unmaskingthedivine

[unmaskingthedivine]

Whelp, it's official...

Tumblr is dead to me now, so I think it's safe to say this blog is dead too. Very disappointed in @staff (and the world in general tbh).

[unmaskingthedivine]

So sorry, I don't mean to be annoying. I am asking for your recommendation because you seem experienced with it. I was searching online for physical books to buy, but I don't know what is good material, or what author would help the most. Also, I am a beginner towards shadow work. Anyways, have a good night!

Hi there. No worries. I don’t get on here much these days so I apologize for the delayed [and short] response… Wish I knew of a good workbook to recommend, but as far as reading material goes I highly recommend Meeting the Shadow (edited by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams). It’s not necessarily instructional or anything, but it offers thorough and diverse insight on the subject (from multiple authors) that I think serves as an excellent primer for developing a well rounded understanding and establishing one’s own practice.

[unmaskingthedivine]

my friend said that whenever she has a bad feeling about her body/appearance, she asks herself “who profits off of this emotion?” and i really love how simple and incisive that is

[unmaskingthedivine]

I avidly support your proposed solution to make decks using only scrap paper and berry ink. Serious farm goals.

Tarot Consumerism - fuck Amazon

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@thistleweeds

~Wolf Child

[unmaskingthedivine]

Lol, well this is just sloppy plagiarism. Come on, @natural-opposites , you couldn’t even take the time to remake the graphic? You just trimmed off my blog name? Had to leave my ages old avatar on there though, huh? Tsk tsk - my Virgo rising is up in arms right now, lmao.

I put this stuff out for free - I don’t even care if I’m not directly linked in external sources or whatever. But blatantly trying to take credit for something that obviously isn’t yours, not even making an effort to redesign and/or improve upon it, that’s just petty. 

For the record, I released this alongside the “January Shadow Work Challenge” back in 2015 I believe it was. Here is the original link.

Shadow Work Tarot Spread!

~Wolf Child

[unmaskingthedivine]

Oh right, new moon in Gemini - that's why everyone's having breakdowns this week.

[unmaskingthedivine]

Dismantled altar pieces casually sprawled out on a work document. #altarpieces #naturaltreasures #deadthings #oddities #bones #fossils #stones #altar

[unmaskingthedivine]

For the first time in my life I have legitimate fitness goals, and they aren't for the sake of living up to some glorified standard of beauty or out of fear of being “unhealthy” or whatever, and it's kind of blowing my mind. 

[unmaskingthedivine]

My Saturn return has been fucking weird, y'all.

[unmaskingthedivine]

Most of the social interactions I have with other humans keep me up at night tbh

[unmaskingthedivine]

I am so here for this.

May Tarot Challenge - Self Awareness

I wanted to develop a challenge that helps diviners develop core skills that sustain long term practice. Or in less clinical terms, there’s a ton of stuff for newbie card readers but you, my friend, are in this for the long haul. You’re gonna need a strong foundation for when you’re reading cards ten, twenty years from now.  This month we focus on self awareness.  I have trouble putting into words just how important this skill is. Knowing how your perception is colored and limited is key to giving good readings. A reader needs to have a sense of when their personal bias is creeping into a reading. Just went through a break up? You need to know when you’re projecting that unhappiness onto other readings. Just got a new job? You need to know when you’re feeling unreasonably optimistic given the cards in front of you.  For this challenge, you’ll pull two cards. One you select and one you shuffle/draw at random. The goal is to see how closely your perspective of yourself aligns with your deck, to give your deck a chance to check you. Feel to start this challenge whenever you feel like it, well after May even. If you post this somewhere else, please credit me and link to my tumblr if you can. Use the tag “#hillbillyoracle may tarot challenge” for posts so we can all support each other.

1 T – What is your current situation?  2 W – Who are you in your situation? 3 T – What happened leading up to this situation? 4 F – What will happen in the immediate future? 5 S – What is the root of the situation?  6 S – What advice are you getting from gods/spirits/the Universe? 7 M – What talents do you bring to the situation? 8 T – How do the people around you see the situation? 9 W – What are your hopes? 10 T – What are your fears? 11 F – What have you been ignoring lately? 12 S – What should your next action be? 13 S – What lesson are you learning from your situation? 14 M – Who in your life should you make amends with? 15 T – How should you make amends with them? 16 W – What’s the state of your friendships? 17 T – How can you improve them? 18 F – What’s the state of your relationships with family? 19 S – How can you improve them? 20 S – What’s the state of your romantic life? 21 M – How can you improve it? 22 T – What’s the state of your relationship with yourself? 23 W – How can you improve it? 24 T – What’s the state of your relationship with the world around you? 25 F – How can you improve it? 26 S – What the state of your relationship with spirits/gods/The Universe? 27 S – How can you improve it? 28 M – What is holding you back in your spiritual path? 29 T – How can you break free? 30 W – What has changed over the last month? 31 T – What lessons did you take away from the challenge? 

[unmaskingthedivine]

“My closet is full of hooks, full of horrors, and I also love them, my horrors, and I know they love me, and they will always hang there for me, because they are good for me, they are also on my side, they gave me so much to be my horrors, they made me strong to survive. There is much in our new ‘enlightened’ lexicon to suggest that one may move into a house that doesn’t have such a closet. You move into such a house and think everything is fine until after a while you start to hear distant screaming, and start to smell something funny, and realize slowly that the closet is there, alright, but it’s been walled over, and just when you need desperately to open it you find yourself faced with bricks instead of a door.”

— Michael Ventura

[unmaskingthedivine]

planning on selling printed copies of this tarot deck me and my dear friend lucy created by hand, let me know if you’re interested in purchasing because we’re trying to gauge demand before we print! :’)

[unmaskingthedivine]

Book Recommendation

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk

Let it be known that I have yet to finish this book, but it has already been such an invaluable read that I feel compelled to recommend it, with a bit of a disclaimer. 

I’m on Part Four, Chapter 11, Page 171. I’ve had it for six weeks. It’s due back at the library now. I’m going to have to (gladly) purchase a copy to get through it. It’s been such a challenging read. I put it down a few weeks ago because I was experiencing unpleasant visceral reactions during/after reading it. 

On that note, I would advise exercising awareness while reading this - if you become disturbed, tense, or sick, put it down, take care of yourself, and come back to it when you’re able. This is especially important for anyone with a history of acute, prolonged, and/or repeated exposure to trauma/abuse.

It focuses primarily on childhood trauma/abuse/neglect and the effects it has on the developing brain and organism. Thoroughly enlightening stuff here. While the information presented isn’t entirely foreign to me, having it all laid out in this way has put so much in perspective for me, in terms of my own behavior and that of my partner’s, as well as a great deal of the human population for that matter. 

Anyway, it’s a must read imo. And I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of it before this year, but I guess I just wasn’t ready for it - I hardly am now. 

[unmaskingthedivine]

if tumblr is dying what other place would you post your content?I really liked your informative posts and I'm sorry to see you go(if you will, actually leave)

I don’t know if Tumblr is really dying (is it?), personally I’m just frustrated with some of the shitty changes that have been made recently, i.e. ”Best Stuff First” and “Safe Mode”... Like, my dudes, I deliberately follow blogs that post “sensitive/adult” content because I want to see “sensitive/adult” content, and the fact that I have finagle my way around just so half my feed isn’t being Black Mirrored irks me. Sure, it is a minor inconvenience to shuffle through settings to undo that junk, but it speaks on a deeper level for me (not to mention has undoubtedly changed the functionality of the platform.) 

Rant over. 

In truth, my activity here has been sparse long before all that garbage was implemented, in large part because so much has been changing and shifting in my life.. my routine, my practice, my passions. I do have an IG account linked under the same name, which I have deleted and recreated only to wipe it clean again (there was never anything very good on there resource wise though.) And I’ve been talking about launching a website for some time now, which I still want to do, but I’m not sure it will be what I once intended.

Tbh, strictly informative posts may be a thing of the past, or at least will no longer be a primary focus moving forward. Simply because I can’t force it. The spirit of this blog has always been experimental; when I started writing those types of posts I was sifting through a lot of information, studying/practicing a lot of different things, just really taking in a lot. It was natural for me to organize my thoughts and experiences in that manner. 

At this point I’m processing things differently, and I’m gravitating towards a little more abstract, visceral content. For instance, my practice has taken a sharp turn toward sensual and physiological exploration in the past year. One topic I’ve been yearning to dive into and share my thoughts on has to do with sexual trauma and the part BDSM can play in the road to recovery. Surely a niche topic in comparison to general shadow work and such, but that’s where all this has taken me.

Anyway, I realize I could have answered your question in way fewer words, but I figured I’d take this opportunity to explain where I’m coming from, where I’m at, and where I’m headed. I don’t plan on leaving Tumblr, and I will be sure to keep it updated with links to any new content I may publish elsewhere at the very least. I appreciate your interest and reaching out! 

[unmaskingthedivine]

♥ ♥ ♥

Much gratitude to the gifted caritia (rigger), bishopblaczk(model) & fred_rx (photographer) for joining the Sacredly Bound Tarot deck as the Empress Card. In traditional Tarot this card is associated with Venus, feminine power, a mistress figure whose passion moves through all of nature. Often the symbol for Venus is depicted on a shield. This specific design draws inspiration from sacred geometry & the planetary movements of the planet Venus herself as metaphor for rope communication. 

Rope communication is the essential core to Shibari, it is ability of a rigger to transport the person being tied through sensory and emotional experiences just with the touch of the rope. 

Done well rope communication transcended gender, desire, power dynamics and even ego to create intentional depth of experience for the person being tied. 

It is this dance of rope around the body that can on rare occasion create celestial experiences. 

This design is not about monarchy but rather a sacred dance with rope around one body from another. In nature Venus’ orbit takes 1 year and has been known as “Venus’ Dance” or the “Flower of Venus”. 

The background of this is a depiction of this motion drawn by Sir Isaac Newton himself. 

“The Venus/Earth orbital 3/2 ratio replicates the perfect symmetry we know as the Golden Mean. The 2/3 ratio of a Venus day to an Earth year replicates the harmonic interval known as the perfect musical fifth (3.2), which is considered as the most universally harmonic consonant.“

 - Detail from James Ferguson’s, Astronomy Explained Upon Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles, 1799 ed., plate III, opp. p. 67. This deck draws on the coincidental beauty of existing shibari scenes, which mirror tarot mythology. Find out more about what else these creatives are up to here: https://votefredforgod.com/ http://caritia.com/ Tell your rope folks, tell a friend, much gratitude to all who share & support Follow the project sacredlybound Graphic design by empathic.ties