Other times I let them fade on their own, becoming something else, shifting into ancient vestiges, a morphing of symbols - like a memory slowly transforming into tears.
And there are the writings that will never fade, the ones that will stay on my skin. They will burn with me, or be engulfed by the Earth: a raven's feather, bee's wings, spiderwebs, and the snake. Ah! When I close my eyes, that is what I want to have inked all over my body: snakes.
And I wonder what they would look like from the other side of my skin. Their vulnerable, soft bellies usually caressing the earth, sensing every vibration, now slithering and creating rivers and roads visible from the inside of me. And when I would lie under the sun, basking in its warm glory, these rivers and roads would shine like a network of blessings on my insides.
And this what I hear this morning, through the voice of my skin:
Be a naked woman.
Our skin is a breathing organ that renews itself regularly, and we are in fact much closer to a snake's process of shedding than we think... this part of us that is reptilian, ancient, primal and instinctive is still there, somewhere. To have a skin that is constantly in contact with the Earth, like a snake, would certainly help us be more grounded and centered - qualities that are so needed nowadays in order to regain balance in this fast-paced and away-from-depth culture we live in. Snake has been with me for years now, and the messages are always sharp, profoundly transformative in the simplest ways, and timeless. But today is different, it is not about snake, but about the bird of night, and about seeing something new through my own skin.
I am not young anymore, my skin tells me this morning. There is a softness and a spaciousness in me now, and an interesting mixture of strength and fragility. At this point in my life, I must know how to protect, nourish, take care of the envelop of my body. There was a time when I was more open to the elements and the experiences they brought me; the elements of wind and sun, of water, of men.
I lingered with pleasure into each of them, letting them touch my skin in order to reach a deeper part of my soul, in order to bring their gifts of freedom, warmth and wildness. My skin was made for the elements, a portal into the world, a membrane between my inner structure and the experiences of the outside.
Now, the list of what I want be in contact with my skin is shorter and much more specific than a decade or two ago, and I expect it to reduce even more as the years pass (discernment is a gift of time):
- gentle sun
- pure cotton
- rose oil
- cashmere
- the lips and hands of my husband
- my daughters' own skins
- ink
- water
- wind
- soil
I have become more exclusive since entering my forties, and I like it. Almost a decade ago, I had a spiritual experience where I traveled to the other world and found myself looking at women gathering outside and having a mud bath. There were laughters and a deep knowing of each other in a way that goes beyond the stories we tell to friends, in a way that is rooted into the proximity of living together, the proximity of the skins, the truth of genuine presence. Each woman was applying brown clay on their own body, in a communal gesture of respect and connection with each other and with the land. Their skins seemed to sing ancestral songs and joyfully breathe each other. They were defining what it means to be a naked person: to find a grounded and joyful quietness, to live in a way that strips the superficial layers of who we are.
It gives piercing eyes and soft stillness.
It gets us closer to the Owl.
- Oracle card by Autumn Skye: "Lucid Vision"
Exploration:
All stories link to our own golden threads, a source of understanding, insights, comprehension, and a portal to our own Mundus Imaginalis (world of the imaginary).Take time to sit with the story, let it unravel within you, feed it space and time.
Feel free to travel with one or all the exploratory questions below, or follow your own path if one appears clearly.
Where are you in this story? What image, smell, taste, sensation has a particular resonance for you - stay there, do not try to interpret or make it something else, just observe your own presence in that place.