Tarot: The Wisdom Keeper, The Tower and Dreaming

Last night, before going to sleep, I drew a card from The Witches’ Wisdom Tarot. It was 17 – The Wisdom Keeper. In the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot, this number corresponds with The Tower, a card of calamity, but in this deck it means something different – wisdom that can be learnt through sudden and unexpected change. 

When the Wisdom Keeper appears, “The Pilgrim feels the suddent shift, feels electricity charge the Air and prick her skin, feels her breathing shorten and the beating of her heart quicken.” So says the book. The Wisdom Keeper can take many forms, and be found in all lands, but she is most often found by entering the darkness. Perhaps it is the darkness of a cave, or a tipi, or a tent in the desert, or just in the darkness of the long winter night. The words in the book continue: 

“The Pilgrim has journeyed a long way to receive enlightenment. She sits before the Wisdom Keeper. A sacred bundle lies open between them, revealing the medicine within – healing plants and offerings, objects of power and tokens of revelation. They are spread out upon the ground, each on a part of the mystery hiding in plain sight.”

I went to sleep after seeing that card, and I dreamt that I visited a shamanic circle. Not one in a cave, tipi or desert tent, but one in my home city in contemporary times, with people dressed in ordinary clothes and nothing particularly unusual in the room in which we met. We sat on the floor and began a journey together, closing our eyes and letting our spirits travel towards a place of knowledge. I tried to follow, but was interrupted. My phone went off. It was something important – a real world issue I had to deal with – but I was still embarrassed. I should turn my phone off before the start of any ceremony. 

When everyone returned to the normal time and place, I apologised. “It’s okay,” said the woman leading the journeying, the Wisdom Keeper in jeans and a jumper. “There will be other times.” She smiled and hugged me, forgiving me. 

I wanted to be hugged, but recoiled. “We should be distancing,” I said. “I’m trying to be careful.”

“Yes,” she said, “but this is a dream. And you have other friends.”

Suddenly the scene changed, as things do in dreams, and I was in my own witchy room at home, sitting in a circle. Instead of humans around the edge there were objects – things I owned and used. There was the spent match with which I’d lit my Peacefires candle; there was the bag I take to workshops; there was my phone… And I realised something I knew before but now knew in a deeper way – that spirit resides in everything. These are also my allies in my practice, even in difficult times.

I know what messages I’m taking from the Wisdom Keeper. What wisdom might she offer to you?

The Witches’ Wisdom Tarot is published by Hay House. You can find my review here: http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2020/10/review-witches-wisdom-tarot-boxed-set.html

Previous related posts
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2020/10/wind-harp-ace-of-air-from-witches.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2021/03/witches-wisdom-tarot-council-of-all.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2021/07/divination-blasted-oak-from-wildwood.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2015/03/friday-13-solar-eclipse-death-tower-and.html

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