The wheel (X) - Druidcraft deck

Hemera

Thanks for the links Sulis.They are interesting!

I guess the very idea of "purification" sounds so Christian to me. I´ve never been able to grasp the idea..To purify myself from what?...
(I`m not at all against Christianity, but they do have some strange ideas :> This is one of them)
 

le fey

I would guess that nearly every religious practice includes some notion of purification and that most, if not all, of those practiced by Christians were borrowed and adopted from pagan religious practices that predate them.

As to what a person would be purfied from (whether by bathing, by smoke and fire, or use of a scourge to focus their attention) it need not be tied into the Christian concept of sin - we give our homes a good cleaning every now and then to get rid of clutter and grime and most of us feel more centered, calm, and uplifted once it's done because it's a more pleasant environment. We strip off our work clothes after a day's work in part because it helps us transition away from the attitudes and needs of that role, and shower or bathe to relax, feel clean, strip away the layers of environmental clutter on our bodies and get back to ourselves.

Cleansing and purfication in a spiritual sense has the same purpose - to clear away the mental, physical and emotional debris left behind by daily living. Thoughts and attitudes that were useful and necessary but are no longer achieving their purpose are cleared away symbolically - the symbols of the act trigger our senses and help us remember to let go and get back to who we are at the core and to make way for whatever spiritual experience will follow.
 

Hemera

I don´t know... I see "purification" as something very different from grounding and centering.
 

le fey

I agree. I don't see them as the same thing either.
 

Mi-Shell

The flail:

Hi guys!
I assume you all have the book that goes with the deck....
Check back to the pages with the High Priestess.
There it states that "The Goddess is seen in her destructive and her creative aspect.
In Egypt these 2 forces were symbolized by the Pharaoh holding the crook and the flail. The HP's book here represents the guidance of the goddess and the flail represents her catabolic force."
--- and let's face it, pain is an entrance way to the trance and visions..... I know that first hand... not that I use a flail but when I was 13 one had been used on me - ( by a christian nunn to drive out the devil) and that led to my first full fledged trance and clairvoyance experience. -- and a lot of welts on my back....
Mi-Shell
 

Arania

This is one of the cards that tend to confuse me, because the woman is drawing a protective circle and not really a wheel... and I'm usually not stuck on details with card images. I can read it well in readings, but it still seems a bit weird to me.
 

Hemera

I guess the wheel is in her jewellery? I see her casting a circle and I think she may be starting a ceremony here?
I have not checked the book, but I think it says something of her pendant and that it is the Wheel of the Year? (I have to check this..)
 

caridwen

Does anyone think this wheel means to literally draw something to a close?
 

Sulis

The Wheel of Fortune is usually about lifes cycles and about how fete or destiny just carries on, round and round and we can't control it. What we can do is take solace in the fact that nothing is forever, everything is a phase and once you've hit the bottom then things can only get better (or vice versa).

I think that this Wheel card turns that on it's head a little.
Here we have someone who is taking control of her own destiny. She isn't happy to leave things up to the hands of fete.
She's preparing to do some sort of magical ritual. She's on a beach, the place where the land becomes the sea; a magical place where the veil between the worlds is thin.
She's drawing her circle, creating sacred space so that she can work her magic and bring about a change.
She knows that everything is a phase and that the Wheel will always turn but she's helping it along a bit.

There's more of a feeling of being in control of our own destinies with this card than with many Wheel of Fortune cards and I think that's how it should be in a deck based on Wicca and Druidry. Magic to me is about taking control of your own destiny and giving the forces around you a little nudge in the direction you'd like things to go.
I like that :)