08/26/2025
Reveal for the pick a card reading for the week of August 24th
Card 1
Dismemberment
Images of dismembered feminine are common in European fairy tales, from 'The Handless Maiden,' whose hands are severed by her own father so that he can save himself, to Karen in Hans Christian Anderson's 'The Red Shoes,' whose feet must be amputated to save her from the power that her dancing shoes have over her.
What does it mean to lose our hands or feet? Such dismemberment reflects a deep soul-wound, a rending soul-loss, and acknowledgement that something essential has been taken from us. For the Handless Maiden, the loss of her hands leads to a feeling of emptiness, of futility. To make herself whole again, this particular fairy tale heroine must undergo a quest- a healing journey in the course of which she finally learns how to grow back her own hands.
Precisely because of their brutality, stories of dismemberment and other such traumas are initiatory experiences, gateways to transformation. They propel us forcefully along the dark, root-tangled pathway to maturity and meaning. But having first re-membered: the Handless Maiden is healed and she achieves this herself, and in her own authentic way. Her original dismemberment, then, represents the necessary culling of an old life to make way for a new one.
Card 2
The King's Palace
The king's palace is both a holding place and a place of refuge: it furnishes the fairy tale heroine with a temporay home wehre she can work (usually in the kitchens or at some other menial task) and be fed. Here, she can disguise herself, take stock of her situation, and plot a way forward. In the Brothers Grimm story 'The Goose Girl,' a princess who's usurped by her maid finds work helping to watch the geese at the palace of the man she was originally revealed as an impostor and the princess regains her rightful place.
It's at the king's palace that the heroine, though usually wearing a surface disguise, is revealed for who she really is. This has less to do with the trappings of her former station in life, and infinitely more to do with her character and steadfastness.
To help her along the way, there might be a talking horse who adores her, or a cook who can't help but feel he must protect her. Whatever the nature of her alliances, the heroine in the king's palace remains wholly herself, and she waits there until the world is ready to recognize the nature of her gifts.
Card 3
Kiss
In some versions of the 'The Sleeping Beauty,' the enchanted princess is awoken from her hundred-year-long sleep by a kiss. A kiss, then, is a tool of awakening: it lifts us out of our stagnant everyday and launches us into a strange new world that's brimming with possibility.
An awakening, though, is more than just a rousing from sleep, the interruption of a dream. An awakening is the moment when we first begin to understand something, or to feel something. It's the process of that something slowly emerging into process of that something slowly emerging into our awareness, then expanding and intensifying, causing us to see the world in a different way. Such an awakening can be the most significant moment of our life, changing our perspective on the world and our place in it.
Card 4
Shoes
Shoes in fairy tales represent our sure footing and self-control. And so, Karen, the key character in Hans Christian Anderson's 'The Red Shoes,' embraces excess and fakery - a glittering pair of red shoes, which she sees as a finer substitute for the poor but much-loved pair of handmade red shoes she'd worn as a child. Karen dances in the flamboyant new shoes, but soon finds that she loses control. The shoes begin to dance her, and the dancing becomes so out of control that the only way she can regain herself' is to beg a woodcutter to chop off her feet. In 'The Twelve Dancing Princesses,' a tribe of sister princesses dance their shoes to pieces every night in a strange underworld with mysterious princes as their partneres- much to the despair of their father, who eventually puts paid to their antics.
Do we dance in the shoes we choose to wear, or are our shoes dancing us? A good pair of shoes will allow us to find a safe grounding in the world. We should be careful, then, about what we put our feet into - anv we should never try to force them into glass slippers that were made to fit someont else.
Card 5
Thread
The making of thread has always been women's work, and in pre-industrial times, creating it was a constant in women's lives. In spinning raw material into strong, useful thread, we construct something tangible from a few wisps of wool or other fiber: it is equivalent, symbolically, to creating life. And so, in Greek mythology, the three Fates worked with thread to influence the course of a human life: Clotho spun the thread of life. Lachesis determined the length of the spun thread (the lifespan), and Atropos bore the scissors that cut the thread at the time of death.
Thread and yarn play a major role in several European fairy tales. Sometimes, a heronine is given a ball of yarn to throw ahead of her, so that she might be shown the life path she must follow. In 'The Six Swans,' a ball of yarn with special powers shows a king where his children are hidden. In the Grimms' 'Spindle, Shuttle, and Needle,' a prince follows a 'Shining golden thread' that leads him to the girl he's fated to marry. Thread, then, represents possibility and, rolled out on the ground ahead of you, it shows you the path you muust take to fulfill your potential.
Card 6
Wall of Thorns
Behind an impenetrable thicket of thorns, the fairy tale heroine is sleepling. Walled off from the world in this way, she might seem on the surface to have checked out of her own story. But when the time is right, she'll need to pass through the wall of thorns in order to come back into the world and pick up the lost threads of her life.
A wall of thorns acts as a protective barrier for the person sheltering behind it. At least until it's time to pass through: then it's nothing more than a painful place, the location of a passage that's hard to navigate. But this is also to greater prize, and staying walled up forever just isn't an option.
One day, we must emerge; one day, we must risk everything for the sake of the journey ahead.
A wall of thorns is often constructed of roses, and the beauty of the flowers might distract you from the pain of the thorns that will tear at you until you reach the other side. It isn't until you're committed that you realize just how hard it's going to be. But once you're through it, you're through it. You emerge from the passage torn and tattered, but stronger that you ever were.
