Artwork Description
Swoon – Oracle Deck: Rasp-Compassion
Dimensions: 17 x 11″
Year: 2024
Medium: archival digital print on Moab Entrada 300 gsm
Edition: ed. 1/20
Rasp is a true teacher. He comes bearing ancient wisdom in a way that feels fresh and surprising. When Rasp speaks, we become suddenly able to hear a simple truth as though for the first time.
Whatever Rasp is sharing, his core message is always the same: see others with compassion, see yourself with compassion. When Rasp and Elly arrive by surprise, they teach Caelum and Terra about the ways that witches become disconnected from their powers, and, the ways that mothers become disconnected from their ability to care even for themselves, and so neither can they care for their children. He invites the girls to see beyond the Wee Wicked Witch of the Grey House, to the frightened child that Katarina once was. At first Caelum doesn’t
understand his message, and yet in her time of greatest need, she is able to live it, and this becomes a gift beyond measure.
The Rasp card calls you to understand someone in your life who is trying but not succeeding. Compassion, not as an excuse to tolerate mistreatment, but as a much larger force which enables us to act with wisdom from the expanse of love which is our most basic nature.
If you knew for certain that people in your life were trying to meet their needs in the best way they knew how at the time, how would you treat them? If you knew that your own imperfect actions sometimes stem from a suffering you don’t yet know how to face, what tenderness might you offer to yourself?
–Swoon