Blue Fox Shaman

Q: What’s our next post?

A: ΞΥΛΟΝ; Water::Heaven; Hexagram 5. Waiting; Tarot Five of Swords

I suppose I deserve that–ask a vague question, get a vague answer!

Fox: But if you take your time, dive deeper, roll up your sleeves, do the work…

Okay, I get it! Here we have the proverbial blank slate. We also associate it with the Tarot card “Five of Swords”, whose chief message seems to be “Don’t cheat! Don’t cut corners!” I guess it depends on which corners you cut as you carve your block into something useful.

Therefore profit comes from what is there; Usefulness from what is not there. -Tao Te Ching 11

I want so much to make something useful, of my life, of my time, of my gifts. Useful to whom? Useful to others so that it is useful to me. That’s the lesson in the Five of Swords. Skipping to the end without doing the work, taking something before you have earned it, that’s cheating. Cheating others, cheating ourselves.

The blank page with no ideas in mind about what to write–that is the writer’s nightmare. With ideas, it is the writer’s gift. The I Ching counsels waiting until the ideas come–the right ideas, yes. But what do you do when there’s a deadline? Hell! There’s always a deadline!

Ὁ βίος βραχύς, ἡ δὲ τέχνη μακρή, ὁ δὲ καιρὸς ὀξύς, ἡ δὲ πεῖρα σφαλερή, ἡ δὲ κρίσις χαλεπή. -Ἱπποκράτης ὁ Κῷος

Life is short, but skill a long journey, opportunities suddenly flash by, experimentation is fraught with danger, and decisions are vexing. -Hippocrates of Kos

As part of my training to become a shaman, Fox taught me to sit with the answers she gave in divination. Not just to sit, however; to ruminate over, to chew the cud. To let the answer arise in that space between this world and non-ordinary reality. Divination is the act of retrieving something from that world and bringing it into this. But once you’ve got it on this side, you may wonder what it means in everyday language. Once you take that beatiful stone from the stream and dry it, is it just a plain rock? It all depends on the meanings you attach to it, or maybe the meanings you take away.

The sculpture is already complete within the marble block, before I start my work. It is already there, I just have to chisel away the superfluous material. -Michelangelo

In the final analysis, there is no final analysis. On the long journey of skill (τέχνη), occasionally we leave something of value on the wayside, something that may be of value to us, or others, whenever we, or they, pass by.

Be passersby. -The Gospel of Thomas 42

To walk the path of skill, and not to waste your time, or the opportunities to achieve merit (for do we not find our value in the value others give us?), you must try (experiment) and judge (decide), but you must also carve your own block, continuously. The road to non-ordinary reality begins in those thin places in this world where we see reality stripped bare. In that place, we can recognize the thing we mean to bring back. In that Other Land, it shines as itself and scintillates in the rays of its true context. On this side, it is the rock in your pocket.

So, you want to be skillful? Which of my hands is holding the rock?