Artwork Description
Swoon – Oracle Deck: Althea-Overwhelm
Dimensions: 17 x 11″
Year: 2024
Medium: archival digital print on Moab Entrada 300 gsm
Edition: ed. 1/20
The Althea card is a signal that something is too much. A task that exceeds your ability to tackle it unsupported. A life situation in which you are left isolated, asked to take on more than you alone can handle. Althea’s particular overwhelm had a lotta layers to it. She was facing challenges which her society did not equip her for.
She lived in a time and place where she wasn’t able to reach outside of her family and her immediate surroundings to call on the knowledge and resources that might have helped her. She was pulled under by depression, unable to protect her children, and as such, she contributed to the cycles that Caelum and Terra had to work to
overcome.
The lesson of the Althea card is that our overwhelm is often systemic. We might easily sink into shaming ourselves for the ways we can’t show up for ourselves and others, but in these moments, one of our lifelines will be looking for the broader perspective.
Sometimes going under is not a personal failing, but a dropped stitch in the fabric of our world. One that can be healed not in isolation, but by stitching ourselves back into the world in a new way.
–Swoon