Artwork Description
Swoon – Oracle Deck: Rotting Snails-Surrender
Dimensions: 17 x 11″
Year: 2024
Medium: archival digital print on Moab Entrada 300 gsm
Edition: ed. 1/20
This card represents the bottom of the barrel, the bitter slimy end of the end of your rope. When we muster our last resources and still
they aren’t enough.
There’s shame and strain and loss, and a whole lot of not knowing what to do. This is the plea that doesn’t ever feel like it’s enough. The rot that’s gone too far. The lowliest place.
And yet — within the belly of the earth, how does soil become rich? How does spring renew itself if not through the cycle of death and decay? Sometimes we resist the end of the cycle. We ride the plea for far too long when the best thing to do would be to give it to the earth and let the cycle start again.
These ol’ snails represent the moment just before surrender, when we are still with- holding. Like the Wendell Berry poem says, “He enters into death yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.”
So let your plea become your gift of vulnerable surrender. Let what needs to go lie down in the dung heap, so that what is waiting may arise in the corn.
–Swoon