This is the post excerpt.
artwork by ZANARA
All we do in life takes us closer to ourselves and the understanding of what purpose we are serving in this lifetime. Writing, just like any type of creativity is my way of finding the road home.
The Strength: the Beauty and the Beast, the Woman and the Primitive, the Human and the Animal within. She appears to be gentle and almost fragile and yet she is closing the animal’ mouth. Her eyes are locked with the lion’s one. Her gentle but firm posture shows how confident she is. She does not recognise the beast but rather see the shadow self that is about to be accepted and embraced. The fare hair, the white shirt and the wreath of spring flowers refer to the purity of the spirit. The feminine is combined with the sign of the infinity above her head. The same sign is to be found in the card of the Magician as they are both masters: The Magician is the master of all four elements, and the Strength is a master of her own animal instincts and she is in control of her own weakness.
She uses care, love and sweetness to tame the beast. The lion has its tail between its legs, but not in fear but with understandings and gratitude towards her. He knows that she will not take his life but rather invite him to follow her on the journey.
The red lion is the masculinity and the white dress of the woman is the symbolic representation of femininity, and just like in ,,real,, life the gentle giving nature of women, tames the fearful and possessive nature of men. And so the balance is found even for a short while.
To overpower anything in life one does not need strength on the physical level, but most of all need the strength of the spirit and the mind.
The story of the Strength: Recognising duality, embracing the shadow.
© ZANARA
Standing in a victorious posture, the boldface is the master that holds the reins of his own life. The Sphinxes are the powers taking the chariot into the unknown going in two different directions. It is the dance of the white and black, the left and right and the lead and the iron – the creation of the new, the creation of the Philosopher stone. The card is the challenge of combining, the incombinable elements in movement. The desire and the need of moving on are there, but the elements are not structured yet.
The past is left behind because it does not serve us anymore, the future is in front of us but the path is unclear. It is the wild passion without form yet. It is the calling, it is the urge to move on, but while doing it we need to have the strength and mastery of taking control of the elements, or otherwise, the chariot will go in the wrong direction or break down.
The guiding star is on the crown of the charioteer and it is the sign of approval and support from above. The blue starry sky on the top of the vehicle is an indication of the higher self, showing us the direction and sending the urges, but we need to make sure that we have under control the material projection and reflection of the desires behind the action.
And it is a wild journey indeed, as the horses of the Universe are pulling the chariot of our life. And there is no turning back in this adventure. The only way is to be brave and determined, the only way is up and forward.
The story of the Chariot: The Beginning of the actual journey
© ZANARA
It is a card of the Duality and Unity at the same time; it is a card representing the feminine and the masculine, the Man and the Woman in the garden of All possibilities, Eden.
Following the meaning of the previous card, The Hierophant, the bridge between here and there, now the bridge was brought into existence in two bodies, two ideas and two sides of the same Mind and Soul.
The Sun is shining bright, revealing all hidden in the open air, referring to the pure beginning and God’s Angel giving all blessings to the Earth and the Humans. The figure above shows the unity, the universal Love available to us and the possibility of brotherhood here in the earthly plane of existence.
But fluffy clouds stay between the astral light and humankind, blocking the direct link with the heavens, leaving us confused, with many obstacles on the way of it, bringing darkness inside our own souls.
We are on a search for the pure beginning wondering on this planet, looking for ways to go back to the source. Looking for the one and only, not realising it is and has always been all the time, within us.
The tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life are there to guide us, to feed our inner beings to walk the Journey of transformation without fear, as it all comes from one source: the Divine Love.
The story of the lovers: The Universal Love, disguised
© ZANARA
The masculine energy crowned with Ram’s head sitting on a throne, glazing deep into your own eyes as a caring but strict father. He is the foundation of the Stability stepped for the first time on four pillars in the material world. It is in his hidden message of the sacred geometry shape and meaning of the element of Fire he holds the key of his own meaning. The first element of nature has found its power within the four walls, guided by the laws of the Universe: clear and destroy.
In his left hand, the Emperor holds the sovereign Orb as a symbol of his gentle and creative power over the world he rules. In his right hand, he holds the Sceptre as a connection between God’s will over the humans and his Kingship emissary powers ruling over them. He is the Father that watches over the Kingdom and brings authority, leadership and order.
He is the structure of the ideas; he is the logistics and guidance that bring the creative chaos into an understandable order.
He wears the colour red for the foundation of the first Root chakra. He is warm and has a passion for justice and fairness. He is the decision-maker and the shoulder to lean on in moments of weakness. He is Animus in us all.
The story of the Emperor: Direction and Stability
© ZANARA
In the glory of abundance, she is blooming in flowers, fruit and richness. She is the Feminine and the motherhood of creativity and harvest. She is pregnant with meanings and endless paths of attaining. She is the Woman of plenty.
The eleven stars are the mastery of giving and manifesting. The right-hand blessing and bringing into shape all that it is desired. She is heavy with it ALL. Her breasts are full of the milk of the abundant minds and souls. She feeds the world with hope, songs and generosity.
The bright and warm yellow is there to show there is no place for cold and sadness to thrive around her. She gives and gives love and passion, babies and ideas.
Water is flowing, greenery is juicing, the softness of the surroundings are inviting for taking as much as you want.
Abundant Creativity: The three is her number in the deck and refer to the trinity of the family: the mother, the father and the child. It is the dynamic creativity of the birth and the connection of the family.
The story of the Empress: Holy birth
© ZANARA
The answers lie between the left and right, between the black and white, between the shadow and the light.
Between Boaz and Jachin, the power elements of the unseen, a Woman sitting at the open doors of the gardens of abundance. The door appeared to be open, but it is not open to all. There is a task to be done, there is a riddle to be solved, and there is wisdom to be released.
The Woman is not a woman at all, but the reflection of the Skies and the Godly ideas to the Earth.
The blue is the veil of mystery, the secrets of the Tora and the Moon tenderness and illusionary realm in her feet, the dreamlike state of the subconscious and the fading contour of the reality.
The fruit of knowledge is in front of you and at the same time unreachable entirely because the moment we concentrate on the lines and our desire to grasp it, we are forever lost and always denied the taste of it.
It is only in the state of floating when our glowing body detaches from the heaviness of the material and it can sense the beauty of the knowledge that has been hidden until now.
Close your eyes to see, cover your ears to hear, and stop your mind from rolling around to feel that as above, so below. The blueprint of your soul is the subconscious, which leads you on this world’s journey.
The story of the High Priestess: As above, so below.
© ZANARA
An upright figure. The I. The Thought. The Light of a Being.
This is the Big bang. The Creation stage in which the immense energy burst into a THING, someTHING, anyTHING. This is the Vertical that connects us to the Creator. There are Four main elements. That is the Philosopher Stone has turned the Light into Materia Prima.
The magus is here to let us know that the first step is taken. The journey has begun. The child was born and the thought had landed into the body. The spirit has been trapped into a small vessel with no prior memories of its immortal soul. This is the ordinary world full of wonders.
The Magician in us is the instinct we carry with us all our lives and barely use. The magician is the red of the action and deep-rooted survival motor. He is here to challenge us to manifest whatever we want. He has placed all of his tools and all of the elements that are ready for him to use during his journey. He is connected to the divine and he is standing firmly onto the ground under his feet.
He simply IS. And that is the real miracle of creation. He is the transformed idea into the Fifth element. He is a piece of the Grand mirror of Adam Kadmon.
He shows us the way of the thought to follow: from the small to the big, from the macro to the micro, from down to up.
It is the I in the Eye of the All-seeing inner eye of the soul left as a seed in our own little garden of Vision. This is the Magician.
The story of the Magician: Let there be Light.
© ZANARA
0 The Fool
A ring, a circle, an endless end and a beginning of it all in one.
The powerful zero contains all and nothing, all possibilities and all impossible things in it.
It is the beginning from before the beginning. In the Tarot, this card represents what lies before the beginning of the Heroes’ Journey of the Soul into the material world. It is the backstage, the preparation for the big introduction. It holds its breath waiting for the curtain to be lifted, in complete darkness. This is the spiritual world, the thought before it has been said and anchored to the world into a shape, form, and meaning. It represents the loose idea of the idea itself before being dressed into anything concrete. Not yet.
As I wrote in the Prologue of my first book, every story has a beginning. But before any beginning, there is another story glued to this one. So we need to cut between meanings, between ends and beginnings and to make our own beginning. Or more precisely to give birth to our beginning.
So it comes the zero or the Fool, with the figure of the happy child in a man’s body. His eyes pinned to the sky, his feet stepping into the nothingness, his heart in the clouds. He is pure thought and the innocent of the unknown, individual living into the state before any paradigms and memories of good and bad.
The Fool walks the Earth and trust completely in God’s will or Universal laws as he knows no others. He suspects no downfalls or betrayals as he is the purity of the Ether. He is the part of us that craves to be left unaware, even ignorant of any social norms or human laws. He is the innocent explorer that takes whatever comes his way and he is always surprised and never judges if something is good or bad. As for him, it is all the same. It is an adventure into the garden of the imagination with no limits, no obstacles, he walks the land of lucid dreaming and makes his dreams come true with no sense of tomorrow.
It is the state of pure happiness based on the here and now, no consequence, no time and no status quo.
It walks in the endless circle of life that expands and contracts in the count of his heartbeat. So he is the beginning of a story that never starts, as for it to start it needs to be born into the world. This is the only way of God to know him/herself and to make the first step into the living light.
The story of the ZERO: the Darkness before the Light
© ZANARA
The wind woke her. Tanya remembered the washing outside!
She ran out half-naked, in only a nightdress. The cold pierced her and the first drops dug into her. The house was planted in the middle of the field, completely separate from the village. As far as the eye could see, ink-black clouds were crawling low over the ground. Oily streams of dense rain were preparing to pour themselves over the dry arms of the trees. The field behind the house was bathed in golden light springing from under the ground. The steel line of the horizon was tearing the thin rip between the concrete air and the glittering wings of the wheat stalks.
She began taking down the clothes from the line quickly. It was night but it was light as day. There was something in the air, something uncommon in the gusts of the wind, she could feel it. As if solid, powerful hands were trying to catch her, envelop her whole. The air thickened, forming huge, juicy fingers around her body. The wind whistled and began swirling around her.
He began flirting like a stag with a doe, like a drop of dew with the sunlight. First he entered her eyes and ears. Penetrated her thoughts. He seized them, jumbled them, and opened her mind without permission. Opened wide all the windows of her thoughts, invaded every nook and cranny and completely disarranged her ideas. He created weightlessness in her soul. He wrapped himself around her breath and made her smile. Tanya remembered how long she had waited for this passion to enter her life. Not in vain did the people in the village call her the lonely gull. So many desperate nights she had stood at the window, looking at the frozen landscape outside. Without hope for movement, change, sweetness. And here he now was, in all his strength, ecstasy and vigour. He was here.
He caressed her skin, slid his invisible lips over her body. Gently glided between her fingers and she dropped the gathered laundry. He took it up and breathed life into it. The clothes filled with movement and began twisting their slender bodies high above the ground. Their patterns created new shapes and states, like a kaleidoscope in the sky.
Tanya was at the bottom of it, admiring the performance. While the wild dance swirled in the sky, Tanya felt how the embrace of the storm became stronger and more passionate. She felt herself swimming in his airy desire.
That night Tanya conceived a Universe. A universe with the eye of a typhoon, an eye like a black hole from which poured out a new world that connected with the umbilical cord of life.
She did not feel alone anymore, she was the wind’s woman. She felt how all of nature loved her. Each night he came to check on her. She lived in the ocean of his presence and the air electrified by his breath and passion. He lived around her, opened the doors before her, brought her bouquets of beautiful flowers floating in space.
Tanya lined up numerous little weathervanes in the field. She wanted to know and see from afar when her husband returned home. And each time when he crept in, all of them rustled softly like hundreds of hands in greeting.
She felt chosen, special and more secure than ever before. As if a divine being had sown magic in the womb of her soul.
She was in love. And the love for the great element has no comparative measure in any human dimension. She felt like she had control over all his might. She had the hurricanes and cyclones as her guardians, she had power over an unrestrained force. This love was all that Tanya had ever wished for.
The eye inside her grew quickly. She felt the thrusts and eruptions of this new world. Laughter and dancing, nightmares and catastrophes. There were so many things happening every minute. Tanya gradually began transforming. She looked like an astronomical map. Her organs formed constellations. Her cells recreated the laws of sacred geometry and formed quite unusual dependencies and shapes.
She had become transparent and was becoming witness to the tiniest of movements and changes inside. She watched sunsets and sunrises, movements of suns and planets. She felt the splash of the waves and the contractions of the tides.
At night she was like a walking candle in the dark. Like a large firefly in the field. She stood on the seashore and shone like a beacon for the lost souls out there. A flame in a human body singing its quiet song.
On one such night she gave birth to their child. It separated from her like a light stream and began shining like a burning symbol against the dark sky. A sign with its own will and purpose, with all its multifaceted meanings. At first glance simple and slight, but every curve of its body, every movement announced that it carried the load of a myriad other meanings. It was an ancient symbol that had gathered the old and the new into one, with a new meaning and purpose. It was infinity collected in a shape, life in the process of dying. It was the child of the wind.
She knew that she had just given birth to one of the many letters of god. One piece of his alphabet to be written into the book of life.
A gentle breeze almost bashfully blew and carried away the glowing child and then a complete calm set.
No matter how long she waited and time passed, the field remained silent. She increasingly focused her thoughts on the sky, until one day Tanya herself became a windmill, waiting to be awakened by the breath of love.
And somewhere there, far away, the wind rushed towards new shores. Because in some remote and foreign field, illuminated in a strange light, a storm was starting and a woman had come out in the middle of the night, half-naked, and begun collecting the laundry outside.
Wriiten by ZANARA /Translated by Reberta
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