This weekend, my friend and I decided that it would be fun to pull Rumi cards. If you aren't familiar, Rumi cards are oracle cards that provide guidance on life decisions. Unlike some other oracle card decks, Rumi cards have longer descriptions and tend to be very intense. This weekend's cards were certainly intense, and I have been reeling from my message ever since. I pulled the Passion of the wild red mother, which encourages transformation and leaning into the passion and joy. Below is the full description.
Bring me your unreasonableness, your insanity, your love without reason and your passion - the passion that makes you crazy and shoos all logical restraint from your mind. Leave your ordered thoughts, sensible plans and appropriate attire at my door. Put on your animal fur and sing to me in gibberish. When my beautiful goats die, I make drums from their skins and their spirits live on in my passionate play. When my birds drop their feathers, I gather them and put them in my hair. Come drum with me, as I place feathers in your hair and we honor the spirits of my animals - of your animal nature too, wild and free as you are in truth. Stick your tongue out and growl at those who try to tame you with guilt, shame and fear. Do you think I give a damn for any of their silly games? Those games of reason and logic. "Of course you should do it this way," they say, "it makes sense!" But I care not for what makes sense, I care for what brings you alive.
You, oh blazing angel, are being invited by the Wild Red Mother to participate in a dance of divine passion. You may be an activist, a poet, an advocate for justice, or a writer, content in your own world of dreams; or perhaps you are a healer, devoted to the liberation of suffering of others and hungry to commune with ancient wisdom. Perhaps you are all of these, or some other exquisite amalgam of holy energy in form. Whatever your nature, there is a passion in your heart; a fire for something more powerful than fear that can become the fuel for your life journey - if you accept the invitation of the Wild Red Mother of course!
This is an invitation to lay aside despair, to lay aside doubt in the capacity of the human heart - even our frustration and impatience. It is time to quit whipping yourself and others, no matter how noble the intention behind the whip may be, and start dancing instead.
Will you join her, the Wild Red Mother, in her exuberant play? You can choose to lead through joy, to heal through love, to transform suffering into what it is meant to be: the crucible through which ecstasy reveals itself. You do not have to analyze, to stay in the throes of process and ordered stages. You can choose this passionate path now, if you wish. You are ready. It is open to you. Will you accept?
It takes a great spirit, one with much practice of studied rebellion, to be ready to cast off the shackles of society from a place of loving defiance rather than fearful anger. And to playfully say to the world, "I have tasted your stale bread and underdeveloped wine, and have had quite enough now. I decline your offer to gorge upon such lesser fruits. I prefer to feast upon bread, hot and fresh, and wine that is mouth-filling and unctuous. Join me if you like. It is an abundant feast and there is plenty for all."
Even in the spiritually minded there can be a driving fear, thinly veiled as devotion to the most arduous path. Perhaps for a while that serves as a truth of sorts, but eventually there will become a time when smaller truths must give way to larger ones, so the soul can truly be free and grow.
Passion is the bridge that leads you from a smaller truth that suffering is necessary in order to heal, towards a larger and more luscious experience of life as a divine embrace. Yes, sometimes the divine lover, in all enthusiasm for the sport, bites too hard or grabs you with so much desire that a bruise remains. However the passion behind such fervent embrace can leave you begging for more life, for more of that boundless love, even when it knocks you on the head whilst grabbing you. This is possible when you give up on judgment of what is good and what is bad, on what is apparently spiritual and what is not, and when you just realize everything in your life is leading to love. Whether through caress or a slap, the divine lover is seducing you. You can accept this, you can certainly give yourself permission to love what you love, to live how you wish to live, and to forget about holding yourself back because some choices make sense, and others, supposedly, do not.
If you are able to rise to the passion that is possible for you, you'll let the Wild Red Mother consume your philosophies and doctrines. She'll feast on your religion and your plans, and devour your doubts and certainties. She'll tear away your need for maps and directions. Just when you think there's nothing left, she'll grab your hands and spin with you. You'll tilt back your head and laugh so wildly with her, spinning together, along with the earth upon her axis.
With daring and bold love for life that will not be quashed, that Wild Mother speaks to you now. You can choose passion over fear, time and time again. So I invite you to paint the whole world red with me with passionate nature. Let us laugh and change the world!
This oracle comes to you with a message. It is a big cosmic yes. It is also an invitation to let go of suffering and struggle; not with regret or shame, but with gentle acknowledgment that it has had its purpose. It now has a bigger purpose - that of passion - which calls you to engage in the embrace of life with more abandon than ever before. Now is the time to let go of belief systems and 'needing to know' anything. It is time to trust in the beating of your own heart and in the people, places and experiences that truly move you, whether it makes sense or appears logical or not.
The Wild Red Mother comes to you when you are ready for her at a soul level. Your mind may think she is a thief in the night, ready pilfer all you hold near and dear - and be utterly in terror at the prospect - but your soul will be gurgling with such anticipation of freedom it will fill your heart with sweet love and urge you to let go. Let her have her way with you - even if it means she crashes into you in the dark as she fumbles and drags you, half asleep, to go out dancing with her under the full moon, wearing nothing but your animal skin and a smile. She'll soothe any bumps and bruises you receive in opening up to life with the most tender and effective of ministrations, for she is just as tender a nurse as she is a wild, raging dance partner.
This oracle also brings you guidance. You have divine permission to do something ridiculous - be it ridiculous in your own mind for your age or career path, or some identity or version of yourself you or another hold. The more ridiculous or inappropriate it seems - the more it moves your heart, without rhyme or reason - the better. This is not about hurting people or behaving without moral code. It is not about childish indulgence or questionable justification for letting the ego misbehave. It is not about the ego at all; the Wild Red Mother eats ego for breakfast. This guidance is about listening to the truth of your heart and allowing your soul to throb with aliveness, making that more important than any restriction, opinion, judgment of fear the mind - yours or that of others - could summon.
Have you ever pulled oracle cards? What comes up for you?
