Faeries Oracle

Card 20 - The Dark Lady

Unconscious power and wisdom. Rituals. Mysteries. Secrets.

The Dark Lady is the high priestess of the Mysteries. She understands how to surrender to divine power, to Unity (Card 1). She has the profound, intuitive knowledge that is only to be found by looking deeply into our own beings and natures. We find her through meditation, in sleep, and within inner peace, ecstasy, and total despair. I am writing this at the time of the dark moon, which is her time.

She is the guardian of beings unborn, of unconscious ideas, and of seeds sprouting in the dark, cold earth, tender and fragile and as yet unready to face the bright sun and the winds of spring. She holds the embryonic hopes we have not yet realized we have.

The Dark Lady is the mistress of Spiritual ritual. The purpose of a ritual is not the power it allegedly has over gods or spirits or faeries, but the very real power it may have over us, putting us into a state of consciousness where we may better connect to our own magic and to otherworld beings. The Dark Lady understands that ritual is something we surrender to and we allow to enfold us, rather than something we do or control.

When we have been through a living cycle - birth and growth with the Maiden, nurturing and fulfillment with the Bright Mother, releasing and letting go with the Lady of the Harvest - it is the Dark Lady who passes with us through the night of endings and death, whether of the body or of the soul or simply of something passing through our lives. It is she who holds and guides us as we reconceive ourselves and prepare to be born anew. In as simple an act as breathing, we see all four of them - inhaling with the Maiden, the moment of fullness with the Bright Mother, exhaling with the Lady of the Harvest, and the moment of empty, waiting stillness with the Dark Lady.

She is there in our very last moments of deepest grief, helping us to move forward to the stillness and peace of the place beyond grief. Our sorrows are transformed within her. She teaches us surrender, walking with us through the valley of the darkest shadow. She is there as we experience the ecstasy of release. Then she guides us back to this reality, renewed and illuminated. From her come those spiritual awakenings that seem to blossom within us out of nowhere.

When we travel through the darkness, inner or outer, we learn the strengths of the Dark Lady.

Starter Reading

We may reach the realm of the Dark Lady through grief, through deep surrender, through ecstasy, or through profound ritual. This card in a reading suggests that it is time to withdraw from the ordinary world to revitalize ourselves through retreat and surrender to the source, Unity and the song of Ekstasis. This is a time of preparation for rebirth, of restoration and regeneration. What is hidden is getting ready to be revealed. Celebrate this passage through the unknown, rich, fertile, hidden realms of the Dark Lady.

This is the time in the natural cycle of life when we open ourselves to and receive the inflowing energies of Himself (Card 17), when we become powerfull, overflowing with the life force. It may also be a time of prophecy, magic, and foretelling of the potentials of the future - a time of self-awareness, self-knowledge, and encounters with the hidden worlds. Meditate, retreat, seek serenity and inner peace.

Reversed

When we block the Dark Lady, we may be frenetically active, occupying ourselves with the outerworld and ignoring the call of the world within. We may be resisting profound change and renewal. In order to keep our feelings repressed and hidden from ourselves, we may become aloof, cold, and inaccessible, holding back from others as a way of holding back from ourselves.

When we twist her living process within us, we may experience sexual blocks or frigidity or impotence or some other form of disability in making connection with others and with the source of being.

At worst, we use the magic of the inner realms for the purposes of destruction or manipulation, becoming black magicians. If we choose to do this, which is the closest thing the faeries know to an unforgivable sin, we may harm others, and we shall certainly do very serious damage to ourselves.

The Sidhe