The Giants’ Tarot, Raven Kaldera

Draw for September 13, 2016:
Active Influence: Hrungnir/Seven of Wands
Rune: Os/The God Voice
Hidden Influence: Kolga/Six of Cups

Your words may bring things to light that others would prefer not to deal with. Speak your truth, even if you are afraid. Defend yourself fiercely always, and especially so when the fight is unfair.

Consider your way with words: are you eloquent, like Saga and Bragi? direct but sometimes vague, like Odin? clever, perhaps questionably so, like Loki?

Whatever your style, it is essential to speak the truth.

Dark Sisters
~ Christopher Villa

Dark Sisters, we were children together,
Even though we never knew
Of each others existence.
We lived in separate worlds,
Meeting only in our dreamtime,
Playing together only in those places
That have no maps or boundaries.
We danced together to strange songs,
Exchanging kisses and caresses
To warm us in the cold light of day.
I knew your faces then,
Each and every one of you,
So that now, when I see you,
In the half-light and shadows,
I remember every detail of your beauty.
Every day of my life since that time,
I have searched for you,
Giving over all other dreams
Till I have found you, each and every one.

Come and dance with me again, Dark Sisters,
In the place where shadow dreams come true.

The Giants Tarot, Raven Kaldera

Draw for September 12, 2016:
Active Influence: Duva/Seven of Cups
Rune: Isa/Ice
Hidden Influence: Geirrod & Loki/Eight of Swords.

Learn from the mistakes that got you stuck here. That’s the only way to get un-stuck without jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

The Sixth
~ Anna Akhmatova

There are three epochs in the memory,
And only yesterday, it seems, the first
Occurred. The soul is underneath their blessed
Vault, and the body is basking in their shadow.
Laughter has not died down, and tears are streaming,
A stain of ink is unwiped on the table,
And a kiss is like a seal upon the heart,
Matchless, unforgettable, goodbye…
But this one doesn’t last long…Already
The firmament is not overhead, and somewhere
In a dull suburb is an empty house,
Cold in winter and in summer hot,
Where spiders live and dust lies everywhere,
Letters that were like flames have burnt to ash,
Portraits have been changing stealthily,
And people come to it as to a grave,
And, returning home, they wash their hands
And brush a quick tear from tired lids, heavily
Sighing. But the clock ticks, one spring
Becomes another, the sky turns pink,
Cities change their names, witnesses die,
There is no-one to cry with, no-one to remember
With. And the shades slowly pass from us,
Those shades whom we no longer call upon
And whose return would be terrible to us.
And, once awake, we find we have forgotten
Even the road that led to the lonely house,
And, choked with shame and anger, we run to it,
But everything (as in a dream) is different:
People, things, walls, and no-one knows us – we’re
Strangers. We got to the wrong place…oh God!
And now we face the bitterest of all moments:
We realize that we could not contain
This past within the frontiers of our life,
And it has become almost as foreign to us
As to our neighbour in the next apartment.
And that we would not recognize
Those who have died; and those whom God parted
From us, got on splendidly without us –
Even better…

After Twenty Years
~ Fadwa Tuquan (translated from Arabic by unknown translator)

Here the foot prints stop;
Here the moon
Lies with the wolves, the dogs, and the stones,
Behind the rocks and tents, behind the trees.
Here the moon
Sells its face every night,
For a dagger, a candle, a braid of rain.
Don’t throw a stone in their fire;
Don’t steal the glass rings
From the gypsies’ fingers.
They slept, and so did the fish and the stones and the trees.

Here the foot prints stop;
Here the moon was in labour.
Gypsies!
Give her then the glass rings
And the blue bracelets.