Faeries Oracle

Card 60 - The Pook

Shape-changer. Good in bad; bad in good. Paradox. Resolution.

The Pook is a shape-changer. He appears in whatever guise he thinks will be most confusing to you, depending on his purpose. Brian wrote, "He weaves spells to bemuse our senses and confuse our judgment. He is a master of the arts of illusion and delusion, holding up a distorting mirror to reveal the bad in the good and the good in the bad."

The Pook also wishes to show us the "bad" in what we think to be "good" and vice versa. This may confuse us further, or it may help us to gain a more balanced understanding of how things really are. He is very against rigid mindsets and, in his own way, encourages the development of inquiring minds.

His true face? I'm not certain that a shape-changer even has a true face - though he did hold still long enough for Brian to paint him. However, the Pook is very proud of the faces he assumes. With them, he offers us contradictions and paradoxes, and finds it all too easy to confuse our judgment because we are often not thinking very clearly anyway. Sometimes we even hold two or more contradictory beliefs in boxes in our minds. If one is true, we think when we finally consider them, then the other must be false. Not so. Perhaps both are false; perhaps both are partly true and partly false. We tend to cling desperately to our beliefs, even when they make no sense to others or are counter to our actual experience.

Our paradoxes and confusions are self-created, and the Pook need only dress them up a bit, add a little sparkle, and dangle them before us in order to induce confusion. In that confusion, we are likely to believe almost anything someone presents to us, just to feel as if we have a metaphorical anchor in reality. His challenge for us is to wake up, to stop projecting our confusions on reality. Once we have seen the truth, seeming contradictions and paradoxes melt away, in the manner of realizing the solution to a Zen koan like, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

When we get the answer, usually by a burst of insight cutting through the confusion and paradoxes, it always seems so simple and we wonder how we could have been in such a tizzy about so simple a thing. We wonder why everyone doesn't understand this so very obvious thing.

Starter Reading

It is time for the resolution of seeming contradictions and paradoxes in the situation. Someone or some part of the situation is cloaked in confusion, and our muddled thoughts must be stripped away, revealing truth. We just need to think about it; the information we needed is now available to us. And as soon as we have that burst of insight and get it, it's time for us to make changes based on our newly clear understanding.

Alternatively, it may be time for us to make a reality check on the good/bad labels we put on things. Make a list of the "good" (possibly even surprising things) about this situation, and another list about the "bad" ones.

If you are not in the habit of seeing the good in the bad and the bad in the good, having preferred a black-and-white world rather than one with colors, you may need some help in learning to do this well.

Reversed

There is a paradox that we are unable to resolve at this time. Recognizing the paradox helps move us closer to a solution for it, but the information or experience we need to resolve it is not yet available to us. The trick here is to avoid becoming bogged down by this. We need to get on with other aspects of our lives while acknowledging the difficulty here. If possible, we need to postpone related decisions and then relax about it, knowing that the insight we need will come - but we cannot rush it. In fact, trying to rush it usually only causes us to become more deeply mired in the confusion. Relax, wait, and stay alert.

"Faeries trip you up to give you a new perspective on the world."
--Brian

The Faery Challengers