AVATARS (wands)
About Avatars
The suit of Avatars represents the spiritual and divine aspects of the search for self, and also the continuance of one’s journey into the unknown. Avatars correspond with Wands in traditional Tarot, which symbolize the mind and inspiration, creativity and insights, invention and optimism, and also hope for the future. Wands relate to the creative force of fire, the motivational energy which moves societies forward. Wands are also the suit of technology for this reason.
In its traditional meaning, an Avatar is a way for a supreme being to walk the Earth in human form. It is an incarnation and a body through which a deity can live an earthly lifetime. A god may do this in order to influence the world of humans directly, rather than through intuitive whispers, visions and other messages, as gods normally must. In recent times, an Avatar is a means for a human being to inhabit a virtual world: a digital form that allows a real person to have a presence in a simulated non-space. These bodies are the creations of humans, as are the virtual worlds they exist in. The Avatar suggests transcendence, transitions and transformations that allow us to enter into the next world or state of being. It also stands for the apparatus, outside assistance and guidance necessary to exist in another world.
The Avatar is the body through which we can explore a new plane of existence, the necessary survival suit by which we can enter into a new medium. It is also an identity we craft for ourselves, or which is crafted for us, which may become another form of expression, or vehicle for experiencing reality. The Avatar imposes a transformation on the seeker, necessary to transcend the boundary between worlds. This transformation may be superficial or may completely change the way a person moves or sees or experiences time and reality. In the case of the gods, the Avatar imposes many unfamiliar limitations. An Avatar may be modeled after one’s actual physical form, or it can be aspirational. It can be a total departure from one’s familiar body, or it can be how one truly envisions oneself. In this suit, water symbolizes a new “medium” through which one must move, a world which transforms one into an alien, for which one needs devices, artificial organs, equipment and different limbs to traverse. This new “medium” can refer to an unfamiliar situation, such as a new place or location, it can also refer to new experiences, revelations and discoveries, things which alter the seeker’s world or outlook. In traditional Tarot, water is associated with emotion and feeling, but here water is related to the mind: realms which can be dreamed or simulated. Water is a place populated with unfamiliar creatures, where we might fail to recognize ourselves, becoming strange creatures ourselves. In extremely different environments, including dreams, we may sometimes forget ourselves. Nevertheless we take something with us from the world we’re from, and leave something behind when we go. The symbol of the transforming being, in the Avatar suit, is a mermaid: half sea creature and half land creature, this being takes something of the land into the sea and visa versa, is a creature of two worlds, incomplete and not fully at home in both places. Many of the transformations suggested by Avatar cards are temporary, means of having an experience or learning something new. Like the ecstatic moment at the end of a visionary quest, in which momentarily sees the faces of angels and the architecture of the cosmos, one returns back to earth at the end, restored to one’s normal self and normal life. One “changes” back, but one is also never the same. In a relevant way, one has been permanently and significantly changed. Avatar cards refer to transcendental experiences ranging from the virtual to dream-worlds to sacred and celestial experiences, and are the final gesture of the Inner Mask Oracle.
The suit of Avatars is largely about crossing boundaries: entering and leaving situations safely, as with secret identities. Many of the cards in the suit of Avatar are about assistance and help and guidance in other worlds, influence from outside and interactions with others on the same path. As the last suit in the Oracle of the Inner Mask, Avatar cards tend to deal with looking at the overarching meaning of one’s journey, what one truly seeks and whether that matches with what one truly needs now. In many ways the Avatar suit is the suit of interacting with one’s path and what it means, and all the interactions one has with the outside world, positive and negative, en route to one’s next accomplishment. The transformations involved in the Avatar
Avatars also concern the realm of dreams. The dreamscape is a place created by the mind for reasons still not well understood. Some say the purpose of dreams are to keep the mind entertained while the body rests. We arrive in our own dreams as newcomers, exploring its inventions for the first time, because dreams are created by one part of the mind and explored by another, the one who wakes up later is the one that does the exploring, the other is a mystery. The emblematic creature of the Avatar suit is the Submerged Mind, also called Submerged Thought. This creature is a mask with the body of an anglerfish or sometimes an eel. It is from a very deep place in the sea, where the sun’s rays cannot reach, and the animals have learned to function without light, some even without eyes, products of a parallel and alien evolution. The Submerged Minds represent the unfamiliar sectors of one’s own being, arenas of one’s self to which one is still connected, but that lineage is so deep it lies in mystery. They also symbolize the dreaming self: the alien one becomes in one’s own mind as one wanders oneself in sleep. As shadows are the refused self and mirrors are the reversed self, avatars are the unknown self, the mystery that remains ahead of one, no matter how deeply one explores.
Avatar cards concern journeys, sometimes compelled by curiosity and other times compelled by forces outside of one’s control, towards higher states of mind and being. They point to a future, hopefully brighter, as yet undetermined, not easily attained but worth pursuing. This also points to the influence of technology, an ever-evolving presence that is best known as a process, the continuing transformation of the world we think we know, into one we cannot yet imagine.
Ace of Avatars • The Sunken Room
Description:
Curious beings inhabit a sunken room. These are the Submerged Thoughts, sometimes called Submerged Minds, residents of mysterious levels of being. An underwater telescope looks out on a volcano erupting in the distance, and flaming embers fall into the room. The Submerged Thoughts regard the new objects with interest, aware of their beauty but not their origin. They are from the deepest ocean, far from the sun’s light, in a world of creatures that produce lights of their own. They are in this room brought close to the surface, perhaps for examination or study by creatures of the light, creatures who need the sun’s light to see. The Submerged Thoughts don’t seem to mind they’re in this situation, pondering the new things all around them.
It is hard to know what lies inside the Submerged Minds: beautiful, dangerous, half-finished beings.
The Story:
This is the first card in the suit of Avatars, the last suit of the oracle. This card points towards the senses: the possibility of being misled by the senses, of one’s senses being insufficient to make a decision or conclusion, and also the prospect of seeing beyond the senses. This card points to the unreliability of one’s ordinary senses, and the need to develop awareness that extends past them. The querent may already be working on more subtle and refined approaches to experience, a deeper connection with the spirit-side, an attentiveness to the unspoken and unseen.
The sunken room appears to us at a crooked angle, giving its contents an uncertain quality. We are invited to question the visibility, position, stability and shape of all we see in this place. The visible surfaces of things are shaken free of tangible reality; the refraction of light and shifting water make it harder than usual to know the exact positions of anything. When one’s senses cannot be trusted, one must rely on instinct and intuition. As we enter into new spaces, we have to develop new senses and ways to identify the particular dangers of the place. The Ace of Avatars is indicative of new sensibilities and approaches one is developing now. One must learn to discern dangers from non-dangers, as one cannot explore if everything is dangerous. One must retain a sense of wonder, so that one is ready to find the unique value in things, while remembering that nothing is guaranteed to be safe.
This is the card of new explorers; children on the scene of new horizons; young people exploring a new medium or technology, first visits to outer space or inward into virtual spaces. It is a card of curiosity and the drive to know more. This card also warns of dangers which might be difficult to see from a distance, tools for seeing these dangers which might go unused or be forgotten, and potentially unsafe things which might already be near. There is also, however, the reminder that it is a marvelous space nonetheless: this room is a meeting place for creatures from above and creatures from within, beings who would never normally have the chance to meet. There is great opportunity to be found, if one is courageous, thanks either to bravery or ignorance of danger.
On the wall is a picture of a falling star dividing a heart, suggesting a pathway through one’s inner barriers to truth. The Submerged Minds may see the falling, burning embers from the volcano as a reminder of this pathway through obstacles, burning through barriers and illuminating things in darkness.
The telescope is the symbol of foresight and exploration, and in this case serves as a warning of distant danger. It is a device by which distant things can be regarded more closely, and it could help anticipate danger. Entering the domain of the Avatars requires the aid of equipment, apparatus or devices, taking on artificial features and perhaps artificial bodies, transformed by the medium itself. There are some places which are more easily explored by sending a robot in our place, or an AI. Certain devices that enable us to enter into spaces our bodies cannot go, and we relate to those spaces through them.
Card Meaning:
Alternative Names: Senses, Perception, Intuition, Curiosity, Innocence
The Ace of Avatars suggests an innocent and curious mind, newness and fresh viewpoints. It also indicates perceptiveness and intuition, the senses and ability to perceive, attain extraordinary insights, foretell the ramifications of one’s actions and other events, it can also suggest receptivity or suggestibility.
This card can mean seeing a straight path or seeing through illusion, discerning emotional from rational reaction, patience and understanding, recognizing the positive. This card also points towards new experiences and experiments, wonder and a non-judgmental attitude, and sometimes it can mean increasing interest and curiosity coming from others.
Reverse Meaning:
The Ace of Avatars reversed can suggest confusion and topsy-turvy experiences or situations, barriers obstructing clear sight, emotions and thoughts getting convoluted. This card can warn of dangers lurking in things less-well understood or less-well clearly perceived, things the querent should be wary of in the next phase of exploration of the new.
2nd Avatar • The Self-Portrait
Description:
The Inner Mask stands at an easel, painting a self-portrait. The paintbrush seems to burn as it touches the canvas, a deep hole seems to be dug in the form of the Inner Mask as it paints itself into the scene. Inside this hole a clearing in a forest opens, and animal masks reverberate and spill outward amongst the reflections of trees. The slatted window sheds split light in this sparse room, a trunk sits by the wall. Smoke from the brush, from its contact with the canvas, winds around the image. The Inner Mask’s likeness opens to a cave, like many we have seen, but a cave containing a magic forest and a magic lake, beside which a figure can be seen panning, perhaps, for gold.
The Story:
The Second Avatar shows the Inner Mask investigating itself and attempting to express its truth through work, and even deeper truths than expected emerge from this, the act of creation. The animal masks seem to emerge from the tiny figure in the center of the artist-shaped-hole in the canvas, the gold-panner disturbs the water and wild beings are revealed by the ripples. These faces can represent “wild” unhindered selves, intuitive or instinctual guides, and signals from a deeper and older place within the consciousness. As the Inner Mask attempts to create one image or shape of self-image, another and very different effect is taking place, the pre-conceived notions are being demolished as the creation deepens, the creation is also a destruction. The canvas, and also the original idea that the Inner Mask had in its mind about itself, are both being destroyed. Experience can bring down pre-conceptions, and the work of creation is a type of experience.
The Inner Mask in this scene had been intending to paint a portrait of itself as a hole, that paintbrush paints with fire and bores through the canvas. The Inner Mask tries to express “this is me, I am a hole, a void, a gap” but that is not the truth that emerges, once this particular hole is dug. The Inner Mask reveals a treasure-seeker in its own center, and the results of that treasure-seeker’s work are wild, untamed creatures, a populated wilderness. The Inner Mask’s self-understanding gives way to many more realities, many more ways of understanding self. There are many other ways to wander the landscape inside, and creatures that live in the Inner Mask’s own wilderness.
This card contains the theme of “creation and destruction.” Creation and destruction can be a metaphor for the catastrophes that make us, that ignite our ideas, that send us in a new direction: formative events. Some things are created, started and made, in moments of seeming catastrophe. Creation and destruction can be a violent replacement, it can be a force of nature like a volcano, it can be a decision to go one way and not the other.
This card also concerns the capacity of our works to attain a certain “life” of their own, that we might instill our artworks with a portion of our consciousness, to act of its own volition, to direct its own progress and ours. This phenomenon can surface in any intimate or organic relationship to one’s work, an ability to ask the process what it needs and get an answer, to converse with one’s characters, to be directed. When one listens to the will of flow, of inspiration, creative need, one may find a potent resource of energy, momentum. We come to a point where we set a stage, within ourselves or in the environment around us, for ideas to arrive, for inspired work, that seems to come all by itself. One can move the furniture around in one’s mind just so.
This card can also be said to concern influence from outside of what’s considered human consciousness, the actions of forces outside what is called “human” on our development, and on the things we create. We see here an ability to expand consciously outside the recognized self and encompass other forms, to invite in other kinds of consciousness into one’s arena of communication and relating.
Card Meaning:
Alternative Names: Creation, Destruction, Uncovery
The 2nd Avatar points to creation, productivity, momentum and process, and also to revealing answers and coming on brilliant and rare solutions. This card suggests giving life, finding treasure, creating with the help of the gods or other forces unimaginable. This card also illustrates creation and destruction bound together in a single action, just as a volcano is both creator and destroyer. By making something new, one takes part in a process of change, creates a site of transformation of the world. Something that existed before our work will be destroyed, and something new will be revealed, perhaps something that was always there. This card relates to the alchemy of creation, allowing one’s “works” to have a voice in the process and guide us to revelation, and recognition of other shapes mind can take.
Reverse Meaning:
The 2nd Avatar reversed suggests creations falling flat or not having “life,” not feeling the “life” in one’s work or activities, lack of passion or engagement, disinterest, productions not communicating as expected. Artistic endeavors unveil an “untamed” aspect: one face of freedom. It can lead us towards this experience when we allow it, but it gets tired after a lot of running.
3rd Avatar • The Monster
Description:
A damsel sacrificed to a dragon takes on gruesome features; she becomes the evidence of the ugliness of the community she was expelled from to save (not of the monster she was sent to.) She grows monstrous features, she defies laws of physics by scaling a ladder without legs, and becomes the beast herself, the one they fear. Even the dragon stands by, she too is a legitimate resident of this cave now.
The Story:
The 3rd Avatar concerns outcasts, the danger of being outcast, and reminds us of that which we refuse admittance or reject. This card is also about inner beauty and a steady devotion to one’s own standards of beauty, and it also points to the particular wisdom and perspective of the monster or “dragon.” This card describes the ugliness of injustice and intolerance, and beauty that blooms in spite of these things.
The 3rd Avatar combines several metaphors, or archetypical visions. One of them is the maiden sacrificed to the dragon. Another is an ugly child or duckling, someone who knows well the cruelty which the world is capable of. Society has expressed its disapproval of this person many times, in many ways. There is an image of an ideal somewhere, in the social conscious of the people, and they collectively act to punish those who differ. This effort by society, subtle and unspoken some times, vivid and intentional other times, has made this person sensitive in a way that goes above most everyone else. This person has seen the actions blindly practiced by society, the blind cruelty others don’t have to know about. Without having done any crime, this person has become associated with wickedness, and this association has made them the recipient of society’s capacity for evil. This person has received instruction about the dark side of the world, as a roundabout result of how they were made.
The 3rd Avatar reflects on the kind of quiet resentment that fosters monsters; monsters that grow in secret caverns, repressed inside of things that aren’t permitted to express anger. The card reflects someone becoming what they are accused of being: a monster growing beneath the surface, consuming what’s available to consume, including the innocent. Certain qualities are enhanced by injustice, unfair treatment, denial of care. Distortions within the self are created by exclusion and unkindness; masks which wear the person and alter the wearer. By forcing certain of its members from sight, society creates its own plagues. The paradox of “purity” is that society will expel an undesirable person in order to keep itself “sane,” “pure” or “clean,” and in doing so dirty itself, seed the growth of monsters greater than it even imagined, denial of love kindling active cruelty. This card sees the capacity of people to gradually become not only what they were accused of being, but worse. Suffering has its own brand of innovation and inventiveness: the unacknowledged effects of subtle and long-term torture by society. The quest for purity incites the rage of beasts, there is paradoxical ugliness embedded in the very idea of “beauty.”
This card also concerns the loss of innocence, as in a maiden’s sacrifice to a monster: an infernal wedding, the aquatic bride of nightmare gods. The person shown distain and harshness by society has never known innocence. Someone about whom society wishes to know nothing and see even less is forced into mystery, none may even know what their collective malice has caused. Whole realities are spawned in the shadow of such spite.
The 3rd Avatar also indicates certain kinds of hidden treasure, lost jewels amongst the rejected, treasures of unsurpassed rareness and value. Imagine a beast which guards a treasure no one else recognizes as treasure. This treasure is only seen by those who are "wicked" or feared, because only those relegated to this cave care to look directly at each other, and see beyond what society hates. Also, those who are here have developed the ability to “see” society’s blind maneuvers, has been forced to see what society does without knowing it, to see what is known to those who society treats the worst, a clarity opened in the absence of kindness. Observation of the world from outside, from a point of exclusion, makes one become a kind of oracle to what the majority cannot see. The more a society believes that it is good, the more it is willing to commit wicked acts. It costs the world treasures it may never even know, and replaces them with shallow concepts of beauty. Blindness to inner beauty is an ugliness that outshines any surface deviation. The 3rd Avatar reflects on the resilient belief in beauty that defies the norm.
Other themes within this card include reflecting back what others refuse to see beyond, the ugliness of societies that believe in monsters and don’t tolerate difference, maintaining a dream of ideal persons. There is beauty in the failure to embody the norm, but sometimes this requires an almost super-human ability not all people have. To be oneself, to appreciate oneself unchanged, in exclusion of all society has taught one to want, requires a rare and particular stamina, resilience and strength, or else it requires dismissal in favor of more important things. To see beauty in a form that goes beyond surfaces, to learn how to recognize the beauty shared in all creation, this is the treasure most highly prized by the dragon, the ancient of ancients, the monster of monsters. It is the secret buried in the place where humankind chases its monsters to, or where they must escape to. Hero-thieves would come to steal the dragon’s treasure, however they sometimes find themselves unable to see it, too bought into the beauty-myths of the worlds they come from to see the real treasure. The society that chooses a lesser notion of beauty, and chooses to impose that notion on its people, has banished the rarest and most valuable of treasures to the realm of monsters, empowering that realm to flourish. This is what produces the unique and peculiar wisdom of dragons; those we fear but cannot see.
Card Meaning:
Alternative Names: Beauty, Outcasts, Hard-Earned Wisdom
The 3rd Avatar highlights the beauty of this universe present in all things, the poignance and poetry in all that is created. It teaches there is resonance even in the parts of experience we dislike. The monster is the collector of earth’s treasures and recognizes beauty, genius and brilliance in that which the world has rejected, places we have ceased to look for it. This is a card of resolve, overcoming limited ideas of beauty and connecting with inner splendor, making good of hardship, turning bad fortune around, and discovering brilliance in the midst of an impossible situation. This card points to people and things we may have been ignoring, the knowledge and experience of outsiders and unconventional wisdom. The world becomes a richer place when we consider all its crevices and corners. This card also suggests the ability to self-create outside normal ideas of the possible.
This is a resilient card, signifying someone who refuses to give up, vanish or disappear even under great pressure. It also suggests refusal to give in to fear and intimidation, to adjust one’s views to satisfy short-sightedness.
Reverse Meaning:
The 3rd Avatar reversed suggests social intolerance, rejection and ostracism. This card upside down points to the effects of societal non-acceptance of who one is, results that seem to validate that dismissal. The 3rd Avatar upside down contains a particular message: all creatures need to be loved. Our society may not always extend needed love to all people, and this may be due to seemingly valid or invalid reasons, but the fact remains the same. How can one love a monster?
4th Avatar • Intuition
Description:
Two Inner Masks sit in a desert-like landscape. A sand-worm writhes in the distance. One mask observes the other, seeming to receive a message from above, while a monumental mask, a great presence in the sky, sits behind the clouds and seems to deliver down its thoughts, or its dreams. A birdlike creature descends from its eye, entering into the mind of one on the ground. This creature looks akin to the Liberated Voices, but is filled with sky.
The Story:
The 4th Avatar is also called “the Eye of God,” or “the Voice of God,” and represents contact with the divine, a spiritual experience, or some other moment of profound reflection and resonating awareness. This card indicates guidance or inspiration from a higher source, and experiences which bring people into contact with vast reservoirs of wisdom: the meditative experience and prayer, vision quests, and other interactions between the individual and the Higher Power. The mind and soul are often strangers but sometimes they are allowed to converse, granting one’s mind access to the wisdom of a higher and more expansive self. If the mind then does the work that its been given, the mind will grant that same access to the wider world.
During visionary experiences and certain kinds of other psychic voyages, a person is allowed a glimpse into the perspective of their creator; their origin, and sometimes see life’s immense questions splayed out before them. One might gain insight into why things are as they are, what course things will take in the future. This might be like shining a light inside the complicated mind, revealing the simple, underlying unity and the sense it all makes. There are many ways to access the visionary mindset. People have different ways of bringing “heaven” down to earth, getting the chance to see inside infinity before death arrives for them. When one touches something vastly greater than one’s self, one knows. By going into another state of mind, using your own brain/mind differently than usual, one uncovers powers one didn’t know about before. Limited minds are occasionally able to see past their limitations, the door may be thrown open by chemicals or ceremonies, or by the decision of heaven, inexplicable and mysterious, that it is time.
This card describes the spiritual quest, with or without gods. The “divine” can refer to whatever has the deepest relevance and meaning for existence. Whatever one believes in, one takes it with one, to places that pose challenges to those beliefs, and by being challenged one gets a more refined, more complete awareness of what one believes. In the course of one’s journey, crossing this desert and facing sand-worms, our beliefs in a good world and a good creator will be taxed many times. There are many reasons that our journeys are not easy, and why sometimes they can in fact be quite difficult. Our first thoughts about the divine are simple ones, basic concepts which explain death and birth, without room for the world’s complexities. After trial and punishment, those simple understandings become stretched to accommodate the many diverse problems of the world. In those increasingly complex understandings, one has the chance to attain an awareness of how simple it all is, even simpler than it seemed at the beginning.
The card can also describe an overpowering influence, something which cannot be ignored. An eternal presence presides at the back of this experience: a mind made of clouds, a self made of nothing, a self that isn’t made at all. There is the suggestion of a maker who makes nothing but makes everything from nothing at the same time. The seeker is presented with the outline or indication of an empty self, an idea without an explanation, a wanderer that loses shape as soon as it touches what it seeks. Expansiveness means losing the limitations of the mind, it means the loss of the meanings of all words, and the exposed meaning of things which have not yet been given words.
Card Meaning:
Alternative Names: Inspiration, Insight, Introspection, Influence
The 4th Avatar suggests a inner investigations and ideas, connecting with higher powers and receiving insights. This card also points to imagination and the power to visualize. It can also point to a blessing or gift from the universe, a change of mind or insight into something previously unknown.
This card illustrates one’s relationship with the divine, in whatever terms the querent chooses to think of it. This can also be thought of as one’s own “higher self” which is more in touch with wisdom and “higher purpose.” If we open ourselves to the universe, we may invite more magic in.
This card also reminds us that after we’ve received divine gifts, it is our duty to interpret and share them, put them into words and into practice, spread our insight to the world. To receive a gift is to be selected to become a giver of gifts. The magic must not go unused for what its for.
Reverse Meaning:
The 4th Avatar reversed describes the dangers of “sand-worms” and other challenges and trials that confront one in a spiritual quest. This can mean a “dark night of the soul” or a questioning of faith, religious or not. This card upside down suggests feeling disconnected from one’s gods or the source of one’s strength, one may question and doubt one’s own abilities, and the relevance of one’s quest. These times pass, and are part of the life of nearly everyone, even great spiritual leaders. Connection cannot be forced, neither can feelings, one can only leave the door open for them, prepare the space so they know they are invited when they’re ready.
5th Avatar • Refuge
Description:
Above an old town on a dark night, a flag of some kind attached to a weathervane signals refuge. In the street, a hooded person knocks on the door, and another individual looks down from a window above. Whatever danger lies in these streets, we do not see it now, but the mask attached at top seems to know.
Story:
The 5th Avatar is about refuge of many kinds. It indicates a strong community able to protect its members, and resources to recreate the safety which is sometimes lacking in the world. A strong, devoted community rises up when one of its members is in danger, so that no person needs to defend themselves alone. A sanctuary is a sacred place protected by the divine and recognized by the forces in control. An effective sanctuary is a space where wars are not permitted entry, it is respected even by soldiers. Whatever the perceived infraction or threat to the status quo, whatever the orders, the true sanctuary is a place where all differences are dropped and the Divine is in charge. This is the ideal concept, a steadfast and eternal place, sometimes the only place such a sanctuary can be upheld and preserved is within the self. The 5th Avatar means arrival in a state of peace and rest, a sacred space, free from the turmoils of one’s day, where one can think clearly and be safe. It also means strength: strength of convictions, strength of allies, strength of community.
The 5th Avatar describes the community one has found, perhaps after a period of isolation; the protective circle of others like oneself, sympathetic to one’s experience. While storms rage outside and unjust laws are passed, the sympathetic community allows for peace and quiet for people to think clearly, and speak freely. When the laws of the land condone violence, and many people forget the equality of all beings, this community remembers. The 5th Avatar also indicates a steady and stable mindset, un-budged by frenzies and rage that the rest of the world is prone to. Inner strength, emotional and mental, keeps one oriented to one’s sense of right and wrong, and helps one find one’s way back out of hate, which is an unholy feeling. Laws are written by human beings and can be wrong. They can be cruel and abusive, greedy and selfish, as well as virtuous, like every other human creation. The sanctuary is a space where only the laws of the divine rule, in which we are all equal, and all priceless beyond comprehension. It is one of the greatest challenges, and acts of strength, to ask of a person: to realize that all human beings are priceless beyond comprehension.
This card can also represent refugees of all kinds, and finding room for these people in one’s own community. A refugee is someone without a place they can be safe, who is trying to find a place where they can live decently. Those with the mindset of sanctuary will see their own selves in the refugee, and will keep in mind that any of us can become refugees at any time. A storm, or a war, or an un-punishable crime can make a person a refugee, and many other things too. A refugee can find hostility in many lands where they try to find a new home, they can be rejected many times. Sometimes they can be refused space on earth until the clock of their life is up and the seas take them. The mindset of the sanctuary wants for this to happen to no one, no matter how many laws decree there is no room on earth for them. The sanctuary is, in some sense, a lawless space, like an embassy from the heavens on earth’s soil, where God’s children can return. The 5th Avatar is a place and time where one reorients oneself to what is right, what one’s core principles are, and to inner peace. It can be a time when one re-acquaints oneself with the divine, or with the ultimate meaningfulness of the universe. Sometimes one needs to rebuild strength, to “recharge one’s batteries,” in order to reaffirm one’s values in such a way they’ll withstand the storms of harsher times.
This card can also denote a growth in sympathy and understanding, the building of authentic connections and the strengthening of friendships, the increasing and expanding of communities.
Card Meaning:
Alternate names: Sanctuary, Stability, Community
The 5th Avatar means stability and security, connection and support from others. It also, however, suggests a need for safety. This card describes relief and sanctuary after a time of struggle and difficulty, a momentary end to troubles. This is a card of building up strength in many ways: strengthening one’s friendships and other connections, restoring one’s health, rebuilding finances, perhaps also repairing physical damage. One becomes stronger now so that one may weather the storm, but also so that, in the long term, one can provide this same support to others running from the night. This card points to an eventual hope of a night we needn’t run from, but safe places in the meantime, necessary steps. This card points to collaborative efforts, small contributions adding up to great things, and glimpses of a better future.
Reverse Meaning:
The 5th Avatar reversed can signify turmoil and instability, feeling “exposed” and insecure, worries and concerns which may or may not be founded. It can also suggest not being admitted in somewhere. The 5th Avatar upside down can also mean being unable to find others like oneself, feeling betrayed by allies or friends, unable to trust one’s neighbors, or questioning safety in the home. Things designed to protect people are being used against them, “security” systems are posing the greatest threats.
6th Avatar • The Guide
Description:
The Inner Mask pauses, a walking stick in hand, at the foot of a tree growing in the path, seeing a spiny chameleon and a murky moon. The road leads to a smoking volcano in the distance, perhaps the road’s source as well as its ending. A sign in the ground seems to point towards that end: towards creation or destruction or both. The tree has faces and other organs, and its roots seem to drink from the path of fire. The creature in the tree seems to be some kind of Inner Mask in itself, cheshire cat and chameleon, spiny creature.
The Story:
The 6th Avatar shows the Inner Mask pausing in its progress up a path, questioning whether this is the right path. From here, the conclusion of the path can be seen: its destination is a volcano, a source of creation and destruction and very powerful, but also not a place to go without protection. This card denotes choosing between more well-traveled paths and less-well-traveled paths, and knowing when its time to strike out on one’s own in a new direction.
The volcano here represents danger and the unknown. It is the origin of mysteries, the cookbook and cauldron of our existence, and also creates destruction for a wide radius. It concludes the road up ahead, but also perhaps constitutes the beginning of the road; the disaster at the beginning and end of many journeys. The volcano is the gateway to inferno, a sacrificial pit, a portal to hades, and also a sign of life that is the planet’s own, one of the ways the earth relieves itself of pressure. The volcano obliterates whole landscapes, but then also builds islands where there were none before, creates mountain ranges and also flat expanses. The volcano could be the source of the desert of our experimentation, or indeed of all of Maskworld. In its shadow we may find ourselves. The volcano also endangers the whole place, though we have no way of knowing when it will end us. As the symbol of both creation and destruction, the volcano symbolizes the powerful energy which is the force behind all change. One cannot rid one’s life entirely from the forces of chaos and the force of change, nor from risk. One may desire to protect oneself from it, to avoid coming to places like this where danger is in sight, but it is hard when one’s path is being created as one walks it, and one’s world is partly the product of a series of catastrophes.
This card represents a moment where the querent is on their own to make the next decision. Outside opinions and guides are less reliable than the querent’s own inner knowledge of the path that’s right. Others may not have a good recommendation for you, because they don’t fully understand where you’re coming from and what you’re after. Sometimes you must collect your thoughts and make the choice yourself. There’s a lot more “general advice” around than we realize, lessons for the masses that seemingly anyone can use. These can be useful up to a point, but the seeker also has to consider the uniqueness of their own situation and be ready to proceed with caution, staying alert to the possibility that the author’s personal experience doesn’t apply here.
In this scene, the current path gets hotter and hotter up ahead, the warnings that “this is not the way for you” get louder and louder until a wanderer has the courage to leave it behind, going towards the unknown, a place with neither signs nor landmarks. Leaving the familiar track, abandoning and quitting the projects which are taking one nowhere, may require as much courage as an encounter with the mountain. Fear is necessary for courage to be meaningful. All wanderers must, in the end, take a path all their own.
Card Meaning:
Alternative Names: the cheshire chameleon, choices, changing paths
The 6th Avatar suggests choosing whether to stay on the current course, or to change course; to go the more well-traveled path, or take a radical new direction. This card asks us to carefully look at the direction we are currently headed, assess for ourselves whether we agree with the outcome its leading to. This card also points to guides and sources of advice, these things we must also carefully assess before trusting completely. This card signifies one’s internal compass and gut feelings which should be trusted before external advisors, leading us towards the paths that are suited to us at this time, and the teachers who have something of value for us.
This card also describes the difficulty of choosing to do something different. You have the ability to forge your own path when you need to, make a way that’s yours alone. Sometimes we must pave our own road, do something radically different, because all the available “tried and true” methods have outlasted their relevance.
Reverse Meaning:
Reversed, the 6th Avatar card signifies persuasion by false prophets, ignorant guidance, and also failure to see the signs and the “writing on the wall.” This also suggests being afraid to deviate from the familiar, or make a necessary change. This card upside down implies continuing down an easier path, but one which will be less beneficial in the end. It also suggests a need to consider one’s own current trajectory and life with more honesty and with an eye to the future, to consider one’s current relationships and whether any are toxic.
It can be enormously hard to take a step necessary, especially when that step is in a direction away from set patterns. It can be very anxiety-driving to move in a direction that has no roadmap, to enter what may seem like wilderness. It is natural to fear. Sometimes we have to go towards what feels the least comfortable, or risk moving in a direction that isn’t you.
7th Avatar • Emergence
Description:
A world, a globe, an atmosphere descends into Maskworld. The Inner Mask presses against the surface, through the cloud layer, and a disembodied mask, a projection, a presence, extends into another field of reality, a place inhabited by Liberated masks. The Inner Mask is behind a porous sort of barrier, held back but at the same time able to extend itself outside, like a species sending forth a robot explorer; something of itself but also not itself. The Inner Mask has created, in the other world, a part of itself missing in its own.
The Story:
The 7th Avatar can suggest exploration of options, the meeting of two worlds, coming to greater familiarity with one’s dreams, and finding completion and wholeness in the act of transcending one’s own limits. This card can also mean getting to places one isn’t ready to go yet, overcoming one’s self-imposed barriers, and getting an increased awareness of other people’s reality as part of interrogating one’s own dreams. This card signifies dreams and reality, meeting and interlacing with each other, extending into each other, preparing to turn dreams to reality and realities into further dreams. This atmosphere is the porous border between the dreamworld and the “real” world, however really both of these planes are inside of us, they just take different approaches to explore, different “explorers,” all of which we can become, if we learn to extend ourselves. In some ways this card shows the Inner Mask overcoming what held it back in the Major Arcana card The Stage, no longer just seeing the idealized world full of creatures it seeks to become, but entering into that place as best it can, living that life for a while, getting a brief look at what life on the other side of this “wall” is really like, brining the dream closer to reality, so the reality can become closer to the dream.
This card can sometimes suggest someone who isn’t ready to step bodily into the life they dream of, to embody it completely and change their life utterly in its image, in other words make it a reality. The individual might not be ready to commit, or make that leap, or make that drastic change, or it could be there’s several steps in the way that have to happen first. The difference between daily dreams and nightly dreams is that in day dreams, we dream what we want, and in night-dreams, we dream what the subconscious has to tell us. The conscious self speaks in day dreams, exploring things it knows it wants, driving up its motivation with sweet fantasies. The subconscious self speaks in night-dreams, exploring many things, some of which are beyond the conscious mind’s ability to rationally comprehend.
This card indicates coming closer to a goal than ever before, so that one’s goals come into focus. From here one can see the real costs and sacrifices, and also the benefits, inherent with this goal. The investigation of one’s dreams can be a means to access a better grasp of reality. One is in a position to ponder whether one really wants it one’s dreams badly enough. One might look at the worst parts of what one aims to do or aspires to get, consider the problems of getting what one wants, and ask then, is it worth it? Is this my reality, my joys, my most-real-self? Even if the answer is yes, it pays to consider these things. This card suggests the collapse of romantic ideas and glamorization, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that one is chasing the wrong star or come to a dead end. This card can indicate arrival at a more honest and grounded understanding of what one is getting into, getting more clear on the daily facts of the life one pursues, not only its moments of glory. This might not be the end of the road for this dream, but it does mean the illusions to which one clung must now fall. These things too are steps towards making dreams real.
This image also refers to the symbol of the Avatar, the wanderer in another world who learns from it and teaches about its own world, and returns home at the end. The Avatar is a being through which the gods walk the Earth as a mortal for a lifetime, it is also a digital representation of the self that can inhabit technological arenas. The Avatar is a visitor from elsewhere, with a completely different life on the other side of some kind of wall or border between realities. The Avatar is transformed by the entry into this world: they are made human or mortal, given the properties it takes to walk amongst us and navigate our world. Some Avatars seek to change what they find, others seek only to connect with it.
This card also thematically points to virtual reality.
Card Meaning:
Alternative Names: Passage, Dreams, Projection
The 7th Avatar concerns what we want, or what we think we want. This card suggests increased clarity about that which we think we want, greater awareness of what it is and what it means to have it. The 7th Avatar suggests “out of body” experiences, perhaps in the form of dreams or travels, or stepping outside the normal bounds of our life. Such experiences enlighten us and help us see the true cost of what we seek, and decide if its worth it. This card can signify our dreams coming true, the fantasy becoming reality. It can also suggest getting a sample or insider’s peek, hearing a new take on it or learning more about it, bringing more realism and reality to our dreams by giving us a more accurate understanding of them. This card can also mean learning generally and expanding one’s mental framework, awareness and understanding of the world outside one’s habitation of it.
This card can refer to expanding one’s experience, increasing one’s knowledge of things one knows little about through direct experience, and finding ways to outgrow the current borders of one’s mind-country. This card suggests an interplay between reality and dreams, and taking the first steps to make one’s dreams become true.
Reverse Meaning:
The 7th Avatar in reverse might mean that one is not yet ready to step fully, completely and wholly into the destiny and life they’re looking for, or that one’s desires and goals are based on misunderstanding and myth. This card upside down suggests a need to go out and experience, increase awareness and get first-hand knowledge, to take initiative on learning and expanding one’s horizons.
This card upside down might also mean a discovery that one’s ideals turn out not to be all they were cracked up to be, or that things one idolized aren’t as glamorous as imagined. This card reversed might mean disillusion and disappointment, a let-down, the loss of a fantasy around which one had become oriented. It’s alright to mourn one’s dreams a while, before recalibrating towards a new north.
8th Avatar • The Lighthouse
Description:
The Inner Mask rests on the edge of a well as an ocean tide rushes by, ornamented with wings like those of Mercury the Messenger. The well is filled with water up to the top, and on the water’s surface sits a bird, its wings spread, seeming to be trying to get the Inner Mask’s attention. Deep in the well, a winged Submerged Mind can be seen. In the distance, the lighthouse sends out a powerful signal against the dark storm clouds.
A quiet voice deep inside:
From far away I hail you, I send counseling birds to speak to you, hoping you hear my call. I have no words with which to describe what I have for you, a translator is needed to make words of all that I have. The message is not the original thought, but it will have to suffice for now.
The Story:
The 8th Avatar represents communication and messages, intuition and signals. This card concerns telling one’s story, understanding the stories of others, and things that can make communication difficult. Many things can obstruct communication: messages can get garbled, two parties can see the same things in different ways, or not share the same language. Distance can interfere with communication, as can time. Some messages are simply very elaborate, and cannot survive simplification and summarizing. Messages fly on wings in the hands of Mercury, the god of communication, something wrapped in words and delivered through air and sea. In the hands of other systems, a message will not always arrive in one piece, or in the same order, or saying the same thing it said when it was packaged and sent. This card concerns efforts to transfer information and meaning, and becoming more able to understand others and one’s own self.
In this scene the Inner Mask has wings resembling the god Mercury, god of communication. A bird sits on the water in the well, acting in part as the reflection of the Inner Mask in this disguise, kinship momentarily implied by these wings. The Inner Mask looks into the well, but at the same time gazes at the distant lighthouse behind itself, broadcasting a steady beam into the darkness. The Inner Mask is split at the surface, interior and exterior; the exterior transfixed on the emotional condition of its journey, the interior alerted to a sign in the dark. It is divided in its attention, inclined two ways: it is as though the face looking outward sees only backwards, and the one looking inward sees forward. The wishing well plummets down through levels of cognizance, reaching down to the depths of the ocean where the Submerged Minds live. This one echoes the wings worn by the bird and the Inner Mask, markers of a chain link. Shared experiences, linked understandings, and other connections can provide the medium through which communication may occur. This card concerns these platforms of sameness, similarities that transgress seemingly overwhelming difference, kinship that joins distant points together.
The lighthouse can symbolize many things (as can most everything in this scene.) The lighthouse can be seen to represent urgent messages or messages with extreme importance, it can also symbolize clarity and powerful messages beamed across great distances. The lighthouse is a safety measure: an endeavor to assist others as-yet unseen, into the future. A lighthouse makes dangerous things visible from far away, and also makes difficult-to-discern boundaries, such as between sea and land, easier to identify. This lighthouse can suggest many things concerning urgent or significant ideas and messages, things which need to be communicated, and it can also signify reliable guides.
The Submerged Mind appears deep in the well, under the earth and the water. This well is a portal, a tunnel and a telescope into the innermost world, it shows us the Submerged Minds are sometimes able, through unknown means, to fly. What messages might our deepest layers of being have for our surface-selves, aspects that connect with us in the form, perhaps, of dreams? We understand little of that place, and yet we have much in common with it. The Submerged Mind has wings somehow, perhaps to make itself more like the Inner Mask above, or perhaps as an expression of the linkage between them. For the Submerged Mind, language is a foreign object, another fluid for the mind to submerge itself in. Emergence from the fluid, one might find new air, new sky, but no words to describe it. Language is a cognitive predicament, a district in the broad landscape of symbols. It helps us talk about things we have agreed to see, and helps not at all with things for which there are no words. The Submerged Mind needs a translator, the bird, someone to express what it is saying. The bird can signify types of expression, veritably the demonstration of a principle or system of thinking.
A Passer-by behind a Cloud said:
The mind is a system of thinking. I thought for a moment I heard the bird say we are not that machine, but it dissolved into noise. We have no compass in this place; we are the only compass that makes sense.
The emotional waves of the sea wash over the Inner Mask’s lower half. The tide can suggest erosion of messages, time washing away signs left in the sand, messages forgotten or context erased. The stormy sky, the encroaching sea, all suggest distractions from the urgent matter. Inner and external static can trouble communication, interference in the style of life-troubles, conflicting messages, a storm of thoughts. This card also concerns instinctual or subconscious information, and dreams as a form of communication between layers of the mind. This can also point to signs from “the sky” and other broadcasts from the universe.
Card Meaning:
Alternative Names: Communication, the Messenger, Mercury and the Tide, The Message
The 8th Avatar signifies communication and messages, receiving signals and interpreting them, and understanding in spite of barriers in language, distance or worldview. This card concerns efforts to communicate and also efforts to understand, an ability to read unspoken clues and see “signs” from far away. In the end, greater understanding will be enabled by clarity, timing, willingness, focus and connection, as well as other factors. Greater understanding expands us, closes the gap between great distances. This card suggests important messages that need to be interpreted, people trying to make themselves clear, and a need to understand the messages from within ourselves and also from the larger world. What is the purpose of communication, what is so important that we must share?
Reverse Meaning:
The 8th Avatar reversed means messages missing their mark or getting lost, interrupted conversation, trouble communicating, and difficulty making oneself clear. Sometimes efforts to communicate, to teach or even change others, has a different or opposite effect. This card upside down can indicate failure to send, or receive, a significant message. Misplaced feelings and misdirected actions can result from messages dealt with an overly heavy hand, or an overly light one. Ships may go off course in the night if the lighthouse fails to operate. Sometimes the story we want to tell is larger than what we can easily say right now. We all have important stories which sometimes feel very urgent to tell someone, some stories take several tries and more effort to get across.
9th Avatar • Polarity (Bedrooms)
Description:
Two Inner Masks sleep in separate bedrooms, one in a bedroom styled as though it were meant for a “boy,” the other with signs it was intended for a “girl.” One bedroom is stars and toy planes, the other bedroom is hearts and toy houses. On the wall of one of these bedrooms is painted warriors from an aquatic realm, these warriors flow into a scene, a shared dream visited by both of these sleeping beings in the form of altered cloth, of a vast sea, and an island in the middle. On this island in the dream, a stranded person, whose head we cannot see, seems to send out or receive a message in a bottle. In the sky, rockets and planets.
The Story:
The 9th Avatar shows two Inner Masks coming from two different backgrounds, two different upbringings, and having been conditioned by this upbringing to inhabit a particular reality. This polarity is expressed in the different ornaments throughout these two bedrooms, decorated with the features of opposite universes. The boundary between these two opposite lives is broken, the two are joined in a strange streamer that forms a portal into a shared reality, a shared dream. It is as though at night these opposite lives become the same in their dreams, ghosts of another space. In this space, a vast sea extends around a small desert island, on which a person is stranded. The person appears to be getting or receiving a message, as though by the desire of these two opposites to break free and meet; in the act of their meeting they send hope to others, similarly stranded. This card concerns the cultivation of protective, cohesive “spaces” that we are from, that we perpetuate, and breaking free of those and other confines, finding freedom in a more authentic connection.
The 9th Avatar suggests breaking through seemingly “insurmountable differences,” boundaries and limitations thought “natural” or inextricable from existence. Opposites dream of each other, meet in a shared place, in a moment of connection across barriers. Imposed order provides comfort and form, it is the gift of a society that wants us to thrive in it. By breaking through this order can we see it’s not the only order possible, and see subtle things the walls around us occlude. This card describes a portal, a connection between distant worlds with little or nothing in common. It describes the ability to find common ground, to see the other in the self, and see through differences that supposedly “define” us. This card contains in it the theme of preserving tradition, and outgrowing certain aspects of it.
A voice from the island speaks through several layers of fabric:
We are more than where we come from, more than what we know, more than what we were told to want and be, we are capacity.
This card reflects an increasing connection with others and also with ourselves, identifying with more than the boundaries we’re given, by intentional rearing or by accident of life-events, and the theme of “beings as potential.” We have more ability to choose, says this card, than we normally acknowledge or allow ourselves. We have more capacity to become, reads a message in a bottle, than our upbringing would have us believe. This isn’t to say that upbringing is a villain or against our truth, upbringing is the world’s best effort to make us able to care for ourselves. We are created by our worlds, we help keep that world going, and in time we can learn to create another world.
The angel said, in the end, the only thing between us and the world we are capable of is imagination. When imagination meets reality, both are turned. No one is stranded that knows how to forge a portal in the air, to bend the fabric of the mind to make a meeting place for all sides to join together. The small figure in the image is reminiscent of another meeting by water, each individual is a continuation of the promise, and an opportunity to see that promise realized, though our circumstances for that realization aren’t the same. The dual riddles: the uniqueness of all creatures and their unity, points us to another theme: all things are connected. It is for us to discover the connection, and remember it when things appear irrevocably split.
Card Meaning:
Alternative Names: Upbringing, Nostalgia, Background, Polarity, Binaries
The 9th Avatar concerns common ground and connection, childhood and nostalgia and connections to the past, shared experience and also differences of experience. This card illustrates overcoming the barriers around and between us, getting past false beliefs assumptions, to recognize similarities that the wider universe holds in esteem. The 9th Avatar points to spiritual and also technological means of connecting, finding commonality and shared experiences; overcoming differences which otherwise separate people. By finding others, one finds oneself.
This card suggests similarities, it also suggests breakthroughs of many kinds. Mental breakthrough means overcoming thoughts that had come to act as barriers, arriving at previously impossible ideas. Emotional breakthrough means getting past emotions that had been overpowering, enabling more clear-minded action. Spiritual breakthrough means overcoming everything in life that gets in the way of one’s mission and mandate, the cosmic requirement that we support and recognize each other, and that we do the same for ourselves. This card implies the beneficial impact we can have on each other, even subconsciously.
Reverse Meaning:
The 9th Avatar upside down has the same meaning as right-side-up, with one additional theme: a-symmetry. Remember things are not the same on both sides, and the experience of one side fails as the instrument of knowing the other. Being supportive, and attaining full connection, means remembering the overlap is incomplete.
10th Avatar • The Great Telescope
Description:
Through a great telescope, an audience of Inner Masks watches a celestial event. In the background, pyramids act as observatories, their eyes suggesting telescopes of their own, and audiences observing the same event. On the monitor, we can see a half-moon and a full moon and a star, possibly a projection of the path of the Empty Moon to its own forms of future enlightenment.
The Story:
The 10th Avatar, the Great Telescope (also called the Eye) concerns methods by which we expand our vision, our knowledge, and our consciousness. It is about the coming together of many people to share in an experience and attain a higher perspective, and ultimately about our joining together with the universe. The telescope in the scene represents the mightiness of our collective potential if we can manage to work together in spite of differences, and it also symbolizes a huge leap in ability to see, to access and to know. The telescope in the picture also represents science and religion coming to an agreement: a sacred event which can be understood both scientifically and spiritually.
The 10th Avatar suggests overcoming disagreements, and coming into harmony. It is a card of civilization and for the peaceful cohesion of many civilizations, the hope of a global unity. As other telescopes in this oracle represent foresight and exploration, this telescope symbolizes extreme foresight, an increase in powers to interpret things and make connections. This card announces major world events which resonate with the seeker. The seeker has learned much and is now able to see things in shared events that others might miss. This card can also represent a shared celebration, revelation or discovery amongst many people.
They say that everyone is different, they also say everyone’s the same. These two facts seem forever at odds: they are contradictory but they are both true. A more refined understanding of universal uniqueness is called for, in order for the next step towards peace to reveal itself. The Inner Masks in this scene, a large number of them, (each the inner quest of someone somewhere) have all assembled to witness several events in the story of the Empty Moon. These “moon phases” represent a trajectory of enlightenment, a drifting towards wholeness. By witnessing enlightenment in another, we ourselves become more open to enlightenment ourselves. “Universal uniqueness” means that every being in the universe is its own solitary path towards enlightenment. It also means that all paths are one path, requiring many explorers, representing every possible variation.
The 10th Avatar is also about the impacts of discovery. Becoming able to see further changes us: how we think of ourselves in the universe, the nature of reality and, in the end, of us. All discoveries expand knowledge, but a significant discovery changes how one thinks about things, and even can move us to rare emotions: touching upon the universe’s wondrousness. They say that observation transforms both the observer and the thing observed, as though recognition stirs a common thread, an origin awakening. Seeing something one was unaware of before leaves the universe changed. One becomes a resident of a different universe than one lived in before: wider and more expansive, and also more resonant with meaning. Once one has gleaned meaning from the thing observed, the universe glows with greater resonance. The thing observed, though it may be far, is also changed, being also part of a more resonant universe. Its future is part of our future for having meaning for us, and this changes destiny, wraps a string around two things which were not linked before. The 10th Avatar represents technology at its best, which is when it becomes a method of emotional healing, physical wellness, or eventually spiritual insight.
Certain details of the sun are made visible only when the moon blocks most of its light, as in during an eclipse. The eclipse appears a few times in this deck and when it does, it reminds us that when we peer into darkness, into the not-us and that which we might consider our opposite, we discover aspects of ourselves that were previously blocked out, drowned out by what we believe true about ourselves. The center of the eclipse is a ponderous place, a darkness like the silence brought through meditation. Only during the opportunity offered by the eclipse can we look at our own sun directly. We are drawn to ponder the heavenly bodies, but our sun will harm us if we gaze upon it as we do for other stars. The celestial orbs draw out our wonder, we cannot help but marvel. They never become ordinary no matter how familiar, and they perhaps remind us that we too are extraordinary, marvelous objects in the universe.
This card signals the growth of important wisdom, and the potential for greater states of peace in the future. The destination may still be far away, but little gifts reward us along the way, small joys are soon to come, hope is fuel and motivation to keep up efforts for the long journey yet to come. Technology sometimes frustrates or terrifies, but here it is helping the conscious being to expand its consciousness, and a society becoming better and more egalitarian, more aware of its place in the universe.
Card Meaning:
Alternative Names: Discovery, Unity, Technology, the Future
The theme of 10th Avatar signifies technology at its best, adeptness and abilities refined, knowledge and exploration. This card concerns events that have a wide-ranging impact on numerous people, and the querent’s shared journey with others. This card suggests unity and strengthening community as a result of change, increasing cohesiveness across distance and barriers, and adapting as one to changes. This is also a card of recognition, of brilliance coming to the surface, both one’s own and others’. Seeing greatness in another being makes one’s own self greater, more appreciative of the potential for greatness in all creation. This card suggests world peace, the capacity for greatness in all society.
Reverse Meaning:
The 10th Avatar upside down suggests toxic interactions and dangerous encounters, it also suggests discovery put to bad use. It suggests spying, stalking, and other counter-productive uses for technology. It also suggests being unchanged or unmoved by what one sees, proof falling flat and evidence going nowhere. There may be deep-seated divisions and separations keeping two sides from recognizing each other and acknowledging their accomplishments. This holds everyone back.
11th Avatar • The Fluid Self (The Bridge)
Description:
The Inner Mask is turned into a transmogrified fish-creature on a massive scale, transcending a sunset far in the distance and a river beneath a bridge below. A bridge separates the upper from the lower, the above-water from the beneath-water, and the Empty Moon rides its raft downstream. The Inner Mask looks two directions: gazing inwards at the setting sun, and gazing outwards at the river as it flows through their fingers.
The Story:
The 11th Avatar is the card of transformation and the power to transform, the ability to rise from the ashes of destruction, and the miracle of newness. It suggests a change in the mental, physical and perhaps spiritual dimensions, becoming slightly or fully new and with new options for movement, and new limitations. Change can mean many things: it can mean ascension, it can mean becoming strange, it can also mean tragedy. Loss also makes a thing new; creating reorganized structures from leftover parts. This card can refer to learning how to rise from the ashes of loss and tragedy. It is also about becoming more at peace with the processes at work in the universe, time and nature.
The 11th Avatar concerns the passage of time and the gradual changing of all things. Some problems are solved by simply “giving it time” as our mind is always becoming different, and will be another thing tomorrow. Our nature is like water: you can’t step in twice. We are constantly flowing into other states, previously unknown and unexperienced, we sometimes surprise ourselves by a thing that is newly true about us, something that transformed without our knowing. If we focus our efforts, we can change in a way that benefits us and the world, directing that natural, unstoppable flow into a form that will carry us forward. This is a collaborative act, one must work in tune with one’s destiny and with natural shift.
A river is a flowing aspect of the land, a path for water and its creatures to take, connecting the dominions of water together. By recognizing the river-aspect of ourselves, we become a mode of transit from ideas to reality, a means for the impossible to become real. This power is shared by the gods, it is one of the ways we are similar. This card is also about healing: our power to heal ourselves and each other, to overcome past harm and retrieve the state of wholeness. One is both an entity and a direction, particle and wave, one can influence one’s direction, through intention combined with humility.
The 11th Avatar also suggests gaining new abilities and skills, an intellectual transformation. The acquisition of new languages is one example. Our options and capacities would startle us if we were to become aware of them all. This is the card of the unknown abilities we have: in strength, in intelligence, but also abilities to be kind and to be wise, the archetypical heroes and heroines we reflect in our overall life trajectory. This card suggests discovery of the greatness and relevance of our role in the universe, surprise at meeting oneself in full (“in person”) for the first time, finding there a jewel of astounding wonder.
The bridge in the scene connects two things and, by doing so, allows for a third reality. The Inner Mask becomes a mermaid, a member of two worlds, composed entirely of neither. The 11th Avatar can mean the querent is ascending to a new way of life and way of doing things, instigating positive change in their life, making a meaningful decision. This is also the card of promises kept, to oneself and to the universe. The 11th Avatar also means the creation of new and higher vantage points, from which one is able to relate to another who was impossible to understand before. From here, one can make sense of viewpoints which contradict and make no sense to each other, one can relate to the “fools” of life and understand their role in the cosmic order, one can also see times when you were the fool, and take these revelations with compassion. From a state of higher awareness, whether that be intellectual, spiritual or emotional, things which made no sense make sense. The world becomes more and more complicated, the pasts of everyone more tangled, and everyone has a role in everyone else’s story. It becomes more difficult to untangle, to find a single clear picture or narrative everyone can agree on, as time goes by. We are creatures wedded to time, part of its flow, and cannot separate nor slow it down. To unravel knots made worse with time, which is an expression of order, one must become larger than the knot, see the sun in one’s shadow, lean in the direction of one’s own creation, shine as the example of what can be achieved when one steps outside the same direction and makes a new one.
Card Meaning:
Alternative Names: Transformation, Flow, Safe Passage, Flexibility
The 11th Avatar is the card of transformation and change, the mermaid that inhabits two worlds and is completely at home in neither, the fluid self that can transition between states. This card is about wholeness in spite of division, it suggests safe passage and successful transitions. Life is a constant process of change, both sudden change and change too gradual to notice. The river represents this constant change of life, flowing towards the sea and sun and towards wondrous things on the other side of our transformations. This card suggests a beneficial change, a change that was hoped for and long-awaited, and also probably a needed change: a change that brings one closer to wholeness and the feeling of fulfillment. This card also suggests surprises that await us on the other side of a transition: greater impacts than we could ever have anticipated.
Reverse Meaning:
The 11th Avatar in reverse suggests standing in one's own way, becoming the obstacle instead of the flow. One’s concerns, fears, and convictions are preventing one from getting where one wants to go in life. When the 11th Avatar is upside down, it indicates resistance or fear of change, affinity with things as they are or attachment to the current state of things.
12th Avatar • The Fortress
Description:
The Queen of the Underworld sits on a fountain in a kind of courtyard, there is water here but not enough for her escape. This queen is also called the Empress of Shadows, which passes through the deep shadow of the Empty Moon when it is entering into a new phase. She is part of the Empty Moon’s mystery, an aspect of its own consciousness that it has not yet resolved, a gender inside no-gender inside a gender. She is perhaps a prisoner here but remains elusive, presenting to the camera a face which fails capture, no matter how many photos are snapped on whatever device. She arrives at the very end of the Oracle of the Inner Mask to pose a riddle pointing to the next quest, the next phase in our development, the gaining of another “layer” in consciousness, the deepening of wells and shadows and bodies of water.
In the sky, a star sails by, and behind the fountain stands a photographer, taking pictures with an antiquated machine. Stacks of polaroid-like photos lay around, depicting nothing. The Empty Moon holds a mask against the void of its own face. In the background is a clock tower with no hands.
The Story:
The 12th Avatar is the final card in the suit of Avatars, and concludes the final suit of the oracle. This card symbolizes inner strength and certainty, perseverance, resistance, endurance, and things which never fully disappear. The 12th Avatar suggests the preservation of hope, even in desperate situations. When things are going down a bad path, when a “bad star” is rising overhead, the light of hope is there, within persons. This card is about the effects of strain and hardship on a person, and finding sources of strength in one’s own inner knowledge of oneself. This card also represents a connection with the future, and the ability to see forward to the outcome of things, confidence that the universe is pointed in an overall direction towards the good.
The Empress of Night is here seated on a fountain, and a photographer tries to capture her essence on film, and fails. She holds up a mask, between her horns where a face would be, fooling the eye that sees those holes as her eyes, fooling the camera that looks for what it wants and doesn’t get it. This card concerns the ability to deceive, and also out-smart, the oppressive forces of un-truth. Those who would invade, control one’s ability to self-express, dictate how one is known and seen by the world, are foiled when one draws from one’s inner resource: one’s inner fountain of truth, that which is unswayed by goings-on at the surface. The fountain represents one’s inner source of light and self-awareness, all that one has learned about oneself, all the things which are true no matter what is taken away from a person, no matter where one goes or who one decides to be like. This center does not shift when others enter the room, this fulcrum does not shake when others insist one move. This is the reservoir of strength because it comes from a place of eternal light, that which is next to the divine, one’s own personal link and also unique pathway to enlightenment. Even if one sometimes forgets that it is there, or loses touch with it or loses track of it, it is nevertheless there, and can be found again.
The photographer, perhaps the Inner Mask itself, takes picture after picture of nothing, but still tries to capture something it intends to show is there. The thing of extraordinary relevance, emptiness, is not something the photographer wants to see; the photographer isn’t ready yet to find the self in nothingness. Indeed the photographer is seeking, nonetheless, to create something which doesn’t exist, and provide proof that it does exist. There are personal gains involved, there are material rewards to capturing that which the photographer wishes to create. It will propel myths forward, it will bury the world deeper in false faces, but it will nevertheless be rewarded. This is the falsity, the inauthenticity, which the Queen of the Underworld will not abide. The truth is too important, sacred to be thus profaned, and she will not stand for it. She will move the world towards recognizing inner truth no matter who it offends.
The last Avatar also suggests a deep internal awareness of justice: the universe speaking through you in its quest for balance. The cosmos has created everyone, and the path of every being is relevant. We may forget our role, ignore it, walk away from it, or start to absorb the hatred of loud voices, saying there is no place in the universe for us. Inside of all this drowning, there is an awareness, though sometimes walled up behind layers of brick, this is one’s own humanity, and it is enough to disprove any thoughts of inferiority, undesirability, or deserving hatefulness. It is the reminder and the evidence that we are real, and that everyone is real, even when they behave like robots, or puppets, or shadows, or pictures of an idea of a person.
Even though we are changed by our thoughts and impacted by the thoughts of others, we are something deeper than thought, deeper than knowledge. We are deeper than all the depictions and thoughts about us, the mimicries of us on paper and copies of our behaviors in the memories of machines. We are also deeper than any belief about us that can be held in the mind: we are a source. When we are over, the source is not over, it redirects. Real things are beyond what can be copied, captured, or indeed abused and destroyed. There is a part of us that cannot be harmed, cannot be changed, cannot be ill. This real thing has significance to the Cosmos that we have yet to unravel. We are aware of the value of all persons in some subtle way, we have a sense of right and wrong, fairness and goodness. The universe brought us here, and we have these things we know about, the instincts of sentient beings. We know somehow we are meant to live in a fair world, though no one knows exactly how to get us there. The universe has brought all of us here, and we can imagine we are a temporary blip or we can imagine we are a way the universe has of accessing something it intends to reach, and in this we all play a part. In this way true justice will always be in tune with this intention; the inner senses of goodness and fairness are aligned already.
It is for us to demonstrate our reality to the world until then, to live in such a way that shows we are real in a way that pictures of us aren’t. We do this by finding a way to be authentic to ourselves, and living our truth.
Card Meaning:
Alternate titles: Fortitude, The Star, Omens, Resilience
The final card of the Avatar suit expresses strength, perseverance, resilience in the face of adversity and survival. It also indicates an increasing certainty and fortitude of one’s beliefs and awareness of who one is. This awareness will keep us from being bent into forms defined by others, distorted to the service of lesser aims than our true path and self-determined inclination. When our self-awareness becomes strong, even the intentional efforts of others to repress or change us is ineffectual, and when the powers that run the world are not in our favor, and it seems our options are few, we are able to subvert, and exist anyway. “The Fortress” represents strength in the face of adversity, preservation of our principles when we are strained, and steadfast certainty of who we are: a “fountain” of strength to call on when times require it. There is truth that won’t abide tyranny, and goes un-dented by efforts to distort it.
Reverse Meaning:
The 12th Avatar reversed may suggest being “trapped” or taken advantage of, situations that put a strain or pressure on us, situations we would wish to escape. This card in reverse can suggest a world unready or unwilling to receive one as one truly is, difficulty inhabiting one’s truth. Comets in the sky were thought to be disobedient stars, bad omens, defying the clockwork. Sometimes one must behave as a bad omen to break a clock that doesn’t work.