Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

THE CARTOMANCER

Home
Pagan
The Cartomancer: How to Speak with your Tree Ally

The Cartomancer: How to Speak with your Tree Ally

Last updated on: March 23, 2016 at 4:00 pm by Camelia Elias

The Cartomancer: How to Speak with your Tree Ally 2016-03-23T16:00:32+02:00 Camelia Elias

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Photo: Camelia Elias

I’m spending the week in the woods of the island of Bornholm. This is a power place full of stone circles and twisted pine trees. Pine tree spirit is one of my strongest allies, so I cherish the possibility to stay at a cabin that’s surrounded by this spirit.

Louttre B Tarot, 1981 (Photo: Camelia Elias)

As I was calling the nature forces this morning using a powerful drum, I looked up and asked the pine: ‘What offering can I make you today,’ thinking of something special. I felt a strong pain in my ovary, on the right-hand side. The sharpest sword couldn’t have been more bloody. ‘Blood?’ I asked pine spirit, and it quickly went, ‘Yes, blood’. I tried to negotiate with it: ‘Well, good luck with that source,’ thinking of my recent joining of the crone club where that kind of blood is not an option any more.

The tree was just standing there, looking at me with anticipation, as if saying, ‘Finally you get what I want very fast, so what are you waiting for?’ ‘Well, Pinus Contorta,’ I said to it, suddenly feeling importantly Latin, ‘I suppose I will just have to prick myself in the finger, and make that offering.’ Pinus Contorta gave me a whiff of its smell. We had a deal. By my word, not my act, for I didn’t rush to perform the venerable act of stabbing myself.

Photo: Camelia Elias

Later in the day I went for a hike. I spotted an old bushy pine, and rushed towards it. On my way I got caught in some brambles. My calves got pricked badly enough for me to see the blood come out of them. Then I remembered. Bloody hell. I said to the Pine: ‘Ok, here it is, thank you for not taking my head or my whole limb.’ The pine leaned towards me, so I could sniff it.

This is always an erotically sublime affair. The more I smell the pine, its cones and resin, the more I travel on my senses to places that understand alchemy. Pine spirit makes my senses colorful, hot and cold at the same time, while also breezing a dry and moist air into my lungs.

My cards out there in the woods were also very clear:

I used the Louttre B Tarot for the affair, as this one likes to be taken to the woods: The 5 of Cups, Knight of Coins, and the Sun were very eloquent in their visual message:

Louttre B Tarot, 1981 (Photo: Camelia Elias)

If you make a promise for a drop of blood while riding the horse in your drum, then make sure to say, ‘Hell, yes’ to the immediacy of the act. You wait too long, you may find out that your promise will be the last. Indeed, I actually thanked the brambles for nudging me, for who’s to say what might have happened had I persisted in my amnesia?

Photo: Camelia Elias

Sacred Language

This made me think of the pacts we make, the devotion we show, and the tuning into nature we do. How do we listen to the voiceless and the inarticulate? One of Hunter S. Thompson’s often quoted phrases came to my mind: “When the going gets weird, the weird goes pro.”

I think of what Socrates and Plato would have made of that, what with their distrust of everything spiritual and artful. Art is no good, they both declared, because it allows for too much unconscious desire to emerge. Voice needs an origin, they further believed, and then they showed even more distrust of the Greek drama and its oracles.

In his thoughtful book, The Infinite Conversation, Maurice Blanchot points to an essential aspect in his comparison of works of literature to the articulation of the sacred voice of oracles. They both have the potential to deceive truth itself. Socrates, for one, wanted only true discourse. No nonsense, such as listening to a tree, water, or image. And yet. Says Blanchot:

“Like sacred language, what is written comes from no recognizable source, is without author or origin, and thereby always refers back to something more original than itself. Behind the words of the written work, nobody is present; but language gives voice to this absence, just as in the oracle, when divinity speaks, the god himself is never present in his words, and it is the absence of god which then speaks.”

Photo: Camelia Elias

Topos

In my conversation with the Pine spirit, I think that what I hear is an indictment that I pay closer attention to that which evades truth. I must pay attention to the discourse of absence, silence, and the mute image. These things don’t operate with truth, but with topos. They are there. They map our judgments against our desires; which is the reason why exploring their territory involves taking risks. The risk of miscommunication, the risk of betrayal, deceit, the risk of promising and not delivering, and the risk of appearing out of balance: ‘You talk to trees and they demand blood? That can’t be good…’

But this risk is also a necessary price we pay if we want to follow the oracle: Know thyself, which is to say, know thy place. You get to know thyself by placing yourself in a state above signification. Thus you are free from having to talk or from having to make gestures. This is something that the pre-Socratics have understood. Heraclitus, for instance, believed that the oracle “neither speaks out nor conceals, but points.” The oracle thus never predicts. I think of this when I read the cards. But then I remember that I practice awareness of the nondual kind, so I don’t worry about what is not NOW.

I also like to think that what I was listening to while communing with Pine spirit was the idea that as a consequence of knowing myself, or rather, my place, I can begin to trust the people in my life more; their acts, their beliefs, and their love. As I can hope that they trust me. Within this trust, the question: ‘Who speaks beyond the text,’ or ‘Whose voice is there behind the words?’, becomes more nuanced as I stretch the elastic of my finitude and of what I can know about myself and others into realms that are vaster than my gratitude and blood. Pine spirit teaches me the lesson of the dead.

More words of power? Stay in the loop.

Click here to like
Patheos Pagan on Facebook.

Click here to like
the Agora on Facebook

The Cartomancer is published bi-monthly on the second and fourth Wednesday here on the Agora. Subscribe via RSS or e-mail!

Please use the links to the right to keep on top of activities here on the Agora as well as across the entire Patheos Pagan channel.

Previous Post

March 9, 2016

The Cartomancer: "Know Thyself," but what does it really mean?

Next Post

April 13, 2016 The Cartomancer: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Columns The Cartomancer Uncategorized

Select a Month January 2024 October 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 November 2022 October 2022 August 2022 May 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 June 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Psalm opens with "Blessed is the man"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Psalm 51 Psalm 119 Psalm 1 Psalm 23