Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Jan 16 - ice between the worlds

We don’t see much blue sky in the winter here. Today it’s clear and cold and the mountains are sharply defined. In the sun the snow is brilliant, blinding, and in the shade its a cold mathematical blue. It’s reminding me of the vivid, crystalline Ontario winters of my childhood. I have always loved the cold, and as I riffle the deck of childhood memories I see that my first strong apprehensions of the absolute beauty of the natural world always came around winter. I remember (probably I was nine) snow flashing like tiny sparks in the moonlight, the snow piled several feet deep, and the tiny cold flakes each falling like white sparks. I remember an icy field at sunset, like being inside an amethyst.
My walk to school passed beside a pond, and I remember one winter when there was a hard early freeze. I tested the ice and found it would take my weight. On my hands and knees, cold seeping through the knees of my lined (we wore blue jeans with what I suppose must have been flannelette linings – I haven’t seen those for years – they were horrible when they were wet) jeans, I looked into another world. The boundary between the two realities, water world and air world, was suddenly at the same time stunningly defined, and invisible. It was like looking through a window. The barrier between the two worlds was at the same time utterly impenetrable, and totally transparent.
The Six of Swords stands for that kind of separation. Older classical decks suggest exile and separation. It has been called the Lord of Science, and it stands for distance. Sometimes to see a thing in its articulation we have to stand away. The more we see it, the more we are disengaged. The Hermit’s departure point is the six, and while he may appear to return from his journey, it will not be as it was, and he will not re-engage. Working on the ground it says get your ego-attachment out of the way. As long as you’re in the picture you can’t see it. The hard thing, the thing that stops, is that you know that once you do this, it’s a one-way trip. When you swim in the water the water moves around you, and the things that live in it are all dealing with your passage, your presence, the displacement created by your mass and your movement. When ice separates you the water world no longer knows you and it goes on its way as if you were not there. At its hardest the six of swords can be a lonely impotent ghost – the result of refusing the separation in your life. At its best it brings true objectivity and a passionate clarit

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