esson 8: The White Hart

ithout my coat, I feel free and open, and I traipse down the path like a Fool. The path leads into a beautiful wood, and narrows to a mere trail among the profuse new spring growth. Crocuses, primilies and other small flowers sprout in the shade of foliating sycamore and birch trees with massive trunks and sky-scraping branches. Sunbeams penetrate a clearing an I stop still in my tracks as I come up on a beautiful and majestic White Hart.

      I would like to hide out of sight and just watch him, but he's already seen me. I wonder if he will bolt, but he just continues to look at me, as I look at him. I want to touch him. I take a step forward. I take another step forward, and he takes a step back. It dawns on me that he is "without spot from the world," pure and unblemished. Like so many beautiful things, he is unattainable, because to grasp such beauty is to change, and therefore destroy, it. If he was tame, and walked among men, he wouldn't hold as great a fascination, I think.

      Soon I notice two people nearby.¹ A man down on one knee is clearly enraptured by the woman standing before him. I wonder if he is proposing (or *what* he is proposing) to her. He is so taken with her, so intensely focused, that he doesn't even see the White Hart. He looks like he would give his all for/to her.

      The woman, on the other hand, is distracted by the rare vision of the White Hart. It seems to me that if she would just turn her head and give her attention to this man, it would be a great gift and really make his day. It's like she is holding all her emotions in the jar, and looking to the virginal purity of the White Hart as an ideal. She will have to choose--will she maintain the spiritual power of her purity, or will she give in to her affection and the passion of her suitor?

      I turn my attention away from these two and back to the White Hart, edging ever nearer to him. He snorts, and I pause as he scratches at his neck with his front left hoof. Something falls and he kicks it towards me. I come forward and pick it up and see that it's a gold link from the chain around his neck. The odd thing is, it's still an unbroken circle, and the chain remains unbroken as well. The link is crafted to appear woven, and the design is the same as the woven hair on my bracelet from Dee (Stone Maiden). I slip the link onto my wrist and see that my two new bracelets are even the same color. Curious. I look up and open my mouth to speak, but the White Hart jogs away. I follow.

ASK

Create a Tarot spread using the first five cards of the Quest for the Sword

      First, I laid out the five definite cards like this:

      Sword Two represents the balanced center of left and right, below and above, intuition and logic, desire and service, conscious and conscience, art and science, . . .

      The Sword Maiden represents what to 'put on,' and Sword Three, what to take off. The central row represents the present. Sword Ten stands for the balance in the past, and the White Hart, the choices of the future. This column represents decision-making styles.

      Then for each card, I placed two more cards: one underneath and one across, to show what supports and what hinders me in dealing with each of these aspects/issues. I started at the bottom:

      I laid two for each, bottom first, then top, then left, then right, then center. The final layout looks like this:

      To read my interpretation of my reading, go to the next page.

1) I couldn't 'become' one of the lovers. {back}