Sophie
[size=+2]THE HOSTING OF THE SIDHE
THE host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na bare;
Caolte tossing his burning hair
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing ’twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away
William Butler Yeats[/size]
So - our wild chase begins! With the host of the Sidhe, with the quiet Sidhe of the mounds, with those that walk in the fields at sunset, we'll explore the three worlds. One card at a time, one dream at a time, let's plunge through the glyph of the Sidhe and meet them, hear their wisdom, their sad and happy stories, learn to walk this earth in a different way, stronger, more loving, more secure, energised by their presence and their magic.
But remember, remember - [size=+2]Empty your heart of its mortal dream![/size]
Since only the Majors are published, we'll start with those - hoping that the full 78 will be available before too long. Time, perhaps, for some Sidhe spell... but that is down the road! The Majors will give us the strong top notes of the voices of the Sidhe.
In the introductory thread to this study, I mentioned that Em had made the deck a balance of dark and light, deliberately building in such a notion of balance and integration. But it's more than "dark and light": there is in this deck a strong vision of thresholds - between dark and light, night and day, below and above - the in-between state, the becoming. The Sidhe strike me as beings that are constantly becoming, constantly created and re-created - as forces active in all worlds but most of all at the borders; in songs and tales, in Faery mounds, in transmission from old to young, from young to old, in the visions of shamans and poets. We catch sight of them in our own shadows, in the light that plays through the trees, in the whispering branch. We feel their energy strongest at the in-between times, dawn, dusk, eclipses, equinoxes. This comes through very obviously in the Major Arcana of the deck. There are 4 cards I'd classify as predominantly dark, 7 as predominantly light, but the 11 others are in-between cards, weighted towards one or the other, but playing along with the whole notion of balance, meeting and threshold. Yeats captured that essence of the Sidhe in words in his poem, and Em did in imagery and the play of light and shadows in the Sidhe Majors.
Looking through all 22 cards, it seems obvious to me that the Sidhe knew long before us that one light particle can go through two slits at the same time... easy, they take the in-between way, where anything can happen, where particles become waves and are everywhere and nowhere at once.
We'll examine this aspect in detail as we go through each card - but we need to be comfortable spending time at borders, at thresholds, in order to do so well.
As well as a balance of light and the in-between state, there is a strong balance of elements running through the cards, and another in-between state - the 5th element that exists within and between all the others - Spirit, which is just that wild, unbalancing factor that puts everything upside-down and inside out for a while - is this a moon or my own face? A fish or a bird? Are you hanging down - or up?
So though the Sidhe dwell in mounds and fly in hosts, it is truly the thresholds they have invested and enriched - the threshold between this world and the others, between our reality and imagination, between magic and science, between your truth and my truth - and nowhere more than in Em's Major Arcana can we study that: if we can stand watching them without being carried away into the borderlands ourselves. In which case, anything is possible, but study might be moot, because:
[size=+2]...if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart[/size]
In the next thread, dare to come along to meet the craziest of crazy loons, The Sidhe Fool, and fall straight through the glyph on his heart, into the land of - where?
[size=+3]Away, come away![/size]
THE host is riding from Knocknarea
And over the grave of Clooth-na bare;
Caolte tossing his burning hair
And Niamh calling Away, come away:
Empty your heart of its mortal dream.
The winds awaken, the leaves whirl round,
Our cheeks are pale, our hair is unbound,
Our breasts are heaving, our eyes are agleam,
Our arms are waving, our lips are apart;
And if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart.
The host is rushing ’twixt night and day,
And where is there hope or deed as fair?
Caolte tossing his burning hair,
And Niamh calling Away, come away
William Butler Yeats[/size]
So - our wild chase begins! With the host of the Sidhe, with the quiet Sidhe of the mounds, with those that walk in the fields at sunset, we'll explore the three worlds. One card at a time, one dream at a time, let's plunge through the glyph of the Sidhe and meet them, hear their wisdom, their sad and happy stories, learn to walk this earth in a different way, stronger, more loving, more secure, energised by their presence and their magic.
But remember, remember - [size=+2]Empty your heart of its mortal dream![/size]
Since only the Majors are published, we'll start with those - hoping that the full 78 will be available before too long. Time, perhaps, for some Sidhe spell... but that is down the road! The Majors will give us the strong top notes of the voices of the Sidhe.
In the introductory thread to this study, I mentioned that Em had made the deck a balance of dark and light, deliberately building in such a notion of balance and integration. But it's more than "dark and light": there is in this deck a strong vision of thresholds - between dark and light, night and day, below and above - the in-between state, the becoming. The Sidhe strike me as beings that are constantly becoming, constantly created and re-created - as forces active in all worlds but most of all at the borders; in songs and tales, in Faery mounds, in transmission from old to young, from young to old, in the visions of shamans and poets. We catch sight of them in our own shadows, in the light that plays through the trees, in the whispering branch. We feel their energy strongest at the in-between times, dawn, dusk, eclipses, equinoxes. This comes through very obviously in the Major Arcana of the deck. There are 4 cards I'd classify as predominantly dark, 7 as predominantly light, but the 11 others are in-between cards, weighted towards one or the other, but playing along with the whole notion of balance, meeting and threshold. Yeats captured that essence of the Sidhe in words in his poem, and Em did in imagery and the play of light and shadows in the Sidhe Majors.
Looking through all 22 cards, it seems obvious to me that the Sidhe knew long before us that one light particle can go through two slits at the same time... easy, they take the in-between way, where anything can happen, where particles become waves and are everywhere and nowhere at once.
We'll examine this aspect in detail as we go through each card - but we need to be comfortable spending time at borders, at thresholds, in order to do so well.
As well as a balance of light and the in-between state, there is a strong balance of elements running through the cards, and another in-between state - the 5th element that exists within and between all the others - Spirit, which is just that wild, unbalancing factor that puts everything upside-down and inside out for a while - is this a moon or my own face? A fish or a bird? Are you hanging down - or up?
So though the Sidhe dwell in mounds and fly in hosts, it is truly the thresholds they have invested and enriched - the threshold between this world and the others, between our reality and imagination, between magic and science, between your truth and my truth - and nowhere more than in Em's Major Arcana can we study that: if we can stand watching them without being carried away into the borderlands ourselves. In which case, anything is possible, but study might be moot, because:
[size=+2]...if any gaze on our rushing band,
We come between him and the deed of his hand,
We come between him and the hope of his heart[/size]
In the next thread, dare to come along to meet the craziest of crazy loons, The Sidhe Fool, and fall straight through the glyph on his heart, into the land of - where?
[size=+3]Away, come away![/size]