Samhain Dreampower Divination - Part 1, The Stone Realm

The Choir

I attended my first pagan group ritual with the ADF (Druid) in a nearby town. The Samhain ritual we did to honor and give offerings to our ancestors was led by a woman who is also involved with Northern Tradition practices (and Seidr), as our ritual very closely resembled a blot to the ancestors (which I really loved).

My offering to my Ancestors, land spirits, Frigga, Freyja and Hela included:

a whole bottle of honey wine
a length of handspun wool yarn
amber gemstone
black jet gemstone
crystal quartz
9 sacred herbs of Northern Tradition shamanism (with a small pentacle in it)
high john root
3 British sixpence coins
Soul Retrieval ritual oil
9 rosebuds
a bed of moss

Following the giving each of our offerings, the leader of the ritual did a tarot reading using the Dreampower deck by R. J. Stewart (which I liked so much, I just purchased one myself). Here are cards and positions in the reading (my own interpretations follow):

The Stone Realm - The Choir
The Pearl Realm - The Teller
The Whirlpool Realm - The Tangler

The Stone Realm

In my mind, the Stone Realm pertains to the deep place of prophetic utterance, of the Ancestral Voices, and to a state of consciousness where the Voices of the Ancestors can be perceived as the Voices of the Many, the Voices of the Few, or the Voice of One which R. J. Stewart distinguishes as conditions of being. The card drawn for this realm therefore, speaks to which state of consciousness is operational to each "hearer" in the reading.

First Card Drawn - The Choir / The Cacophony

The Choir is a group of assorted animals singing loudly. We see a donkey, cow, sheep, pig, goose, cockerel and duck. There is a cat playing the bagpipe. Within this cluster of animals, all leaning onto one another, extending their necks and singing loudly in harmony, we also see some small creatures: a mouse listening raptly, a spider within her web spun between the horns of the cow and in one corner a small baby sleeping peacefully in a wooden cradle. This Trump works on several levels and we may use our overall idea of the Three Realms resonating through each card (with each Trump at home in one particular Realm) to examine the levels. 

On the surface, this card brings up the Voices of the Many. However, in the description of this card, I was caught by the phrase "a mouse listening raptly." To me personally, this is the Voice of One "when the Ancestors speak within the first condition, the Voice of One, they are the land."  This card to me, seemingly uttering a cacophony of Voices, is asking the question, "hey you, what do you hear?" and "hey you, what do you see?" The challenge of this card is hear the Voice of One, to hear the Ancestral stream as it is uttered from within "the first condition of Being" amidst the cacophony of Voices. Despite the cacophony, I hear, I see the mouse, my fylgja, listening raptly. Here is my poem, written decades ago which pertains very exactly to this card in this realm:

SUDDENLY

hey you, what are you looking at
the mouse seemed to say silently, to me one day
hidden in the closet, coming close to see
where land meets sea, isolating some field of awareness
distracting the mind toward some special duty
hey you, what did you say
you talkin' to me?

hey you, what do you hear
the mouse seemed to say silently, to me one day
hidden in the closet, coming close to hear
wandering around this anomaly of conversation, suddenly plucked up
toward the task at hand, wiping off all others
hey you, do you hear what I hear
who goes there, talkin' to me