Tickle Your Fancy

I find myself coming back again and again to different decks featuring animal archetypes. I imagine there are a number of reasons, but one in particular is a fascination with the ways that multiple different cultures have come to similar conclusions about different animals’ “energy,” even as other cultures have come to wildly differing interpretation. The snake, for instance, was considered to embody healing and transformative energy in Indian, Greek, Celtic, and Mayan traditions, among others, but neighboring Native American tribes might have vastly different beliefs about it, with one people seeing it as an omen of bad luck. Christianity, meanwhile, has historically treated the serpent as a symbol of betrayal.

I’m still at the point in my tarot journey that I’m developing my own intuitive sense of how things work before I formally dig into researching the historical origins of these divergences and convergences, something I’ve always done a bit backwards from other researchers. I like to develop my own “feel” for something before complementing, correcting, and expanding that tentative understanding with what other people have had to say. But one question I’d like to investigate at some point is how often such differences may have geographical explanations. Historically, many cultural differences are explained by social and political disagreements — the Sanskrit term devi, or God, became devil in English, which historical linguists chalk up to a likely religious schism where one culture flipped the meaning of a previously shared concept as an act of defiance. But there are Native American cultures that developed scientific theories of elements that saw different entities as being hot or cold (e.g. trees are cold, water is cold). European cultures also had this type of theory at the same time, but where European theories believed that certain beings were innately hot or cold, some of the Native American scientists included geographic location as part of their classifications. So, for example, oak trees that grew in one part of their land would be considered “hot,” while the same species of tree that grew in a different place would be “cold.” I wonder sometimes whether regional, and not simply political, differences might account for the different energies and powers attributed to animals that we consider “the same.” Could it be that wolves in one part of the world are the embodiment of loyalty, while wolves elsewhere are teachers? What if epistemologies that take place into account are onto something?

At any rate, enough idle musing. Today’s cards want you to get out there and have fun.

Today’s draw:
Otter
Hummingbird

Deck:
Medicine Cards, by Jamie Sams and David Carson

The Medicine Card deck that I am using here attempts to be a Pan-American Native deck that combines the beliefs of multiple different peoples into a shared deck. This can get you in to disagreement territory at times (think, again, of that tricky snake that means so many different things to so many people). So for the purpose of working with the deck, I use interpretations based on the authors’ guidance.

Here, otter represents her frequent association with playfulness, but she also represents an idealized femininity — one that boosts other women as sisters. Her playfulness is never mean-spirited or bitchy. It is about supporting those around her free from petty jealousies, secret intentions, or competitiveness. The attitude is complemented by hummingbird, who represents a pure joy at being alive and surrounding oneself with beautiful things. Hummingbird’s attraction to the beautiful is not merely the selfish aesthete’s haughty contemplation of beauty from afar. He puts his nose right in it, drinking from everything that life has to offer. In the process, though, his delight in the world infects everything he touches, the consummate fertilizer. Taken together, hummingbird and otter encourage you to recognize the beauty in the people you surround yourself with. By delighting in their company and letting them know it, you make it possible for them to bring their own fruits into the world.