We Must Call A Meeting

As you may know, or perhaps you dont, each week on a Sunday, I do a weekly pull on a special Tarot deck, (whichever one I am guided to use), and then share a short interpretation on that card for the collective via social media. As I write this, our weekly Tarot card is the 8 of Birds from Rachel Pollack’s ‘Shining Woman’ deck, which was later renamed ‘Shining Tribe’.

In Rachel’s deck, the suit of Birds replaces the more standard suit of Swords, and as you can tell, both are representative of the element of Air - it’s a no brainer, right? For the sake of full disclosure, the four suits in this deck are;

Trees instead of Wands

Rivers instead of Cups

Stones instead of Pentacles

Birds instead of Swords

As I have a couple of Rachel’s books here, I had a look at what she says about her 8 of Birds card, ,and what stood out to me from here wriiting, was her reference to the poem you see below which she says inspired the image she created for the 8 of Birds.

I trust that you enjoy reading it as much as I did.

We Must Call A Meeting

Poetry by Joy Harjo

I am fragile, a piece of pottery smoked from fire

made of dung,

the design drawn from nightmares. I am an arrow, painted

with lightning

to seek the way to the name of the enemy,

but the arrow has now created

its own language

It is a language of lizards and storms, and we have

begun to hold conversations

long into the night.

I forget to eat.

I don't work. My children are hungry and the animals who live

in the back yard are starving.

I begin to draw maps of stars.

The spirits of old and new ancestors perch on my shoulders.

I make prayers of clear stone

of feathers from birds

who live closest to the gods.

The voice of the stone is born

of a meeting of yellow birds

who circle the ashes of smoldering volcano.

The feathers sweep the prayers up

and away.

I, too, try to fly but get caught in the crossfire of signals

and my spirit drops back down to earth.

I am lost; I am looking for you

who can help me walk this thin line between the breathing

and the dead.

You are the curled serpent in the pottery of nightmares.

You are the dreaming animal who paces back and forth in my head.

We must call a meeting.

Give me back my language and build a house

inside it.

A house of madness.

A house for the dead who are not dead.

And the spiral of the sky above it.

And the sun

and the moon.

And the stars to guide us called promise.

The 8 of Birds Tarot Card from the Shining Tribe Tarot Deck by Rachel Pollack