Come Away, O Human Child

         

I’ve been haunted of late by a poem by William Butler Yeats entitled The Stolen Child.  It tells the story of faeries who are enticing a young human to leave behind a world of sorrow and go to a place where life is more magical.  Here’s the refrain:

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

At the end of the poem, the human child accepts the invitation:

For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery hand in hand,
From a world more full of weeping than he can understand.

This morning, I looked through my face-up Morgan-Greer tarot deck (because it was at hand) to find any images that remind me of Willie Yeats’s words.  The 8 of Cups and 6 of Swords (see above) stood out for me.  In both cards, there is an air of mystery.  The figures are moving away from us into deep, watery territory.  Another place, whether oceanside rocks or another shore, awaits them.  The central character in the 8 of Cups seems to be beckoned by the pull of the moon; one of the 6 of Cups characters is being ferried (faeried?) by someone else.  Where they’ve been has been okay, but there’s something wondrous, fresh, and possibly exciting that lies in the new territory.  It’s scary to move there, but perhaps necessary.

Yeats’s text and these two tarot cards make me ask the following questions:

• In what ways might I perceive this to be a world that’s full of weeping?
• What magical voice calls out to me?
• To what does this magical voice invite me?
• What is the most healthy way for me to say “yes” to the invitation?
• What might await me in that new territory?
• What scares me most about the journey?
• How can I face the fear and go there anyway?
• Who or what supports me and/or ferries me there?

All good food for reflection.  What about YOU, friends?  What words or images haunt you?  To what deeper questions do they invite you?  To what journey do your questions invite you?  Please feel free to share here.

 

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