When The Star Aligns
The Star for Mother Ren’s Tarot Deck by Mother Ren - Based on our closest star and life giver, the sun, and its relationship with the moon. The seven chakras are represented by the seven snakes. The Star Card in tarot represents hope, faith and, purpose.
Hello again, my awesome adventurers, enigmatic explorers and vivacious vagabonds. Where has life’s journey taken you this week? I have been flung in to space once again, high above the heavens and in to the infinite beyond, much like a philosophical astronaut seeking the answers to questions beyond the reach of the physical. The captivating mystery of 3i/Atlas and its ancient origins that predates the birth of our very own solar system has inspired in me a passion for creation. I have always had more than a surface level of want to discover how things came in to being. I find science and logic considered by many to be the be all and end all of knowledge, whereas I consider it as only a mere fraction of the bigger picture. What is out there that can’t be explained by science and mathematics alone?
As an example if I may? Every physical thing in the observable universe is made up of atoms, even the air that surrounds us. An incalculable number of mind-blowingly small dots make up the entirety of the universe. I remember vividly a painting I studied when I was a little girl, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat. I would have been no older than 10 years old when this painting crossed my path but it has remained with me my whole journey and now I believe I understand why. The interesting thing about this painting is not what it depicts, although I am sure Seurat painted with intention to convey a personal message that my immature self could not discover, it is how it has been composed to convey that meaning. It is not made up of brush strokes or outlines, there are no clear boundaries that separate human from grass, and yet it is clear every oil-painted object is unique to its neighbouring parts. It is in fact made up of teeny, tiny dots of paint in a cavalcade of colours that are carefully arranged tricking the eyes in to seeing the whole rather than the parts. Small little slices of information make up the bigger picture we can see.
This art style is called Pointillism, as it starts with a point, and then another and then another until you have a sum of its points made into something bigger than its self. Our televisions used to work similarly, with individual pixels changing their colour frequency to depict the visual story wanting to be told. If one pixel went black the others were still more than enough to be able to understand the picture being shared. I have no idea with new technology whether TV’s still work in this way but I hope the example shows us that we have evidence of a human understanding that everything we see is made up of infinitely smaller wholes, dots, pixels, atoms, even if it sometimes is only recognised in the subconscious.
So, yes, we all agree that everything and everyone is made up of atoms, and these atoms are individual building blocks with their own chemical properties, a bit like a green dot of the grass in Suerat’s painting is different than a red dot in the bodice of the central woman. We know that Suerat has basically arranged his coloured dots into categories that then define shape, much like my atoms have been assigned to me and your atoms have been assigned to you.
Simple, yes? Let’s get a little more complex. Now, what if all those thousands of years ago, the atoms of natural plant fibres hadn’t been squished, dried and manipulated in to paper by us clever humans? What if, and I can’t believe I would dare to imagine this horror, but what if paper was never invented? Gasp! Where would have Suerat compiled his dots? Without paper, canvass, or really any porous surface, the dots would be rogue, they would obviously be elsewhere, probably still in their tubes of paint, each dot swimming in a sea of a single colour with a purpose (to be painted) but no meaning . . . yet. We humans have understood for an astonishingly long time that paper doesn’t just hold but one colour of paint at a time (and can hold many more mediums beyond) we can paint with all the colours observable under the sun on to one piece of paper, holding them in place and transcending individual purpose to one of collective meaning. And us humans, like everything that surrounds us are a pointillist painting of an infinite amount of atoms.
I wanted to calculate for you all the atoms in my own body to share with you, but this is a feat far beyond my own mathematical expertise (which happens to be only to a GCSE level). So, I shall share with you an example as explained by howstuffworks.com. A human weighing 70 kilos (that’s just over 11 stone to us old British fogies), has roughly around 7 billion billion billion atoms ( or 7,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms). Wow, okay! That’s a hell of a lot! In fact that is so many that we have more atoms making up our body than the Milky Way has stars! And further to that, it’s not the only thing we are made of. We are actually predominantly made up of empty space, the atoms only take up a minute percentage of our overall mass. In fact, atoms make up only 4 percent of the mass of the contents of the entire universe and all its inhabitants. Only 4% of you is what can be seen and observed, the other 96% scientists believe is dark energy or dark matter. I believe it’s also the paper, our paper, the universes paper.
Whilst we are looking at how to improve on that 4%, how can we make our hair shinier or our skin blemish free, how can I be thinner, squatting for a fat bum and relishing in the joys of the physical, we neglect the 96% of us. The shadow part of ourselves that forms the canvas on which our atoms are painted on. Each thread of the canvas must be chosen and strengthened to support the art you wish to place there. If all you have to work on is toilet roll then all you are going to produce is shit. With it becoming ever apparent how little we understand of our universe, (is 3i/Atlas comet or comrade?), now is the perfect time for humanity to look at the 96%. To get to know the space between our atoms that makes up the most of us.
Tarot cards are thought to be visual messages from a spiritual divinity, personal prophecies on paper. A complete metaphor for the synergy of the material and the spiritual. And something I know intrigues you my vagabonds, especially in these uncertain times. Whether or not you believe there is a higher power there is something about tarot that beckons to its listener and hints at a curiosity going unheard. So, my latest adventure is more holistic, I will be taking us on a journey to reveal how we access that other 96% of us and I thought there was no better place than to start with designing my own tarot deck.
The star card was pulled by Chris as the first card for me to draw and share with you. It means hope, faith and purpose. Purpose. I love that! I truly believe you have such great purposes in life, my beautiful vagabonds, so to receive this message as the first to share with you filled my heart with such overwhelming joy and relief. I know you are going through the storm currently, or maybe coming out of it, things are confusing and scary, but hear this. You are going to be okay, you will make your way through the storm, you and your legs are strong. Just keep moving forward for you have a purpose in this life. You belong here!
My purpose is and always will be to be your Mum. Be the stars you were born from and destined to become once again. Sail through the sky confusing everyone like 3i/Atlas. Teach the world something new about themselves and always remember you are more than the 4% everyone can see, you are made of the universe. I love you with all my heart.