Obelisks Will Mark the Place You Fell

All cards are coded. That is, they have multiple layers of meaning embedded in history and culture. You don't have to know that these cards date from the time of Napoleon III to realize there's something beyond a game going on here. 

Go ahead, draw a card. Whad'ya got?

Today's Rune: Signals. 

Row Your Boat

This is the "La Chalupa" Lotería card. Rema rema va Lupita, sentada en su chalupita. 

El juego de la lotería is hundreds of years old. How cool is that? 

La chalupa rema y rema se va para Xochimilco.

"Row, Row, Row Your Boat" seems to date back to around the time of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848). It was certainly in printed circulation by the 1850s. Sung or read aloud or in silence, this little ditty sounds like pure existential philosophy. It can be taken as sweet, eerie, surreal or as a blend.   

Consider variations. Take, for instance, Lewis Carroll's lines from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland ("A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky"), published in 1865: 

Still she haunts me, phantomwise,
Alice moving under skies
Never seen by waking eyes.

Or take the chalupa as a vessel for delivering food. 

Fry up some tortilla masa; fold in little goodies like minced onions and shredded meat of some kind; add a touch of salsa de tomate verde (green sauce). Let it cool just enough to make the journey from desire to fulfillment. Yum, yum, yum, yum!

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily,
Life is but a dream.

Today's Rune: Wholeness.  

Santa Bárbara / Sainte Barbara / Saint Barbara: Red Lightning

Not too long ago, I received a Catholic prayer card featuring Saint Barbara. For those who may wonder, Catholic prayer cards are sort of like baseball trading cards, usually featuring a colorful picture on the front and on the back, maybe a little information about the saint or other holy figure, plus a short prayer. This is one of the fun things about being Catholic -- carrying around prayer cards.  

Saint Barbara is, among other things, the patron saint of artillery. Yes, indeed. Usually her attire includes quite a bolt of red, bright red, but in this Rosselli depiction, Saint Barbara has more blue, green and brown, with a castle in one hand and a quill in the other. She looks like a saint you wouldn't want to irritate. Notice what she's standing on. . .

 

Here in Jan van Eyck's depiction, Saint Barbara holds a seriously dramatic quill or its equivalent in one hand and a book in the other. A cathedral goes up behind her, workers laboring diligently to make it happen.

In the image printed on my Saint Barbara prayer card, she wears a gold crown and red robe; in her left hand there's a palm leaf (or quill) and she sports a sharp sword, too. In her right hand, she holds up a golden chalice. And in the background, there's a castle-church-village complex.

Move to the Americas, and you might see double duty for Santa Bárbara via Santería. Emanating outward from the Caribbean region, she serves as a stand-in or avatar of Ṣàngó /Changó / Shango / Xango.  In most iconography, Chango and Saint Barbara share a red color-energy, as well as a strong association with the production of lightning, storms, thunder and fire. Though of a different outward gender, this makes perfect sense for both the patron saint of artillery and Ṣàngó. 

Finally, I've always understood Saint Barbara to offer extra protection against jealous, chattering enemies; plus she looks over architects, miners and prisoners, among others. Feast Day (not officially sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church): December 4.      
  
Today's Rune: Wholeness.   

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun

Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun. The Fall of Phaëton and Icarus from High in the Sky. Each caused his own downfall. 

What's the lesson for today's world, and the near future? 

If you don't want to go there, have you ever had a nightmare or dream that featured you or your avatar as falling? If so, what did the image-feeling convey to you?   

Phaëton, the Chariot of the Sun out of control, drew a lightning bolt from Zeus and plunged to the Earth, along with his poor horses. Collateral damage from his entire act of folly was everywhere.

Icarus, fluttering through the air with waxed wings fashioned by crafty Daedalus, his father -- flew too close to the sun. 

Similarly, look around and see today many a person felled by his (or her) own actions.

Next, check out LA MAISON DIEU (House of God), a major arcana tarot card (Tarot de Marseille) often also called The Tower. And an Italian version below, inversely called Casa del Diavolo (House of the Devil), involving the mysterious image of a woman and a man exiting a passageway. Can you dig?

  
Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

Tartarus-Tantalized Tantalus

The gaze. The reach. The water. The fruit. Tantalus!

If only you had a thousand ducats, a million bucks. Ten thousand clams, a dozen smackeroos. The original G. His kingdom for a horse. So close, yet so far.

Tantalus!

Another great assault on the psyche -- ego -- desire. Is it really there? Can you really reach it?  Can you grasp victory from the jaws of defeat?  Who will wear the crown?  

Today's Rune: Possessions.  

Sisyphus and the Rollright Stones

Sisyphus -- poor dude. Beyond that, the epitome of being condemned to repeat some heinous task over and over again -- like history. 

Ever felt like Sisyphus?

Ever tried to broker peace in the Middle East?  Seen recently a lot of productive and farsighted endeavor in the US Congress?

The Myth of Sisyphus seems pertinent to human psychology, individual and collective. This action leads to that effect. Pattern A leads to Outcome K. Person Blue always gets on Person Red's nerves. Over and over again. 

Only way to transform the fateful groove is to change a variable or a core element. Maybe a behavior. Maybe a path. Maybe a way of seeing. Hopefully, unlike Sisyphus, many a person usually enjoys a fighting chance for a change in fate or direction. Or maybe not. What do you think? Do people tend to have more options than they seem to think, or really none at all?

Today's Rune: The Mystery Rune. 

Some Mythical Future Time

I cannot say that after this, for five years, any extraordinary thing happened to me, but I lived on in the same course, in the same posture and place, as before; the chief things I was employed in, besides my yearly labour of planting my barley and rice, and curing my raisins, of both which I always kept up just enough to have sufficient stock of one year's provisions beforehand; I say, besides this yearly labour, and my daily pursuit of going out with my gun, I had one labour, to make a canoe . . .

-- Daniel Defoe, The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pirates (1719), chapter 10. 

Name a project, any project, or a trip or something like that. You've been thinking about it for days, months, years. Why are you putting it off to some mythical future time that might never happen? Must it be perfect -- the supply planning, the dreaming, the doing? Is it fear, procrastination, lack of resources, lack of energy, ill health, being trapped, feeling trapped, entropy? 

Look around for something along these lines. Then "tackle" it. Eh?

I just "got around" to framing a couple of items. It feels good, they look good, it is good. Why had I "forgotten" about this little project, and why did it take so long to carry forth? Why do we "put things off" at all, particularly those things we don't have to?

Today's Rune: Joy.