Faeries Oracle

Card 38 - Laiste, Moon's Daughter

Light cast in shadows. Spiritual guidance. Illumination. Riddles.

She is the bringer of light in the darkness, yet moonlight both reveals and conceals. Her bright faery hoofprints light the path ahead of you, guiding you through the dark. She is also one of the guides at the passages between the otherworlds and this one. It is she who, with her bright light, tends the Gate of Revelation, showing us the way through by illumination, while her sister, Epona's Wild Daughter (Card 54) helps guide us through the Gate of Despair. Laiste's gate is much more fun.

Yet, in the process of guiding us, Laiste may pull a veil of cloud across the face of her mother, the moon - and three steps later we fall into a bog. "That should wake you up," she thinks, smiling wisely. She disapproves of sleepwalking, which is something that most of us humans do a great deal of the time. The night contains too much magic and beauty and wisdom to walk through it unseeing. You may find her activities helpful; you may find them frustrating. How you take them is entirely up to you, but they are intended to help you awaken. Bear in mind that she does not trip us; she merely places an obstacle or a pitfall in our path, and we, sleepwalking and unaware, step right into it. We don't have to do that. As always, it is our choice.

Laiste wants us to be open to the great unknown, to mystical (not necessarily magical) experiences that teach us an expanded way to relate to the multiverse, all of the worlds and dimensions together. She is daughter of the moon, but she is also an illumined child of Unity (Card 1). Where the Losgunna, the Frog Queen (Card 39), wishes you to get in touch with your subconscious and find the treasures there, Laiste hopes you will reach for your higher self; your not-yet-realized cosmic wisdom. You know far more than you know you know.

There are places in ourselves that we may have feared because they are shadowed and unknown. We may imagine them full of monsters when, in fact, they are inhabited by joyful spirits. She wishes us to explore this terra incognita because that is where much of our potential and as yet unexplored wisdom lies. Laiste reaches into our deepest minds, opening long-shut doors, illuminating and revealing the uncultivated ground of our being - our hidden senses and talents. She speaks to us in the language of symbols, as faeries often do, because words are so limited. Any one symbol may speak to us on many levels of consciousness and about many different aspects of being, if we spend time contemplating it. Laiste is a sphinx, and finding the answers to her profound riddles gives us keys to the multiverse.

If you are attending to your dreams and visions and studying everyday occurrences, trying to discover the deeper levels of meaning in the symbols there, you are learning the language of Laiste. That language is spoken by artists, like Brian, and poets, whose works are informed by rich symbolism. Discovering it through study, through looking within ourselves, and through interaction with faeries not only teaches us the language of Faery, of art, and of high poetry, but it also gives us keys to our own psychic abilities and to the deep levels of our own psyches, where the Singers and the creative force of Unity are most easily found.

Through revelation and the ecstatic experience of the mystic, Laiste faces and leads us into the future. She prefers to let the old stuff of the past fade away in the illumination of insight and newly accessed wisdom.

Starter Reading

You may be finding apparently random events and ideas are falling into a pattern and beginning to make sense to you. Things may be flowing more easily than you are accustomed to, and your decisions and choices may be bringing an unusually high degree of success. Psychic abilities - hunches, intuitions, foreknowings - are becoming clearer and making more sense. Trust the process.

Laiste also brings psychic dreams, forelighting the future and illumining the present. These dreams often speak in symbols, as faeries are wont to do.

Reverse

If someone is experiencing free-floating anxiety, inexplicable selfdoubt, or a tendency to accidents, it may be that change is occurring at the very deep levels of the psyche. In various stages of such work, as change takes place on a deeply unconscious level, some disruptive energies rise to the surface of consciousness. Be especially careful and watchful as you go through your daily activities. When we are occupied on these deep levels with change, many of our automatic coping mechanisms fail to work properly. We are too busy deeper down to pay attention to whether or not the traffic light is red or the shoe laces are untied.

Alternatively, this card reversed may indicate that Laiste is working behind the scenes with others to bring about change - which, in turn, will probably eventually elicit change in the querent.

This card reversed can also signify that someone is unreasonably and unrealistically demanding superhuman perfection from others. Laiste's advice on this is, "Don't!"

Another alternative is that by ignoring dreams, portents, omens, and insights that are trying to occur at this deep level, someone is denying or blocking change. Laiste does what she can, but when her help is refused, she refers people to her sister, Dorcha, Epona's Wild Daughter (Card 54).

Faery Guides and Guardians