June: Intuition and Self-Sovereignty

A Luna moth rests on the fabric used to make Chinese shoes, of a fashion now banned: the cruel practice of foot-binding, gradually breaking the bones in a woman's foot until it achieves resemblance to a lotus flower. Crippling a woman was beautiful only for the man; a wife who could not walk on her own, requiring servants to help her, is a display of his wealth and status. The independence of a wealthy wife was crushed like the bones in her feet. She might well have wished to have been born into less 'fortunate' circumstances.

When survival depends on an abusive relationship, it is as if a woman is forced to wear invisible Chinese shoes. Even the mouth of the moon is covered, when one is in captivity.

The doors represent decisions, a destiny behind each. One of them leads out of the walled garden. A tenet of intuition (inner tuition) is that everything we need is actually here, now, in the present, and can be found by casting about in the landscape, both inner and outer. Colette, in her book The Vagabond, called this, "Chance"...the reliance on synchronicity for guidance.

 A gypsy, being free, throws flowers to the prisoners. When we penetrate more deeply into the book of life, we will release all our relatives from bondage. 

The portrait is My Sweet Rose, by pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse, circa 1908.