Deck: The Druid Oracles
Spread: Card of the Day
Date: Mon Sep 09 08:14:33 EDT 2019


Today's Card
Poppy (Upright)

Meilbheag

Papaver sp.

upright
Redemption • Motherhood • Remembrance

reversed
Languidness • Excess • Indifference

leaf

The Common Poppy, also known as the Field Poppy or Corn Poppy, probably came to Britain with the first Neolithic farmers. Growing about 30 cm (1 ft) high with flowers of rich scarlet, each plant produces an average of seventeen thousand seeds, many of which will lie dormant for years in the earth before springing into life.

The card shows a Corn Poppy (Papaver rhoeas) growing on a hot Midsummer’s Day. In the distance we see a round barrow with its entrance open, symbolizing both tomb and womb: death and the Mother Goddess.

Upright Meaning   Like the best of mothers, the Poppy combines vigour and tenderness in the most beautiful way. They seem to disappear forever, then one season, as if out of the blue, Poppies can return to a hillside or field to astonish us with their beauty. This card may suggest the reappearance of someone or something that you thought you had lost forever.

Alternatively, it may indicate that a quality or feeling you felt you could no longer access will become available to you again. Sometimes things have to be forgotten or hidden for a while before they can return like a new dawn to surprise us. And, in doing so, a redemption occurs. Just as we speak of redeeming an investment that has matured in value out of sight, so we can sometimes redeem a situation or relationship by forgetting it, letting it go, or simply not attending to it for a while, so that it has a chance to grow. It takes skill to know when to pay attention to something and when to leave it alone. Some situations require action, vigilance and even confronting; others require forgetting or ignoring. Raising children often requires us to know when each of these strategies is best.

Reversed Meaning   Any quality in excess can have a negative effect. Selecting this card reversed may mean that you risk being seduced by the apparent benefits of being anaesthetized to the difficulties of life. There is a reason why we have the psychological defence of denial, and we all need to protect ourselves at certain times from the harshness and pain of being in the world. But, in the end, we need to be able to find a source of comfort, well-being and protection that is rooted in our essence or our spirituality rather than in an external agent. Chronic pain or certain other disturbances may need to be treated with medication, but there is a distinction between the valid use of substances for medical reasons and addictive self-medication or sedation.

leaf

The Flower of Life and Death

So delicate are the petals of a Poppy that you can’t pick them as a flower for display. No-one is sure of the common Poppy’s origin – it is as old as agriculture and has sprung up wherever the soil has been tilled. Poppy seeds have been found in Twelfth Dynasty Egyptian tombs and archaeologists have found traces of the Common Poppy’s relative, the Opium Poppy, in sites in the western Mediterranean dated to 4000 BCE.

The Poppy’s blood-red colour combined with its seeds’ uncanny ability to remain dormant in the ground for decades – only to reappear as a blaze of crimson – led to its natural association with ideas of death and rebirth, and the fertility of the Mother Goddess. Before the introduction of herbicides, Poppies grew among the corn, further reinforcing this connection with fertility, and with the harvest and cyclical rebirth.

The Opium Poppy arrived in Britain later than the Common Poppy but, due to the climate, produces negligible amounts of narcotic. Opium was treasured by the Persians, Greeks and Romans for its powerful painkilling effect, and was often combined with Mandrake. Both these plants would have been traded between mainland Europe and the cooler regions of Britain, and may well have been important ingredients in the medicine bags of early Druid healers.

Centuries later the Physicians of Myddvai used an anaesthet

ic that contained the fresh juice of Hemlock, Mandrake, Wild Lettuce, Ground Ivy, Sea Holly, Orpine and Poppy. This potion was dripped very slowly into the patient’s nostril. The Hemlock and Mandrake would have contributed the major anaesthetic effect, while Wild Lettuce and Poppy, even in its common variety, are mild sedatives and would have counteracted some of the more unpleasant side-effects of this powerful combination of ingredients. The Physicians also recommended the bruised heads of Poppy infused in wine to induce sleep.

Symbolically the Poppy unites the worlds of sleep and wakefulness, birth and death, in the way that it can act as a sedative and remain dormant for years, and yet at the same time appear bright red in the Summer as a symbol of vigorous life.

But pleasures are like poppies spread, You seize the flower, its bloom is shed.
Tam O’Shanter



Presented by The Druid Oracles app from The Fool's Dog.

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Deck: The Druid Oracles
Spread: Card of the Day
Date: Tue Sep 10 06:29:39 EDT 2019


Today's Card
Crane (Upright)

Corr

Pronunciation: Corr

keywords
Secret knowledge • Patience • Longevity

The card shows a crane fishing in a pool. Its legs are crossed to show the Ogham letter Muinn, and it gazes into the water, patiently waiting for sight of a fish. Behind the pool is a cave entrance to the Underworld, and in the evening sky the full moon is rising. In the foreground grow bitter vetch (Cairmeal from Corr) and bloody crane's bill.

Upright Meaning   Corrbrings the qualities of patience and perseverance. The crane will stand for hours peering into the water until the time is right for it to dart at its prey. Combined with the ability to be patient, the crane conveys the capacity to be focused and to be able to concentrate without distraction. It brings an ability to guide others into the Underworld, to help them with their transition at the time of dying, or with their journeying in the inner realms. As well as conveying an ability to work in the "Underworld," the crane symbolizes arcane science, or Secret Knowledge, which in the Druid tradition is represented by the Ogham script—the tree-language of Druidry. In its widest sense, learning this language involves learning to read the "Book of Nature."

Reversed Meaning   The crane stands alone for hours on end, simply observing and patiently waiting. But it is also able to join its colleagues to fly in formation or to dance together. You may need to learn the right balance between being alone and working with others. Spending too much time alone can create feelings of isolation and separation. Conversely, having no time to oneself can be an avoidance of self-knowledge and the uncomfortable feelings of loneliness. Spend a while looking at your life to see whether you give yourself enough time having both these experiences. The "shadow" side of the crane is manifested as harshness, meanness and a nagging, complaining disposition. If you find these qualities showing sometimes in your behavior, see if you can experience the deeper aspects of the crane, in which it becomes an animal of the Goddess-as-crone or wise-woman. Ask yourself to what extent you are denying the wise-woman who has a knowledge of death and the Underworld in yourself, and to what extent your negative behavior may be a reflection of this denial.

The Tradition of the CRANE

Comely Conaire slept on the side of Tara of the plains; when the cunning well-made man awoke, the crane-bag was found about his neck
From the Fionn cycle

On the island of Inis-Kea, off the coast of County Mayo, lives a lonely crane who has been there since the beginning of the world—and who will continue to live there until our world ends. This ancient bird is known in the Irish tales as "one of the wonders" and has come to symbolize longevity.

The crane, or heron, is one of the four most frequently-mentioned birds of the ancient Irish and British tradition—the others being the raven, swan and eagle. Since it was a sacred bird, to eat crane's flesh was taboo, although later this reverence was set aside and it became a delicacy. The crane was said to be one of the first birds to greet the sunrise, and was accorded the ability to predict rains and storms.

The Tree Alphabet

The association of the crane with knowledge comes not only from its link with the sunrise and therefore the East, the place of knowledge, but also from its association with Ogham, the tree alphabet of the Druids. Ogham was given to humanity by Ogma Sun Face, who purposely intended it for the use only of the learned. Later, when further Ogham glyphs were added, Greek mythographers credited Palamedes with their invention, saying he received his inspiration from observing a flock of cranes "which make letters as they fly." Since it was known only to the Druids, the term "Crane Knowledge" came to be used to denote knowledge of the Ogham in particular, and of arcane science in general. As Druidry gave way to Christianity, the term "Crane Cleric" came to be used to signify

a high level of wisdom in certain priests, such as St. Columba of Iona.

An early Irish text tells us how the sea-god Manannan possessed a bag made from the skin of a crane. In this crane-bag he carried his own shirt, a strip from a whale's back, the King of Scotland's shears, the King of Lochlain's helmet, the bones of Assail's swine and Goibne's smith-hook. Some say that the crane-bag became the Druid's medicine-bag, in which he carried his Koelbren lots—carved Ogham-sticks used for divination. The crane-bag is a powerful symbol of the womb or fetal sac, and this symbolism is deepened when we learn that the Crane was considered a bird of the Goddess. Cranes often appear in threes. In the Irish Book of Leinster, a god of the Tuatha De Danann, the divine Midhir, has three cranes guarding his castle. They had the magical ability to rob any attacker of the will to fight. Three cranes protect the entrances to Annwn, the Underworld; three cranes stand on a bull's back in Gaulish carvings. All these cranes probably symbolize the triple-aspected Goddess: the Three Muses, the Three Fates, the Sisters ofWyrd.

Grandmother Crane

The association of the crane with the bull is reinforced when we read in the Irish tale "The Hag of the Temple" that the hag's four sons have been turned into cranes who can only become human if the blood of an enchanted bull is sprinkled over them. In other stories the crane is a symbol of the dark aspect of the Goddess, and, like the raven, it becomes a bird to be feared as a harbinger of death or bad luck. With its harsh and raucous cry, it came to typify the nagging, scolding hag and to be associated with mean and unpleasant women. Here the association is with the Cailleach, the crone or hag, but a more positive representation of this aspect of the Goddess is depicted in the Irish tale which tells of Fionn falling over a cliff when a child. His grandmother saves him by turning into a crane and breaking his fall.

As a bird of the Cailleach, the crane is a bird of old age, and hence longevity, and is also a psychopomp—a guide in the Underworld after death. This symbolism is found both in the West and the East: cranes are shown on church carvings sucking the spirit from dying people to carry it safely away, and in China the soul of the dead was represented as riding on the crane's back to the "Western Heaven"—in the Celtic and Druid tradition the soul would be taken to the "Isles in the West."

Cranes dance in circles: and the ancients associated this ring dance both with the movement of the sun and with the cranes' role as Underworld guides, leading souls out of incarnation and back again to birth (in their variant the stork). Ritual crane dances were known in China, Siberia and Greece, and may well have been enacted by Druid shamans too—using, significantly, nine steps and a leap as a basic theme, and weaving in and out of a maze or labyrinthine pattern to symbolize the journey of the soul.



Presented by The Druid Oracles app from The Fool's Dog.