Miscellany: A is for …

Once again I’m playing in a month-long blog challenge and I so enjoy creating abecedariums that I’m going to be doing another one.  A miscellany – a collection or group of various or somewhat unrelated items.  Sounds like a perfect container to explore whatever happens to strike my fancy.  And so let’s begin…

is for Angel of Wildness

I love this invocation by John O’Donohue:

“May the Angel of Wildness disturb the places

Where your life is domesticated and safe,

Take you to the territories of true otherness

Where all that is awkward in you

Can fall into its own rhythm.”

I’m not sure whether it was the wild wind storm that blew through on the eve of November or something else entirely, but I feel the Angel of Wildness present inviting me to travel with her this month.

I’ve been playing in Marybeth Bonfiglio’s class Arcanum where we’re taking a look at the tarot’s major arcana.  I love the work on many levels, but especially because it speaks to how I like to walk in this world.

I like to trust my own knowingness and forge my own understandings.  While it’s nice to connect with others and explore their perspectives and understandings, I need to forge my own way on my wisdom path – personalize and integrate and bring the wisdom down into my own bones and the insights inside me so I can use them to see through.

One of the things I’ve been doing as part of the Arcanum class is working with a large number of tarot decks card by card, and distilling the archetype based on many different individual deck interpretations.  It’s fun to get to know each deck intimately, but it’s also fun to work more deeply with the archetypal energy. This is what I wanted to receive from the course – that was my intention of how I wanted to explore within the context of what Marybeth had structured her class as.

While I was listening to see which of the decks I owned wanted to be explored in this way, I also realized how I haven’t talked very much here about my interest in tarot and oracles and archetypes.  I use them both as guide stones, but also as focus points to help open the way to deeper explorations.  And I have so many fabulous decks it occurs to me it’s time to share some glimpses.

So for example, when I got all tingly thinking about the Angel of Wildness, I knew there were some cards that spoke of that energy for me – regardless of what they are labeled by their creators.  This is what I mean by personalizing our understanding and following energy streams.

Here are three cards that speak to me of the Angel of Wildness.

Love Your True Colors oracle cards by Outi Harma – Oracle of Initiation divination deck by Mellissae Lucia – Mother Mary Oracle with art by Shiloh Sophia McCloud

If I invite in the energy stream that the Angel of Wildness offers from the focused perspective of where contemplation of these three cards takes me, do you see how different my experience will be from those perspectives you might choose?  Mine would be a right-fit for me, and yours a right-fit for you.  And yet we might share a great deal in common as well in our explorations, and also be able to riff of each other’s differences too.  All good.  Archetypal energies are big, but we also connect to them from our own particular essence.

So what am I looking for in my journey this month with the Angel of Wildness?  I’m not entirely sure, but I am open to receive her gifts.  The loosening of old perceptions and habits certainly.  The time is ripe for that.  I invite her to help me find extravagant devotion fanning all the inner flames ready to burst into full light.  And I suspect there will be lots of laughter.  Don’t you imagine wherever there is an Angel of Wildness laughter can’t be far behind?

What about you?  Love the idea of an Angel of Wildness?  What gift would you invite her to bring you?  Do tell – you know I love to hear.