Making Peace with the Ancestors
Summer has come to an end way back, and the dark winter is knocking on our door. The transitional state of the falling leaves and the expectation of the barren trees brings us into contact with death. Today, Catholics remember the loved ones and friends who are passed away. This festival is called All Souls, and stems from the Celtic holiday Samhain (nowadays transformed in Halloween), that also has the function of seeking contact with the dead.
When loved ones are dead, they are not there anymore. Questions that come up cannot be answered and long-time grudges that seemed not that important back then, but are now, cannot be uttered and talked about.
On this years’ All Souls Day I want to ask something about my father, who has died three years ago. We did not have any big or little conflicts when he died, not at all. Still, just like most children, I have some disappointments about our father-daughter relationship. I think it is important to take these serious, and to look at them for it is an obstacle to be at peace with myself. This reading has the subject of: “Peace with my father”, and it consists of two cards: the first one shows which grudge I am harbouring, and the second shows how I can make peace with my father. I show and tell only about the second card.
The card I have received as an answer to the question ‘how I can make peace with my father’ is The Moon, from the Arthurian Tarot.
The Moon is a card with many layers and with many secrets, we just worked on it in one of the classes I teach. In many cases The Moon brings one to ones' roots.
My eye fell on the unborn baby in the moon and on the path that runs toward it. They show me that to make peace with my father I need to go a long, long way back to my beginnings. I need to walk that path towards the moon and its unborn baby. When I come at the end of it, I find there that I was a very, very wanted child.
Inspired by: Caitlín Matthews, The Celtic Spirit, Lewellyn, 1999.