|
It is shocking and disturbing for those of us who are conscious food shoppers to walk into a mainstream grocery store and see aisle upon aisle of processed, frozen, sprayed, and packaged food. Whole foods have been transformed into ideas, schemes, and high tech microwave "Meal Deals". Production and marketing of low fat foods is the latest tactic, but even these products are often ladened with refined sugar. And, while reading nutrition labels is more in vogue these days, the average buyer will still eat what tastes good, irrespective of diet and wellness. Even worse, those who wish to eat unsprayed organic food must pay sometimes three times the price.
What does this say about our cultural mentality? Perhaps that we have lost our Earth centered knowledge and our innate ability to nourish ourselves in a complete and balanced manner. The consequences are frightening. If the vital life force of our food is removed and deadened with chemicals and artificial fillers, how does this effect our consciousness, our spirituality, and the part of our Divine Self that balances and co-creates our physical body.
The parallel between our culture's relationship to food and spirituality is astounding. Sacred and esoteric traditions have been commercialized, packaged, and marketed in the same way as has food. The "Become a Shaman in a Weekend Workshop" mentality, homogenized daily horoscopes, pay by-the-minute psychic services, and re-enacted television dramas all undermine the integrity of these ancient practices. The marketers of this pre-packaged Spiritual junkfood use glitz and new age rhetoric with little concern for what is lost. Again, we are not nurtured by the real food that was once our heritage.
I'll take this a step further as I examine the Tarot. The Tarot is a body of images that arose organically, depicting a powerful pathway toward initiation. Early initiates knew that the images of the Tarot reflected ancient memory encoded within the body and stored as "picture consciousness". The calling up of such memories through the arisal of these "mirrors of human development" enabled each mortal soul to trace their origins back to "divine immortality", and understand the cyclic nature of our passage as seen through our living and dying experience.
The Major Arcana, or "Great Mysteries", is a twenty-two card series of archetypes or "mirrors of the soul", that reveal to us our organic passage of transformation through a lifetime. In synchronistic fashion, the Tarot offers a unique look at the stage of development we are mastering at any given time. From this mirror we may be more attuned to the past, present and future realities that embrace us simultaneously each moment. Thus, the Tarot is a vital expression of heart, mind, body, and soul. It is from this place of organic memory that we may be fed the seeds of new consciousness which stems from the root of universal knowledge.
Ultimately, all that we ingest creates or dissipates our wholeness and wellness. If we seek to nourish our bodies with healthy food, we must persist to also feed our spiritual bodies well with knowledge, and negate, just as we would the puff and fluff of refined boxed foods, the inappropriate sugar coated New Age rhetoric that depletes the integrity of our Intelligent Body. We all remember the popular slogan "you are what you eat". Let's feed our soul
Back to Tarot
|
