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Lowitja O’Donoghue was born in 1932 at Indulkana, in the remote north-west corner of South Australia, to a Pitjantjatjara mother and an Irish father. When she was just two years old, she and two of her sisters were taken away from their mother by missionaries on behalf of South Australia’s Aboriginal Protection Board.
Renamed ‘Lois’ by the missionaries, she and her sisters grew up at Colebrook Children’s Home and did not see their mother again for more than thirty years. They weren’t allowed to speak their own language or to ask questions about their origins or even about their parents. Aboriginal girls brought up in the missions were trained in domestic service with the expectation that at age 16 they would seek employment as domestics.
O’Donoghue’s work on behalf of Aboriginal rights began in the early 1950s when she tried to extend her qualifications after working as a nursing aide at the local hospital.. She applied to complete her training at the Royal Adelaide Hospital, but was refused the opportunity because she was Aboriginal. She fought the decision, which was eventually overturned and she became the first Aboriginal person to train as a nurse at the hospital. She had by then joined the Aboriginal Advancement League, to advocate on behalf of other Aborigines and specifically to ensure employment options other than domestic work for women and manual labour for men could be available to them.
Lowitja O’Donoghue’s leadership in Aboriginal rights has been highly influential. A member of the stolen generation, she has also been an advocate of reconciliation and avoided politics of confrontation, finding conciliation to be more effective.
Dr O’Donoghue has received numerous awards and accolades for her work. She was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1983 and Australian of the Year in 1984, during which time she became the first Aboriginal person to address the United Nations General Assembly. She won the Advance Australia Award in 1982, was named a National Living Treasure in 1998, and awarded Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in 1999 and Dame of the Order of St Gregory the Great (DSG), a Papal Award, in 2005.
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In the Rider Waite Eight of Cups, we are confronted with the moment of transition. We see a cloaked figure taking off to a barren land leaving behind eight golden cups. He is tired of what those cups, that he has spent so much time collecting, represent and is now setting out seeking a higher purpose. It may come from boredom and restlessness or from sheer necessity.
In a general context, the Eight of Cups represents abandonment. It can signify walking away from people or situations in your life or abandoning your plans. It can indicate disappointment, escapism and turning your back on or leaving bad situation.
“Sometimes you don’t realize your own strength until you come face to face with your greatest weakness.” – Susan Gale
Between 1788 and 1868 more than 162,000 convicts were transported to Australia. Transportation as a form of criminal punishment emerged in the British legal system from the early 17th century as an alternative to execution.
Many of the crimes for which they were transported are considered minor offenses by today’s standards. The most common crime by far was stealing—food, clothing, money, household items—mostly items worth no more than £5.
One can only imagine how my great great grandmother, Mary Ann Maule, had been living prior to her sentencing after a series of petty thefts. Clearly Mary was no angel but conditions in Liverpool were particularly harsh. Houses were severely overcrowded and the impact of the Great Famine, known as the Irish Famine was profound.
Friedrich Engels was shocked when he visited Liverpool in the 1840s. “Liverpool, with all its commerce, wealth, and grandeur yet treats its workers with the same barbarity. A full fifth of the population, more than 45,000 human beings, live in narrow, dark, damp, badly ventilated cellar dwellings, of which there are 7,862 in the city.
“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”– Arnold Schwarzenegger
Having survived the long, perilous journey on board the convict ship, there can be no doubt that life would have been no easier when she arrived in the colony. However, the scarcity of women opened up opportunities for convict women as servants and wives. Many, including Mary Ann, successfully merged into colonial society, creating new families, and through good conduct and hard work forged new lives. Convict women, like my great great grandmother, demonstrated a diversity of character, aspirations and behaviour, which contradicted their stereotype as ‘damned whores’.
Her legacy of strength and fortitude has been far reaching.
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Passion is the fuel that powers the engine of our desires and our ambitions. The challenge for most of us is to learn to channel our ambitions wisely, or they can ignite and blow things up. One of the dilemmas when are confronted with the Seven of Cups is that we can feel like we are drowning, feel utterly overwhelmed.
Kabbalists are said to call the Seven of Cups tarot the Lord of Illusory Success! Unfortunately it can all be like that mirage you see in the desert! Like the Wizard of Oz it can all be an illusion, all done with smoke and mirrors.
Happily the Seven of Cups does allows us to explore our wildest, most exotic fantasies without having to worry about the real world consequences. Writing our discoveries into your journal or expressing them artistically will be very instructive.
Alternatively, if we are lucky enough to have one, we can send out an SOS and seek advice from a Zen Master. As luck has it, Skellie Stan bridges the gap for me and is willing to act as a conduit and pass on advice from the dead and abandoned. It was his idea to go to a grave of a creative man that we have often noticed in a nearby cemetery, and to stop at one of the farm houses that has long been abandoned. He seemed to think that they would be responsive.
The trouble with personas, according to Jung, is that it can lead to aspects of one’s personality (both good and bad) being unexplored, underdeveloped, and suppressed. Through a desire to please others, we focus on our qualities which we perceive to be acceptable by others and hide the parts of ourselves which we believe to be negative.
The Two of Cups generally shows a young man and woman, exchanging cups and pledging their love for one another but the symbolism of this card encompasses so much more than just romantic love. What we see here might also indicate the beginning of a lifelong friendship, a “meeting of the minds” – or any situation in which human energies enrich and transform one another.
Another approach is to take the opportunity to court, to romance a part of yourself that has been underdeveloped. To identify such an aspect you might lay out Two of Cups cards from a number of deck (see above). Then place a card from the Archeo, Personal Archetype Cards by Nick Bantock or from the Carolyn Myss Archetype Cards. Spend some time in your journal exploring the benefits of connecting more fully with this archetype.
Decisions Decisions!
- Flip through an archetype deck and decide which archetypes need a bit of love, need to be courted and activated. Lay down the cards and perhaps make use of a Show Me style deck to pose a question to begin some work with these archetypes. See example below. Dialogue with the archetype and work out how you can use the energy of, in this case, the Ace of Rods.
To the extent you’re aware of the archetypes operating within you is an indicator of your level of consciousness.
Little Red Tarot
Back in the 1950’s, when dinosaurs may have still roamed the world, on a humid summer afternoon, I could not have been aware that events would mean that my world would look very different for awhile. I can only have been two or three at the time, so all I have are the stories that were subsequently told.
My father loved his sport and he was a keen cricketer in the summer and a football umpire in the winter. Clearly my brothers went to the cricket match with him on this fateful day. My eldest brother was in the car watching from a distance while my other brother was on the side lines. When the storm came in and the thunder cracked the team and my brother sheltered under a tree.
The lightning that struck the tree must have looked spectacular. My elder brother was certainly traumatized by having witnessed this.
“It looks like somebody threw a cannonball through it.”
What happens when you are struck by lightening
The whole team, including my father and brother felt the full force of the lightening as it struck the tree they were sheltering under. I can only imagine their shock when it hit like a cannonball. Have you ever got a static electricity shock? When lightning hits the same thing happens, but on a much bigger scale. The majority of injuries and deaths are caused by a ground current, where lightning hits a nearby object and then travels through the ground in all directions.
Amazingly they all survived but at the time, the local doctor in our small country town struggled to know how to treat them. My brother was sent, repeatedly, to Melbourne for skin grafts, the scars of which remain to this day.
Your Turn
Lay out a collection of Tower cards and make a spontaneous list of Tower moments that come to mind. Write in the first or third person about this event.
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Having your home destroyed by fire or flood, quitting your job, getting fired, finding yourself living rough, being ghosted by someone you love, losing a friend, having a loved one die are all examples of Tower moments. Lets state the obvious. The shock from events like this feels incredibly painful and sadly, there are rarely any quick fixes. But, eventually, despite our despair, most of us pick ourselves up and slowly rebuild.
Without sounding glib, or suggesting that doing a Tarot spread will fix things, it must be said that working with cards may help adjust one’s perspective and help someone find a way forward. Assuming you have come up for air this is an example of a spread with cards that might help you find some clarity. The Show Me cards are great because, at a time when you are not sure what you want to know, they help you ask whoever is listening, to just shed some light on possible options.
Rather than provide a ‘reading’ of the cards that appeared from the Forest of Enchantment Tarot, I’ll let you consider which responses are in any way helpful.
from Labyrinthos
If the Six of Cups has presented itself to you it may be a good time to reminisce about childhood and the books that made a deep impression on you and have, in some small way, influenced choices you have made. While you cannot bring the past back you can revisit and experience the joy of escaping into a fantasy world.
Children’s Literature is extremely vital as it provides the child with the chance of responding to literature and developing personal opinions. Moreover, it encourages deeper thoughts and emotional intelligence and imagination; it cultivates growth and development of personality and social skills. Those, like Ruth Park, who write for children, generally provide an escape from reality for children, taking them into exciting fantasy worlds that they might never know otherwise. The impact of their work is almost impossible to quantify.
Rosina Ruth Lucia Park was born in Auckland, on August 24, 1917 but spent most of her life in Australia. Her Scottish father had migrated to New Zealand to work as a labourer on road- and bridge-building projects. Park spent her early years as the solitary child in camps for road workers. Romping in forests she developed a fertile imagination, also inspired by her father’s tales of Scottish heroes.
In a piece that she wrote to tell children about her life she wrote that “many years ago I was born in that green, snow capped archipelago called New Zealand, and I’m very glad I was. Probably I am a writer because I had a singular childhood. My first seven years I spent all alone in the forest, like a possum or a bear cub. It was rain forest, pathless, dense; its light was a dim green twilight. How did I get there?
My father was a bridge builder and road maker; he drove some of the first roads through the forested Crown lands of northern New Zealand. My mother and I travelled with him, living in tents beside mountain streams lively with trout and eels. My father’s head was crammed with the savage hero tales of his ancestral land, Scotland. How lucky I was that he had the gift of storytelling! You must imagine lamplight, owls hoo-hooing, the tent fly cracking with frost, and myself, this bear cub child, listening to the stories I would play out by myself in the bush, next day. I developed an imagination both rich and rowdy. But there was one thing I had not imagined. When I went to school at last, I was totally astounded, almost frightened, to see children playing together. I hadn’t known they did that!
Although I loved school, I wasn’t at all interested in children’s games. However, I learned how. to pretend, and became on the surface just another kid, though inside I knew I wasn’t. This didn’t make me happy. I really believed I was a changeling. (We didn’t know the word ‘alien’ then, otherwise I would have thought I had been dropped by a Rigelian spaceship.) I longed to be like everyone else, but my solitary early life had made me different somehow. My friends were almost all Maori children, little forest creatures like myself.
By the time I was eight I was writing. I entered all kinds of verse and story competitions, and when I was eleven I won one of these. My story was published. This went straight to my head. I saw my life’s work laid out before me, and have never stopped writing since. I think, even at the age of eleven, I felt comfortable writing, more the real person I knew I was.”
From Becoming a Writer by Ruth Park
May Gibb
Within the Tales of Snugglepot and Cuddlepie May revealed herself as a committed conservationist with the opening inscription ‘Humans Please be kind to all bush creatures and don’t pull flowers up by the roots‘.
May Gibbs (1877 – 1969) is one of Australia’s most treasured illustrators, artists and children’s authors. Her bush fantasy world has captured the imaginations of Australians for over a century, creating a uniquely Australian folklore that holds a special place in the hearts of a nation. May was to say in later life ‘I’ve always had the greatest pleasure in thinking of all those little children who enjoyed my books. Everything became alive for me, it was just a fairy tale all the time.’ Born Cecilia May Gibbs in England on 17 January 1877, she was the only daughter of artist, cartoonist and public servant Herbert William Gibbs and Cecilia Rogers.
May emigrated to Australia with her family in 1881 aboard the Hesperus at four years of age. First trying their hand at farming in South Australia, followed by two years at Harvey Cattle Station in Western Australia, the Gibbs family eventually gave up on the farming life and settled at ‘The Dunes’ in Perth.
Over this time the young May spent many impressionable years observing the beauty of the Australian bush. In later years May was to say ‘It’s hard to tell, hard to say, I don’t know if the bush babies found me or I found the little creatures’. Raised in a creative household, May demonstrated artistic ability from an early age – ‘I could draw before I could walk,’ May was to recall. May excelled at botanical drawings and in 1892 at just fifteen years of age May won her first Art prize at the Perth Wild Flower Show, the first of many throughout the 1890s.
For the full online autobiography and to learn about the diversity of Gibb’s work, visit the official May Gibb website
]]>The Six of Cups represents innocence, nostalgia, and positive thinking. The card has an overall feel of childhood and nostalgia.
It is no accident that in movies like Titanic we see the dying Rose being reunited with all the people who were on board that fated ship. This is very Six of Cups nostalgia that reduced most of the audience to tears
Faced with death on the battle field of the Great War its not hard to believe that Bubs Corbetts thoughts would have turned to the country, family and the lifestyle he had left behind.
In the face of so much death and horror one can only hope that Bubs gained some comfort remembering the love and the bonds of relationships that he left behind.
It would be reassuring to think that, like Rose or Maximus Decimus Meridius (The Gladiator), he found his way back ‘home’ to walk in the door and be greeted by his loved ones.
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