Wheel of Fortune

Six of Swords---Vervain

I pulled this card New Year's Day----and pulled it again this morning---using a different deck.

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The universe must be teling me to PAY ATTENTION!

The image of this card----six swords, blades down, in a boat, getting ready to launch into a blue sea, a pink-tinged sky recalls me to a painting by Craigie Aitchison, titled BOAT--that was featured in the book, Sister Wendy on Prayer.

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Here there is a scarlet sky, a purple sea, an unmanned boat launched in starlight. Sister Wendy explains this is like prayer----we do not know, once we begin, where prayer will take us, we do not and cannot direct it. We are in foreign territory, in God's world, a state of vulnerability accepted. I launch my prayer boat, not knowing where it will take me....

The herb associated with this card is blue vervain...a nervine, and tonic, good for sleeplessness, and to produce an overall state of well-being.....prayer does the same.

Spent yesterday with the grandkids...despite their GI symptoms of diarrhea and vomiting...they were still playing and delightful. Let's hope gramma doesn't succumb to whatever nasty bug was floating around. I find it hard to deny my grands anything....


We carry the past around with us all the time, and not just in our bodies. It lives also in our customs, including the way we speak. The past is a set of invisible lenses we wear constantly, and through these we perceive the world and the world perceives us. We stand always on the shoulders of our ancestors, whether or not we look down to acknowledge them.



"It is disconcerting to realize how few of our ancestors most of us can recognize or even name. You have four great-grandmothers, women sufficiently close to you genetically that you see elements of their faces, and skin, and hair each time you see your reflection. Each had a maiden name she heard spoken thousands of times, and yet you probably cannot recall any one of their maiden names. If we are lucky, we may find their birth names in genealogies or documents, although war, migration, and destroyed records have made that impossible for many Americans. Our four great-grandmothers had full lives, families, and bequeathed to us many of our most personal qualities, but we have lost these ancestors so completely that we cannot even name them. How many of us can imagine being so utterly forgotten just three generations from now
by our own descendents that they remember nothing of us--not even our names?"

source:

David W. Anthony, 'The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern