Mystical Tarot Realms
Click on page 70 above or hover your cursor above BLOG to go to other pages.
Pounding Stone on a Ridge
SPIRIT OF PLACE
​
At dawn, we follow paths
into a forest that dreams,
where we find abandoned
villages, last night's rains
veining the slopes, the quail
reminding us that we
are awake. I sense a spirit
watching us
as I slide my fingers over
wet moss. When the spirit senses
our love for moss and rocks
and mushrooms and grass
and for each other, she
gently touches our souls
and drenches us
with her joy.
SPIRIT OF PLACE
After I mentally purified my aura, I became more sensitive to the spiritual vibrations within nature. In some regions of the wild, I can sense an overarching intelligence, what the Romans call the “genius loci,” or "spirit of place." In some areas, the genius loci is absolutely terrifying, in others, resentful, but in one place that my wife and I call “Fairy Creek,” the spirit of place is loving and nurturing, almost maternal. Every time I go there, I experience vibrations of joy and love and caring. I eventually developed a theory about the phenomenon. Several pounding stones exist in the area. I believe the Native Americans over time developed a deep sense of reverence and love for the creek and its genius loci, which she reciprocated, so not only does she care for the plants and animals, but she also still cares for human beings. At Native American sites that are closer to modern civilization, I sense only resentment. Our ancestors knew that you need to establish a parley with the spirits of nature. Almost every culture has at some point personified the spirits of nature as deities. Modern American society, possibly due to its never-ending exploitation of resources, remains willfully ignorant of the spiritual side of nature, which my wife and I had experienced together on numerous occasions.
​
​
​
​
All stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
Wind Poppies after the Rough Fire
LET GO
​
The day had come to say goodbye,
the rooms gathering their endings,
eyelids closing near worn-out paths,
my body a ravaged hive.
As I closed my eyes, buildings
emptied themselves of me, decades
of webs cleared in a moment. Free,
I threw my knife down and plunged
into a river where no lifeguard
could save me, and I drifted
toward slow tapestries in the soil,
hearing the mantra of leaves:
Leave the toil of destinations--
Let go, let go, only know the sun.
Immobile, I saw treasures
no one else could see: a golden
cup and plate on a pure, white cloth;
a lemniscate; an equal-armed cross.
In the deep a diamond hovered above my head,
and, far below mouths opening and closing
on the flowing surface, I could see threads
everywhere dissolving in a blazing light
of negative existence. Aware
of my breath, I opened my eyes,
my hands together, my legs stiff,
returning to a failing body, knowing
light in each cell, in the earth,
in the deepest roots of the mind.
LET GO
One day, years ago, I leapt from rock to rock across Big Creek, and climbed an embankment near an ancient Native American site. I found a lush green Eden surrounded by cliffs and imbued with a mysterious presence. I felt an overwhelming urge to explore the pristine hillside, but I soon faced a daunting incline. Nevertheless, I forged ahead, climbing higher and higher until I realized that I was perched on a nearly vertical cliffside. When I looked down, I knew that I would probably not be able to descend without tumbling to my death, and the cliff above appeared hopelessly steep. For a few moments, I was sure that I was going to die on a mountain side that few other people explore. After I recovered from my climber's panic, I did the only thing I could do: I inched my way to the top of the ridge and eventually found a much easier route back to the creek.
At one point recently, I stared into a different kind of abyss. Due to constantly recurring bouts of atrial fibrillation, I was certain that I was experiencing a fatal form of heart disease. I struggled day to day, hoping that I would live a little longer while striving all the while to accept the inevitable. I felt an overwhelming desire to withdraw from daily life and from my relationships. On the one hand, I was subconsciously trying to protect myself. On the other, I was trying to let go and give others the opportunity to let go of me as well. Unless you have teetered on the edge, certain that you are soon going to fall off, you might not fully understand what I was experiencing. My wife, unfortunately, either did not understand at all or understood only too well.
After she had witnessed me teetering on the edge for about a year, my wife received the first installment of her inheritance. She put the money in a separate account and informed me that she was retiring. Soon after that, she informed me that she was leaving me.
Eventually I learned to forgive, recognizing that forgiveness is an act of self-empowerment because you free yourself of negative energy.
I faced death and survived. I haven't experienced atrial fibrillation for years because I have eliminated gluten completely from my diet. My wife, unfortunately, couldn't remain in the relationship while I was working through my physical issues. I occasionally find it hard to understand, but I don't blame her.
​
​
​
​
All stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
Dowitchers at Sunset
THE SHORE
​
Twenty years since I last saw
the cliffs and the skeletal tree stump
where I had sat in the dusk,
the shore deserted.
A pelican glides above the waves,
tilts a little and plunges.
I don't remember pelicans offshore
twenty years ago.
Only the one
who had left me behind,
the shore timeless,
life irrelevant.
My daughter piles pincers and husks
before me twenty years later in that place
so unaltered that memory
and place match unexpectedly.
Some part of me seems untouched,
yet I could have sworn the years
had altered me beyond
recognition to myself.
In another twenty years,
my wife will leave me,
the waves growing violet
once again.
A pelican will glide
above the waves, tilting
a little and plunging,
my soul timeless like the shore,
the waves growing violet
once again, my soul timeless
like the shore, like the shore,
like the shore....
THE SHORE
"The Shore" is another song that my wife loved, perhaps because the lyrics include a description of our daughter piling husks and pincers of crabs in front of me.
It's another song that I rewrote a little after she left me.
The song describes a beach at Patrick's Point, which is several miles north of Eureka, CA. When I was a kid, my family spent a week there on vacation. My brother and I explored all the paths in the area even though it was pouring rain most of the time. One day, after hours of splashing through the trails, my brother and I around sunset found a path down to the beach. Suddenly he was gone. He had already ditched me several times that week, but this time his motivation seemed a little more sinister since our campsite was far away and it was already getting dark.
My family traveled all over California when I was growing up, and I never really paid much attention to where we landed or how we got there. When twenty years later I found myself on the beach at Patrick's Point with my wife and daughter, I was thrown back in time. I had had no idea that we were heading back to the same beach where my brother had ditched me years before. Oddly, the beach seemed exactly the same, and I felt like I was simultaneously experiencing two different moments in time--in a timeless place.
The ending of the song is now different. I wanted to focus on how the natural world stays pretty much the same, no matter how much a person is battered by experience--yet there is always a sense of timelessness in the natural world that the soul is able to experience. It's more than just a sense of timelessness, really--it's a connection with what the ancients called the anima mundi, the "world soul," within which everything is connected. Relationships change, horrible events disrupt lives, the physical body breaks down, but sometimes the human sense of time disappears and the soul feels connected to the subtle spirit of the earth and the cosmos, which can bring peace beyond understanding.
​
​
​
​​​
All stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.
Angels: Ithuriel's Spears and Fiesta Flowers
RISING
​
It could be like this rising
into a greater brightness, close now
to the source where nothing
separates us from the light.
It could be like returning
to a place we had forgotten
from a time before our migration,
rediscovering our home tree by tree,
flower by flower, always
haunted by wings
but now only timeless
like light.
RISING
This song was inspired by a trip to Mineral King in late May. In the lower foothills, the last flowers were blooming profusely on the hillsides. We rose higher and higher on a treacherous single-lane road on a cliff by the Kaweah River, then on a winding dirt road through a high mountain forest, and we eventually encountered the flowers of early spring again. As we drove into the high mountain valley, water was cascading down the mountain on every side. The sun seemed so close that we could almost touch it. After we parked the car we found a trailhead and kept rising higher past huge trees and small streams. Suddenly a bear ran across the path twenty feet in front of us, heading for the meadow in the valley below.
We were well above eight thousand feet in elevation, and oxygen was thin. I began to feel a little dizzy. My wife and daughter seemed unaffected by the thin oxygen level, but we knew that we would have to hike many more miles to get to a mountain lake, and many more miles beyond that to touch the sun, so we rested on the trail before we turned around and headed back. I imagined our souls rising higher and higher into a dimension that we had known before we had come to the earth, a place with its own forest like the one we were exploring. That day, it seemed, we were rediscovering trees and flowers that we had known before.
Some part of me knew then that we never completely lose anyone, that there is some dimension where we meet again and thank each other for struggling with us through trials and tribulations, and I also knew that we thank each other for sharing the mystery and the stunning beauty and the magic of this earth.
​
​
​
​
​
All stories, illustrations, and music Copyright © 2024 by Jim Robbins.