vorige  tarotpagina  volgende
http://images.chakra-san.nl/faeries/18.jpg

Faeries Oracle

Card 18 - The Lady of the Harvest

Completion. Grief. Loss. Harvest. Release.

After we have experienced the nurturing and fulfillment of the Bright Mother, the Lady of the Harvest, also called the Old Woman or Crone, helps us to let go of what is finished and liberate ourselves to move on to the next phase of our activities and relationships. As in the natural world, the old becomes compost for new growth in our lives. The Lady helps us to adapt to change and release.

Often we associate the Lady of the Harvest with loss, regret, and grief - and often we are right to do so: The basic phases of grief are shock/denial, anger/guilt, emotional storm, acceptance, regaining of perspective, the beginning of healing, and the deepening of our capacity for love. The Lady of the Harvest understands grief and is patient and kind as we go through the sometimes painful process of letting go. We may well need to be patient and kind with ourselves.

We should note here that the grieving process is the same for little losses and large ones; only the time scale and the intensity of the emotions vary, but they vary enormously. We might go through all the grieving stages of a small loss in a few minutes while it may take years for a greater loss.

On the other side of this letting-go business, there are many things that make us lighter and happier when we release them-old traumas, tasks, or stages in our lives that we are glad to have finished, unhappy relationships, or feelings that cause us pain and inhibit our growth. Sometimes we simply comfortably finish with one aspect of our lives and move on to the next, happily anticipated one. Such releases are cause for celebration, and the Old Woman joyfully celebrates with us. In this card we see both the patient acceptance of loss and the joyful celebration of liberation.

When we liberate something in ourselves or in the world, we grow to be more like the Lady of the Harvest, developing her capacities within us.

Starter Reading

It is time to accept change, to move on to the next phase. Power and strength in the present and future come from releasing the past.

This is a time of liberation, and we might as well cooperate with it. It will happen; whether we want it to or not. Release and liberation may be painful or joyful, depending on the circumstances. Cry if you need to, be joyful if that is appropriate, but in either case trust the process, acknowledge what you feel, and prepare to move on.

Reverse

When we block the liberating energy of the Lady, we may refuse to accept a loss or cling to outgrown pains, traumas, or limiting ideas. We may deny reality. Shock and denial are the first stage of grief, but we need to move on past that to eventually gain a healthy balance in the present. If we stay in denial, the grief cannot heal. Denial can be the denial of reality or the denial of our feelings. Either one prevents us from moving on to healing. The universe moves on; we have no choice really but to move on with it.

Twisted, the energy of release can move in various directions. One possibility can be the "letting-go program," an automatic process like a computer program, where we compulsively push away things we actually want and need. Another twist on this is to turn away from the things in our lives that give us satisfaction, fulfillment, or joy because we cannot have the one thing we want - so it seems reasonable to have nothing at all. This kind of sulking can easily be carried to an extreme.

The destructive mode of release can be summarized by the bumper sticker saying: If you love something, let it go. If it doesn't come back, hunt it down and kill it. This is the "if I can't have it, no one will" attitude. From the outside, such attitudes seem obviously stupid and selfish, but to someone caught in one of the less rational stages of the grieving process, they may seem the only solution - a solution that is not a solution to anything at all.

The Sidhe