“There are two kinds of pain in this world … pain that hurts and pain that alters&rdquo

“There are two kinds of pain in this world … pain that hurts and pain that alters” ~ Denzel Washington.STRENGTH. In the Rider-Waite deck a woman is … squeezing a lion’s mouth shut? Team Biddy says she’s petting the lion, taming the Beast with her feminine wiles (because raw sexual energy is problematic?) in such a way that she’s, “Channeling her inner strength to subdue and subtly control the lion” … which for me is still a form of coercion and one of the reasons I’ve never related to this particular card all that much.For me, Strength is about growth and growth hurts. We don’t call them, “Growing Pains,” for nothing. Strength is our ability to alter ourselves, to transform into something new. Any Initiate quickly finds out that there is sacrifice involved (often physical) if one desires new knowledge. Odin sacrificed his own eye in order to gain divine wisdom from the god Mímir. Because Sedna has no hands the Inuit Shaman (Anatquq) must journey to her home under the sea and offer to comb out her hair for her if they want her gifts. Writing in, Shamans, Spirits, and Faith in the Inuit North, Kenn Harper talks about how it might take decades for a Shaman to train in order that they’re strong enough to survive the journey. Not everyone is willing to push themselves to such a degree. Malidoma Patrice Somé recounts, in Water and Spirit, that the initiation process for becoming a Dagara healer had a rather low survival rate and only those willing to test themselves in the Spirit World could succeed. That is the sort of strength that I was thinking about when I designed this.In the card the Spiritual aspect of the Novice, call it her Higher Power (Jung talks about the psyche being, “Outside the Body”), rises up to the challenge that transformation will bring through her Shamanic initiation. From out of a Bastet-like goddess a ghostly cat pounces on the Novice, consuming her so that she might be re-born with a better understanding of how to harness her Unconscious. Freud was convinced that what takes place in the Unconscious shapes our everyday life and determines our behavior. Her two guides, cat-like nightmares, might take her to the Spirit World but it will be on her own inner-strength which will determine if she’ll return home or not. In order to learn such Mysteries the Novice must sacrifice who she once was completely.  Often when I hear people talk about wanting to learn Magic of one sort or another they say things like, “Which book should I read?” “Which spells should I try?” “Which Spirit should I pray to?” As someone who loves books I’ll never say that reading is a bad idea but it does not surprise me when such people give up in frustration because nothing happened. Of course nothing happened, there is no risk in reading a book, no test of willpower, no use of strength. Magic is an action verb, which is what moves it from the realm of Philosophy into an actual Science. Odin gave up his eye for wisdom. It is not hyperbole to ask, “What will you sacrifice in order to learn something new?” -- source link

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