94stranger
This follows on from the post set 5 part 1 - set 5 has had to be split to accomodate the maximum length possible in this forum
41. Flow-Singer: group - Unconscious (5 indigo)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/FlowSinger/41.aspx
The image
A dark-skinned girl stands in a brown river whose bank, visible in the distance, is covered with lush foliage. Above the waist, she is wearing only a turtle pendant around her neck and two garlands of flowers across her chest. Round her waist, we can just see above the waterline the red material of whatever covers the lower half of her body. She wears a blue flower in her hair, and is smiling. She holds her arms down and slightly out from her body, turned so that the open palms of both hands face us. It is clear that she has been making ripples in the water. She has two familiars, both of whom are shown larger than natural perspective: to her left as we look at her, a blue swan representing co-incidence; to her right, a grey elephant representing time. The image is completed by two sprays of leaves, possibly olive.
The archetype.
Flow-Singer is the card at the centre of the grid and is the archetype of the Unconscious. As such, she is the card furthest from the light, her significance in the world of consciousness being the most difficult of all the grid cards to assess. The Unconscious is the origin, so the number 5 in no way implies that Flow-Singer comes ‘after’ the previous four. As the card of set 5 and group 5, the double Unconscious, Flow Singer represents the emergence of the Unconscious into consciousness. She is therefore at the crossroads between time, reason and causality – the building-blocks of consciousness; and coincidence, dream, symbol and acausality: the frame of reference of the Unconscious.
Divinatory meanings
Flow-Singer: the mediator between consciousness and the unconscious, causality (time) and acausality (synchronicity); the source of the stories of being.
To draw this card is to show proof of flexibility; to have the inner freedom to go in many possible directions. You are at ease in the ebb and flow of existence, because you are not committed to any particular viewpoint or course of action: you are available for whatever turns up. This means that your inner attitude is that of someone for whom issues or situations are ongoing – you do not regard yourself as being at the end of anything, as having reached completion. Because you have a free flow of access to the Unconscious, you are making an impression – not by deliberately drawing attention to yourself, but by being connected. In relationship, you have the capacity for affinity, because you can sense what lies behind the masks that people use; but this capacity is dormant, since your connectedness with the whole makes it hard for you to commit yourself to fully connecting to specific individuals. Again, because you are in touch with yourself, you are clear about how you feel – which of course is not always true of others.
As with all cards which involve close links with the Unconscious, your issues are with the world of Form – connectedness to people and emotions. Manifestation is the arena of the Will as much as of Spirit, and exposure to the Will may mean being buffeted by strong emotions, like a walker on a very windy day. This exposure to passion can eclipse the unconscious connection – something you have resistance to. Your problem is that given your ability to go back and forth across the interface between consciousness and the unconscious, you have an inner balance which has plenty of amplitude and which you are therefore reluctant to disturb. The biggest potential disturbance is other people, so that falling in love, to take the extreme case, is something that you have a lot of resistance to. In general, given the extent of your inner resources, you experience no great urge for any form of close contact with others. Paradoxically, therefore, the greatest threat to your well-being, and the force likely to undermine it, is change. This means change in the sense of upheaval, of a sharp break from the continuity of your existence. In fact, it is exactly this energy that you are attracting to yourself: challenging you to come out of your comfort zone in no-man’s land and plunge into the clamour and frenzy of combat in the world of Form.
Divination summary
flexibility, flux; non-doctrinaire attitudes; uncommitted in relationship; elusiveness, enterprise, insight, self-awareness, rounded personality, wide interests, no settled life-style, travel, career change, makes a strong impression on others; difficulty committing in relationship; reluctance to settle for one person, career or lifestyle; non-conformity.
42. Self: group - Self (6 yellow)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Self/42.aspx
The Image
A large woman stands at a table holding a ladle, which she is about to dip into an earthenware pot. To the right of her sits a boy in green, to the left, a girl wearing pink. The presence of spoons and bowls (5 and 4 respectively) on the table makes it clear that she is about to serve the children. Behind her on the wall hangs a grey cloak to the left of the image, and a medallion on a lace to the right. The woman wears a yellow apron over an orange dress with red sleeves, a cook’s hat and various items of jewellery. She looks straight at us with a forthright gaze.
The Archetype
Self represents the point in the evolution of the psyche at which the individual, as a distinct unit of the whole, is born. The viewpoint of Rainring is that, like Form, Self is an integral part of the psyche, and must not be judged against on the basis that ‘in reality, we are all one’. Both unity and diversity have their place in the psyche, and Rainring incorporates each of them. The universe evolves towards differentiation; humanity likewise faces the task of nurturing and developing the uniqueness of each individual. It is not Self which is responsible for the conflicts we experience, but the history or conditioning that Self has been subject to since the dawn of consciousness. Self is not the villain of the piece, but the indispensable organising principle of individual identity in the cosmos.
Divinatory Meanings
Self: guardian of individual being, the unique nature of one’s own identity; the force which supports and guides multiplicity, differentiation, individuation
Once Self arises, it immediately threatens to abort the feeling of connectedness of the individual soul with the whole of life, the ocean of being.
Self is also rather like a house where you decide to stay for a while during a long journey. In this place you are in a state of centredness; not running here and there pursuing this and that. In other words, you know who you are and what you are about. You are in accord with your core, your true identity. Your inner experience is that of focus on yourself, an introvert emphasis. To know who you are -self-knowledge- is the beginning of wisdom. This is what is gained, the positive side of the coin. A sense of independence attaches itself to Self, because you have a good balance of male and female energies. You also demonstrate an exuberance of spirit, because to be yourself, to pursue your own agenda is a powerful motivator.
For Self, however, the shadow is always the other, and the relationship with that other. Not far behind your sense of separateness and independence comes need: the urge to be in contact, to be close to the other. And it is from here that the opposition to Self comes – from that in us which needs, imperatively, the interchange with other selves. Self, that is, ushers in the dilemma with which every human being is familiar: you versus me. In the company of another, and still more with numerous others, the members of the group, you find that you cannot be entirely yourself. So the tension is set up – to be totally yourself but alone, versus to be totally immersed in the group but to lose your identity, yourself. The card Self shows that for now you are right at one end of that spectrum. But to be self-centred (even ‘selfish’) is not automatically a moral failing, behaviour for which you ‘should’ feel guilty.
Ultimately, out of Self will come projection – when you lose touch with the Self of the other, and believe him or her to have the same motivations, feelings, neuroses as yourself. The paranoid dictator wants to have everyone killed because everyone (he is convinced) is out to kill him. Although this is prefigured by Self, this latter is nevertheless a highly positive card: not to have a solid sense of identity is to be in danger of plunging headlong into insanity. With all its attendant issues, Self is nonetheless an indispensable ingredient of well-being.
Divination summary
self-centred behaviour; strong sense of your individual identity; doing what you need for yourself; independence, pursuit of your own advantage, selfishness; motivation, exuberance, balance, idiosyncrasy, appropriate introversion; self-isolating tendency, difficulty recognising need for others; reluctance to get involved with others.
43. Wordsong: group - Communication (7 blue)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Wordsong/43.aspx
The Image
The scene is of a stretch of ocean on a day with sun and white clouds. In the foreground, a naked man stands on a rock, surrounded by water, playing a set of bongo drums. Two seabirds are visible overhead, perhaps implying that there is land not far away.
The Archetype
Wordsong is the fundamental archetype of the communication group, which in turn corresponds to the throat chakra in human beings. It stands between Self and Swayesse, that is between the individual soul and the union of male and female through love. Wordsong can be thought of as the expression of the Soul’s journey towards union with the beloved; or as the transition between identity and desire. As we will see with the feeling archetypes of set 6, only when freedom (yellow) has been won can there be longing (blue) for love. In the same way, until the Self is established, there is no quest for desire, because there is no separation from it. Psychic wholeness is not possible for the lone human being; Wordsong is the means by which the bridge is made from one individual soul to another.
Divinatory Meanings
Wordsong: spirit of the muse; the joiner of selves in spirit; the medium in which resonance takes place
At the heart of Wordsong is the process of making an image of the other, or indeed others. With Self has begun the process of losing touch with the universal ocean of being.
There is now a kind of trompe l’oeil effect in which when you look at the world and at the other, you see yourself - as though in a mirror. It therefore becomes your abiding obsession to pass through the mirror, in the sense of seeing what is really out there, as against a mere reflection of yourself. Similarly, there is the urge to surmount the walls that divide you from me: for you and I to be one. To have Wordsong is to wander in spirit – not for the love of roaming itself, but out of your need to contact the other. You therefore have clarity in relationships, in the sense that you know what your objectives are: you have the urge to communicate, to find others who are on the same wavelength as yourself. You feel driven to go beyond the niceties of conventional social interaction, to reach the point at which authentic contact with the Self of the other can take place. You use the resources of word and music to attempt to reach out across the distance that separates you from others, and to obliterate it.
What opposes itself to this reaching out? It is the demands of the Self, the vibration which represents the essence of your own unique identity. On the one hand, you have this overwhelming urge to find love, on the other, you want to be yourself, with no compromise. To put it another way, if you are alone in the universe you have no limit on your actions; your need for the other, by contrast, means that you must let go: you must give up the absolute control desired by your Self, and set out in search of Swayesse. Wordsong is both a pilgrimage and a dilemma causing acute inner tension.
Divination summary
the urge to communicate; longing and search for love; tensions between being oneself and being with others; making music, poetry, drama etc, questioning self-image; frustration with limits of expression; awareness of self, others and relationships; emotional restlessness; desire for the muse; high artistic endeavour.
44. Swayesse: group - Conjugation (8 magenta)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Swayesse/44.aspx
The Image
Two abstract figures, one in tones of blue on the left, the other in silver on the right, are depicted against a background of deep pink shades, with a white circle towards the periphery enclosing most of the image. The two figures, perhaps male and female, have the lower half ending in a kind of tail (but unified, unlike a mermaid), rather than legs and feet. The figures thus seem capable of swinging back and forth, perhaps referring to the ‘sway’ in Swayesse.
The Archetype
Swayesse, being magenta, belongs in its full expression to the future. Swayesse (Love) is a to and fro movement between souls, not a state which might be somehow worked towards and ‘achieved’. Swayesse, ultimately, represents a dynamic harmony between male and female individuals or energies – a kind of two-and-one state in which the barriers between male and female no longer exist, but in which the individual self is not surrendered to the union either. Swayesse, therefore, comes only at the end of a process of resolution, in which the mutual alienation of male and female, accumulated like a swelling river over the aeons, is resolved by tracking back upstream to the source, resolving en route all the pain, rage, grief, terror, hate, despair and so on which stands between the two.
Divinatory meanings
Swayesse: love as a moving sea; tides of feeling, sense and spirit between male and female in the psyche.
The card Swayesse shows your commitment to breaking down the barriers between male and female – in other words, to your engagement in emotional, sensual and soul relationship.[5] Because of the accumulated trauma in the history of the psyche, this means that in fact you are going to be in a self-defence mode of behaviour. You may already have gone partly beyond the initial period of being in love, which is somewhat like a state of intoxication. Once you come down from that high, and face the task of attempting to deal with the barriers to union which exist in both your and your partner’s psyche, then you will adopt the defensive reflex which the souls have learnt, because of the pain they have experienced.[6] So you swing from one pole to another: the self exerting its demand for withdrawal from the conflict; the emotional, sensual and spiritual fulfilment of the couple demanding the opposite: not withdrawal, but advance – towards ever greater closeness.
This is not a portrait of relationship in general, but of Swayesse, in which there is not simply mutual dependence, habit, fear of being alone, systematic repetition of childhood-experienced abuse and so on. All these and more might be present for you at one point or another, but in this relationship there is a ‘higher purpose’ – meaning simply that you are dedicated to exploring and developing this relationship not because it is the immediately pleasurable option, but despite the fact that it may not be. But of course, neither are you there simply to indulge in the repetition of the emotional and psychific[7] pain you experienced as a child. You are in this relationship to learn, having established that this person, your partner, is an appropriate individual with whom to undertake such learning.
According to the cards themselves (if I understand them correctly), a Swayesse relationship is one in which there is the sense of no way out – being trapped for the most fundamental of reasons: that it is this person with whom the process of reconciliation must take place, and no other. This individual is sometimes referred to as one’s soul-mate, though this term, like ‘love’ itself, seems often to be thrown around in the loosest possible fashion. This Swayesse relationship in its fullest sense is one which will retain a constant dynamic – due to the rapid personal changes taking place in both partners consequent upon the ongoing process of healing. Similarly, the sensual intensity will not diminish. This portrait of Swayesse in its advanced development probably goes beyond the lived experience of most people if not everyone at the present time. Certainly, portraying it is for me a matter of intuiting from the cards, not of describing what I have already lived as experience.
Another misconception: this is not a relationship which because it is ‘spiritual’ is not sensual. Such an attitude recreates the old hierarchy, with the male on top (literally and figuratively!). On the contrary, your Swayesse relationship will invariably have the capability of being intensely sensual, erotic. Herein lies the source of your opposition to it. When the emotional confrontation period kicks in, you and your partner will experience a great temptation to take a detour into a new situation where once again, for a time, you can have sensuality without pain. The quest for cost-free sensual gratification is capable of exerting huge pressure on your relationship. The best counter to it may be for you to have a shared spirit-side goal, an endeavour to which you are both deeply committed.
Finally, neither you nor anyone else should underestimate the power of this relationship. It has a capacity for self-renewal, for youthful exuberance, which gives it great staying power. With the right person, there is a true balance of male and female energies, giving a potentially very stable foundation. Caution: to draw the card Swayesse does not mean you have met your soul-mate! We may all have to work on other less critical pairings before we must face that one. But it does indicate an orientation in conformity with important aspects of the Swayesse relationship which we have outlined here.
Divination summary
An important love relationship; passion, sensual excitement, feeling vulnerable; anguish, distress, fear, emotional distress and turmoil, feelings of inadequacy, self-protective reflexes, respect for ones partner; shared values and goals, compatibility, commitment.
45. Raindance: group – quest-ion? (9 grey-brown)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Raindance/45.aspx
[We have decided to withhold the detailed meanings for all the cards of group 9 until we can publish all this material commercially. We are really sorry for the inconvenience this may cause. See 9 Ebb (set 1) for details]
[5] Note: it is perhaps appropriate to point out again, as I do throughout my work on the cards, that same-sex couples are not excluded by the definition male-female. These terms refer to energies, not to people. In all couples, one partner has the male pole, the second the female.
[6] We look at this in more detail in the commentary on card 70: Pain (Twainsong)
[7] psychific = of the psyche.
41. Flow-Singer: group - Unconscious (5 indigo)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/FlowSinger/41.aspx
The image
A dark-skinned girl stands in a brown river whose bank, visible in the distance, is covered with lush foliage. Above the waist, she is wearing only a turtle pendant around her neck and two garlands of flowers across her chest. Round her waist, we can just see above the waterline the red material of whatever covers the lower half of her body. She wears a blue flower in her hair, and is smiling. She holds her arms down and slightly out from her body, turned so that the open palms of both hands face us. It is clear that she has been making ripples in the water. She has two familiars, both of whom are shown larger than natural perspective: to her left as we look at her, a blue swan representing co-incidence; to her right, a grey elephant representing time. The image is completed by two sprays of leaves, possibly olive.
The archetype.
Flow-Singer is the card at the centre of the grid and is the archetype of the Unconscious. As such, she is the card furthest from the light, her significance in the world of consciousness being the most difficult of all the grid cards to assess. The Unconscious is the origin, so the number 5 in no way implies that Flow-Singer comes ‘after’ the previous four. As the card of set 5 and group 5, the double Unconscious, Flow Singer represents the emergence of the Unconscious into consciousness. She is therefore at the crossroads between time, reason and causality – the building-blocks of consciousness; and coincidence, dream, symbol and acausality: the frame of reference of the Unconscious.
Divinatory meanings
Flow-Singer: the mediator between consciousness and the unconscious, causality (time) and acausality (synchronicity); the source of the stories of being.
To draw this card is to show proof of flexibility; to have the inner freedom to go in many possible directions. You are at ease in the ebb and flow of existence, because you are not committed to any particular viewpoint or course of action: you are available for whatever turns up. This means that your inner attitude is that of someone for whom issues or situations are ongoing – you do not regard yourself as being at the end of anything, as having reached completion. Because you have a free flow of access to the Unconscious, you are making an impression – not by deliberately drawing attention to yourself, but by being connected. In relationship, you have the capacity for affinity, because you can sense what lies behind the masks that people use; but this capacity is dormant, since your connectedness with the whole makes it hard for you to commit yourself to fully connecting to specific individuals. Again, because you are in touch with yourself, you are clear about how you feel – which of course is not always true of others.
As with all cards which involve close links with the Unconscious, your issues are with the world of Form – connectedness to people and emotions. Manifestation is the arena of the Will as much as of Spirit, and exposure to the Will may mean being buffeted by strong emotions, like a walker on a very windy day. This exposure to passion can eclipse the unconscious connection – something you have resistance to. Your problem is that given your ability to go back and forth across the interface between consciousness and the unconscious, you have an inner balance which has plenty of amplitude and which you are therefore reluctant to disturb. The biggest potential disturbance is other people, so that falling in love, to take the extreme case, is something that you have a lot of resistance to. In general, given the extent of your inner resources, you experience no great urge for any form of close contact with others. Paradoxically, therefore, the greatest threat to your well-being, and the force likely to undermine it, is change. This means change in the sense of upheaval, of a sharp break from the continuity of your existence. In fact, it is exactly this energy that you are attracting to yourself: challenging you to come out of your comfort zone in no-man’s land and plunge into the clamour and frenzy of combat in the world of Form.
Divination summary
flexibility, flux; non-doctrinaire attitudes; uncommitted in relationship; elusiveness, enterprise, insight, self-awareness, rounded personality, wide interests, no settled life-style, travel, career change, makes a strong impression on others; difficulty committing in relationship; reluctance to settle for one person, career or lifestyle; non-conformity.
42. Self: group - Self (6 yellow)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Self/42.aspx
The Image
A large woman stands at a table holding a ladle, which she is about to dip into an earthenware pot. To the right of her sits a boy in green, to the left, a girl wearing pink. The presence of spoons and bowls (5 and 4 respectively) on the table makes it clear that she is about to serve the children. Behind her on the wall hangs a grey cloak to the left of the image, and a medallion on a lace to the right. The woman wears a yellow apron over an orange dress with red sleeves, a cook’s hat and various items of jewellery. She looks straight at us with a forthright gaze.
The Archetype
Self represents the point in the evolution of the psyche at which the individual, as a distinct unit of the whole, is born. The viewpoint of Rainring is that, like Form, Self is an integral part of the psyche, and must not be judged against on the basis that ‘in reality, we are all one’. Both unity and diversity have their place in the psyche, and Rainring incorporates each of them. The universe evolves towards differentiation; humanity likewise faces the task of nurturing and developing the uniqueness of each individual. It is not Self which is responsible for the conflicts we experience, but the history or conditioning that Self has been subject to since the dawn of consciousness. Self is not the villain of the piece, but the indispensable organising principle of individual identity in the cosmos.
Divinatory Meanings
Self: guardian of individual being, the unique nature of one’s own identity; the force which supports and guides multiplicity, differentiation, individuation
Once Self arises, it immediately threatens to abort the feeling of connectedness of the individual soul with the whole of life, the ocean of being.
Self is also rather like a house where you decide to stay for a while during a long journey. In this place you are in a state of centredness; not running here and there pursuing this and that. In other words, you know who you are and what you are about. You are in accord with your core, your true identity. Your inner experience is that of focus on yourself, an introvert emphasis. To know who you are -self-knowledge- is the beginning of wisdom. This is what is gained, the positive side of the coin. A sense of independence attaches itself to Self, because you have a good balance of male and female energies. You also demonstrate an exuberance of spirit, because to be yourself, to pursue your own agenda is a powerful motivator.
For Self, however, the shadow is always the other, and the relationship with that other. Not far behind your sense of separateness and independence comes need: the urge to be in contact, to be close to the other. And it is from here that the opposition to Self comes – from that in us which needs, imperatively, the interchange with other selves. Self, that is, ushers in the dilemma with which every human being is familiar: you versus me. In the company of another, and still more with numerous others, the members of the group, you find that you cannot be entirely yourself. So the tension is set up – to be totally yourself but alone, versus to be totally immersed in the group but to lose your identity, yourself. The card Self shows that for now you are right at one end of that spectrum. But to be self-centred (even ‘selfish’) is not automatically a moral failing, behaviour for which you ‘should’ feel guilty.
Ultimately, out of Self will come projection – when you lose touch with the Self of the other, and believe him or her to have the same motivations, feelings, neuroses as yourself. The paranoid dictator wants to have everyone killed because everyone (he is convinced) is out to kill him. Although this is prefigured by Self, this latter is nevertheless a highly positive card: not to have a solid sense of identity is to be in danger of plunging headlong into insanity. With all its attendant issues, Self is nonetheless an indispensable ingredient of well-being.
Divination summary
self-centred behaviour; strong sense of your individual identity; doing what you need for yourself; independence, pursuit of your own advantage, selfishness; motivation, exuberance, balance, idiosyncrasy, appropriate introversion; self-isolating tendency, difficulty recognising need for others; reluctance to get involved with others.
43. Wordsong: group - Communication (7 blue)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Wordsong/43.aspx
The Image
The scene is of a stretch of ocean on a day with sun and white clouds. In the foreground, a naked man stands on a rock, surrounded by water, playing a set of bongo drums. Two seabirds are visible overhead, perhaps implying that there is land not far away.
The Archetype
Wordsong is the fundamental archetype of the communication group, which in turn corresponds to the throat chakra in human beings. It stands between Self and Swayesse, that is between the individual soul and the union of male and female through love. Wordsong can be thought of as the expression of the Soul’s journey towards union with the beloved; or as the transition between identity and desire. As we will see with the feeling archetypes of set 6, only when freedom (yellow) has been won can there be longing (blue) for love. In the same way, until the Self is established, there is no quest for desire, because there is no separation from it. Psychic wholeness is not possible for the lone human being; Wordsong is the means by which the bridge is made from one individual soul to another.
Divinatory Meanings
Wordsong: spirit of the muse; the joiner of selves in spirit; the medium in which resonance takes place
At the heart of Wordsong is the process of making an image of the other, or indeed others. With Self has begun the process of losing touch with the universal ocean of being.
There is now a kind of trompe l’oeil effect in which when you look at the world and at the other, you see yourself - as though in a mirror. It therefore becomes your abiding obsession to pass through the mirror, in the sense of seeing what is really out there, as against a mere reflection of yourself. Similarly, there is the urge to surmount the walls that divide you from me: for you and I to be one. To have Wordsong is to wander in spirit – not for the love of roaming itself, but out of your need to contact the other. You therefore have clarity in relationships, in the sense that you know what your objectives are: you have the urge to communicate, to find others who are on the same wavelength as yourself. You feel driven to go beyond the niceties of conventional social interaction, to reach the point at which authentic contact with the Self of the other can take place. You use the resources of word and music to attempt to reach out across the distance that separates you from others, and to obliterate it.
What opposes itself to this reaching out? It is the demands of the Self, the vibration which represents the essence of your own unique identity. On the one hand, you have this overwhelming urge to find love, on the other, you want to be yourself, with no compromise. To put it another way, if you are alone in the universe you have no limit on your actions; your need for the other, by contrast, means that you must let go: you must give up the absolute control desired by your Self, and set out in search of Swayesse. Wordsong is both a pilgrimage and a dilemma causing acute inner tension.
Divination summary
the urge to communicate; longing and search for love; tensions between being oneself and being with others; making music, poetry, drama etc, questioning self-image; frustration with limits of expression; awareness of self, others and relationships; emotional restlessness; desire for the muse; high artistic endeavour.
44. Swayesse: group - Conjugation (8 magenta)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Swayesse/44.aspx
The Image
Two abstract figures, one in tones of blue on the left, the other in silver on the right, are depicted against a background of deep pink shades, with a white circle towards the periphery enclosing most of the image. The two figures, perhaps male and female, have the lower half ending in a kind of tail (but unified, unlike a mermaid), rather than legs and feet. The figures thus seem capable of swinging back and forth, perhaps referring to the ‘sway’ in Swayesse.
The Archetype
Swayesse, being magenta, belongs in its full expression to the future. Swayesse (Love) is a to and fro movement between souls, not a state which might be somehow worked towards and ‘achieved’. Swayesse, ultimately, represents a dynamic harmony between male and female individuals or energies – a kind of two-and-one state in which the barriers between male and female no longer exist, but in which the individual self is not surrendered to the union either. Swayesse, therefore, comes only at the end of a process of resolution, in which the mutual alienation of male and female, accumulated like a swelling river over the aeons, is resolved by tracking back upstream to the source, resolving en route all the pain, rage, grief, terror, hate, despair and so on which stands between the two.
Divinatory meanings
Swayesse: love as a moving sea; tides of feeling, sense and spirit between male and female in the psyche.
The card Swayesse shows your commitment to breaking down the barriers between male and female – in other words, to your engagement in emotional, sensual and soul relationship.[5] Because of the accumulated trauma in the history of the psyche, this means that in fact you are going to be in a self-defence mode of behaviour. You may already have gone partly beyond the initial period of being in love, which is somewhat like a state of intoxication. Once you come down from that high, and face the task of attempting to deal with the barriers to union which exist in both your and your partner’s psyche, then you will adopt the defensive reflex which the souls have learnt, because of the pain they have experienced.[6] So you swing from one pole to another: the self exerting its demand for withdrawal from the conflict; the emotional, sensual and spiritual fulfilment of the couple demanding the opposite: not withdrawal, but advance – towards ever greater closeness.
This is not a portrait of relationship in general, but of Swayesse, in which there is not simply mutual dependence, habit, fear of being alone, systematic repetition of childhood-experienced abuse and so on. All these and more might be present for you at one point or another, but in this relationship there is a ‘higher purpose’ – meaning simply that you are dedicated to exploring and developing this relationship not because it is the immediately pleasurable option, but despite the fact that it may not be. But of course, neither are you there simply to indulge in the repetition of the emotional and psychific[7] pain you experienced as a child. You are in this relationship to learn, having established that this person, your partner, is an appropriate individual with whom to undertake such learning.
According to the cards themselves (if I understand them correctly), a Swayesse relationship is one in which there is the sense of no way out – being trapped for the most fundamental of reasons: that it is this person with whom the process of reconciliation must take place, and no other. This individual is sometimes referred to as one’s soul-mate, though this term, like ‘love’ itself, seems often to be thrown around in the loosest possible fashion. This Swayesse relationship in its fullest sense is one which will retain a constant dynamic – due to the rapid personal changes taking place in both partners consequent upon the ongoing process of healing. Similarly, the sensual intensity will not diminish. This portrait of Swayesse in its advanced development probably goes beyond the lived experience of most people if not everyone at the present time. Certainly, portraying it is for me a matter of intuiting from the cards, not of describing what I have already lived as experience.
Another misconception: this is not a relationship which because it is ‘spiritual’ is not sensual. Such an attitude recreates the old hierarchy, with the male on top (literally and figuratively!). On the contrary, your Swayesse relationship will invariably have the capability of being intensely sensual, erotic. Herein lies the source of your opposition to it. When the emotional confrontation period kicks in, you and your partner will experience a great temptation to take a detour into a new situation where once again, for a time, you can have sensuality without pain. The quest for cost-free sensual gratification is capable of exerting huge pressure on your relationship. The best counter to it may be for you to have a shared spirit-side goal, an endeavour to which you are both deeply committed.
Finally, neither you nor anyone else should underestimate the power of this relationship. It has a capacity for self-renewal, for youthful exuberance, which gives it great staying power. With the right person, there is a true balance of male and female energies, giving a potentially very stable foundation. Caution: to draw the card Swayesse does not mean you have met your soul-mate! We may all have to work on other less critical pairings before we must face that one. But it does indicate an orientation in conformity with important aspects of the Swayesse relationship which we have outlined here.
Divination summary
An important love relationship; passion, sensual excitement, feeling vulnerable; anguish, distress, fear, emotional distress and turmoil, feelings of inadequacy, self-protective reflexes, respect for ones partner; shared values and goals, compatibility, commitment.
45. Raindance: group – quest-ion? (9 grey-brown)
http://www.rainringcards.com/Cards/Raindance/45.aspx
[We have decided to withhold the detailed meanings for all the cards of group 9 until we can publish all this material commercially. We are really sorry for the inconvenience this may cause. See 9 Ebb (set 1) for details]
[5] Note: it is perhaps appropriate to point out again, as I do throughout my work on the cards, that same-sex couples are not excluded by the definition male-female. These terms refer to energies, not to people. In all couples, one partner has the male pole, the second the female.
[6] We look at this in more detail in the commentary on card 70: Pain (Twainsong)
[7] psychific = of the psyche.
